This story originally appeared on Them.
The dystopian future climate scientists predicted decades ago is here.
The wildfires that spread across Ontario and Canada’s Northwest Territories in July decimated millions of acres, disproportionately tearing through First Nations communities. Meanwhile, Europe’s unprecedented summer heat waves fueled drought, crop loss, and more wildfires blazing across Spain and France.
During the first week of August, large brush fires erupted throughout the Pacific Northwest, with residents in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho rushing to pack their belongings to flee the path of destruction. This year is slated to be one of the hottest summers on record, continuing a decades-long trend. And the forecasted Super El Niño — a weather event which has previously caused famines and catalyzed the end of entire civilizations — is still on the slate for this year.
Scientists say it’s only going to get hotter from here, unless we make drastic changes. To state the obvious: Fellas, it’s bad. Really bad.
And the climate crisis is an issue that queer people especially should care about. According to the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute, LGBTQ+ people in same-sex couples are more likely to live in parts of the country likely to be most impacted by climate change, such as coastal areas that will see dramatic sea-level rise, areas with infrastructure unequipped for hotter temperatures, and cities with fewer resources.
Compared to their straight counterparts, per the Williams Institute, same-sex couples are more likely to be negatively impacted by climate change. Additionally, communities of color, particularly Black, Latine, and Indigenous people, are more likely to face the worst of climate change, compounded by lack of resources, geographic location, and economic class across the U.S.
But these gaps in impact aren’t just a byproduct of bad luck. They’re consequences to decisions made by politicians. As transgender people across the country relocate to blue coastal states like Washington and Oregon to escape the wrath of Republican lawmakers passing anti-trans legislation, we’re running from one emergency into a climate catastrophe, out of the kettle and into the frying pan.
And on a macro level, President Donald Trump and his administration have used trans people as scapegoats for the country to focus on, all while his administration has “accelerated the climate crisis and endangered communities’ health,” as the Climate Action Campaign notes.
This is why it’s no coincidence that many of the leaders in the climate justice space belong to communities who are already worst impacted by the systemic violence of climate change. It’s often queer people, trans people, people of color, and working class people leading mutual aid efforts that can respond more quickly and directly to climate catastrophes than FEMA.
In the case of the devastating and unprecedented 2024 flooding in the Appalachian mountains caused by Hurricane Helene, for example, trans-led mutual aid groups and ad hoc gaggles of queer DJs delivered thousands of dollars in supplies before the National Guard arrived. With each climate disaster, mutual aid pages and everyday people compiling GoFundMe links are responding at times with more urgency than even governmental agencies. That’s because in the face of many manmade disasters, queer and trans people have long had to take care of each other to survive.
But the fight for our future is about more than just taking individual action; passing the same $15 between each other; and pleading with people to reduce, reuse, recycle. While these are all important pieces of the larger puzzle, a unified fight to steer away from a potentially bleak future means developing a consciousness between all of our liberation struggles.
As billionaires stuff their pockets at the end of the world while AI data centers send millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air, it’s important to understand climate change as an active political decision, both caused by systems of inequality and worsening them simultaneously. Late-stage capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, settler colonialism, and, yes, transphobia and queerphobia all rely on each other to keep functioning, like a hydra hellbent on destroying the planet with us still on it. Climate change is a queer liberation issue, not just because we have some of the most to lose, but because without all of us fighting together, the world will just keep burning.
Though the obstacles may feel bleak, I see gleams of a bright future when my TikTok For You page fills with videos of teens speaking fearlessly while confronting their local city government about the construction of a data center in their community. I’m certain that the climate clock slows a little bit every time heads of tech companies get chased out of a community board meeting by crowds of everyday people protesting the valuation of artificial intelligence over human life.
It isn’t all bleak from here. The world is waking up as it superheats. It’s our only choice.
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