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Take a moment and think about your last grocery bill, the spike in your electricity costs, or the recent extreme weather headlines. It’s not just your imagination, things are getting harder.

Not only that, our personal struggles are deeply linked to global events. Which is why you should be asking yourself these four questions right now: 

 

1. Why are we paying more for everything while billionaires get richer every minute?

Groceries. Rent. Electricity. Healthcare. Everything feels like it costs more. Because it does. We’re living through one of the steepest cost-of-living crises in recent memory.

Meanwhile, billionaire wealth has ballooned to historic highs. The richest 1% now control more than the bottom 95% combined. Even during a global pandemic, worsening climate disasters, and wars, the ultra-wealthy, especially fossil fuel and oil executives, have raked in record profits by increasing energy prices and new exploration.

While the rich get richer, the wages for the rest of us aren’t keeping up. Public services are being cut. High energy prices are driving up the cost of everything else. Governments are prioritizing billionaire interests over food, education, and health systems.

Is this all an accident? Not really, no. This system is designed to funnel wealth and power to the few, leaving the rest of us with less and less.

 

2. If the climate crisis is getting worse, why is nothing being done?

For some of us, electricity bills have climbed with every heatwave. Others have watched water costs spike during droughts or shortages. And for many, floods, fires, or storms have struck closer to home than ever before.

From devastating floods in South Asia and Brazil, to deadly heatwaves in Europe, climate impacts are no longer distant or abstract. 2023 and 2024 have been the hottest years ever recorded. We’re on the brink of crossing a point that scientists have warned could trigger irreversible damage to our lives, all because of the world’s dependence on oil, gas and coal. 

Despite many clean energy alternatives, fossil fuel expansion continues. Brazil, the host of this year’s biggest climate talks, is planning to open new oil fields. The U.S. along with others is charging forward with increased oil and gas production. 

Not only governments aren’t taking the crisis seriously, in some cases, they’re actively rolling back hard-won climate protections. And who do we have to thank? Back-door influence from industry lobbyists, banks, and fossil fuel corporations.

At the same time, these bad-faith actors have been using a lethal combination of delay, distraction, and disinformation on the rest of us, so that they and their political allies continue profiting from destruction.

This isn’t just a massive failure of leadership, we are witnessing power protecting itself at the cost of all life on Earth.

 

3. Who is deciding our future, and why aren’t we at the table?

In country after country, we see democratic backsliding and increasing corporate influence over our everyday lives, with (surprise!) fossil fuel lobbyists playing a major role.

Crucial decisions are being made in closed rooms. From the fate of our forests and rivers to the cost of the air we breathe, our shared future is being shaped without most of us, especially workers, young people, Indigenous leaders, and frontline communities. These include deals allowing corporations to sue governments to protect their profits or mining contracts signed without community consent.

It’s even evident in the biggest UN climate talks. During COP29 last year, more than 1,773 fossil fuel lobbyists were allowed to participate, more than the delegations of nearly every nation and the combined representatives of the 10 most climate-vulnerable nations.

It feels like we’re living through an era of unchecked corporate control and a global democracy gap, where those of us in the majority have the least say. 

Not only is this unfair, it’s also dangerous. We want a world centered on people and the planet, not profit for a few. And when the future is being written, we should be the ones holding the pen.

 

4. What’s the world we want to see and what will it take to get there?

So finally, let’s ask ourselves this: aren’t we tired of a system built on crisis, exploitation, and collapse? Don’t we want to live in a world where everyone has access to clean, safe, and affordable energy, where resources are shared, not hoarded, and no one is pushed aside? 

The good news is that we have the power to turn the tables. To reclaim our future. And it’s already begun.

Indigenous communities in the Amazon and the Pacific are defending forests and waters with centuries of wisdom. Locals in East Africa are taking governments to court over harmful energy projects. Women are leading resistance at the frontlines, including through building and managing community solar projects that secure people’s lives instead of exploiting them.

Collective action is showing us what the world can look like if it were rooted in justice and community care, over greed.

And another wave of action will rise again soon.

From 19–21 September, we’ll unite across borders and time zones and to Draw the Line against greed and corporate destruction.  

FIND AN EVENT NEAR YOU & JOIN US

 

After September, we’ll take our voices, all the way to the biggest climate talks of the year, COP30 in Brazil. And we’ll demand real action and tell those in power: fix the system, fund the solutions, and stop the destruction.