Humanity, like Rochdale, has reached a critical crossroads. We have never, and I MEAN never, faced an existential risk like what we’re facing today. I firmly believe that fighting climate change should take precedence over any issue thought of or spoken about, because if we don’t act now, soon there will hardly be anyone left to think or speak. Slow-moving issues tend to be ignored in such a fast-paced globalized social order, but this big blue spaceship is sinking. And its lifeboats are, as of right now, reserved exclusively for the people who poked the holes in it. The people who have caused this disaster are the people who hold the most power and capital, which means that those innocent of excess wastefulness and consumption are the ones who are going to suffer the most. Environmental justice means justice for all. If we don’t make big changes quickly, this will become one of the greatest human injustices the world has ever seen. The percent of the world’s population who are displaced is the largest it’s ever been, and that number is only going to rise with the global temperature. We are going to need to learn to live together, and in a drastically different way than we do today. We have the technology to seriously reduce our fossil fuel consumption. We do not need to manufacture and import goods at our current rate. We need to start producing and distributing food without single-use plastics. We need to start farming sustainably on a global scale. We can educate ourselves and each other on this stuff. But we’re not doing any of it, because affluent people in the global north aren’t willing to make small sacrifices, and because conglomerates care more about big bucks than human lives. I know the people of Rochdale would fight for climate justice, and I hope you will too.