This is one in a series of posts sharing the stories of grandparents, parents and young people who are joining the Walk for Our Grandchildren, July 19th-27th.

This week-long, 100-mile walk will bring an intergenerational message of hope from Camp David to the White House to demand that President Obama reject the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline and confront the growing crisis of climate change. You can join us for a day on the trail, or join walkers and thousands of others for a culminating rally at the White House on July 27th. Click here to learn more and sign up.
 

By Elisabeth Hoffman, Clarksville, Maryland

My parents married in November 1945, just months after the end of World War II. My father had worked in the Navy developing radar; my mother used coupons to buy rationed food and fabric, gasoline and tires. At the war’s end, after their work and sacrifice, they decided it was safe to get married. As much as was possible, they could count on a future for themselves and their children.
My children were born in 1984 and 1994. I can’t know what their future holds, but my actions now — while we still have time to avert the worst climate changes — will shape their world.
This is our time to do whatever we can to ensure a future for our children, our grandchildren and generations to come. Even if that requires a WWII-like effort.

Our fight today is with the fossil fuels industry. Its executives, and the politicians who do their bidding, would have us go a little greener even as they carry on with ever more extreme technologies, spewing carbon and other greenhouse gases into our superheated atmosphere, with calamitous results for life on our planet.
Already, we are feeling the blowback, in the form of extreme storms and raging forest fires, long-term drought and deadly heat waves, melting glaciers and rising seas, acidic oceans and mass extinctions. Our burning of fossil fuels has also polluted our air, damaged our water and become the basis for pesticides, herbicides, plastics and other toxic chemicals that are making us and our planet sick. Enough already.
In that spirit, I will participate later this month in the Walk for Our Grandchildren, part of 350.org’s Summer Heat campaign to raise awareness about climate change and push President Obama to keep his promise to future generations. As scientist James Hansen says, we are in a climate emergency.
For nearly 30 years, I worked in newsrooms, as a reporter, copy editor and page designer. I was barred by ethics rules from even writing a letter to a legislator. I was also part of a business that quoted scientists about climate change, but for too long simultaneously undercut them by quoting bought-and-paid-for deniers and spreading misinformation, all in the name of fairness.
Now, I am making up for lost time.
I live in Howard County, Md., and see the urgency most clearly in the battle against fracking in the western part of the state. Residents describe feeling colonized as the landmen arrived to buy up leases for the gas beneath their feet. Maryland is still studying whether to allow fracking. Even with no fracking in the state, though, residents in the small town of Myersville are fighting a compressor station in their backyard for Pennsylvania’s fracked gas. If we build an economy on fracked gas, we will all face some combination of drilling rigs, compressor stations, pipelines, fractured forests, air and land pollution, methane leaks that accelerate climate change, and toxic chemicals and gases wandering around in our exploded bedrock looking for a way into our drinking water.
As our climate heads for dangerous tipping points, we must work toward our own tipping point – the point when our actions will bring about the enormous changes necessary to protect our children, future generations and the ecosystem that sustains all life on Earth. This country has a long history of protest. Alice Paul and other suffragists picketed in front of the White House for 2½ years in their demand for the vote. Some were jailed, beaten and force-fed. Civil rights activists rode buses into the segregated South, sat-in at lunch counters, faced beatings, tear gas and high-pressure water hoses, all in the name of justice. Each action built on the ones before.
We don’t know which of our actions will change hearts, minds and politics. But each is absolutely necessary, in the name of climate justice for those who come after us.
Elisabeth Hoffman is a former journalist turned climate activist. You can find her on twitter @planetesh and read her blog at http://climatehoward.wordpress.com.