The Red Card We Are Asking For

The Red Card We Are Asking For

A public request to the United Nations, from Seven Years of Change.

This month, one red card lit up the whole world.

At the World Cup, an American player was sent off and suspended for the next game, the way the rules say. The president called the head of FIFA and asked for a review. The suspension was set aside, and the player took the field. It was the first time in more than sixty years that a player suited up after a red card in the game before. Soccer bodies across Europe said a line had been crossed. People here at home were upset too, across every party, because it did not feel like the game played straight.

In soccer, when someone breaks the rules of the game, the referee holds up a red card. The player has to leave the field.

We are asking for a red card. Not against a country. Against a choice.

Here is the choice we are naming. This same year, the United States walked away from the world's climate agreements. It began leaving the Paris Agreement on the first day. Then it pulled out of the United Nations climate convention and the global science panel that studies climate change, bodies nearly every nation belongs to. At home, it shut down Climate.gov, the public's home for climate science for fifteen years, and took the Fifth National Climate Assessment, the government's most complete study of our air, our water, our weather, and our land, out of public view.

The data did not lie. So the data was hidden.

Three women would not let that stand. Rebecca Lindsey, who managed the site, joined two former colleagues, Anna Eshelman and Mary Lindsey, Rebecca's older sister. Together they rebuilt the archive as an independent nonprofit and put fifteen years of climate science back where the public could reach it. They saved the work that was meant to disappear.

That is the American spirit. It was never lost. It was dimmed. These three women turned the light back on with their own hands.

The request

We are asking the United Nations for one thing. A one-time exception.

Here is the honest part first, because we do not trade in slogans. We deal in receipts. The largest United Nations climate funds, like the Green Climate Fund, are built to send money to developing countries. A community inside the United States cannot normally draw from them. That is the rule, and the rule exists for good reasons.

So we are not claiming a door that is already open. We are knocking on a closed one, in public, and asking it to open for a season.

We ask the United Nations to grant a time-boxed exception, seven years, to match our name and our promise, so that community-based projects here in America can receive support to build the food, housing, transportation, and repair work that lets people live until "Green is how we live."

I do not ask because America is better than any other nation. I do not ask because we deserve it more than anyone else. I ask for the planet. America carries people from every nation inside it. When Americans choose to ride in the green bus, the whole world is in the seats. This platform is how ordinary people leverage real resources, and how that dimmed American spirit gets its light back.

Why seven years

Seven years is not a slogan either. It is how long it takes to move a family from surviving to owning a share of the things they need. The exception would not fund one program and end. It would seed permanent capacity, teams of neighbors doing measured, verifiable work, so that when the seven years close, the community stands on its own and the money is no longer needed.

We measure every project against four returns: ecological, financial, human, and community. Money alone is not a return. A real return counts planet, people, and community. Green support would not be spent. It would be planted.

The people we honor

If they choose to accept, we nominate three ambassadors for this request. Rebecca Lindsey, Anna Eshelman, and Mary Lindsey. They are our (my) heroes, because when the climate record was being erased, they refused to let it vanish. They are the proof of what this request is really about: people who will not let the truth be taken from the public.

For our international voice, if she chooses to accept, we honor Greta Thunberg. Not because she is greater than the many people doing extraordinary climate work around the world. We honor her because she matches our demand for urgency. She sees the emergency plainly and says so plainly. That clarity is a gift. It is a way of seeing that family members of mine share, and I honor it, and I acknowledge that we need those minds. We need them at the table. I want them at the table.

The green parts of Seven Years of Change were built, in large part, on the United Nations climate goals. We did not invent a new measuring stick. We aligned ourselves to the one the world already agreed on. So this is not a stranger asking a favor. This is a partner asking to be counted.

The ones who cannot ask

The land cannot fill out a grant application. The rivers cannot testify. The animals of North America cannot vote against their own extinction. They have no seat and no voice in any of this.

I (my friends and family who are no longer with us) am asking on their behalf. That is the whole reason. Everything else serves it.

Voting is sacred, and it always comes first. This work runs alongside the vote and protects it. It never replaces it. But there are lives inside our borders that cannot cast a ballot, cannot speak, and cannot wait. We are standing for them.

Butterflies are asking the United Nations to help us stand.

To learn how the green plan works, and how it becomes a real engine for a community, read Until Green Is How We Live.

When we name a person in our work, we provide a way for that person or their family to reach us. If you are named here and wish to talk with us, or to be removed, write to connect@sevenyearsofchange.org.