Our Day of Deliverance

The wild coast of Montaña de Oro State Park, San Luis Obispo County.

By Cody Petterson

There is no risk of exaggerating the importance of Joe Biden's election victory over Donald Trump. The Trump administration has been an environmental calamity of Biblical proportion for our communities, our climate, and the natural world, and his defeat is a collective act of national and global deliverance.

The challenges that remain before us are staggering. Like a community waking up the morning after a hurricane, we have years of work ahead repairing the devastation the last four years have wrought. Renewing our commitment to global cooperation on greenhouse gas reduction, reinstituting endangered species and habitat protections, restoring our conservation hertiage and national treasures to their protected status, halting and reversing the privatization of our public lands, reaffirming the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples, redirecting environmental investment to the communities of concern most impacted by climate change and pollution. The list is endless.

Many in the environmental and climate communities supported Democratic primary candidates who advocated more aggressive climate action, including a fracking ban and a Green New Deal. It falls to all of us to support President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in their efforts to advance meaningful environmental legislation and policy, and to maintain unflagging pressure on their administration to accelerate and deepen our national response to the climate emergency.

We are hopeful, we are mindful of the challenges ahead, but above all else, on this day of national deliverance, we share with our communities a profound sense of relief, and joy.

Photos by Tommy Hough