Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration where he infamously called for “drill, baby, drill,” he’s signed a number of executive orders focused on rolling back environmental regulations and protections. From trying to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement to declaring an energy emergency to support oil production, the future looks bleak for the environment. In the face of this, we must engage in grassroots mobilization to both protect the environment and help marginalized communities that are hit the hardest by climate change survive it. 

With the actions already underway due to Trump’s efforts, prospects of clean energy production and environmental justice are declining. 

After rolling back former President Jimmy Carter’s order for federal agencies to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, there’s a chance over half of the wind projects in the U.S. will be halted. His energy emergency declaration, along with his order for land in the Arctic to become available for drilling, signify that Trump’s environmental policies are going to have devastating effects on biodiversity conservation and greenhouse gas relief efforts. 

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So, the question remains: How do we protect the environment during this time? The initial response might be to support policy efforts to resist it, and while this isn’t necessarily bad, it can obscure the necessity of grassroots organizing that gives more direct access to both fighting climate change and surviving through it. 

As Trump continues to push an oil-heavy agenda, we need to seriously acknowledge that in the case that efforts for decarbonization are not able to resolve everything, we should establish systems to lessen the blow that environmental degradation has on underrepresented communities who bear the brunt of the damage. 

While progressive policy resistance against conservative environmental measures is not a futile effort, it still has its flaws. Much of the talk that surrounds the development of renewable technology ignores the processes of building it that require mining and extraction throughout the Global South, which reproduces many of the environmental harms that the status quo has already caused. 

In addition, the viability of political reform as a long-term solution is not guaranteed — even with avid proponents of climate progress in the House and Senate — the likelihood that significant climate legislation will pass in a Republican-dominated government isn’t high. 

Grassroots organization offers an effective alternative that works at every level of climate resistance. It is an opportunity to mobilize change by and for the people who create sustainable solutions for underrepresented communities. Part of this process must include analyzing the way that systems that prioritize profit over people lead to policies — from both sides of the political spectrum — that leave underrepresented communities behind.

This is exhibited by groups such as Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education that work with schools and the South Central community to build intersectional strategies of housing support, park construction and better air quality. They promote education that refocuses the conversation on climate change to include the adverse health effects it has in Black and Latine communities.

The Community Environmental Advocates Foundation is another example of bottom-up resistance that protects the climate and also resists extraction and unequal land use. They work to support clean air and sustainable energy as well as advocate for a fundamental shift in our consumption patterns. These organizing efforts give ways for us to protect the environment for its own sake rather than to create new cycles of economic development that tend to prioritize profits. 

Though the next four years look bleak for climate policy, it’s crucial that we use organizing to propel on-the-ground efforts and take climate justice into our own hands. While this isn’t an urge to abandon all policy efforts for environmental protection, it is a recognition that the capacity of the government is inevitably limited under Trump’s administration. 

Even when policy goes into effect, it often ignores adverse impacts on Black, Indigenous and Latine communities, which leaves us back where we started. Grassroots organizing dually focused on protecting the environment and the people living on it is necessary for promoting climate progress during and after Trump’s four years as president, creating space for equitable changes that improve environmental protections.