TRUST Arizona: Jaime Lynn Butler Asks Our Leaders to Lead to Ensure a Just World and Healthy Environment

On January 24, 2012 during the State of the Union address, President Obama recognized that, “[T]he differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change.” Jaime Lynn Butler, an 11-year old Navajo artist recognizes the extreme difficulty this administration faces and that the Whitehouse is doing all it thinks it can do in this political climate to address climate change. But Jaime also recognizes that there will be guaranteed consequences of climate change if America fails to do more than what is politically feasible. According to leading climate scientists, the Earth is in “imminent peril” and should we fail to make a massive assault on CO2 pollution we will unravel the entire life-support system of our civilization and our species.

Since Jaime knows that human-induced climate change is a matter of carbon math, not carbon politics, Jaime is not only writing to President Obama and asking for his assistance, she is also sharing her story (watch above) with others so we can visualize the urgent and unstoppable nature of human-induced climate change. But that’s not it. She, along with youth across the United States, launched the nationwide atmospheric trust effort by bringing legal actions in 49 out of 50 states and against the federal government to compel our governments to prepare scientifically-viable Climate Recovery Plans.