The Planet is on Fire – And We’re Still Pouring Gasoline

By Aisha Khan, Climate Activist & Founder of Earth Defenders Collective

Friends, family, strangers scrolling at 2 a.m. — I’m writing this with ash still under my fingernails from last week’s forest fire response in the Sundarbans. I’m not here to sugar-coat anything. The planet is not “changing.” It is screaming.

We have already crossed 1.5°C of warming. Scientists warned us for decades; now the warnings are coming from our own backyards. Bangladesh is losing land faster than any other nation on Earth. My grandmother’s village in Satkhira is half underwater. Children in Pakistan are dying from 50°C heat domes. Pacific islands are literally disappearing beneath the waves. This is not a future problem. This is today’s emergency.

And yet the fossil fuel industry is still raking in record profits while governments hand them subsidies with both hands. Last year alone, the world spent $7 trillion propping up oil, gas, and coal — money that could have solar-powered every village from Dhaka to Dakar. Instead, we’re subsidizing our own extinction.

I’m tired of polite petitions and “awareness campaigns.” We need disruption. We need to make it politically and financially impossible for leaders and CEOs to keep choosing profit over people. That’s why we blockaded the coal port in Chittagong, why we glued ourselves to bank windows in London, why young people are chaining themselves to bulldozers in the Amazon and the Arctic.

But disruption without direction is chaos. So here’s what we actually need:

1. Immediate Fossil Fuel Phase-Out No new oil, gas, or coal projects — anywhere. Existing infrastructure must be retired on a 2030 timeline. Anything less is suicide.
2. Real Climate Reparations Rich nations and corporations that built their empires on centuries of emissions owe trillions to the Global South. Not loans. Grants. Now. The people drowning in Bangladesh and the Maldives didn’t cause this crisis — Exxon and Shell did.
3. A Just Transition that Leaves No Worker Behind Every coal miner, every oil rig worker deserves a green job with better pay, not pink slips. The solution isn’t to abandon people — it’s to bring them with us into the solar future.
4. Youth at the Decision Table The generation that will inherit this mess should be writing the policies. We’re done being tokenized at COP meetings while the adults in the room sign death warrants disguised as “compromises.”

You don’t have to glue yourself to a road tomorrow (though if you want to, DM me — we’ll train you safely). Start where you are:

• Switch your bank to one that doesn’t fund fossil fuels.
• Demand your MP votes against every new gas project.
• Grow food, plant trees, share skills, build community.
• Talk to your parents, your colleagues, your mosque or temple — this is everyone’s fight.

The science is settled. The technology exists. The only thing missing is political courage — and that courage is supposed to come from us.

History will judge this decade as the one where humanity either chose life or chose greed. I refuse to let my children read in their textbooks that we knew everything and still did nothing.

The Earth is not waiting for perfect politicians. She is waiting for us.

Join the fight. The future is not something we watch on the news — it is something we build with our own hands, our voices, and our refusal to stay silent.

Together, we rise. Together, we protect this one fragile home.

In fierce hope, Aisha Khan Climate Activist | Earth Defenders Collective Dhaka, Bangladesh