On the same day global leaders gathered in Belém, Brazil, for the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference (COP30), Super Typhoon Fung-Wong tore across the Philippines, displacing over two million people—a catastrophic footnote to a summit supposedly dedicated to saving the planet. Since then, UN agencies have scrambled to scale up aid across the Caribbean and Southeast Asia after Hurricane Melissa and the one-two punch of Typhoon Kalmaegi and Super Typhoon Fung-Wong killed more than 500 people across multiple countries. Two days into COP30, Indigenous protesters were already clashing with security forces, waving yellow flags against Amazon oil drilling—because someone has to remind the world that “climate action” means more than nice UN lanyards and catered panels.
But fret not, for the most important thing plaguing the western hemisphere—the Epstein emails— have been released. As if the salacious habits of the ultra-rich should eclipse the fact that the United States remains the world’s second-highest carbon emitter, responsible for roughly 14% of global CO₂ emissions. It’s a bizarre editorial pivot: from reporting a government shutdown that jeopardized healthcare and SNAP for millions of Americans to breathlessly covering the inbox of a deceased human trafficker. Well, the good news is that there will be more news about another government shutdown in January, if we play our cards right.
Meanwhile, in New York, Governor Kathy Hochul, who once blocked two gas power plants to spearhead a climate-conscious agenda, recently bent the knee to President Trump and approved a new gas pipeline, cutting a deal that will keep a gas-fueled cryptocurrency miner running for five more years.
” … {T}oday’s superstorms reveal not just a climate crisis, but a collapse of global leadership — a world where communities must build the future themselves because the powerful are too busy protecting their own interests. For the world to survive, everyday people like you and me should use our voices to speak out against moneyed interests.“
This is curious timing in the aftermath of Zohran Mamdani’s election, where his plans for free buses are already facing the governor’s resistance over concerns that the $650 million annual price tag is too high. If congestion pricing encourages people to leave their cars at home, wouldn’t free buses do the exact thing our climate models are begging us to do—reduce transportation emissions, which make up nearly 29% of U.S. greenhouse gases? The math is simple, even if the politicians are allergic to logic.
Rising CO₂ emissions trap more heat in the atmosphere and warm the world’s oceans—now the hottest ever recorded—creating jet fuel for stronger, wetter, and more frequent typhoons. With storms intensifying across Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan, it’s no longer hyperbole to say that climate change is no longer “approaching.”
It’s here. It’s angry. And it’s expensive.
Across social media, activists are trying to cut through the noise, echoing the fury of the Trillion Peso March, a movement demanding accountability for billions allegedly siphoned away from weather-regulating infrastructure—money that could have fortified communities now underwater. In response, Juan Ponce Enrile—architect of the first Marcos dictatorship—warned Filipinos not to follow the “Robespierres, Dantons, and Marats” of today, invoking the French Revolution as if the real danger is dissent rather than corruption.
It’s ironic: a man who once shaped a dictatorship, warning the public about the perils of revolution, just months before his own death at age 101.
But if the people can’t shape their own government, who exactly is it supposed to serve? In the wake of Enrile’s passing, Filipinos—and frankly, the world—have every reason to demand something better.
Because we’ve seen this story before. In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, today’s superstorms reveal not just a climate crisis, but a collapse of global leadership — a world where communities must build the future themselves because the powerful are too busy protecting their own interests. For the world to survive, everyday people like you and me should use our voices to speak out against moneyed interests.
And that begins by confronting power in the places where ego, profit, and denial have become sacred scripture.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elaine Joy Edaya Degale is a Black-Filipina writer and lecturer at community colleges within the City University of New York (CUNY) and has an Ed.M. and M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University.
She graduated cum laude from Mount Holyoke College, where she studied International Relations and Development, and continues to support literacy and food programming efforts in Indigenous communities through her Community-Based organization, OperationMerienda.org
