Last week was a doozy.

It started off with an assessment of the current state of our climate, conducted by a team of 60 experts from around the world. According to their findings:

• We’re just a few years away from 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming;
• Sea level rise is happening twice as fast as it was between 1971 and 2018; and
• The impacts we’re experiencing are increasing in frequency and intensity on increasingly faster timescales.

For climate activists like us, these results confirm what we’ve been saying for decades: the climate crisis is here, impacting people now, and without bold action, things are on track to get worse fast.

The Midwest and East Coast got a clear glimpse of this reality this week.

A heat dome has left cities in these areas grappling with an unprecedented heat wave, made worse and more likely as a result of climate change. According to recent estimates, close to 170 million people saw temperatures of over 90 degrees and feels-like temperatures in the triple digits, with cities like Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City all hitting 100 degrees.

It’s unbelievable.

Even more unbelievable is a Republican Senate that creeps ever-closer to signing a budget bill that will significantly hinder climate progress in the United States.

But yet and still, there are glimmers of hope.

To start, an increasing number of people are taking climate change seriously. The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication’s opinion maps show that majorities in all 50 states think climate change is impacting weather patterns, and 63% are worried about it. The maps also reflect strong support for several climate policies and initiatives, with 66% of Americans in favor of a clean energy transition by 2050, 74% in favor of regulating CO2 emissions, and 77% in favor of increasing renewable energy capacity on public lands.

Then there’s Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate Parliamentarian.

MacDonough has already rejected several budget bill provisions that cannot be passed as part of the reconciliation process. This includes a measure that would have repealed vehicle emission standards, a disastrous provision that would have forced the sale of millions of acres of public lands, and rules that would have enabled fossil fuel companies to expedite permitting and environmental review by paying a fee.

Of course, MacDonough is operating strictly on the grounds of what is permitted under the rules of budget reconciliation. However, simply by doing her job, she is making the budget bill better for our climate and environment than it would otherwise be.

Let’s hold on to hope as we continue to fight!