America's ambitious if deeply
imperfect new climate bill is a modest step toward confronting a climate
emergency that "has been declared over and over by Nature and by human suffering" - 2,000 dead of heat in Spain and Portugal, temperatures "unlivable for humans" in Pakistan, dying coral reefs in Australia and billions of dead Pacific sea creatures and catastrophic grain crop failures almost everywhere. Still, many say it is past time for "business as usual to halt." Armed with righteous rage, bags of lentils and the vow to ensure the world's richest countries "cannot ignore the crisis," enter an anonymous collective of activists
proclaiming, "We are the Tyre Extinguishers." Arguing that years of reasonable actions and polite protests have failed, they've taken to their still-polluted streets with acts of minor, pesky sabotage against gas-guzzling SUVs - startlingly, the 2nd-largest cause of soaring global carbon dioxide emissions - by deflating their tires under cover of night. Since March, they've "disarmed" nearly 6,500 SUVs in Austria, Canada, Germany, Sweden, France, the U.K., and now the U.S. Their goal: "To show that the welfare of the planet comes before individual freedom. We have to try everything."