A new report from Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute shows the strikingly unequal way rich people are depleting the global carbon budget. | Getty Images

Every energy reduction we can make is a gift to future humans, and all life on Earth.

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

If 2020 teaches us anything, it’s that the next crisis we could have prevented is probably right around the corner, and it will be painful. A pandemic that scientists warned was very likely to occur arrived and has already killed well over 200,000 people in the US. Dozens of predicted, large wildfires exacerbated by climate change are torching the American West, their smoke more damaging to health than almost any fire season on record.

Because of the implacable physics of how