By now many people, especially those who pay attention to climate news and science, realize that our chance to stop or slow climate change is fast slipping away. Expectations of unknowable but almost certainly dire consequences for younger and future generations make some people desperate, others despair. Their thoughts turn to schemes for geoengineering to reverse climate change, civil disobedience to stop fossil fuel development, disinvestment from fossil fuel companies, and plans to simply cope and adapt to the more foreseeable impacts of climate change.
When President Obama said the words “climate change” in his
Second Inaugural address, you could almost hear the pent-up emotion and hunger
for action in the roar that went up from the crowd.
Among climate activists who have been trying to in their own
lives and communities to reduce climate change there is a growing fear that
their cause is an exercise in futility. Despite all their efforts since 2006, when
Al Gore launched his Inconvenient Truth campaign,
the forces behind global warming have advanced unchecked and the United
States remains deadlocked over measures that
should have been taken decades ago.
The lack of progress calls into question the foundational
belief of U.S.
climate activism that we can solve the
problem or, more modestly, that there
is a solution. If the sustained efforts so many people have made to reduce climate
change have made so little difference, many people are starting to wonder “Why
bother?”
This essay answers this question. It is addressed to climate
activists with the hope my ideas will spark a broader conversation about the state
and direction of grassroots climate. For this purpose I have set up an on-line
blog where readers’ responses and comments are welcome: http://climatebluecircle.blogspot.com/.
The first section of the essay describes the current
situation and the reasons for the current stalemate in more detail. The second
section suggests a strategy that might break the stalemate.
In addition to the sources I cite, the essay is a response
to my experience as a climate activist in Cambridge and conversations with
hundreds of Cambridge residents and activist colleagues about climate change
and what citizens can do in their our lives to slow it.
I. The Stalemate
In Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” slide show he compared
humanity’s nonresponse to global warming to that of a frog in water that is
slowly heated to a boil. The change in temperature is so gradual that the frog
fails to jump out and save itself, as it would if were suddenly dropped into
hot water. Humanity, like the frog, needs a “jolt” to motivate it to act in
time to stop global warming and prevent disastrous climate change.
Nearly seven years later we are still waiting for a jolt that
will stir the United States
to act with the urgency and at the scale required to reduce climate change. The
new “inconvenient truth” is that we have scarcely begun to make the changes in
the “way we live our lives,” as Gore put it, that would be necessary to control
climate change.
Neither the impact of Gore’s small army of trained activists
armed with facts about global warming nor the many efforts of other activists
and advocates, nor changing weather patterns and a succession of
climate-conditioned weather disasters, including unprecedented wildfires in the
West, prolonged drought in vast areas of the Southwest and Midwest, and
devastating storms in the East in both 2011 and 2012 has moved the public to demand
government action on climate change or do very much on their own about it.
By almost every measure, the climate situation today is more
urgent and dire than in 2006 when Gore invoked Winston Churchill’s words on the
eve of World War II,
The
era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedients,
of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of
consequences.
Or than in 2007, when Rajendra Pachauri, head of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said,
If
there’s no action before 2012, it’s too late.
Or in 2008, when Bill McKibben warned,
Copenhagen in December 2009 is the last real chance the
world will do what needs doing.
By key measures climate change is advancing more rapidly
than most pessimistic projections by scientists:
- Global emissions of greenhouse gases[1],
- Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere[2],
- Summer loss of arctic sea ice[3],
- Surface melt of Greenland’s ice cap[4],
- Methane emissions from melting permafrost in the Arctic Ocean[5], and
- Annual mean temperature in the continental U.S.[6]
Yet our leaders are stuck, mired in disagreements about
whether and how to respond:
- Globally: The 2009 Copenhagen climate summit failed to build on the 1997 Kyoto protocols to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, and hopes for concerted international action have faded.
- In Congress: Since the Senate failed to act on the flawed 2009 Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade Bill, House Republicans have blocked all climate legislation including proposals for a national carbon tax.
- In the White House: Although President Obama took several promising steps in his first term, he rarely and only reluctantly mentioned climate in his re-election campaign and embraced an “all of the above” energy policy, including increased production of fossil fuel. In his Second Inaugural address he finally spoke boldly about the urgency of action on climate change. But we don’t know yet how boldly he will act, and it is hard to believe that he will even mention the 10 percent year-to-year reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that leading British climate scientist Kevin Anderson says are necessary to have a chance of avoiding dangerous changes to the climate.
As Anderson has
summarized the situation:
Put bluntly, while the rhetoric of
policy is to reduce emissions in line with avoiding dangerous climate change,
most policy advice is to accept a high probability of extremely dangerous
climate change rather than propose radical and immediate emission reductions. http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1934/20.full.pdf+html
Or as Al Gore said more pointedly last year,
…the world’s political leaders –
with few honorable exceptions – are failing catastrophically to address the
climate crisis. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/01/record-greenhouse-gas-trouble-scientists
Although our leaders are unable or unwilling to confront the
problem, most Americans now recognize that climate change is a real threat. Even
before Sandy, last September, the
number of deniers and doubters had shrunk.[7]
- 70% of American adults believed that global warming is happening, up 13% from early 2010.
- More than half (54%) also believed that global warming is mostly caused by human activities up 8% from last March.
- Increasingly they see global warming as a threat to themselves (42%), their families (46%) and their communities (48%).
However public opinion remains divided on whether and how to
act:
- 24% of American adults believe that the U.S. should make a large-scale effort to reduce global warming, even if it has large economic costs,
- 44% believe we should make a medium-scale effort, even it has moderate costs,
- 19% believe we should made a small-scale effort, even if it has small costs, and
- 12% believe the U.S. should make no effort to reduce global warming.
- These shares in September were unchanged from three years ago.
In view of these divisions in the public and the disarray of
our leaders, it is not surprising that most Americans are skeptical about the
prospects for reducing climate change and have been for years.
Three out of four Americans believe
that humans could reduce global
warming, but only 5% believe that we will do so. Almost half (49%) believe that
it is unclear whether we will do what’s needed, and one in five (22%) believe
that people aren’t willing to change their behavior, so we’re not going to.
Altogether, 71% of Americans are doubtful that we will reduce – let alone stop
– climate change. (These Sept. 2012 figures are unchanged from January 2010.)
Despite the extreme weather shocks we have already felt, despite
growing public awareness of the reality and impacts of climate change, despite the
alarming new evidence of the rate of climate change, despite all of the efforts
of Al Gore, the Sierra Club, Bill McKibben, 350.org, the Environmental Defense
Fund, many others organizations, and countless activists, opinion polls reveal no
hint of movement by citizens to “rise again to secure our future” as Gore pleaded
in 2006.
Unless there has been a sudden shift in Americans’ beliefs
in response to Sandy’s devastation,
it is time to abandon the theory that a “climate shock” will stir the public to
act in time to reduce climate change.
The divisions within the public support the disarray of our
leaders and are deepened by it. Elected officials are reluctant to get ahead of
their constituents on such an important issue, and their reluctance feeds the
public’s doubts that humans will do what is needed to reduce climate change. It
is important to note that this stalemate between leaders and citizens appears
to be founded not ignorance but on public awareness
of the nature of climate change, its threats, and the scale of change that will
be required to reduce it. If this observation is correct, then it makes no
sense to expect that more education about climate change, greater awareness or
more climate shocks will ever stir the public to break the stalemate.
II. A New Strategy
Despite this bleak assessment of the balance between the
natural forces of climate change and the human response, I believe that
grassroots climate activism is both necessary and possible. The necessity is
self-evident. As Al Gore said in 2006,
When considering a problem as vast
as global warming, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless – skeptical that
individual efforts can really have an impact. But we need to resist that
response, because this crisis will get resolved only if we as individuals take
responsibility…. [I.T. p. 305]
Thanks in large part to Gore’s leadership and advocacy,
there now exists a strong popular base for individual action and climate
activism. About one in four U.S.
citizens …
- says the issue of global warming is “very important” (17%) or “extremely important” (6%) to them personally.
- thinks that citizens themselves should be doing much more to address global warming (25%).
- believes that the U.S. should make a large-scale effort to reduce global warming, even if it has large costs.
These figures indicate that the cause of climate activism
has scarcely begun to tap the potential for grassroots action. The question
must be asked, if so many people believe that they (or their neighbors) should
be doing much more about climate change, then why aren’t they doing it? What is stopping them?
The answer, I believe, is that there are uncertainties and
conflicting opinions about solutions and there is no credible structure for
individual or collective grassroots action. After perhaps changing their
lightbulbs and getting an energy audit, people are looking for guidance about achievable, effective things they can do,
and don’t see it.
If the opinion poll data are correct, at least 60 million
Americans (one in four adults, not including children too young to vote), are
anxious about climate change yet not doing what they feel they should about it.
These people constitute an untapped pool of potential recruits for climate
activism and for necessary climate action.
Fossil fuel companies and their agents sow confusion by
professing skepticism about the climate change and proposing bogus and self-serving
solutions. These contemptible efforts make a bad situation worse but are not
preventing citizens from taking action and making changes in their own lives.
The profusion of well-meaning groups at different levels
vying for attention and support – to send a statement to a public official,
donate, install solar panels, demonstrate in Washington or elsewhere, attend a
meeting and more – is another source of confusion. The list of proposed urgent,
necessary actions can be overwhelming to a citizen who wants to help control
climate change. But this confusion is also not a serious obstacle to action.
The heart of the problem is that the mass of potential climate
activists face a complex, dangerous, and global problem for which they know they
bear some responsibility and on which they can have an uncertain but at most
tiny impact and then only if everyone
else in the world, from Chinese electric companies, and loggers in tropical
forests, to President Obama, the U.S. Congress, and the neighbors next door, also does their part. But this is
plainly not happening and we despair. A pervasive lack of confidence in others and ourselves has become the biggest
obstacle to climate action at all levels. It is a crisis of trust in our
neighbors next door and around the world. No one wants to make a change or even
a small sacrifice for the sake of climate stability, if it is futile and at
best a symbolic act. Because we don’t trust others to do their part, we don’t
believe that anything we do matters.
It might seem that the only effective strategy for grassroots
activists to overcome this crisis is to push officials to do much more and
support them when they do. Effective government action to reduce climate change
will inspire public confidence and hope in others, and elected officials are
likely to do more if they feel pressure from activist-constituents. But
confidence and hope, even on a global scale, will not by themselves overcome
the doubt and sense of futility that sap people’s resolve to act. To paraphrase
Tip O’Neill’s dictum that “all politics is local,” all trust is local. If you can’t trust your neighbors to do the
right thing, how can you trust the Chinese (or those in some other remote land)
to do the right thing?
And so, activists have a less visible and, I believe, even
more urgent mission close to home. They are in a unique position to spur action
by the millions of Americans who already believe they should be doing more in
their own lives, by building that trust we need. Building that trust and reaching the full potential
of individuals and families to make changes in they way they live can only be done
from the ground up, and this is clearly a job for local, grassroots activists.
The devil is, as always, in the details, but this should be
an achievable task for the many grassroots activists already striving to
persuade people to take specific actions or make changes in the way they live
that reduce their carbon footprint or reduce climate change in other direct ways.
Instead of focusing narrowly on direct climate impacts, I suggest that broad action for climate protection needs
to become a top priority objective, as important and urgent as direct impacts
on the climate system.
I offer three examples of what it would mean in practice for
grassroots activists to pursue this objective.
First, activists would educate people about the urgent need
to increase trust and how they can help to create it by demonstrating support
for the cause in their daily lives. This will not be simple, because so many
actions are by their nature invisible to neighbors, from changing lightbulbs to
turning down thermostats to installing insulation and staying out of airplanes.
Second, “climate protection” or “climate friendliness” would
be emphasized as a motive for immediate action, so that everyone sees and
understands the actions as support for the cause. This may seem obvious, but
activists now often play down the motive of climate protection or avoid it
altogether. “Clean energy” needs to become “climate friendly” in both name and
fact.
Third, activists would inform others about the breadth of
actions people are already taking to respond to climate change, locally in
their region, nationally, and around the globe. From the ground-source heat
pump installed by a neighbor, to the substitution of local and
climate-stabilizing foods for meat raised in distant feedlots and crops grown
on factory farms, to the restoration of millions of acres of desertified
grasslands in Africa through sensible land management
practices to absorb carbon from the atmosphere and support food production.
The goal of the strategy is to unite people in climate
citizenship, in which people simply do their duty as citizens to respond to
climate change as others are doing. The common practice of recognizing climate
“heroes” or “leaders,” probably has the opposite effect of lowering
expectations. Leaders and heroes are, by definition, exceptional. The sooner needed
actions become ordinary and normal the better.
For such a strategy to reach its full potential, it is not
enough, and people know that it is not enough, for the people of one community,
region, or even an entire state to act in their lives to reduce climate change.
It will need to lead to a broad and ultimately universal ethos of climate
citizenship. This may not seem possible, but I believe that it is. Because of
the 60 million or more Americans who already believe that “citizens themselves
should be doing much more to address global warming.” And because there are
climate activists and grassroots groups in communities across America
who want to help them do it.
It is time for activists to try a citizenship strategy.
There are many details that will have to be ironed out and methods developed to
make it work, but activists’ time and energy will be better spent in this way
than on continued efforts to breathe life into appeals based solely on science
and reason or continuing to mark time waiting for a climate shock to break the
stalemate.
A further reason for activists to pursue a citizenship
strategy is the hope that it will trigger a wave of individual effort to cut
carbon emissions. Rapid reductions, by 10 percent per year and 70 percent by
2020, according to climate scientist Kevin Anderson, are needed to have a chance of preventing very dangerous
changes to the climate. Presidents and governors, like captains of
supertankers, are unable to change course this quickly. Citizens, each paddling
their own canoe, can turn much more rapidly. And if 60 million or more citizens
can turn their canoes, they will make it possible for the President and
governors to turn the supertankers and send their cargoes back where they
belong.
--John Pitkin
February 17, 2013
[1] According to the International
Energy Agency, “Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a
record high of 34.8 billion tonnes in 2011, up 3.2%” from 2010. (http://iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2012/may/name,27216,en.html).
[2] “Monitoring stations
across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than
400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number
isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace.” The Guardian, June 1, 2012.
[3] “by an area about the size
of Texas, Arctic sea ice extent
shrunk below the previous record low established September 18, 2007. ‘Climate models have predicted a
retreat of the Arctic sea ice; but the actual retreat has proven to be much
more rapid than the predictions,’ said Claire Parkinson, a climate scientist at
NASA.” Washington Post, Sept. 9, 2012.
[4] “In over 30 years of observations, satellites
have never measured this amount of melting, which reaches nearly all of Greenland's
surface ice cover. When Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory observed
the recent melting phenomenon, he said in the NASA press release, ‘This was so
extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: Was this real or was it
due to a data error?’” Huffington
Post, July 25, 2012.
[5] “Dramatic and
unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than
carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by
scientists….” The Independent, Dec. 13, 2011.
[6] “Not Even Close: 2012 Was
Hottest Ever in U.S.”
The
New York Times, Jan. 8, 2013.
[7] All of the data I cite on
public opinions are from polls taken by the Yale Project on Climate Change
Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change
Communication between November 2008 and September 2012 and reported in two 2012
reports, Public Support for Climate and
Energy Policies in September 2012 and Americans’
Global Warming Beliefs and Attitudes in September 2012, accessed at http://environment.yale.edu/climate/.
