This question of how far to take the fight to stop global warming has haunted activists for years. But now that more conventional solutions, such as a global treaty to cut greenhouse-gas pollution, are dead, the issue is more pressing than ever. As the crisis grows, the temptation to turn up the volume with more dramatic and attention-grabbing protests will only increase. Climate activists often speculate about who will emerge as the Martin Luther King of the climate movement. But it may be equally relevant to ask who will emerge as the Malcolm X.This from a brief piece in Rolling Stone that mentions, and never explicitly admonishes, "a little guerrilla warfare against Big Oil and Big Coal." Jeff Goodell, the author, goes on to present a false choice when it comes to climate politics. They can either be tame, a la 350.org's Day of Action and the 'march on Washington' variety, or they can be more subversive, a little less civilly disobedient. Goodell seems to admire the efforts taken by activists lately, who "cut through fences and get smacked around by cops in riot gear."
Why I must choose between two ineffective strategies--one legal, the other not-so-much--is beyond me. More on this soon, but the campaign to "change the composition of the atmosphere" (as Bill McKibben puts it) will not be accomplished by grassroots organizing and/or semi-violent protest. Instead, it will be accomplished by an elite team of policymakers, engineers, and entrepreneurs, who approach the technical challenges of climate change and decarbonization and effect technical solutions.
UPDATE (7/5): Mr. Goodell graciously responded to this post in a short exchange on Twitter, in which he asserted I had misread his piece. There is not a false choice between "tame" and "subversive" climate politics, Mr. Goodell clarified; rather, there is room for both. I wouldn't say I misread his piece so much as I perhaps didn't make myself perfectly clear in responding to it. I agree, climate activists do not have to choose one camp or the other. A strategy to promote action on climate change can embrace both the tame and the subversive, much like the XL pipeline protest organized by Bill McKibben and James Hansen, which aims for civility yet warns its participants they might spend a night in prison over (Mr. Goodell uses this same example).
My point is that neither tameness nor subversion are effective pathways to successful action on climate change and decarbonization, because they frame the challenge entirely wrong. Action on climate change will not be accomplished by grassroots organizing, as was action on civil rights or earlier environmental issues. Rather, it will be addressed by elites, whose expert understanding of the technical challenges of climate change are matched by a strong government mission to re-industrialize the energy sector. See my latest post for more.
I cant think of a single event in American public policy history that has been led by an elite team ect..
ReplyDeleteCivil rights, environmental policies, judicial reforms and the right to vote have all taken serious sustained acts of civil disobedience.
You could argue that the civil disobedience component of policy debate is part of the three legged stool: legal, legislative and
activism but elite teams? seems like that's what got us into this mess.
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ReplyDeleteHow about the Manhattan and Apollo Projects? Neither benefited from a groundswell of political organizing, and the former was accomplished in secret. How about the creation of the Internet, which was DARPA-led and revolutionized virtually every aspect of commerce and communications? The railroads and Interstate Highway System are some of the most important accomplishments of the federal government, and their realized demand far exceeded the ex-ante demand. Then there's our current energy infrastructure, installed and maintained through vast networks of government support without any populist campaign.
ReplyDeleteThe energy challenge is far more similar to these challenges and accomplishments than to civil rights or even environmental problems, because it requires fundamentally changing the most basic and ubiquitous input into communications, commerce, travel, and leisure. Everyone is a stakeholder; there is no disenfranchised minority or easy legal fix.
Coal and oil are cheaper than clean technology. We need to make clean energy cheaper than coal and oil. Elites will do this, through research, policy, and entrepreneurial efforts. Marches and civil disobedience will not.