We can do it!
I don't know how many times I have typed the hashtag #ActOnClimate into my Twitter machine since February of 2011, when I opened my @SninkyPoo account. Since I have tweeted over 30,000 times (yikes!) since then, and since as @SninkyPoo I
only tweet about climate change, it has to have been A LOT.
But what do I mean? What does "acting on climate" look like? It's an awkward locution, to be sure, but it does have a concrete meaning, does it not?
More below....
This past May, Bill Nye (the Science Guy!) gave the commencement speech at Rutgers University. In it, he said:
The oncoming trouble is Climate Change: It is going to affect you all in the same way the Second World War consumed people of my parents’ generation. They rose to the challenge, and so will you. They came to be called The Greatest Generation. I want you all to preserve our world in the face of Climate Change and carry on as The Next Great Generation.
I will gloss over the fact that we Olds CANNOT LEAVE IT TO THE KIDS and instead try to unpack what it would take to be the next "greatest generation." What, exactly, would we have to do?
When thinking about the "greatest generation," it's first instructive to remember that the phrase was coined by Tom Brokaw in 1998, as the title of a book commemorating their putative greatness. The phrase encodes a myth of sorts - a myth of brave young people who lied about their age to sign up to go to war - who enthusiastically hurled their bodies in the way of rocket fire - who if they could not serve worked punishing hours back home in munitions factories - who scrimped and saved and grew victory gardens - and who scrupulously followed the rationing rules so we could send resources to our brave lads at the front.
Many Americans did, in fact, sign up to go to war, without being coerced. Many Americans voluntarily acted in ways that we would consider congruent with being members of the "greatest generation." But many did not. Some contravened the rules. Some came around only after persistent persuasion. And everyone needed to act in concert - to know what to do - to pull on the rope together.
A a more nuanced, historically accurate portrayal of this generation would have to note that not everyone grew a victory garden, that not everyone saved string, and that there was a lively black market for ration book tickets.
AND THERE WERE RATION BOOKS. There was a NEED for ration books. And for a draft. And propaganda. And a coordinated plan. So government stepped in. It had to.
As the kind of "Snake!" style threat to which people instinctively respond, the enemy Americans faced in WWII beats climate change all to heck, alas.
That war featured villains who were impossible to ignore, who had ships and subs and soldiers and tanks and a terrifying agenda. Yet even with such an outsized foe, and actual danger of real bodily harm, citizens did not rise up en masse to fight - work - manufacture - scrimp - and garden. Government had to step in to make people do the right thing.
The Office of War Information was created in 1942, with the specific goal of creating and distributing government propaganda.
The draft was instituted in 1940 - before we entered the war.
A system of rationing for sugar, meat, cooking oil, and canned goods was established after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The government asked citizens to grow "victory gardens."
The "greatest generation" didn't magically become great on its own. Government pulled the strings.
Full disclosure: I am a Bernie Sanders supporter. I will be campaigning for him - hard. If he isn't the Democratic party's nominee for president, then I will cheerfully campaign for Hillary Clinton (should she survive the trumped up email "scandal" currently underway). But when I think about "acting on climate," I enthusiastically imagine a Bernie Sanders administration, and what it would have to do to make any significant progress on slowing the progress of climate change.
Because I have a juvenile sense of humor, I imagine President Sanders taking office and immediately setting up a cabinet Committee on Climate Change Resolution (see what I did there?). I imagine the appointment of a Climate Czar (mixing my Soviet humor metaphors) to lead it.
Naming a Climate Czar would be a bold, progressive statement by the new administration that tackling climate change is job one and the US recognizes it as such.
Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg View had this to say about "czars" when Ron Klain was appointed Ebola Czar:
Czars are often brought in when the structure of the federal government is seen as a poor match for specific challenges that arise. Ebola is the responsibility of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, yet there's the foreign policy element, which means the State Department. And the Transportation Security Administration. And the Federal Aviation Administration. And probably a dozen other agencies. Federalism means the states (and their untold agencies) are involved as well. Getting everyone to work together is the president's job, and since occupants of the Oval Office are overloaded with these things, the sensible practice has been to appoint a single outside person to manage that coordination.
That sounds about right to me. The new Climate Czar would, then, be tasked with:
* Working directly with President Sanders to set the US climate change agenda.
* Compiling all input from agencies and NGOs.
* Drafting a coherent plan and triaging the priorities for action.
* Ensuring that decisions are tracked and carried out quickly.
* Drafting legislation for passage by Congress.
* Managing the coordination of the cabinet-level departments that will need to be involved in the work, which include Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, and Treasury.
AND THEN WHAT?
Then government has to pull the strings. We cannot rely on business. We cannot rely on the efforts of individual citizens. Only government has the power and reach to effect change of the magnitude that will be needed to get the job done. Only the Federal government, more specifically, has what it takes to coordinate the enormous amount of work that will be required to move off of fossil fuels, to drastically dial back emissions, to create an economy built on renewable sources of energy, and to keep it functioning and people employed while making such a tectonic shift.
Sacrifice will be required. Whole industries may need to be rooted out and either replaced or sunsetted, and their workers retrained and redeployed. I can foresee the coal industry going away, and the factory farming business model being drastically altered or eliminated. I can imagine the hugely carbon-intensive fast fashion industry being reigned in and regulated. I can imagine rationing, and (non carbon) infrastructure projects along the lines of the WPA.
And diplomacy will be required. America could lead the world and set the example. We could show 'em how it's done, if we had the will to do so. I am not a foreign policy wonk, but as the world's last remaining Super Power, it seems to me that we should have the leverage to work with our allies, and bargain with the not-so-friendly, to hammer out agreements on trade and energy and limits on production.
But whatever happens, it will have to happen fast. According to this very credible story:
In only three years there will be enough fossil fuel-burning stuff—cars, homes, factories, power plants, etc.—built to blow through our carbon budget for a 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise. Never mind staying below a safer, saner 1.5°C of global warming. The relentless laws of physics have given us a hard, non-negotiable deadline, making G7 statements about a fossil fuel-phase out by 2100 or a weak deal at the UN climate talks in Paris irrelevant.
Can we do it? We have to try. And to do that, we have to get Bernie Sanders elected president. He's the only one with a plan and a sense of emergency that even comes close. He has been in Congress for a very long time, and understands how to get legislation passed.
No, a President Sanders, however much wishful thinking I do, is not a magic bullet. Laws will have to get through Congress. Action cannot be taken by fiat. Nevertheless, electing a president with a strong position on climate change and knowledge of how the system works is a place to start. Urging that president, once elected, to immediately appoint a climate czar, is the necessary second step, IMHO.
So please join me, and #ActOnClimate - get out and vote BLUE in 2016!