Bernie Sanders upset some people with his comments about the Paris pact on climate change, just as he did when he said in the second Democratic presidential debate that the climate crisis is our biggest national security risk:
“While this is a step forward it goes nowhere near far enough. The planet is in crisis. We need bold action in the very near future and this does not provide that,” said Sanders.
Sanders is right. The agreement hammered out in Paris doesn’t go far enough. That doesn’t mean it isn’t “historic” or that the talks were a waste of time or that they are, as James Hansen labeled them, “bullshit,” though that pre-eminent scientist is right about the need for a global levy on carbon.
“Not enough” ≠ nothing. Saying it does creates despair and defeatism, which generates cynicism. That trio produces apathy, and apathy kills activism. And making the words of the Paris pact actually become a turning point will require massive activism. That’s Sanders’ clear message.
As 350.org founder Bill McKibben wrote in an op-ed for Monday’s New York Times:
So the world emerges, finally, with something like a climate accord, albeit unenforceable. If all parties kept their promises, the planet would warm by an estimated 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit, or 3.5 degrees Celsius, above preindustrial levels. And that is way, way too much. We are set to pass the 1 degree Celsius mark this year, and that’s already enough to melt ice caps and push the sea level threateningly higher. [...]
That we have any agreement at all, of course, is testament to the mighty movement that activists around the world have built over the last five years. At Copenhagen, world leaders could go home with nothing and pay no price.
That’s no longer true.
What Sanders and McKibben and hundreds of thousands of activists know is that the climate movement has much to do to transform the forward motion provided by the flawed Paris pact into an even bigger movement dedicated to getting the world off fossil fuels far more rapidly than all but the most ambitious nations’ plans. Yes, that brings up (gasp!) Denmark again, already getting 40 percent of its electricity from renewable sources and planning for 100 percent by 2050. That ought to be a goal worthy of emulation rather than sneering. Iowa, it should be noted, got 28 percent of its electricity from wind turbines in 2014.
As McKibben says, the movement must now expand what we’ve already been doing—“blocking pipelines, fighting new coal mines, urging divestment from fossil fuels” and otherwise weakening the fossil-fuel industry. And despite its own weaknesses, the Paris pact provides a tool for that effort.
Activists in the United States have a huge obstacle in the path of dealing with this global crisis: The U.S. Congress. Even though the majority of members aren’t climate-change deniers, the stubborn minority there, as we know all too well, is strong enough to block even modest actions, much less the vastly greater changes required if we’re to have any hope of avoiding or at least reducing the negative impacts of some of the worst effects of global warming.
As the Earth heats up—2015 appears almost certain to be the hottest year on record—the heat also has to be turned up on the delayers and deniers. One key aspect of that should be to stress incessantly to Americans in general and voters, in particular, the gains to be had from transforming our energy system, our agriculture system, our transportation system, and therefore our economic system, while we’re steadily reducing CO2 emissions. That transformation will generate millions of new jobs—that’s not hyperbole—and provide much needed new green infrastructure. We need to make that point every single day.
Overcoming the knuckleheads and fossil-fuel marionettes in Congress obviously will be no small task, just as it is not in so many other realms. Which is why “street politics” will be even more in evidence than they have been in the climate movement so far. What can’t be done at the polls because of gerrymandering, dark money, corruption, and ignorance will have to be achieved otherwise.
But while we have an uphill struggle ahead, activists have allies in key places. At the municipal level—and in some cases the state—there are elected and appointed officials who get it, who have for years been nudging policy in the direction of local transformation. Activists can exert pressure to get these officials to step up the pace and put the spotlight on foot-draggers in local and state governments. There’s no excuse for a single city council meeting to pass without someone in the audience raising questions about what that city is doing to respond to climate change.
As we transition from the current system to a new one, American climate activists should also be in the forefront of supporting an assisted transition for those workers who will feel the impact of the changes most immediately. The shape of that assistance is something to be hammered out among all the stakeholders.
The same should be said of the transition elsewhere. It’s the developed world that has emitted most of the industrially sourced CO2 that’s been pumped into the atmosphere in the past two centuries. That makes it crucial for developed-world activists, Americans and others, to push their governments to offer far more financial and technical assistance than pledged in Paris to help the developing nations build their own clean-energy infrastructure and ameliorate the ravages of climate change. Telling them to follow a different energy path than the developed world did without helping them to pay for it is an exercise in arrogance, exceptionalism, and first-world privilege.