Climate change threatens to trigger the collapse of human civilization as we know it within this century — within the lifetimes of many who are alive today. Right now, our political leaders have no plans to stop this disaster scenario from unfolding.
That is why The Climate Mobilization (TCM), a nonprofit advocating for a massive response to the climate crisis, is asking Americans to drop what they’re doing and spend a year building a mass movement powerful enough to commence a WWII-scale climate mobilization in the United States by July 4, 2017.
“We have an almost impossibly short window of time left in which to act and still be able to restore a safe climate for humanity,” says TCM director Margaret Klein Salamon. “We are pursuing this goal and this timeline not because it will be easy or politically expedient, but because this is what the science requires.”
The newly launched Climate Year volunteer program looks to enlist highly skilled individuals from all backgrounds and regions of the U.S, who are willing to devote a minimum of 30 hours a week for a year to the mobilization effort. Participants will be asked to employ their own skillsets, as well as receive intensive training to take on a range of leadership roles. Climate Year encourages applicants to make clear what they would need to make the program work for them, such as housing or a monthly stipend.
“We were inspired to launch this program because we were already getting interest from people who had internalized the full implications of the climate emergency, and were rearranging their lives to do this,” Salamon says. “We’ve decided to open it up.”
TCM campaigned for a WWII-scale mobilization throughout the 2016 election cycle and successfully moved the idea into the political mainstream, with Senator Bernie Sanders calling for wartime-scale climate mobilization; dozens of articles in major publications embracing the idea, including leading climate advocate Bill McKibben in the New Republic; and the Democratic Party platform itself declaring that we are in a global climate emergency and must respond on a scale not seen since WWII. TCM’s current mission is to build an unprecedented social movement to hold our government to those words.
About The Climate Mobilization
The Climate Mobilization (TCM) has been building a grassroots movement demanding a government response to the climate emergency on the scale of the home front mobilization during World War II.
The campaign launched at the People’s Climate March in September 2014. Our primary organizing tool has been the Pledge to Mobilize, a document which commits signers to spreading the truth of the climate emergency and the need to mobilize, as well as supporting political candidates who have pledged to mobilize over those who have not.
To learn more, or apply, visit ClimateYear.org.