The climate threat demands an end to individualism
To fight climate change on the timescale we face, only collective action remains a viable strategy.
Nine years. The human species has just nine years to drastically reduce net emissions of fossil fuels and remain within the Earth’s carbon budget of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures; anything less, the world’s best climatologists say, will trigger irrevocable consequences to human life, livelihoods, biodiversity, weather, and public health. That means we will need to start sourcing our food almost exclusively from organic, local farms, transitioning to electric vehicles, building robust high speed rail systems, replacing our electric grids, returning sovereignty to (and learning from) the indigenous nations who sustainably stewarded this land for millennia, and installing swaths of solar panels, wind turbines, and other new energy forms without compromising said indigenous sovereignty. All in the next decade.
I do not say this to fearmonger, or to promote a nihilistic form of apathy, or to paralyze you into inaction. Contrarily, I bring it to your attention in the hopes of catalyzing action that actually meets the scale of the crisis we face. In other words, the sheer scope of political, economic, sociological and logistical revolution needed to combat climate change now makes it imperative we delineate true climate action from the toothless virtue signaling of climate acting.
Due to the hundred year storms soon arriving annually, submerged farms across the Midwest already yielding fewer crops, and coastal public housing units now facing water damage every time it rains, as well as numerous other crises, climate acting — also known as greenwashing — has become ever-present. Countless corporations, elites, and influencers, either wittingly or unwittingly, now exploit the aesthetic of environmental justice for reputational gain while simultaneously profiting from extractive industries or investments therein. ExxonMobil, which knew about the ramifications of climate change in 1977 yet expanded its oil and gas operations in the decades to come, now produces Earth Day ads that state they are “…work[ing] tirelessly to reduce emissions and move toward a lower carbon future.” Michigan State University, which continues to invest over $100 million in Marathon Oil, “supports” Earth Day events for student environmental justice groups like my own, Sunrise Movement MSU, yet these events only consist of ineffectual programming like painting tote bags and potting succulent plants. The multinational clothing company Inditex produces deceiving annual reports; their headlines cheerily tell consumers that the company recycles and reuses 80+% of their fabrics.Yet, hundreds of pages later in their report, we learn that this number excludes thousands of their factories in Spain and all of their 7,000+ brick and mortar locations — the places from which most of their waste derives. Worse yet, such practices are in no way limited to the entities above; instantiations of such disingenuity could comprise volumes.
As a result, with the nudge of these deceptive business and investment methods and the obfuscation generated by a billion dollar-a-year climate change disinformation network, working and middle-class people who genuinely care about our warming planet are falsely taught to believe the straw in their Starbucks each morning, or the plastic water bottle beside them at the gym, or the hamburger on their plate on the 4th of July is the cause of climate change. In turn, this atomization of responsibility, the implicit finger-pointing at you, an average consumer, suggests individual solutions to the problem. If only you used a refillable water bottle, we could solve climate change. If only you adopted a vegan diet, future human suffering could be avoided. The wealthy financiers of climate-denying think tanks, scientific mercenaries, and astroturfed (that is, paid and strategically-placed) “protestors” have a financial incentive to cultivate and maintain this fiction. With the masses divided and looking inward at our personal consumption, they can avoid the prospect of millions of people uniting to enact reform.
The narrative of individual culpability is nothing more than a facade meant to satisfy the ambiguous standard of “corporate social responsibility” while commodifying every last ounce of Earth’s resources, human and otherwise, in an attempt to raise revenues. The same ExxonMobil that earnestly pledged its help in bringing about a low-carbon future this Earth Day also bragged of “…a 35-percent year-on-year production increase” in its 2021 annual report. The same Zara that touts its “sustainable” decision to reduce the use of water in its clothes-dyeing process also misleads the public by withholding the fact that dyeing only accounts for about 1% of all water consumed in the production of its clothes. No matter how many greenwashed ads such firms and their myriad celebrity endorsers produce to signal their “commitment” to future generations, one fact is unavoidable: a few dozen corporations, including Exxon and other fossil fuel titans like Peabody Energy, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP, are responsible for 71% of all emissions, ever.
Consequently, I propose that only collective activism that antagonizes such corporations and their political enablers can viably combat climate change in the 2020s. According to Dr. Ericka Chenoweth, historical movements for change need 3.5% of the population actively engaged to implement their demands. Thus, while any decision that makes one’s lifestyle more harmonious with the principles one holds is commendable, personal conversions to veganism, commitments to recycling, and ascetic pledges to take shorter showers are simply insufficient if taken in isolation. Given the unprecedented timescale on which mass decarbonization is now required to save our communities from cataclysmic and irreversible damage, these aforementioned acts — environmentally conscious in the abstract — are actually counterproductive if used as an excuse to wipe one’s hands clean of the issue. Any claim to the contrary, no matter how well-intentioned, is climate acting.
Now, collective action can vary depending on someone’s privileges and identities, but anyone can participate.
For those willing to directly agitate policymakers on behalf of climate justice policies like the Green New Deal for Public Housing and a ‘GI Bill’ for fossil fuel workers, you can…
- organize and participate in climate strikes outside your nearest seat of government
- stage sit-ins at the offices of your elected officials
- coordinate with other local activists on a strategically-located march
For those less comfortable with confrontational politics, collective action can include…
- making donations to local and national environmental justice groups like the Poor People’s Campaign, the Sunrise Movement, Food Not Bombs, the Red Nation, and Black Lives Matter, among many others
- getting together with friends to prepare homemade food for local organizers to eat at an upcoming conference
- supporting nationwide boycotts of brands that have not solidified plans to reach net zero emissions by at least 2050
For those who are teachers at heart, you can utilize other tactics, such as…
- performing “relational organizing” that engages your personal network of family and friends about the severity of the climate crisis and what we can do together to solve it
- establishing “teach-ins” at your local school or municipal center to educate your fellow community members about the unseen ways a changing climate negatively impacts our lives
- writing op-eds in your local paper to reach an older, and perhaps more reluctant, audience
Fortunately for our generation, thanks to the work of giants in the Abolitionist Movement, the Women’s Suffrage Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the LGBTQ Movement, the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, Occupy Wall Street, and more, accessible strategies for organizing around progressive causes far exceed those outlined above. And though it is undoubtedly unjust that the burden of action rests on us at such a young age, I’m reminded of a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings. As Frodo Baggins reaches a low point in his Hero’s Journey, he turns to Gandalf and says, “I wish I had never lived in such times.” Gandalf replies, “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” Right now, our generation must decide what to do with the time we have been given. Fair or not, it is now our responsibility to step up, fight back, and unconditionally assert our solidarity with one another.
