Time is running out. Here’s how the climate movement can level up.
From Vox by Rebecca Leber
The high-risk, high-reward stakes of building a more radical movement.
On an unusually warm, clear day in late September, a dozen progressive activists paddled their kayaks and boats up to to a houseboat Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) keeps parked on the Potomac in Washington, DC. For four days, they had been floating around the West Virginia-themed boat named “Almost Heaven” with colorful signs, calling on him to support Build Back Better, the most critical piece of climate legislation considered by Congress in over a decade. Apparently unmoved by their “We want to live” chant, Manchin finally leaned over the railing to acknowledge their presence and talk for a moment.
The bird-dogging campaign to try to change Manchin’s position on Build Back Better was one of the most visible moments of climate protest in 2021, another pandemic year that forced activists to get even more creative. So far, those who targeted Manchin have managed only to get under his skin; he claimed the White House was using them to bully him into voting yes on the bill when he announced he couldn’t support it on December 19. (The activists were representing the Center for Popular Democracy and other advocacy groups.) Since then, Manchin has softened his criticism of Build Back Better’s climate provisions — including his objections to a methane emissions fee and tax credits for union-made electric vehicles — though it’s not clear yet if Democrats will reach a deal on the larger, roughly $1.75 trillion bill.
But the houseboat confrontation was only the tip of the iceberg of a movement that in 2021 became more decentralized and far-reaching, fighting on dozens of fronts. With the goal of slashing fossil fuel reliance and creating a cleaner, fairer future, high schoolers’ student strikes expanded, the college divestment movement grew, and racial justice organizers sank major gas terminals and pipeline projects through lawsuits and public opposition.
Climate organizers are “trying every possible permutation of what we can do,” observed longtime climate activist and journalist Bill McKibben.
But even as the climate movement finds new recruits and builds political momentum, the one thing it seriously lacks is time. If Democrats can’t find the votes for the climate provisions in Build Back Better, then the country misses its best opportunity to marshal the federal government’s power to meaningfully rein in carbon emissions. Even if the federal government steps up, states, cities, and corporations will be just as essential to contributing larger pollution cuts to move the world toward its incredibly ambitious deadline to slash global pollution in half by 2030. The US might not have another opportunity to make a difference before the world warms to a calamitous level.
To beat the clock on climate change, some activists believe they’ll win by refining what the movement is already doing. By finding new levers to push, and new age groups to attract, the movement would build on the momentum of what’s already working to change entrenched institutions.
But others think it’s time for a new movement entirely. That includes Margaret Klein Salamon, executive director of the Climate Emergency Fund, a group that’s funding a more aggressive strain of organizing that conveys climate change as a house-on-fire-style emergency requiring more direct action now.
“What we need to do if we have a shot in hell on climate is fight for our lives, and make it clear we’re fighting for our lives,” Salamon said. “That’s a different movement” from what she sees today.
Some of these strategies will clash, and some could even threaten the movement’s unity. But the risks could also be worth it: The stakes are higher than ever to snap the US out of apathy and inertia while the whole world barrels toward worsening climate change.
