An important perspective from Ross Gelbspan Journalist and author of The Heat Is On and Boiling Point Because climate change has outpaced social change, the climate movement needs a new goal and a new role: pushing governments to prepare for a cascade of breakdowns. We have failed to meet nature’s deadline. The movement’s current goal of moving the world toward zero tolerance for fossil fuels now needs to be subordinated to this far more urgent task. Barring a rapid (and unlikely) outbreak of global cooperation, we will see a proliferation of national conflicts over resources. Intensifying climate impacts will also trigger totalitarian responses by governments trying to keep order in the face of chaos. It is not hard to envision governments resorting to permanent states of martial law. To head off this scenario, the movement needs to expand by an order of magnitude. Bill McKibben’s 350.org began broadening the movement by casting last September’s People’s Climate March as part of a wider “climate justice” effort. Activists need to go further, enlisting groups around the world working on human rights, economic equity, poverty alleviation, civil liberties, social justice, and government reform — as well as sympathetic leaders of governments and corporations. We need a much broader, more influential, more powerful coalition to move the world’s leaders toward a cooperative — not a competitive — set of coordinated responses. Environmentalists are best positioned to jump-start that movement. They best understand the accelerating changes in the planet’s natural systems. But the climate movement is not necessarily best suited to lead a movement to force the world’s governments to prepare for an increasingly stressed future. That may require some soul-searching by movement organizers. Ultimately, a global rescue movement needs to proclaim with one voice that the global climate has passed a point of no return. The mission seems screamingly clear: to persuade governments forcefully and urgently to plan for an increasingly chaotic future — and to force the world to recognize that the ultimate casualty of prolonged inaction and pervasive denial will be a coherent civilization.
Posted on: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 22:08:01 +0000
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