The World at 1°C ― January ‘17
2016 was a dark year for anyone paying attention to the gathering storm of climate change and social breakdown, and the change of calendar year does not mean a change of direction.
2016 was a dark year for anyone paying attention to the gathering storm of climate change and social breakdown, and the change of calendar year does not mean a change of direction.
There are no party lines in our movements today, only a variety of proposals, tactics, strategies, memes, and other approaches to mobilization that we might choose from, and so far, while some have accomplished great things, we have yet to find the formula to empower this movement of movements as the force it must become.
Since June we have been compiling monthly bulletins which highlight the reality of current climate change―impacts such as storms, droughts, floods, and scorching heat. We call it “The World at 1°C” to acknowledge the terrible fact that the global average temperature is already 1°C warmer than it was before the industrial revolution. In fact, it is now already 1.2°C warmer.
Novels, short stories, photos, art, music, and performance are just a few of the ways we are telling and intend to tell more of the stories of climate justice around the world. This last essay explores the power of another medium for telling stories, and presents some of the most compelling recent film and video work that tells us on some profound plane of existence what we must do about the huge problems we face.
Yesterday’s installment of the What Now: Momentum Slowed series addressed the likely first blasts of the Trumpeters to weaken the current federal framework of clean energy and environmental rules, policies and programs. Today I am continuing that discussion starting in the agency regulatory arena and moving on to the courts.
One of the most powerful antidotes we have to despair – whether in the face of the climate catastrophe that looms menacingly on the horizon, or of the dawn of the Trump era in the United States – is our ability to resist and create, often simultaneously, through our cultural creation – our art, cultures, literature, movies, and music.
Before there was indigenous resistance at Standing Rock, there was Black Lives Matter (and before that, Occupy, and before that the Zapatistas, and before that, May ‘68… and at the bottom of everything, there’s a turtle standing on an island).
The two statements – Ezra Silk of the Climate Mobilization’s 100-plus page Victory Plan and Bill McKibben’s essay “A World at War” – have led to a healthy and vigorous debate about these ideas and their potential to play a role in the US response to the greatest global challenge of the 21st century.
Optimists trade on hope, and activists on visions. It seems good then to end a year which lacked both with this hopeful vision of the future, rooted in a visionary dream from the past.
It’s 2016 and the weight of American corporate interests has come to the Missouri River, the Mother River. This time, instead of the Seventh Cavalry or the Indian police dispatched to assassinate Sitting Bull, it is Enbridge and Dakota Access Pipeline.
Ever the optimist, I thought it would be good to end the year on a hopeful note, so here’s my best shot at that.
Seventeen simple sayings for scholar-activists.