Embracing Climate Truth and Escalating to Win: Excerpt
The climate mobilization we need represents, not just a temporary break from the status quo, but the bridge to a sustainable future with justice for all.
The climate mobilization we need represents, not just a temporary break from the status quo, but the bridge to a sustainable future with justice for all.
This April, two powerful mobilizations will take place in D.C. and around the world, one to stand up for science and truth, the next to defend our climate, jobs, and justice. Together, the March for Science and the Peoples Climate March provide a powerful way for all of us to take action—together.
How did a man like Donald J. Trump get to be president? And how on earth can his dangerous agenda be fought? For those burning questions, a forthcoming book described as “the toolkit for shock resistance” could well be an indispensable resource.
In serving as a figure who was able to bridge different organizing traditions, Gandhi provided a model of a complex social movement ecosystem. This model illuminates a critical idea: that transformation is most likely to come about not through any one single approach to creating social change — but through the integration of many.
The veil has been lifted. The administration’s budget proposal for 2018 eviscerates agencies which could have mitigated some of the climate change devastation ahead. We have confirmation that the White House is sawing off the branch on which 99% of Americans sit.
There is a mission brewing and building, a mission that needs all hands that are ready: To bring the ‘un-named movement’ – the ‘for-life’ story of our time – to a tipping point. This needs to happen faster than the rate at which our planet is approaching fatal climatic tipping points
In the summer of 2016 the global imagination was consumed by monsters…I am talking about Pokémon, Japan’s most successful international brand, which once again stormed onto the cultural stage with the release of its first “augmented reality” (AR) video game for smartphones.
Now we’re at a point where we can name currency, debts, big finance, big extraction, consumer values, advertising, the global corporate state. We can name that common colonizer, that common enemy and we have to address it and own it for what it is because we are all part of it. For me, I’m just one soul that has to be willing to sacrifice something in order to liberate from this thousand year old enemy.
But while I certainly agree that it’s (long past) time to talk about what comes next, and that there’s a very widespread need for something entirely different, it doesn’t really follow – and I’m far from sure – that what we most need is a “next system”. Why so?
Millions of Americans now share the profoundly disturbing experience of watching and waiting as their nation lurches toward authoritarianism. In a previous essay, I described the Trump administration as a “presidency in search of an emergency”—i.e., a crisis that could be used as a pretext for seizing unchecked power. I opined that the emergency could come in the form of an economic meltdown, a terrorist attack, or a natural disaster.
Scientists officially have a date where they’ll be taking to the streets. The March for Science has been scheduled for Saturday, April 22 in Washington, D.C. A growing constellation of marches are also scheduled for that day in cities across the U.S.
If there is one idea that has gained the status of true hegemony – dominant and unquestioned around the world – it is the idea that we need to perpetually grow our economies, and every part of them, in order to improve the quality of human life.