As we find ourselves surrounded by the tatters of the climate debate in the U.S. Congress, it seems fitting to take a moment to step back and ponder where we go from here. While the blogosphere is buzzing with assignments of blame for the failure of the Senate to act, we are much more concerned about how we move forward with urgency and clarity of purpose. Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury to pack our bags and go home as the Senate did only moments ago. We just staggered through the hottest six months in recorded history worldwide. People everywhere are being impacted by the damage we have done through decades of carbon loading, and it is clear that our ailing planet will not sit idly by as our political leaders have done.
In reflecting, we find ourselves returning to the founding principles of 1Sky when we formed in 2007: We must redouble our efforts to unite American society across all divides in an unyielding call for action on the scope and scale of the enormous challenge and opportunity we are confronting. We are galvanized by the understanding that the political, human rights and economic repercussions of climate change transcend the 'environmental issue' label, and present a nation-wide challenge requiring a unified response. As United States citizens, we understand our moral and ethical responsibility to act with resolve – both as members of a global community, and as the leading per capita emitters of global warming pollution. We must succeed in building a nationwide movement that changes the politics of what is possible to deliver what is necessary; our very lives depend on it.
The central aspirations of our campaign as embodied in the 1Sky Solutions which have been endorsed by more than 600 allied organizations nationwide continue as our north star:
But what lessons can we learn from the last three years, years in which the advocacy for action on climate change was better funded and coordinated than ever before? We all had high hopes, and the debate was closer to center stage than it has ever been. But in the end, we are left largely empty-handed.
We feel it is imperative to pause, ask tough questions about what went wrong and why we as a community failed to achieve our aspirations, and – more importantly – to look carefully at what is most needed given the new legislative and political landscape. Toward this end, we are holding a retreat in mid-November with key allies, organizers, 1Sky staff and board, but also with leaders from other sectors to help us see in fresh ways, and to explore what role 1Sky can best play as we move into the next chapter.
As we prepare for the strategic discussions we will be having, six key lessons strike us as salient and worth offering now for discussion and debate. We don't pretend to have the answers, but we are committed to grappling with the tough questions and to road-testing solutions. Our thoughts at this time:
1. We need to redouble our investment in grassroots movement building. Climate and energy advocates were better funded and coordinated than ever before, and yet we were unable to convince reluctant policymakers to take action to prevent global warming and jumpstart a clean energy economy. Donors invested unprecedented amounts of money in the climate and energy debate, including paid advertising that elevated grasstops voices from the military, business, and faith communities. However, we feel strongly that a longstanding and damaging underinvestment in grassroots organizing severely crippled our ability to move policy forward. Swing politicians routinely claimed that they simply were not hearing enough from their constituents in favor of climate and energy reform – and in the summer of 2009, the calls opposing action on global warming in the House of Representatives reportedly outnumbered the calls in support of it by margins of more than 10:1. This chapter of climate and energy advocacy was marked by an unprecedented "professionalization," with new resources underwriting polling and campaign-style infrastructure that served many important purposes. We need all of it and much more for the next battle. Until or unless we have a cohesive fabric at a local level throughout the country, woven together from citizens, organizations and businesses that are passionately committed to preserving our future, we will never elect politicians who share our commitment, or win policies that deliver solutions at the scale of the problem. The Global Day of Work on 10/10/10 is a good opportunity to converge. Of course this is not work that can be completed overnight – it requires years of work and deep, patient investments of time and resources. And it requires new thinking, strategies and tactics to engage communities. This is not just about getting to 60 votes in the Senate as we all know; our legacy must be a strong and enduring grassroots movement, powered by passion and conviction to the ongoing fight of our lifetimes. That is what we are redoubled in our efforts to create with the 1Sky campaign.
2. President Obama and the White House failed to lead on climate and energy with the fierce determination required to tackle a challenge this big, and the environmental community failed to publicly demand the leadership required. From our perspective, the environmental community and others concerned with climate change failed to put sufficient pressure on President Obama and the White House. Perhaps this is understandable given their historic relationships with the party that has delivered a majority of the environmental reforms for our country, but it did not serve us well in this debate. Our president is leading a deeply divided country and Congress, and while he undoubtedly "gets it" when it comes to the imperative to take action, he was surrounded by strategists who doubted the wisdom or the feasibility of winning on this issue. We simply never made a strong enough public case to change their minds, and as a result we did not get the leadership demonstrated by the White House in the health care and regulatory reform debates.
3. In order to win over American minds, we have to talk about global warming and the transition to a green economy. We were all counseled again and again that the polls mandated a message focused on jobs, energy independence, and national security. We were warned repeatedly by highly paid consultants and well-funded studies that discussion of global warming or the climate crisis was unproductive. But we reject the "either/or" dichotomy, and maintain, as our founding 1Sky principles above suggest, that we must be clear about the planetary emergency we are facing even as we emphasize the economic opportunity of investment in a clean energy economy. During the course of the last three years, as organizations adopted the clean energy economy emphasis, we saw our opponents make steady headway in their ongoing and deliberate disinformation campaign to suggest that there is credible debate about the science of global warming. We left the science of global warming flank largely undefended, and we are paying the price as polls suggest decreases in the percentage of Americans who are convinced that global warming is an urgent problem that we must address. We have to reclaim the debate on the science, clearly and with conviction, before it is too late. At the same time, we have to redouble our efforts to explain and demonstrate why an investment in a clean energy economy is critical to our future. We need to make real federal investments in energy research and development to help drive down the price of alternatives. For too long, we have fought this fight on terms set by our opposition. We must change the frame and tell the truth in a way that empowers and ignites an irrepressible citizen's force for change.
4. We must negotiate from a position of power in order to build our power. Compromise is ultimately essential, but we believe a far more ambitious opening stance and aggressive advocacy throughout would have served our cause better. From the beginning in the House of Representatives, the debate was framed and it became an alleged foregone conclusion, for example, that we had to trade away enforcement of existing Clean Air Act provisions against leading sources of global warming pollution in order to obtain a cap on global warming pollution. While it is important and necessary to get industry on board, from our perspective, our opening posture reflected and ultimately reinforced our lack of power. At each step, we seemed ready to give more away, which made it increasingly difficult to sustain strong and unified public demand for action. Rarely did we stand firm until the final battle when everyone converged in defense of the EPA. Time and again throughout this debate, our political leaders were assured that "we" (meaning the environmental community as a whole) would take what we could get – even when it became increasingly unlikely that it would represent even an incremental step in the right direction. In a similar vein, we believe we should encourage open and frank discussions amongst members of our community with varying viewpoints on tactics and strategy. We should seek consensus where it is available and stand strong and undivided together, even as we discuss and use our differences to our strategic advantage wherever possible in the debate. Too often, those who pushed for more ambitious agendas were vilified. We tired of hearing "don't let perfect get in the way of the good" when the good was long gone in the process. We have made steady progress in this area, but we need even more openness, dialogue, debate and transparency among us as a community if we are to succeed.
5. Companies wield the dominant influence on U.S. politics, and controlled the debate on energy reform. Coal, oil, gas, agriculture and utility company lobbyists are literally swarming Capitol Hill. As Eric Alterman recently pointed out in his article Kabuki Democracy: Why A Progressive Presidency is Impossible, For Now,
"According to the Center for Public Integrity, the number of lobbyists devoted to climate change had risen by more than 400 percent since 2003, to a total of 2,810 – giving lobbyists a five-to-one advantage over the combined membership of the House and Senate. (This is in contrast to an estimated 138 working on behalf of alternative forms of energy.)"
In addition to a Capitol Hill glutted with lobbyists, the pocketbooks of most politicians are lined with campaign contributions from coal, oil, gas and utility companies. Click here to see Oil Change International's map of oil company contributions to members of Congress, just by way of example. And, to make matters worse, the Supreme Court recently decided Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 50 (2010) holding that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment. The ruling opens the door to unfettered corporate influence during the forthcoming mid-term elections, as fossil fuel fat cats can disguise themselves as 'citizens for a greener future' and frame the national debate over the airwaves. Hasn't the time come for a broader, cross-sectoral collaboration to contain the force of money in politics? And while we're at it, isn't the disfunction of the filibuster in the Senate worth a more rigorous debate?
6. The international dimensions of the climate crisis are more critical than ever. Millions of vulnerable people all over the world are being hard hit by the effects of global warming, through no fault of their own. Their ecosystems are suffering and being eliminated and, perhaps not surprisingly, 2009 witnessed the biggest global mobilizations on climate change in history. International Energy Agency projections that virtually all emissions growth will be in developing countries and that China may emit more than the rest of the world combined in 25 years highlight the need for attention on several international fronts, including: (1) the ongoing internationalization of our movement, (2) a more robust strategy to bridge the global energy technology gap to provide and deliver de-carbonized energy to 1.5 billion people without energy, and (3) follow through on the significant climate finance commitments by the United States and others made in Copenhagen and an ongoing focus on the need for a fair, ambitious and binding global deal to reduce global warming pollution.
We offer these thoughts humbly as renewable fuel for thought. Do you agree or disagree? What are your key takeaways? Please join is in a conversation here. Clearly none of us have the answer or we wouldn't be in this fix, but we believe that we can and we must do better.
With dedication and respect for our colleagues in this fight,
Members of the 1Sky Board of Directors (Jessica Bailey, KC Golden, Bracken Hendricks, Bill McKibben, Billy Parish, Vicky Rateau, Gus Speth and Betsy Taylor)*
*All members of the 1Sky board join this letter in their individual capacities, rather than on behalf of other institutions with which they are affiliated.
Nevertheless, the entire community has missed the boat in shoving "pollution" aside in favor of concentrating on CO2. Melting glaciers far away and rising seas in the future just don't resonate with most people.
A more effective strategy would focus on immediate damage from nitrous oxides, sulphur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds. Cancer, emphysema, asthma, & allergies are epidemics & THEY ARE CAUSED BY OZONE.
Furthermore, it shouldn't be difficult to demonstrate that ozone is KILLING TREES. After decades of cumulative exposure they are in rapidly accelerating decline globally. Inexorably rising levels of background tropospheric ozone are damaging annual vegetation which will lead to widespread crop failures and ultimately, famine.
Agreed, we must eliminate CO2. But ozone will cause mass extinction long before CO2 renders our planet uninhabitable.
Scare people with that and maybe they will find the motivation to conserve and switch to clean energy!
All NGO's should join and streamline the message:
We are in a state of Emergency. Ration fuel and reserve it for the most essential purposes. Sponsor education so people understand the danger, promote a new level of civility, cooperation, and compassion to help the least fortunate cope with global boiling.
People accepted rationing on products and services to fight WWII. This is a much greater fight.
www.witsendnj.blogspot.com
you are on wealthy street you don't see them. It's time to listen to the people who have been there.
City planning ignores the needs of people who don't drive a vehicle, and does not anticipate the needs of the elderly. Zoning ordinances cause people to be away from their children more hours of the day, as well as waste gas on long commutes. I would suggest a movement to encourage community gardens and safe bicycle paths - golf cart lanes. There is very little long range planning, it's as if it is presumed that life as we know it will never change. Sad mentality to have, and it's clearly not proven to be sustainable. The local ordinances, and local status quo must change, this spreads like peer pressure, keeping up with the Jones'.
Perhaps we should follow the propaganda of the fossil fuel industry that claims it is just hoax?
OK, Willie, shut the door (don't forget to turn on the air conditioner!) and dream up other deep "Pluto" Beetle Baily scribble.
The right wing didn't get this level of power by being stupid and by rising up to slaughter their allies every time something didn't go their way. And it's ridiculous and childish to think that winning one presidential election is enough to set this country on the right foot. Every time somebody on the left starts talking about "The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama" and similar bastardizations of the truth, the only thing you accomplish is to discourage your allies and swing the independents toward the right.
I wonder how you'll all feel about the "failed presidency" of Mr. Obama when they are swearing in President Palin.
If anyone is to blame here it's us... the liberals, the progressives, the left... whatever you want to call us. We have wasted the past 30 years bickering with each other, playing "more politically correct than thou", and clinging hard and fast to our "ideals", when we should have gotten down to the hard and ugly job of moving this country forward.
However, the MWP deniers, such as the IPCC, US EPA and the UK’s MET Office, will never admit the existence of the MWP because it means that their religious-like belief in AGW is exposed for the steaming pile of junk science that it truly is.
In total, climate change is complex and not well understood.
But this part is simple.
Since the world was warmer when CO2 levels were lower, CO2 cannot be the earth's temperature regulator.
In the past, the Earth was warmer than it is today; before the social and industrial advances that have made modern people the healthiest and most prosperous in history. MWP deniers want us to believe that plant friendly and life giving CO2 is a bad thing to better advance their meglomanical desire to both boss around the developed world and further impoverish the poor while pocketing a lot of taxpayer money along the way.
Useless, misguided attempts to control carbon are not the answer to the ever changing climate.There is only one answer to changes in climate that has ever worked for humanity.
That is adaptation.
One of the many links to the overwhelming Paleoclimate evidence of the global nature of the MWP is below.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Climate is multi-determined. Lots of factor go into creating warm and cool spells. There are dozens of sinusoidal inputs into climate. Sun cycles, orbit cycles and oceans cycles. They are all going up and down asynchronosly. If several of them are going down at the same time, you get a periof cooling. The last couple of years have been a little cooler than the year before 2005, but still very much hotter than any time in recorded history. If you get all of the cycles going up at the same time, you get a hot period like the MWP. That doesn't have anything to do with CO2. CO2 imposed on top of those cycles. It is a constant offset and, though the cycles still go up and down, the overall trend is constantly upward. The current upward trend has resulted in about 1 higher than any time in since the 1850s and much higher than the MWP.
2. Burning oil, coal, and natural gas releases CO2. (Doubled since 1970)
3. The Oceans have a fixed volume of water and have a limited ability to absorb CO2.
4. Plants have a limited ability to absorb CO2 and with deforestation it is decreasing. (10-million hectares/year.)
5. The net amount of CO2 in the atmospher is increasing; by 23% since 1959 and by 49% since 1850. (1850 = 280PPM.)
6. The current CO2 level of 390 PPM is higher than any time in the last 400,000 years. (Previous peak from Antartice ice cores 300PPM)
7. The last time CO2 levels were has high as today was 2.1-million years ago. (Previous pre-industrial peaks were around 300PPM, 400,000 years ago).
8. CO2 blocks Infrared radiation centered around 1.4um and is thus a greenhouse gas.
9. The CO2 increase over the last 150 years is responsible for the earth retaining 1.4 watts per M^2.
10. Various cycles such as sun spot cycles, orbital cycles, etc. amount to no more that 0.4 watts per M^2.
11. Positive feedback mechanisms, methane release, less snow cover, increased water vapor increase the effects by 2 to 9 watts per M^2.
12. Control quesiton: the earth is more than 2-billion years old.
Currently, we are at 390ppm and adding 2ppm each year.
If these facts are correct, we are now in an unrecognized life-threatening emergency.
See A 5 Point Program at http://www.aesopinstitute.org for the supporting documents.
The good news is that survival is one hell of a motivator! Once the facts are widely known and agreed upon, those who have made it impossible to take strong and immediate action may decide that it has become wise for their own survival and that of their families to step aside. Those who are wise enough might use their leadership skills to help achieve the necessary changes fast enough to matter.
This is now a fight for life itself. Not just for humanity, but for most of the species that inhabit the earth.
If we fail, kiss it all goodbye!
Can it be accomplished? Probably? Will it be done in time? Good question.
It certainly needs a far bolder agenda - with the strong across the board political support that would exist if we were preparing to defend ourselves from the very high probability of a massive nuclear attack.
Wake up folks! The life you save may be your own!