In last week's New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a fascinating article, "How David Beats Goliath: When Underdogs Break The Rules." In his patented style Gladwell weaves together story after story of underdogs who defied convention to defeat much stronger opponents. From the Biblical story of David defeating Goliath, to a junior league basketball team of twelve year-old girls, to the armies of George Washington, Gladwell offers us examples of how an underdog is only an underdog when he plays by his opponent's rules. He also offers the research of Ivan Arreguín-Toft, a political scientist who analyzed every war fought over the last two hundred years between strong and weak combatants.
The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 percent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful--in terms of armed might and population--as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time...What happened, Arreguín-Toft wondered, when the underdogs likewise acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy? He went back and re-analyzed his data. In those cases, David's winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath's rules, they win..."
What an intriguing piece of data. Gladwell's article got me thinking about the movement to build a clean energy economy and what we can do to turn the tables and put the odds in our favor. By most measures, we face an indomitable opponent. We seek to transition the economy off of fossil fuels, which represent the core business of the largest industry in the history of human civilization. In just the first three months of 2009, these companies spent $79 million lobbying Congress versus $4.6 million by our side--a 16:1 ratio--and a Common Cause study released yesterday shows that members of the critical Energy and Commerce Committee (where the climate and energy bill is currently being watered down) received an average of $107,230 from the energy sector in the last election. 16 to 1. 16 to 1. Those are tough numbers.
I wonder what would happen if we acknowledged our weaknesses and adopted an unconventional strategy. After reading the New Yorker article, I see four principles of a winning underdog strategy that we can apply to the climate movement:
1. Make it a battle of wills, not a battle of skills
2. Empower people to think and act in real time
3. Attack your opponent where they are weak
4. Defy social convention (and be ready to do what is socially horrifying)
Below the fold, I give my take on what some of the implications of these principles are for our movement's strategy.
1. Make it a battle of wills, not a battle of skills. The first thing we must do is change it from a contest about ability, to a contest about effort. If it's about the ability to pay for more advertising, to pay for more lobbyists, or to control the price of a gallon of gasoline, we will lose. Major environmental groups have invested far too heavily in Washington DC for the past twenty years instead of building our base of grassroots leaders across the country, which has only begun to change in the past few years. We must resist the temptation to staff up inside the Beltway again and remember where the battle can be fought and won. The passion for building a clean energy economy among ordinary Americans is our greatest strength and we need to build on that strength by expanding our grassroots movement to pass strong legislation and get the US to take a positive role in the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen. We need an all out effort from people who care about the future of this country - young people creating viral videos, grandmothers hosting salons in their living rooms, and families showing up to rallies. If we make this about who has more heart, we will win.
2. Empower people to think and act in real time. One of the advantages of being being a grassroots, decentralized movement is that we can operate in real time. We don't need to wait for a CEO or Board of Directors to issue a statement. We don't need to need to convene our leadership to make a decision. Our strength is our diversity, independence, and knowledge of the terrain. Our people know their local schools and communities and can fight the fight on the ground if we give them the tools and information. By using technology from blogs to iPhone apps to Twitter we can give our supporters the ability to counteract a much larger, stronger foe. The Exxons and OPECs aren't equipped for this kind of contest. We should learn from the Obama campaign, which empowered local leaders with the tools to be constantly organizing, both online and, more importantly, offline. We will win if operate in real time.
3. Attack where they are weak. This might seem obvious, but time and again underdogs fail to identify where their opponents are most vulnerable to attack. While cheap fossil fuels have spurred tremendous growth over the last two hundred years, the dirty little secret is that the era of cheap oil is over. It takes more energy to pump less barrels of oil out of the ground and that trend will only continue. Job growth in the fossil fuel industry has stalled. For every $1 million we invest in coal and oil, only five new jobs are created. Yet, when we invest the same amount in clean energy, seventeen new jobs are created. The future of the American economy is clean energy, creating millions of green jobs that can't be shipped over seas.
We've tried their way and it has led us right into a recession, two wars without end, and an uncertain future for our children. Strong climate legislation is the first step towards turning things around. Good legislation leads to more investment, which creates new jobs, now and in the long-term, and improves our national security. We need to position big oil and coal as a dead-end opposition, and win the public pr battle about how we can create new, good clean energy jobs.
4. Defy social convention (and be ready to do what is socially horrifying). I believe we are making tremendous progress toward strong climate change legislation, but we need to do more. We campaign, sign petitions, lobby congress, and raise awareness. All of that is necessary and important. But to really succeed, we need to go the extra mile. To do the unexpected and raise some eyebrows, while staying true to our values and principles. When Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat in 1955, she defied convention and the black community of Montgomery, AL followed through by doing what was "horrifying" and boycotting the public bus system. We increase our chances of winning, if we don't play by Goliath's rules. What will it take? Hunger strikes and fossil fuel infrastructure disruption? A March on Washington? A bus boycott? Remember how arresting the images of millions of New Yorkers biking and walking to work in 2005 was? We did that because we had no other choice and in freezing cold weather. Could we do it again this fall for a higher purpose? Maybe. Or maybe there is a better way...
Bottom line is that in many ways we still seem to be fighting this battle on our opposition's terms, and right now it looks like we're losing. We need to rethink the rules of engagement. A conversation is happening across the movement about how to do just that. What do you think we should do?
This entry is cross-posted at Grist.org
Here are some truly revolutionary things we can all do right now (sorry, none of them are particularly chic or hip):
hang your clothes out to dry. have a garden, or a container garden in the city. visit your local farmers market. buy handmade vegetable based soap (in fact just eliminate petroleum based bath/body and household cleaning products), kill your diswasher and do it by hand, recycle you washing machine or other gray water when possible back into your garden or yard, don't overheat your home in winter or over cool it in summer. buy products with less packaging. eat less meat. no plastic crap from the dollar store.
I know we all know these things. problem is that once we humans get older our ideals fly out the window when we learn how much we like those luxury creature comforts - trading in our fuel efficient beaters for the hummer, or having children and spending tens of K's on baby gear. what WOULD make a world of difference is if we continue to live our values even when we make more money, and especially when we become parents and find ourselves pressured to just buy, buy, buy because little Athena Supernova is being advertised to relentlessly.
The same as Al Gore, our Government, as Democrats, as Republican, world media he has poor understanding of Nature and therefore offers very dangerous directions.
We need reevaluate science of global warming and free it from politic ASAP.
Nature more complicated than Democratic or Republican vision of it.
As one side, as another provide public with very simplistic picture and mostly for political reason.
MELTING OF ICE IN MOUNTS AND POLAR CIRCLES COULD BE NOT ONLY BECAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING, BUT IN GLOBAL COOLING CONDITION.
We have possibilities to stop this process with huge profit for our countries (Canada, USA, Mexico) if we will came to root of science, not to make “Energy Action Coalition”.
By the raw numbers, you're looking at $200K vs. $58,800 a head. Even if the green industries have a staggeringly better indirect wrap rate (say 2.0 instead of 3.0), you're talking about a salary of $29,400 for the green job and $67,000 for the job in fossil fuels. I know which sounds better to me.
LEGALIZE HEMP D0000D :)
8X more BTUS than CORN
8X more bio-diesel than soy or canola.
Bloomberg's lies to NYC FireFighters;
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/616.html
Maybe when or if it turns around again and people are looking for their next drama, they'll come back to global warming and "climate change" (whatever that is).
You said like a religious fanatic.
It takes-339 kcal of energy to evaporate 1 kg of water-after that vapors goes up to clouds and above.
-1 kcal to heat one kg of water on 1º C
-80 kcal of energy to melt one kg of ice, when its temperature will be 0º C.
In air we always have nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, carbon dioxide and others as man-made as natural greenhouse gases (GHG) and also water droplet. Water vapor is invisible gas. When we see fog, clouds or have poor visibility’s it is always waters vapor.
To evaporate water we need a lot of energy. When water vapor condensed to water droplet of rain they released the same amount of energy. What are the differences?
As lighter gas water vapor going up to cloud level, where latent heat of condensation easy escape to space.
When infrared radiation trapped in any molecule of GHG it energy will evaporate closest water droplet, which additionally cool air, while water vapor from that water droplet will go up.
Droplet of rain from cloud will go to land partially evaporated, this also cool as air as droplet of water. We have natural pendulum of evaporation and condensation, which cool the air better than anything else does.
greenhouse warming in the troposphere ( 11 km): 30% water, 70% co2.
overall greenhouse warming: 80% water, 20% co2.
But climate is dictated by the troposhpere and the heat capacity of the stratosphere
is much less than that of the troposphere.
A lot of commenters here have the false notion that all the water leaves the atmosphere
after rain or snow. Incorrect. Rain reflects conditions at high altitude, not surface.
With a slight decrease in surface temperature, the surface relative humidity often goes up.
On a clear day, the average relative humidity is around 40% (global average= 80%).
At 20C, 100% humidity -> 2.4% molar percentage of water -> 60 times co2 level.
At 20C, 40% humidity -> water molar % = 24 times that of co2.
On a molecule basis, water is a stronger absorber/emitter of IR than co2.
Adding to your statement:
greenhouse warming in the troposphere (less or equal to 11 km altitude): 90% water, 10% co2
greenhouse warming in the stratosphere (greater than 11 km altitude): 30% water, 70% co2.
overall greenhouse warming: 80% water, 20% co2.
Al Gore is not scientist. He is good writer and made good point from everything, what his friends-scientists explain to him. Al Gore has huge popularity in the world maybe because of election 2000. He author of Earth in the balance, 1992, An inconvenient truth, 2006, co-author of movie. He has support in mass media in the world and more dangerous-supports from Government of USA.
He is wrong and implementation of his ideas will bring huge damage for world economy, His good intention could bring huge damage to nature.
Al Gore explains global warming by increasing amount of carbon dioxide, which trapped infrared radiation, and heat the air. This heat evaporated additional amount of water vapors which also greenhouse gas and trapped infrared radiation, which additionally heat the air.
He misunderstands role of water vapor and simplifies explanation of global warming.
It is not only carbon dioxide.
It is winds and their direction, which send hot air to cloud level.
It is reflection, which send short wave back to space.
It is huge convection forces.
It is cloud formation.
It oceans streams.
It is properties of water and ice.
It is water evaporation, which take a lot of energy on the ground level and send vapor as lighter gas to cloud level, where infrared radiation escapes to space. We need to use all natural properties to reduce effect of global warming.
Hate nuke? SO what. Greenlight a few dozen plants to take of the slack of decomissioning coal fired plants. No CO2 released, some waste to deal with, but serves both masters.
Hate oil dependence? Put a floor under fuel prices--say $4/gal.. Let consumers decide what to drive and use the revenues EXCLUSIVELY to buy down the deficit. Allow innovation to occur in private sector, driven by consumer demand for cheaper-to-operate vehicles.
Want WIND, SOLAR, WAVE et. al? Build them in blue states. Quit being the precious NIMBY twits that most of the country thinks you are. I mean, Sen. Kennedy and Kerry oppose wind off Cape Cod, but they love it for 'fly-over' country.
Sen. Feinstein loves solar--unless you try and put it in California. Robert Redford wants GEOTHERMAL, except near Yellowstone--where it is ubiquitous.
Lead the way. Or please, be quiet.
If the anti-climate legislation people actually offered ideas, then we could compromise and move forward. Instead they covertly and overtly attempt to destroy the legislation by eviscerating its intent.
Clever, but we all suffer from global warming, not just the people who don't understand it, but everyone.
Tom
...given the concern, I wonder...how much CO2 is being released by the billions of sodas and beers that are being opened and drank around the world on a daily basis?