10 Ideas to Rethink in Light of Climate Change

By Laura McClure

I have a feeling that our children and grandchildren will look back on this as the era of mass denial — a strange period when almost everybody in the U.S. knew that catastrophic climate change was upon us, but for some weird reason, just went about their lives pretending it wasn’t. It’s a kind of insanity, because by our inaction, we’re creating a world of trouble for ourselves and those who will come after.

A quick review of the facts: scientists tell us that climate change is proceeding more quickly than they had predicted, and that human civilization is in danger. (If you think I’m exaggerating, please see the latest report by the International Panel on Climate Change.) There is no quick fix in the works. Scientists say that the big engineering solves (like putting some kind of solar deflector over the planet) are too dangerous to even try, unless society is literally on the brink of collapse. Meanwhile, national and international efforts to address climate change have been paltry, and the obstacles to change, under our current political and economic systems, are huge. We and our children are facing wave after wave of droughts, floods, storms, conflicts set off by shortages of food and water, rising and acidifying oceans, and the spread of disease. And a major species die-off is already underway. Whew!

There’s good news, maybe, for people who want comprehensive global social change: we’re probably going to get it. The question is, what kind of change will it be? Will it bring greater social and economic justice? Or something else? If those of us on the side of justice keep averting our eyes from climate change because it is too painful or scary to bear, or because we don’t quite believe it could really happen, or because we just can’t think what to do about it, then things will probably not fall in our favor.

This appears to be the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. And our current economic and political system is now demonstrating that it is not prepared to address it. Case in point: scientists tell us that we must keep the great majority of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, unexploited, if we are to keep the planet livable. Corporations — and the politicians they sponsor — have shown no inclination whatsoever to do this. They are at this moment willfully frying the planet our children hope to be living in.

Meanwhile, the ideals that many of us share — of a more egalitarian society and an economy that is not based on profit and ever-growing consumption — is actually aligned with our long-term survival under climate change. A big wave is coming, and it’s possible we could ride it toward a more just and sustainable global society. We could at least give it a try.

But first, we’ve got to rethink a lot of old assumptions. At least I do. For the past few years, I’ve been trying to rewire my thinking in light of the realities of climate change. I find myself re-thinking a lot of reflexive ideas that don’t correspond with reality anymore — if they ever did.

Old Economic Assumptions

(1) We can and should return to the halcyon days of the post-World War II era.

Looking to the past as a model for the future is just not going to work for us now (if it ever did). Yet in this country, a lot of us economic/labor types are still stuck on getting back to the era of the rising middle class, the era when more people had a shot at the “American Dream.” We really want FDR to come back from the dead and give us the New Deal all over again. But we can’t go back to where we were. We need a radical redistribution of wealth more than ever — and a powerful movement to demand it (like the movements that forced FDR and other western leaders to enact New Deal policies). But in the U.S., we should no longer be in an era of expanding consumption. We can see now that our resources are not bottomless. U.S. consumption levels need to fall, overall — and poor people need a much bigger piece of what’s left. We need to figure out how we can all have enough, but not too much. I have no idea what this would look like, but probably the “social wage” or “the commons” will be part of the picture.

(2) Jobs, jobs, jobs.

Now is a good time to rethink the idea of “full employment” in the industrialized world — at least if we’re talking about 40-hour-per-week jobs doing non-essential work. As a society, we need to make less, commute less and consume less. Driving our cars to and from jobs where we produce non-essential goods and services makes for a lot of greenhouse gases and generates little value. There’s a disconnect between this convention of the “job” and our long-term survival as a species. How can all of us be meaningfully and helpfully engaged, have a decent standard of living, and, in the industrialized world, consume much less on average? Instead of producing more and more, and then allowing the ultra-rich to walk away with most of the wealth that we generate, we should produce less and distribute it fairly. What would that look like?

(3) The U.S. is the center of the universe.

Many of us have a habit of seeing policy questions through a national, not a global, lens. But more than ever, this produces distorted thinking. We can’t achieve whatever economic or social goals we’re after as a nation unless we’re working in concert with people globally. This is not charity: our self-interest is global, as climate change makes clear. The U.S.-centric view also blinds us to what climate change means in the global south and other less-industrialized parts of the world: the people who are the least responsible for climate change — who live in devastating poverty and have been denied basic amenities — are on the front lines of climate devastation. If we’re going to take on climate change, this injustice has to be addressed.

Old Assumptions About “the Environment” and Climate Change

(1) Climate change is an environmental issue.

If climate change is in the “environment” department, and you’re in the “labor” department, then it’s not your issue. But climate change is an economic issue, a racial issue, a labor issue, a health issue, an education issue, a cultural issue. It’s a personal issue, a family issue, a financial issue. Climate change is a survival issue in low-income communities, both around the world and in the U.S. As Katrina and Sandy demonstrated, poor people and people of color are hit first and hardest by climate disruption. I’m not saying, by the way, that we should all abandon our worthwhile issue silos and focus on “climate change.” I’m proposing that we rethink everything we do in our silos in light of climate change. If the scientists are right about what is happening out there, everything is going to change. And it seems like we’ll need all the expertise we’ve got in every field — from labor to education — to turn this boat around.

(2) Nature is a pretty place we go for entertainment, and we are in charge of it.

Despite farmers’ markets and CSAs, the majority of people in the industrialized world still live in a manufactured bubble that walls us off from the planet that in reality sustains our lives. It’s hard to remember that nature isn’t a playground, the place we go on vacation. Related to this hubristic view is that we are the stewards of the earth, the keepers, the managers. We’re already being reminded that nature rules us, not the other way around. In reality we are subject to the earth’s systems, we don’t manage them. Also, fighting climate change isn’t about saving the planet. The planet has seen many radical changes, with multiple mass extinctions. It will likely continue for many millions of years no matter what we do. We are talking about saving ourselves here, and hopefully some of our fellow species.

(3) Addressing climate change is mainly about consumer choices.

A lot of people I know, including me, tend to go into a defensive crouch at the words “climate change.” We start to list off the green things we are not doing and should. Or maybe we feel we are very virtuous on this front and can cite our accomplishments. It’s not that virtuous personal action doesn’t matter. It does. But, it’s also another way that American individualism is obscuring our view of a systemic problem. We live in a society that is based on consuming, that produces too much stuff, much of it unnecessary, then markets it in the most clever ways imaginable. None of this really makes sense in a society that is on the edge of collapse because of a history of overconsumption. Restructuring our personal consumption habits is good, but our whole economic system is based on these personal behaviors of ours. We need to change the system.

(4) We can fix climate change by substituting one fuel for another and then consuming as usual.

The U.S. isn’t going to buy and build our way out of climate change, as comforting as that might seem. Step one for the industrialized world is systematically reducing consumption and waste. I’m not saying that appropriate, community-controlled “alternative” energy isn’t a key to addressing climate change, including in those parts of the world that desperately need more electricity. (In India alone, over 300 million people have no electricity.) But people in industrialized countries need to do a major consumption rethink, not just cross our fingers and hope that green technology will take care of the problem for us. A corollary: if you don’t like gigantic Wall-Street-backed energy companies that are unaccountable and driven by the profit motive, then please don’t give big private solar and wind companies your unqualified support — and access to endless government tax breaks.

(5) The experts and technology will save us from climate change.

Surely “geoengineering” will come to the rescue. “They” — the experts — must have something in the works to save us from the collapse of civilization. Unfortunately, we can’t bank on this. Experts convened by the National Academy of Sciences recently came out with a set of recommendations about strategies aimed at reflecting sunlight from the earth. They found that these strategies are fraught with peril. In short, they said, “[t]here is no substitute for dramatic reductions in the emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to mitigate the negative consequences of climate change, and concurrently to reduce ocean acidification.”

Old Assumptions About Change

(1) We’ve got to have white knights.

For my whole life, most of the people I know have been hoping that the right person will be elected president and that this will save the day. This involves a lot of waiting. People are also waiting for a great person to step forward and lead a new movement. Yes, great leaders can be important, but major change is made through movements. Movements are made of us — regular people. Waiting for leaders is a waste of precious time. And the act of waiting makes us feel powerless and ultimately hopeless.

(2) Everything will continue pretty much as before.

Perhaps it’s human nature to take a short view of things. Rationally, we know that humans have only been on earth for a snap of the finger, in planetary time. And our current political and economic systems are much newer than that. There’s nothing inevitable about them — especially now.

What Is to Be Done?

Honestly, I don’t know. I’m just asking questions and sharing my thinking to date. But here are four things that seem like good steps:

  1. Don’t deny, avoid, or sideline climate change; don’t be lulled by the mainstream media’s almost total failure to report it. If you feel fear, grief, and uncertainty, accept that. But don’t let it stop you from acting.
  2. Rethink what you are doing. Reexamine your work, your analyses, your strategies and your priorities in light of climate change. How can the work you are doing be shifted to address climate change? How can you help the next generation change the system and weather the storms? What is your best contribution? What is the best contribution of your organization?
  3. Connect with the climate justice movement, or at least keep informed about it. Figure out how you can help build it.
  4. Join with others to develop a new vision. Vision is what drives powerful movements, and we haven’t come up with a comprehensive new vision in a long time. Instead, during my lifetime, people I know, including myself, have specialized in critiquing and tweaking. We have been good at adjusting, adapting and reacting. If we start getting too idealistic or dreamy about a new society, people tend to roll their eyes and ask: What’s your strategy? What are your demands? Which politician are you going to support?

But now, climate change is calling the question. It’s calling on us to come up with a new vision. What is this new society, where we consume less and distribute it much more fairly? How can we all be happy and feel rich in the new paradigm? How can we cooperate to save ourselves from the ravages of climate disruption? How can we start experiencing pieces of this new society in our lives right now? We need to start thinking, talking and writing about this. We need to stop being so practical all the time and dream — so that we can move forward!

The late Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano wrote the following poem:

Utopia lies at the horizon.
When I draw nearer by two steps,
it retreats two steps.
If I proceed ten steps forward, it
swiftly slips ten steps ahead.
No matter how far I go, I can never reach it.
What, then, is the purpose of utopia?
It is to cause us to advance.

Tony Mazzocchi, a longtime leader of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, who was also Chair of the first Earth Day in New York City in 1970, used to say that the biggest challenge to our economic system would probably come from nature. He also used to say, when someone would question his big, dreamy plans: “You’re right, it’s probably impossible. But maybe it’s not. And isn’t it more fun to try? Why don’t we?”

After several years as a clerical worker, organizer, and local union officer, Laura McClure began writing on labor and workplace issues, with articles in two dozen magazines and newspapers, ranging from The Progressive and Village Voice to Glamour. She has been editor of several publications. She currently writes for an education nonprofit in New York City, and spends the rest of her time in upstate New York writing, editing, and growing food.

Photo by Oxfam International via flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND).

1 thought on “10 Ideas to Rethink in Light of Climate Change”

  1. Nice to see your name in print again. You are right of course. Can we do this all and win under capitalism? I don’t think so, so that opens up the next set of questions. Old School, eh?

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