by Keith Harrington
Despite all the doubts surrounding Copenhagen’s political
outcomes, global climate activists can take heart in the fact that the
conference may result in the next best thing to a binding climate treaty: a smarter,
more galvanized, and re-energized global grassroots climate movement.
More than a mere geographical convergence point for our
movement, Copenhagen has already proved itself an important philosophical and
sociological convergence point as well, inspiring climate activists around the
globe to come together like never before behind powerful new ideas and
campaigns. And I’m not just talking about 350.
Here’s a look at few of the more notable global grassroots efforts
to emerge around COP 15 and a quick analysis of what they mean for the current
state and future of the climate movement:
The Fast Track to
Climate Action
The idea of making sacrifices for the climate has certainly
never been a mainstay of the mainstream climate movement. Cowed by conservative
framing and fearful of alienating comfort-loving Americans, mainstream climate
campaigners have done a pretty impeccable job of keeping the word out of their
messaging and off their lips. Nevertheless, in recent months, many segments of
the true grassroots climate movement have found their liberal backbones and
started latching on to the idea of sacrifice as a mobilizing tool, and the
results have been pretty refreshing and inspiring.
On the very front lines of this emerging sacrificial vanguard
are the participants of the Climate Justice Fast. The brain child of Australian
students, the Climate Justice Fast kicked off on Nov. 6, and has since
become an international phenomenon, involving around 100 fasters in 23
countries. Tracing their lineage to the great hunger strikers of the past
including Gandhi and Terence MacSwiney, Climate Justice fasters have described
their campaign as a “deeply moral form of political protest, demonstrating
through our personal sacrifice that we are willing to make deep personal
change.”
And the participants of the climate justice fast aren’t
going to be contented to let their sacrifices transpire in private, unseen by
politicians and government negotiators who need to hear their message. Like their famous forbearers, the fasters are using their fasting for a very pointedly strategic
political purpose. The fast will continue through the end of the climate
negotiations in Copenhagen and several of the strikers will actually be present
at the conference to act, in faster Ted Glick’s words “as visible evidence of
what the climate crisis is all about,” – that it’s a very real and urgent
matter of life and death for many in our global community.
Indeed built into the ethos of the Climate Justice Fast is
an understanding that the urgency of the climate crisis requires a fresher,
more radical form of activism than the mainstream climate movement has served
up so far. According to the CJF website “Traditional methods of protest, such
as marches, petitions, and direct actions, all lack the power to communicate
the importance of the climate issue.” In other words such soft core tactics are
all too easily ignored by politicians, and don’t have the emotional energy
needed to inspire new activists and build a powerful movement around. Something
much more visceral is needed to really open eyes and move hearts to action.
Fasting is one such tactic.
Unplugged but fully
charged in Massachusetts
Another tactic with a similar sacrificial theme has recently
burst on to the grassroots climate scene in Massachusetts via the student led
Mass Leadership Campaign. While the Climate Justice Fasters have been depriving
themselves of food as a way of demonstrating their solidarity with future
generations and the global poor, the participants of the Mass Leadership
Campaign have been working towards the same end by depriving themselves of the
trappings of modern domesticity. Launched the day after the 350 International Day of Climate Action the campaign has seen hundreds of mostly student climate
activists forgo the electricity, heat and other creature comforts of their
dorms and homes to live outdoors in tents on their campuses and the Boston
common for nights and in some cases even weeks. In addition to drawing
attention to the reality of climate refugees who will have no choice but to
leave their homes and live without basic necessities, the Leadership Campaign
has the very locally focused political goal of persuading the Massachusetts
legislature to pass a law that would put the state on track to 100 percent renewable
energy by 2020. Faced with the Hobson’s choice of living a lifestyle fueled by dirty energy, or
unplugging from the grid completely, the Mass leaders have chosen the latter, and
have vowed to continue to do so until the their political leaders accede to
their demands.
Adding to the Gandhian overtones of their campaign, the Mass
leadership electricity fasters have also added an element of civil disobedience
to their efforts, by pitching their tents on the Boston common in contravention
of city ordinances. It is a testament to the tactical brilliance and
inspirational power of this move that to date hundreds of people, including
climate luminaries such as James Hanson and Bill McKibben, have participated in
the Boston Common sleep outs and broken the law and received police citations
together in the name of climate justice. By the time the Boston Common phase of
the sleep out campaign wraps up on Sunday, Dec. 6—the day before
the start of the Copenhagen conference—hundreds more will have participated,
and the campaign will have built the necessary momentum to inspire continued
sleep outs in towns and campuses across Massachusetts, and hopefully, in time,
across the whole country.
Rewriting the
grassroots climate action playbook
Together, the Climate Justice Fast and the Mass Leadership
campaign constitute the first few inspiring glimpses into the content of a new
tactical playbook that will be vital to taking the global climate movement to
the next level. The real promise and power of these tactics derives from the
fact that they reflect a deep understanding of an important aspect of human
psychology that the mainstream climate movement has thus far ignored in its
flight away from sacrifice—namely that people more readily act to prevent
losses than to achieve gains. Thus even though we need a positive vision of a
clean energy vision to orient people toward, when people are already living in
relative comfort as they do in the United States it’s hard to motivate them
with visions of a “better world.” As I’ve written here before, one of the biggest
shortcomings of the American climate movement is that most American climate
activists understand the difficulties of the climate crisis on a mostly
intellectual level. Without any kind of visceral connection to the climate
crisis, we are simply unable to summon the kind of emotional and moral energy
needed to power the push for lasting solutions to the crisis. Tactics like fasting
and the Mass Leadership campouts are perhaps the only thing short of real
climate disasters that will help us develop those visceral connections, and as
such one can only hope that they will begin to be more widely deployed so that
more people can appreciate what exactly we have to lose and stand up to protect
it before it is really lost.
Related Links:
Grist correspondent heads to Copenhagen, looks forward to pickled herring
President Obama, give us hope again…this time in Copenhagen
Optimistic or pessimistic about the Copenhagen climate talks?
