The choices we make now about climate change will radically change the world we grow up into. But progress on a climate deal is slow, with powerful forces outmanoeuvring us. We need to be a movement, not a unified campaign. That means shifting our focus to service: providing people with the tools, skills and narratives to launch their own campaigns on climate and energy. Danny Hutley encourages potential to flouris and ideas to be unleashed.
“I began to draw an invisible boundary between myself and other people. No matter who I was dealing with. I maintained a set distance, carefully monitoring the person’s attitude so that they wouldn’t get any closer.” - ‘K’, in Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
“I began to draw an invisible boundary between myself and other people. No matter who I was dealing with. I maintained a set distance, carefully monitoring the person’s attitude so that they wouldn’t get any closer.”
- ‘K’, in Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
It’s raining and I’m walking home at pace, eager to check the news, reply to emails. Something is happening that occupies my attention, months in planning, consistent gravity on my bank balance.
Nothing could be more important to me. The choices we make now about climate change will radically change the world we grow up into. It’s the natural disasters, conflicts, migrations and resource crises I’ll witness. It’s my family, my job, our future.
The news arrives hard: progress on a climate deal is slow, powerful forces have outmanoeuvred you. The hope you tried so hard to spread was misplaced, a strange churning of guilt and heavy empathy in your stomach.
“I’ve got to try harder.”
We’re ambitious, sharply honest and strong in our idealism- but with a portacabin ceiling above us. Smaller numbers of us working harder towards more concrete goals is not going to generate the shift in power we need. The climate movement needs to be bigger, a lot bigger. That means being broader, more loosely connected, and service-oriented.
This year, the Canadian Government opened bidding for companies to begin an environmentally damaging method of extracting natural gas, called fracking. The Fort Nelson First Nation community were angry that they hadn’t been included in consultations, despite their water being used extensively in the extraction process. They started an online petition on Change.org, and over 25,000 people joined them. In Turkey, 46,000 people stopped a construction magnate from building in their forests. 10,000 in Indonesia revoked a logging license from a destructive Palm Oil company. These aren’t your usual group of climate activists, nor are they being used as the face of a climate campaign, these are their own concerns. Tens of thousands of people is just the start - I believe we will see these types of campaigns proliferate quickly. Compare this to the static or dwindling numbers of people that have been engaging meaningfully with the UN Climate Talks.
I am not saying that we shouldn’t have people speaking out for climate justice in those artificially-lit halls of power. Activists bring increased transparency, ambition and moral urgency to high-level decision-making. But much too often discussion is about policy and framing, with certain groups spending more energy criticising other members of civil society for their positions, than trying to engage new people. Most people will never be interested in whether a weak deal or no deal is a better political outcome, and it’s conceited to think they should be.
As next year’s “Global Power Shift” of thousands of youth climate activists seems to recognise, we need to be a movement, not a unified campaign. That means shifting our focus to service: providing people with the tools, skills and narratives to launch their own campaigns on climate and energy. That means diversifying into a multitude of specific campaigns against polluters, companies and local councillors. Those of us that like to be in control will have to let go, and there will be conflicting frames, disunity.
But so be it. This is a necessary part of growing.
Let’s allow potential to flourish, unleash ideas we could never have thought up, reach people who are currently feeling no pressure, and welcome many, many more people than we’ve managed before.
“I have this strange feeling that I’m not myself any more. It’s hard to put into words, but I guess it’s like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling.” - Sumire, in Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
“I have this strange feeling that I’m not myself any more. It’s hard to put into words, but I guess it’s like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling.”
- Sumire, in Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami