Today marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, an event that originated in 1971 with the intent of bringing national attention towards the environment, and would lead to the founding of the EPA and adoption of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. But the big victories of the 1970's decelerated, bringing about the era of the Environmentalist Movement. This movement was the mainstream strategy for addressing climate change, led by scientists and full-time advocates largely from narrow demographics (white, middle-class, affluent). The movement lobbied politicians, targeted market-based policies, and made a lot of public service announcements, but failed to attract continuous, mass noncooperation outside of Earth Day rallies. If you grew up in this time period, you might have been led to believe that personal lifestyle changes were the key to saving the environment. The three R's, turning off lights, shorter showers, dialing down the A/C, picking up trash... all comfortable actions to try to solve a very disturbing problem.
Today, we experience extreme weather events multiple times a year, Australia recovers from its catastrophic 240-day fire season only to pivot into making preparations for the next [1], and countless projections give us an expiration date on our fossil fuel dependence [2]. In 2019, the global average temperature rose to 2.07°F (1.15°C) above the pre-industrial baseline, largely due to worsening carbon emissions that have brought us over 410 ppm in the atmosphere [3, 4]. It is also important to understand that temperature does not scale linearly with carbon levels: the two main distinctions are temperature inertia and equilibrium points. The NOAA wrote this to explain them:
By 2020, models project that global surface temperature will be more than 0.5°C (0.9°F) warmer than the 1986-2005 average, regardless of which carbon dioxide emissions pathway the world follows. This similarity in temperatures regardless of total emissions is a short-term phenomenon: it reflects the tremendous inertia of Earth's vast oceans. The high heat capacity of water means that ocean temperature doesn't react instantly to the increased heat being trapped by greenhouse gases. By 2030, however, the heating imbalance caused by greenhouse gases begins to overcome the oceans' thermal inertia, and projected temperature pathways begin to diverge, with unchecked carbon dioxide emissions likely leading to several additional degrees of warming by the end of the century. [3]
And despite the mounting evidence, the current administration has rolled back fundamental regulations on air and water quality under the supervision of a former lobbyist for the coal industry, Andrew Wheeler [5].
If I were to end my discussion here, though, I would fall victim to the same missteps that the environmentalist movement has for years. I want to highlight the new, stronger movement combining environmental justice, racial justice and inclusion, labor and economic justice, and sustainable business under a new economy. By definition, this new movement is intersectional, unlike the Environmentalist Movement which marginalized the poor and people of color, focused only on first-order environmental issues, and is not enslaved to the Reagan Alignment. Instead, this "People's Alignment" identifies a common enemy: the fossil fuel billionaires who have provably and proudly paid-off politicians to deny climate action at a federal level, builds towards a large-scale mass movement, and fights against racism and classism. This new movement also makes use of mass noncooperation, reminiscent of Civil Rights era approaches to disrupting society until it must make a choice.
The most illustrative examples of the interconnectedness of climate change and these other societal issues include climate refugeeism [6], massive disasters like the Chicago heatwave of 1995 [7], colonialism and border policy violating indigenous people's lands for fossil fuel interests [8], fracking here in PA [9], and, unfortunately, our current Coronavirus crisis [10, 11]. These events all occur within the intersection of governmental inaction, climate disaster, private interests, racism, classism, and unfettered capitalism; and events like these demonstrate why a plan to fix climate change necessarily must address our other complicated societal problems, and vice versa. They also exhibit a pattern of how the least privileged people bear the largest burden from our climate crises.
Well, now we've just made the problem infinitely harder, right? Perhaps. But in some ways, we've made the problem easier, too. Understanding the full extent of the problem is a necessary step towards devising and enacting a solution. Even better, we have now created an opportunity for multiple movements to converge into one unified voice. Coalitions are forming between groups that work under the umbrella of initiatives like the Green New Deal, including the Sunrise Movement, Women's March, Sierra Club, People's Action, American Sustainable Business Council, Justice First, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Working Families, and hundreds more [12]. I should note that the Green New Deal is not (just) the resolution introduced by Senator Ocasio-Cortez in February, 2019. Instead, it is a governmental agenda with the ambitious 10-year plan to achieve the following 3 things within
Mobilize every aspect of American society to 100% clean and renewable energy,
Create millions of good jobs and guarantee living-wage jobs to everyone who needs one,
Establish a Second Bill of Rights: guaranteeing Americans the right to a job, an adequate wage and decent living, a decent home, medical care, economic protection during sickness/old age/accident/unemployment, and a good education.
Fossil fuel billionaires have desperately employed the following tactics to prevent resolutions like the the Green New Deal from passing:
Deceiving the people, e.g. ExxonMobil sewing mistrust in their own research results [13]
Buying out politicians, e.g. The Koch Brothers' "No Climate Tax Pledge" for federal and state politicians [14]
Turning the people against one another. Think of race, class, party-preference, age, religion, etc. being used as dividers; e.g. Trump fanning the flames of lockdown frustrations [15]
Consolidating power in the government, e.g. Barry Russell (CEO of IPAA) leaked audio about success during the Trump administration, March 2019 [16, 17].
We are up against a powerful, expensive political machine run by the elite. It is important not to vilify workers in industries you disagree with; it is the CEO's who commit these malevolent actions. Moreover, recognize that the typical dividers placed upon us prevent us from recognizing the common ground we share.
The United Nations has drafted a list of 17 Sustainable Development Goals which aim to tackle global issues for all people by 2030. Numerous countries, companies, universities, and organizations have already adopted these goals, including Penn State University!
The research is ongoing, but it is clear that we are past the point of arguing about anthropogenic climate change, about racial injustice, about universal healthcare: we need to act now. The way we treat Earth is directly tied to how we treat people. It is worth noting that we have an exceptional window of opportunity as we demand a green and people-first recovery from the Coronavirus crisis.
The final key to the new wave of progressive environmental and economic plans is the emphasis on local action. The implementation of particular solutions will greatly depend on the situations faced by individual communities, so each community is depending on its members to get involved. Personally, I am getting involved through multiple clubs and positions at Penn State. My goals include eliminating carbon dependence, fully switching to renewable energy, reducing our dependence on cars around campus, editing our curriculum to stress sustainability and resilience for undergraduate and graduate students, upgrading all existing & planning all future buildings to meet higher efficiency standards, preserving and expanding our natural lands in the county for greater biodiversity and carbon sequestration, promoting local self-sufficiency for our foods by supporting local farmers in a switch to human-consumable crops, supporting our community's most vulnerable individuals, and more.
This Earth Day, I want to encourage you to do a few things:
Try the Sunrise Crash Course on climate action (it's really short, low-effort, but informational and inspiring! I'm taking my second course now) https://smvmt.org/sunriseschool
Introduce the ideas of the UN Sustainability Development Goals in your workplace or institution, with the help of https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/partnership/register/
Embrace local action. Vote for progressive candidates in every election. Get involved with people-first initiatives, including recent groups helping the most vulnerable during the Coronavirus crisis in your community.
Support divestment initiatives that demand companies and institutions to direct their investments away from fossil fuel companies and towards green investments.
If you really want to be greener, recognize that driving, air-travel, eating meat/dairy and nonlocal foods, and some household heating/cooling/lighting practices are the biggest individual sources of carbon emissions on average. Check out https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/12/27/35-ways-reduce-carbon-footprint/.