Which way forward for the climate movement?

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At the Paris climate talks in December 2015, the world’s governments—dominated by those who contribute most egregiously to global warming—ac­ knowledged the need to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels but re­ fused to commit in a meaningful way to the necessary reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases.

Major U.S. climate action groups laid the ground­ work carefully in the period leading up to the talks, working hard to prepare the ranks of the movement for the near-inevitable failure to mandate the drastic and immediate changes in energy production and conservation that are necessary to stave off cata­ strophic environmental degradation.

Back on Sept. 26, the national group 350.org, for example, launched a campaign perspective called the “Road Through Paris” at a major Brooklyn Academy of Music event that presented the Paris talks as just a stop on the journey toward a major spring escala­ tion of climate movement activity. During this livestreamed event, Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben pro­ jected the kind of movement that would be necessary to force governments and corporations to keep fossil fuels in the ground and maintain human solidarity in the face of the climate disasters that are already un­ folding.

Such a movement, it was emphasized, needed to see the fight for a livable climate, and the fight for eco­ nomic and racial equality, as so deeply intertwined that in some sense, the climate movement would become a “movement of movements.” The challenge before us, they argued, was so immense and unprec­ edented that the only realistic perspective for change lay in the creation of a movement so broad and pow­ erful that the slogan that rang through the canyons of New York at the September 2014 People’s Climate March—“To Change Everything It Takes Everyone”— would become an accurate prescription for our work. It takes everyone Two months out from the Paris talks, and despite all the preparation to avoid to a slump, the U.S. move­ ment is lacking dates for the kind of national united action that could build on past movement successes (Above) Close to 40,000 protested on Feb. 17, 2013, in Washington, DC, against fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline.

like the Peoples Climate March, which put nearly half a million people into the streets. In that effort, and subsequent regional actions like the Toronto “Jobs, Justice, Climate” march of June 2015, organizers dem­ onstrated that unprecedented numbers of people, in­ cluding front-line communities, unionists, immigrant workers, and mainstream faith communities were ready to engage in protest.

These actions demonstrated that armed with the perspective that it “takes everyone,” the day when the movement in the United States could literally put a million people in the streets to demand an end to the predatory and life-threatening fossil fuel economy is at hand.

Such a movement, necessarily built from the bottom up by the assembling of local, regional, and national coalitions around demands hammered out in meet­ (continued on page 11)

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Planned Parenthood — 2 Haiti / Connecticut — 5 Flint / NYC workers — 3 Election debate — 6 Labor / RCMP — 4

Friedrichs & unions See page 12