Bill McKibben: ‘Mobilize like in WW II’

Scan page 7

“Our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII.”

This quote is from the title of an article by Bill Mc­ Kibben in the New Republic. First through his books and articles, and increasingly through promotion of demonstrations and civil disobedience, McKibben has earned recognition as the most prominent Ameri­ can environmentalist. Among his achievements was his leading role in the successful fight to stop con­ struction of the Keystone XL pipeline. With the help of tech-savvy Millennials, he initiated 350.org, utilizing the power of the internet and “social media” to cre­ ate a global network of information and coordination linking hundreds of thousands of climate activists.

The views McKibben expresses in his latest article are an important advance for him and will likely stim­ ulate interest and debate about a strategy that is vi­ tal to the very future of humanity. McKibben writes, “It’s not that global warming is like a world war. It is a world war. And we are losing.”

The current headlines he cites about “natural” disas­ ters across the world and in our own country, supple­ mented with excerpts from scientific studies, estab­ lish a prima facie case to support his assertion. This prize-winning author emphasizes his declaration of war is more than an attention grabbing metaphor, “By most of the ways we measure wars, climate change is the real deal: Carbon and methane are seiz­ ing physical territory, sowing havoc and panic, racking up casualties, and even destabilizing governments. … Its first victims, ironically, are those who have done the least to cause the crisis. But it’s a world war aimed at us all. And if we lose, we will be as decimated and helpless as the losers in every conflict—except that this time, there will be no winners, and no end to the planetwide occupation that follows.

“The question is not, are we in a world war? The question is, will we fight back? And if we do, can we actually defeat an enemy as powerful and inexorable as the laws of physics?”

He immediately begins to reply, “To answer those questions—to assess, honestly and objectively, our odds of victory in this new world war—we must look to the last one. … Defeating the Nazis required more than brave soldiers. It required a wholesale industrial retooling.”

McKibben, who is a pacifist and doesn’t have a class perspective, more or less accepts the narrative we are all taught in school and pop culture that World War II was a battle between freedom and evil totali­ tarianism—a yarn much flawed, to say the least. But “wholesale industrial retooling” was key to the victo­ ry of the Allies over the Axis—and a similar emergen­ cy restructuring is likely the last chance for defeating global warming. We can’t and don’t need to defy the laws of physics. But, in my view—though not in the other Bill’s—we can and must replace the laws of the global capitalist market.

McKibben relates some important findings of scien­ tists who have taken the initiative to calculate both what it would take to stop climate change and wheth­ er we have the required material and other resources to do the job. The most advanced and remarkably detailed assessments have been done by the Atmo­ sphere and Energy Program at Stanford University chaired by Mark Z. Jacobson. They have concluded that we have enough of everything needed to imple­ ment near total replacement of fossil fuels with exist­ ing clean, renewable energy technology before the ... Dakota (continued from page 1: “Native people fight to stop Dakota pipeline”)

Honduras; he has been meeting with the Hill­ ary Clinton-installed president of Honduras about potential projects.

Bloomberg quotes Warren as acknowledging the converse relationship between his person­ al success and what is good for the rest of us:

“the most wealth I’ve ever made is during the dark times.”

The idea that land needs to be protected is perceived as a threat. The idea that water needs to be protected is perceived as a threat. Profits are threatened by people’s right to breathable air and drinkable water. This is capitalism in the 21st century. n (Above) During World War II, millions of women and men were mobilized into the workforce.

Much like the motivational psychology that many apply to children, McKibben has in the past urged us to thank President Obama for the watery soup sold by the White House as nourishing a global plan to reduce carbon emissions. Just a few weeks ago, McKibben was Bernie Sanders’ point person on climate in the Democrat Platform negotiations.

In the early stages of dealing with the veto-happy Clinton team, he was like a vegan finally observing how sausage is made. But then he writes, “To my surprise, things changed a couple weeks later, when the final deliberations over the Democratic platform were held in Orlando. While Clinton’s negotiators still wouldn’t support a ban on fracking or a carbon tax, they did agree we needed to ‘price’ carbon, that wind and sun should be given priority over natural gas, and that any federal policy that worsened global warming should be rejected.

“Maybe it was polls showing that Bernie voters—es­ pecially young ones—have been slow to sign onto the Clinton campaign. Maybe the hottest June in Ameri­ can history had opened some minds. But you could, if you squinted, create a hopeful scenario.”

And later he adds, “…the Democratic platform as­ serts, ‘We are committed to a national mobilization, and to leading a global effort to mobilize nations to address this threat on a scale not seen since World War II.’ The next president doesn’t have to wait for a climate equivalent of Pearl Harbor to galvanize Con­ gress.”

I’m willing to give McKibben the benefit of the doubt on being naive, not cynical. Major party platforms are hardly a line of march to secure objectives over the next four years. They are mostly bait-and-switch—or bait-and-forget—to lure certain voter groups. The enhanced climate plank in the Democrat Platform is calculated to draw in millions of reluctant Sanders supporters who might otherwise vote for the Greens or stay home on Election Day. It wasn’t a hostile Con­ gress that led to President Obama’s quashing a prom­ ising agreement at the Copenhagen Climate Summit during his first year in office, with his party control­ ling both houses of Congress.

To use an idiom familiar to The Donald—there’s fat chance of a climate-friendly Trump administration. There is only a slim chance of any part of the Demo­ crat climate program being seriously pursued by a President Clinton.

To get the wartime mobilization that McKibben ably advocates will require a change in which class rules. The dominance of the bosses and bankers who got us into this war—and who prevent the needed counterattack—must be replaced with a government of and for the working-class majority. That’s the only force with both the class interest and the economic and so­ cial power to get the job done. n