Want to get really angry about health care and global warming? Not the ginned-up rage of the Obama-was-really-born-in-Kenya crowd, but an anger that fires you up to take action in the name of justice? Anger like the rage felt by so many white Northerners and Southerners in 1963 when they saw Birmingham’s fire hoses turned on patriotic African-Americans, a rage so profound that they too joined the civil rights revolution?
Well I invite you, in a brief audio and video tour, to bear witness to what’s happening in Wise County, Virginia. This Appalachian region, only a few hundred miles from the policy fog in Washington DC, clarifies what the health care/climate policy fight is all about. And if you’re not angry enough to take action after hearing these voices and seeing these images, blame yourself when DC-powerbrokers like Don Blankenship (more on him later) once again have their day.
Let’s start with what’s good about Wise County: its hard-working families. Taking a look at this community calendar, you’ll see all that is right with rural American communities and their urban counterparts. From January to December, the citizens of Wise County celebrate the legacy of Dr. King (January 19), perform plays (March 17), honor our country and its veterans (July 4 and October 8 ) and get involved in all of those glorious community, spiritual and volunteering activities that capture the essence of the American experience. In Wise County, it’s not hard to find the best of ourselves.
But one item on the same calendar reveals what is not right: the July 24 – 26 “Remote Area Medical Health Fair” at the local fairgrounds. Sound innocuous? Well take ten minutes to listen to this recent report from NPR on this event, hosted in Wise County, that served 2,700 ‘tired and desperate’ people from 17 different states. In the words of NPR, it was “a Third World scene with an American setting.” It’s heartbreaking: entire families waiting in line overnight to get just some of the basic health care that they cannot afford. Hear about the young boy with a battered nose and an oozing ear; the single mom with a gallbladder so enlarged it’s about to kill her; and the many patients getting all of their teeth pulled. That’s right – for over 20 years, while DC politicians have been promising a better health care system, your fellow Americans in and around Wise County have been suffering. Angry yet?
And take a guess what industry dominates this part of Appalachia. No surprise, it’s coal. Like in so many parts of the country, excessive reliance on coal means high levels of poverty – the kind of poverty that creates the need for this health ‘fair.’ A recent study out of West Virginia University puts it clearly: “Coal-mining economies are not strong economies. [Coalfield communities] are weaker than the rest of the state, weaker than the rest of the region, and weaker than the rest of the nation.” There’s no doubt that the 1000s of employees of the (increasingly capital-intensive) coal industry are hard-working, admirable people; the problem is that in the 21st Century, coal helps them at the expense of others.
The second part of coal’s legacy in this area is mountain top removal. Take this extraordinary virtual flyover of Wise County to view its devastation. The human effects of this destruction are captured in the words of Wise County’s Kathy Selvage. Listen to her speak about the ‘terrible injustice‘ created by coal, literally in her backyard. And memo to the ‘birther’ crowd: if you think that the fight against mountain top removal is some godless liberal conspiracy, see this testimony from Kathy: “It was my Mother’s custom to have her early morning Bible reading on her front porch. [Because of mountaintop removal,] she was forced to move inside because she could no longer stand the noise, dust, and smell that was invading her ‘Morning with the Lord.’”
In Wise County, poverty, environmental destruction and powerlessness come together, and the result – despite the resilience of hard-working Americans who call it home – is sick families, destroyed mountains, a dysfunctional economy and at least one good lady who finds it harder to pray.
Now there certainly are winners in all of this: take Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Coal, a modern version of Daniel-Day Lewis’s ruthless oilman in There Will Be Blood. It’s hard to know where to start with this guy:
And he seems to be a coward to boot. When James Hansen accepted Blankenship’s challenge to debate global warming, the Massey CEO suddenly backed off.
So climate warriors, let’s get angry: about inexcusable poverty, the destruction wrought by coal, and the lobby-laden system that helps Blankenship thrive while too many of the good people of Wise County suffer.
And if you are angry, what are you going to do about it? Will you be willing to get arrested standing up to Massey Coal, like Jim Hansen? Lead civil disobedience against Dominion Power, right there in Wise County? Or at least, show up to your elected officials’ town meetings and speak loudly and clearly in support of health care and climate change legislation? With some hard work, maybe we can reveal Blankenship and his ilk for what they are: the Bull Connors of the dirty-energy age. There’s no time to waste.
At a recent three-day workshop here in Vermont, I joined a visionary set of leaders, including Mary Evelyn Tucker, David Orr, and Larry Susskind, to help launch Solutions. The brainchild of Bob Costanza and his Gund Institute colleagues, it’s a great idea: an academic journal dedicated to analyzing and sharing solutions, in real time. Stay tuned: the Solutions website will soon be alive with practical ideas for building a more sustainable and more desirable future.
I have made the case to Bob’s team that Solutions has the potential to thrive on campuses worldwide. The reason? Today’s remarkable college students are truly the Solutions Generation. Like their older sisters and brothers – the Millennial Generation – the current batch of late-19 and early-20 somethings were born into a warming world in which poverty has stubbornly persisted and human rights have been denied to too many for too long. But even more than the millennials, “the solutions” (I like that… ) believe in action. They don’t see college as a time to prepare to lead; it’s a time to lead. And while they don’t shy away from academic theories or even ideologies, they are not burdened by them.
Here’s an example. In late January, Lois Parshley and Ben Wessel, Middlebury sophomores, approached me with a modest proposal: to get academic credit for researching and writing a detailed guide to The American Clean Energy and Security Act, or ACES. Their reasoning? Everyone in the youth movement was talking about ACES; few had studied its contents.
While I saw the merit of their proposal – akin to outstanding work for 1Sky that three other Middlebury students led a year ago – I wasn’t sure that they would succeed. For one, Lois was planning to spend 10 days in Antarctica during the semester (following Ben’s footsteps – he was there last summer!) But based on their irrepressible enthusiasm, I signed off and held my breath.
The result, The Citizens Guide to Climate Policy, speaks for itself. Forty-four detailed pages on ACES: the research is thorough, the analysis is rigorous, and the presentation is clean and clear. (And yes, they both got an A!)
I detail this example to make a case: those of us in higher education should be playing to the strengths of this generation, in part through online, open-source resources like Solutions. What shapes their pragmatic worldview? For one, these young leaders are products of their time. As Nicholas Kristof has been documenting for several years, citizens of all kinds are using the networking and information-sharing power of the internet to effect real change, Here’s just his latest example, on Charity Water. As many of my co-authors document in Ignition, the web-powered civil-society movement may well be a transformative tsunami
There’s even more going on with today’s college students. Their babyboomer parents have not only offered caring and opportunity; they have passed along an ethic of commitment to social change. So their kids have inherited the best ideals of the 60s and early 70s – without tangled ideologies and the raw sense of a nation falling apart, forces that left too many of the hopes of that age unfulfilled. Now, young leaders don’t have to try to effect change in the street (though their good at that too – see the latest from Mt. Rushmore); they organize online, big time. For example, take a look at what Sierra Murdoch, another Middlebury student, has done to accelerate the fight against coal.
So I am hopeful about the journal Solutions, in large part because, if done well, it will complement the pragmatic leadership of the Solutions Generation. In fact, I look forward to a special edition of Solutions, edited by leaders like Lois, Ben and Sierra. I know I’ll learn a lot from them.
Today, hundreds of citizens are on the forefront of the climate movement; 20 years ago, in the summer of 1989, the fight against global warming had only two well-known spokespeople: Senator Al Gore and NASA Scientist Jim Hansen. (Bill McKibben, now at the helm of the indispensable 350.org, joined this august roster with the publication of The End of Nature). Recently, I was lucky enough to hear each of them share their strong opinions about American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), the House’s energy and climate bill that just passed in a 219-212 squeaker. Their opinions diverge, but together Gore and Hansen map out the movement’s next critical steps.
At a mid-May gathering in Nashville, Gore fired up hundreds of climate troops on behalf of ACES. The bill is many ways a dream come true for Gore and others who have been in this fight almost from the get-go:
It sets the aggressive target of 83% emissions reductions (compared to 2005) by 2050, and a modest but acceptable target of 17% by 2020
With a permit system, it places an economy-wide cap on emissions; to minimize costs, it gives polluters the right to trade these permits.
It sets a federal renewable electricity and efficiency standard and prioritizes investments in a smart grid and other necessary technologies.
In short, this is the kind of bill that was not even a remote possibility for most of the last 20 years. Sure it’s full of disappointments and potential loopholes: it’s far from the ‘100% auction’ of emissions permits that President Obama has called for, and the 2 billion tons of emissions offsets are a real concern. But Gore’s case is simple: “ACES is not the last step, but it is the necessary first step.”
Yet if you are giddy about this bill, Jim Hansen’s assessment should give pause. During his keynote address at our ‘Getting to 350’ workshop at Middlebury College, he minced no words: “ACES will be a disaster.” Hansen’s argument hinges around, among other things, the dark-side of the market forces that underlie the bill’s cap-and-trade provision. But Hansen’s biggest worry is that ACES does not put coal in the bull’s-eye. For as his current work illustrates, atmospheric CO2 can peak by mid-century if the global economy rapidly transitions away from coal. With a coordinated global effort to change forestry and farming practices, we can then be on a path back to 350 ppm.
To get on this path, Hansen calls for a carbon tax and research into “4th generation nuclear power” (as well as carbon capture and storage.) But above all, he calls for a moratorium on coal – which ACES in no way supports. In fact, the prices of coal stocks jumped up in the last week as investors realized that coal’s future is not in doubt here in the US. This is depressing stuff.
And yet on ACES, I fall into the Gore camp. We need a climate bill, fast – in part to be credible at the December meeting of global climate negotiators in Copenhagen. And as enamored as I am by alternatives to cap-and-trade – I’m a big fan of cap-and-dividend – I think that the goals of ACES are essentially the right ones, and the approach has the potential to work.
That’s the key – the potential. Just as the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 did not represent anything close to the final victory for racial justice in the US, climate movement activists will not be able to rest if President Obama signs a bill like ACES in the fall. Indeed, it is at that point that each of us will need to redouble our efforts – in particular, in the fight against coal.
And like Hansen, I believe that the key lever of that fight is to take on mountain top removal. For in shedding light on this injustice, the broader, multi-generational injustices associated with coal will also come to light. Credit goes to Hansen and other dedicated activists: see this (at times chilling) video of what they faced last week in getting arrested last week in Coal River Valley. More mass arrests are in the works; all of us should be involved. (Learn more at http://ilovemountains.org/ and http://climategroundzero.org/)
In a note that just went out to all supporters of Energy Action, Jessy Tolkan – certainly the embodiment of this next generation of climate leaders – wrote: “The fight for bold federal climate and energy policy has only just begun. We need to make sure that the Senate passes a MUCH stronger version of this bill in the fall.” I say amen to that! And right now, let’s all offer up our support to those who are fighting the injustices associated with coal extraction, use and disposal.
In times of great trial, the best politicians strive for Churchillian rhetoric – or better yet, simply quote Churchill. And in tough times, no quote resounds more than Churchill’s memorable assessment, in late 1942, of the Battle of El Alamein, the first major British victory in WW II: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Well, let me suggest that President Obama needs a bit of Churchill 101. For upon signing the stimulus bill last week our new president stated: “Today does mark the beginning of the end” of our economic problems. Winston the statesman would certainly have harrumphed at this. The key to his memorable formulation is the implication of under-promising – and then over-delivering. It has just the right hint of hope. I fear that Obama’s ill-advised ‘beginning of the end’ may unduly raise expectations about the pace of our economic turn-around.
Moreover, the real opportunity for Obama to channel his inner Churchill was during his Congressional address this week. During that speech, he declared: “I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.” It was after this remarkable demand that distant echoes of 10 Downing Street should have been evoked. For Obama’s words – “send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution” – are, perhaps, the end of a beginning.
I’m referring here to the climate movement, the surging groundswell that will hit a new peak this weekend with Power Shift 2009and the Capitol Climate Action. It’s a movement that was sparked two decades ago – think of Jim Hansen testifying before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 and the publication in 1989 of Bill McKibben’s End of Nature – and which truly caught fire this decade, thanks to the leadership of college students and a diverse range of other citizens. It’s a movement that, taking on the world’s most daunting challenge, has had one major demand above all others here in the United States: federal legislation that accelerates the coming of a clean-energy economy. With his words this week, Obama called for such legislation.
My first reaction (like so many of the good climate folks listening to the address) was: “Hallelujah!” And then I thought of Churchill. For yes, this moment certainly represents a victory for Hansen, McKibben and other climate visionaries like Billy Parish, Jessy Tolkan, Van Jones, Majora Carter, and Mike Tidwell (as well as their public-sector allies, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jay Inslee and Deval Patrick, to name a few.) Despite all of the frightening science – there’s always frightening science – and President Obama’s essential belief in acting as facts merit, I am certain that we would not have the push for such legislation without their inspired leadership and the leadership of so many others.
But at the same time, it’s no more than an “end of the beginning” victory. Savor it again: a popular American president has called for major global-warming legislation. But now let’s acknowledge all that stands in our way: the coal lobby’s arsenal; the reach of bloviators like George Will; the threat of filibuster by Senator Inhofe. And these are just obstacles to the major climate legislation in 2009. To follow up on the promise of such legislation, to rewire our global economy: this will be the lifelong cause of our newest greatest generation.
When historians document the climate movement in the years ahead, how will they assess this phase of the fight against global warming? Let’s hope that they will also paraphrase Churchill, who years after the war wrote of that key 1942 battle: “Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein, we never had a defeat.” At Power Shift this weekend, let’s lay plans for never, ever again having a defeat.
Monday Night, at a fine Indian restaurant in the shadow of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies: after giving a talk on green entrepreneurship, fellow Brighter Planet co-founder Jake Whitcomb and I were dining with FES Director Gus Speth, his colleague Bryan Garcia, and over a dozen Yale MA and MBA students, talking about the urgent need for innovation – even as the latest climate science becomes even more foreboding.
As the meal ended, I got to thinking: if I could invite a handful of guests for a holiday meal to talk about innovation in the joint fight against global warming and widespread poverty, who would they be? I would start with some familiar faces: May Boeve and the entire 350.org crew, Majora Carter, Bob Costanza, James Hansen, Paul Hawken, Van Jones, Gus Speth (again!), Betsy Taylor (read her great new post from Poland), and Jessy Tolkan. Leaders and innovators all, these folks would have lots to celebrate together: the new administration is showing every sign that they get it; 5,000,000 green jobs may well be on there way; and 350 parts per million is quickly becoming the target for the next round of international negotiations. Just as it becomes clear that our climate-related challenges have never been greater, the climate movement is entering a promising new stage.
To jump start this next stage, whom else to invite? I have been thinking a lot lately about open-source innovation (for example, in higher education), so I would also welcome another set of guests, whose cutting-edge approaches are founded in networks, collaboration, and the need for comprehensive feedback loops:
Ben Kaufman, who is using group-based decision-making to transform how we create new businesses.
Lew Milford, whose “Climate Choreography” proposes a decentralized, network based approach to ramping up clean-technology innovation.
George Overholser, who with colleagues at New Profit and the Non-Profit Finance Fund, is transforming the financing, accountability, and reach of non-profits worldwide.
Alex Steffen, whose WorldChanging brings a web-based, solutions-oriented approach to 21st century challenges.
Michael Woolcock, who with a raft of collaborators has brought new analytical rigor and pragmatism to the idea of locally-based development.
If you don’t yet know of their work, pay attention: these innovators are helping networks worldwide to craft lasting ideas that make a difference.
While I won’t be able to pull together a holiday gathering in the next few days, I may have a better alternative. This spring, I will invite all of these folks – along with other cutting-edge innovators – to a conference at Middlebury, with the working title: “Solutions: Building Frameworks for the Open-Source Century.” Our goals? Using many of the participatory approaches that made Middlebury’s “What Works?” conference such a success, we will share, critique and spread the word about crafting solutions in this challenging age. Stay tuned …and let me know if you want to be invited!
So what next for climate activists swept up in ‘Yes, we can!’ mania? Perhaps we first must acknowledge how hard this is going to be. As a friend wrote to me in reaction to last week’s blog post, “I share your enthusiasm about the long-term, but the near term is going to be very challenging. Obama needs to convince the public that some pain is required immediately in order to clean out the problems in the financial system, mortgage markets, and budget deficit.” My friend is right of course, and so-far-so-good for the new administration: props to Obama for talking about sacrifice in his first – gotta love it! – weekly video address.
One interesting question for the President-elect’s transition team is whether the perceived sacrifice of cap-and-trade legislation makes it difficult to champion such a bill, which must eventually be at the heart of national climate policy. It’s true, as Peter Barnes has been championing for years, that a cap-and-dividend program would be progressive fiscal policy: lower- and middle-income households would receive a dividend that would more than compensate for the higher energy prices of a carbon-capped economy. And as Rob Stavins of Harvard has just noted, cap-and-dividend “can go a long way toward making the legislation palatable to Republicans and Democrats alike who are reticent to take any actions that even resemble a tax increase.”
But the question remains: given these fragile economic times, should the new administration be out front of a cap-and-dividend policy immediately, or should they promote – (in the words of Ignition co-authors Chris Klyza and David Sousa) – another ‘policy pathway’? Michael Northrup and David Sasoon have a compelling new piece which argues that the President-elect can use his executive power under the Clean Air Act to ‘jump start’ climate action – perhaps even to initiate a national carbon trading regime without new legislation. This appealing idea should be vetted – particularly in light of the decision last week by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board that, according to the Sierra Club, “all new and proposed coal plants nationwide must go back and address their carbon dioxide emissions.” As the demands on the new Congress stack up, following a pathway of executive branch policy making has a lot of appeal.
But I confess that I am drawn back to my friend’s point about calling for sacrifice. Even with the prospect of receiving a large dividend to compensate for higher energy prices, most American voters are likely to balk at cap-and-dividend… unless the new President is willing to make the case that short-term pain will produce long-term gain. In fact, the case for a clean-energy strategy is more compelling than ever: think 5,000,000 new jobs, greater energy independence, less reliance on Middle Eastern oil … and the chance that we might yet save the planet from runaway climate change. So if President-elect Obama does begin to detail his call for national sacrifice in the days and weeks ahead, cap-and-dividend should be in the forefront of his call.
Yes we can! – That unforgettable call-and-response, heard again last night in Barack Obama’s stunning acceptance speech, echoes today around the world. And I and my fellow climate activists are happy to take all the credit for the President-elect’s use of this phrase.
Well, not really. But I do feel that there is more than karma in the fact that this declaration was also the organizing theme of Ignition: What You Can Do to Fight Global Warming and Spark a Movement. The opening line of Ignition — which features chapters from leading climate activists Bill McKibben, Gus Speth, Mary Lou Finley and many others — is “Can we really win this fight against global warming?” The response comes one paragraph later: “Our answer — and the resounding answer of this book — is Yes, we can.”
OK, maybe Obama and his team didn’t steal our line. But I’m not surprised that leaders of the climate movement and of the Obama campaign have adopted the same language. Consider what they have in common. Both the movement and the campaign are driven by optimism about our future, a realistic assessment of present challenges, and an overarching sense that it is time — it’s time for a mobilized groundswell to rebuild our world, fueled by the energy of the grassroots and the vision of leaders who get it.
Now it would be wrong to say that the climate movement is partisan. As we celebrate in Ignition, both Republicans and Democrats are at the helm: think Schwarzenegger and Gore. But it is right to say that the raw energy and drive of Obama’s team is akin to what drives the climate movement.
Early this morning, I prepared a note of thanks to a dozen friends who, over the last several months, put their life on hold to help Barack Obama win last night: they are dedicated volunteers, fund-raisers, organizers. As I was about to hit the send button, I had an ‘aha!’ moment: so many of these inspiring folks are equally committed to the climate movement (Billy Parish is a great example of this.) And since the skills and tools put to work in the Obama campaign are transferable, last nights’ results are a promising signfor the world’s drive for a clean-energy future. It really is time, and our leaders are ready to go.
So yes, we can! Let’s all pause and savor those words today — and then get back to work.
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