Another day, another study about global warming, this one about how it’ll cost us trillions of dollars not to address climate change. Quite remarkable in itself, the report was commissioned by Friends of the Earth and conducted by researchers at Tufts University. I certainly buy it.
More interesting for me though is the quote from the Chairman of Shell UK in the Reuters story on the report: “For business, tackling climate change is both a necessity and a huge opportunity. We have to step up to the challenge.” Hm, that last phrase - it sounds vaguely familiar. And that part about opportunity, that’s a word you almost never hear from the major environmental groups.
What does it mean when the only ones talking about “opportunity” in the face of a “challenge” in the context of climate change are young people and oil companies?
It means that the major enviros need to get on their game if they’re to have any hope to be the ones that lead and inspire people to take on the task of addressing climate change. Cursory searches of major U.S. environmental organization websites return press releases about “missed opportunities” to take one action or another - but rarely, if ever, does an environmental organization refer to a real-world, non-environmental benefit that could made possible by taking action on an environmental issue that would not be possible otherwise. That, to me, is the definition of opportunity that will make people start thinking that that cycling carbon out of our economy is going to be anything but a enormous pain in the ass.
But that is clearly what businesses have in mind when they talk about opportunity. And that’s what young people have in mind as well, because many young climate activists feel that a clean energy economy will have numerous ancillary benefits far beyond simply protecting our climate - creating openings for all kinds of economic, social, and environmental initiatives.
And I would say that’s a key reason why modern businesses are viewed as dynamic, forward-looking organizations by most people, while environmental organizations aren’t, even though businesses are working for private profit while environmentalists are clearly working for public benefits.
As the report cited above clearly shows, and as others have said before, the biggest economic opportunity the U.S. has is to become the global leader in clean energy technology and in doing so avert a destabilized climate.
Edit: It’s only fair to note that Al Gore is one environmentalist who has started making the opportunity case, including his use of the business executive parable “the Chinese word for crisis is made up of the characters for danger and opportunity”… which unfortunately is not really the case.
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Right on Nathan. This is a GREAT post.
Past social change agents have understood and embraced the opportunity inherent to challenge as well.
While almost everyone has heard or read the Thomas Paine quote from “The Crisis” written in Dec. 1776 ,
“These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country,”
the last part of that paragraph is not as frequently quoted and is perhaps most important, “we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorius the triumph.”
Another way to put it is that global warming is not just a curse of sorts, but it is a blessing. After all, only a challenge of this magnitude can impel our society to stop nibbling around the edges for shallow, uninspiring, half-measure changes to our government and economy.
When we overcome this challenge it will, by necessity, happen with solutions whose scale of ambition and transformational power are just as large as the scale of the problem. Within the audacity of that bold and comprehensive solution is our chance to not only avoid a climate collapse but to create a future far more just, sustainable, and secure than the world we live in now. We aren’t just for stopping destruction, we’re for creating real and lasting progress in the process of doing so.