The lunch counter sit ins and the organizing that went into them with SNCC and other organizing groups were fundamental to getting the Civil Rights act passed. Great. Did America solve civil rights with that one piece of legislation? No, it’s absurd of me to suggest that. Did people stop organizing after that? Of course not.

My point is, yeah, legislation is important. The Civil Rights Act fundamentally changed how our society thinks about or acts upon racial issues. It empowered communities that had been explicitly discriminated against since the civil war. But it didn’t “fix” it. It didn’t make racial equality, and even made some things worse.

When we’re talking about national climate legislation, everyone wants it. Even I think it would be pretty great if we could get some climate legislation. But climate legislation is not my goal! If we’re actually going to kick global warming’s ass I do not want to put all my eggs in the basket of the US federal government! We really doesn’t have that great of a track record, and something tells me that this won’t be much different.

So yes, Bill McKibben. We do need something more than simple, disconnected, individualized actions. But we also need something more than legislation. We need a fundamental value shift within our society, because honestly, all the technology and politicians in the world aren’t going to dig us out of this one.