Combining Urgency with Hope will get us to Victory. Compromise and long-term, complex goals will not.
The situation:
Right now, congress is struggling to pass a carbon cap and trade bill that will reduce our emissions 80% by the year 2050. President Obama, congressional leaders, and even environmental advocates are talking about needing to compromise – doing things like giving away pollution permits for free to dirty energy, providing public money for the mythological “clean coal,” and weakening the 2020 targets well below the already absurdly weak 20% below 1990 levels. They say such compromises are the only way we’ll get a bill passed.
Why we’re losing:
Take a look at our message:
Global warming is a major problem that will be disastrous for our country. So we need you to call your congressperson, and tell them to vote for a bill that will implement a cap and trade system that will reduce our emissions 80% by 2050. (Insert more detailed, complex, techno-babble here about auction permits, renewable portfolio standards, CCS, REDD, and the like).
See the problem? This message is horrible, and its making us lose for two primary reasons:
1) We’re proposing a band-aid for a gunshot wound, so people think we’ve got a paper cut.
There is a cognitive dissonance in our messaging. Our proposed solutions aren’t as serious as the problem, so people think the problem isn’t serious.
When we’re telling people we need to reduce our emissions 80% by 2050, they read that as hearing that we have until 2050 to solve the problem. That’s not urgent at all! In their heads, they’re thinking: “2050?” “Why do we need to do anything now while the economy is in the trash when we have until 2050 to solve this?” And they immediately shut-off.
If we were really serious about solving this problem, wouldn’t we ask people to do more than just call their congressperson? And wouldn’t we say we needed to solve this problem sooner than in the next FOUR DECADES? People don’t care about 2050 when they’ve got a comfortable job, much less when they’re unemployed or worried about getting laid off soon.
2) We’re promoting the means instead of the goal, and the means are confusing!
By getting into arguments about cap & trade vs. carbon tax, we’re losing sight of what we actually want to achieve: a clean, beautiful, stable, and prosperous world (who’s against that!), and confusing the heck out of people in the process. That messaging is completely lost when we start discussing the technical details of cap and trade systems or carbon taxes. If we stay so focused on the means (or worse, continue squabbling between them), we’ll wind up with a carbon tax or a cap & trade bill that won’t even approach mediocre, much less help us get to that world we’d like to see.
What we need to do: Generate Urgency & Hope
When I first came the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard two and a half years ago, I set-up a meeting with a professor, Marshall Ganz. Marshall spend three decades as a professional organizer who worked in the Civil Rights Movement, was one of Caesar Chavez’s top lieutenants, worked with labor unions, helped Nancy Pelosi win her first congressional election, trained Obama’s field staff, and most recently trained hundreds of student-leaders at Power Shift 2009. Marshall told me something the day we met two years ago that has stuck with me ever since.
“Every successful social movement needs two things: a sense of urgency, and a sense of hope.”
Show me the urgency – or the hope – in a cap & trade bill (or carbon tax) that will reduce emissions 80% by 2050. Do you measure the quality of your life by the amount of emissions that are in the atmosphere? Do you say to yourself: “Man, today was a great day! It really felt like there was only 267.4 PPM of carbon dioxide particles in the atmosphere!” Then how do you expect other people to do that? We need to speak in the language people understand, and show the urgency of the problem and the hope of our solutions. And we need to focus on right now; not 2050.
Urgency: Treat the Public and our Problem Seriously.
Let’s be real: Global Warming is deadly fucking serious. Millions of people are going to die if we do not act. The public needs to understand this, and we need to level with them that if we wait until 2050 to solve this mess, there will be blood on our collective hands. The effects are already being felt. If we send the message that we have until 2050 to take care of this problem, we’ll get serious about it sometime in the 2040s (if the world hasn’t fallen to pieces by then). And no one in the 2010s, 2020s, or 2030s will care until we change that message.
Instead, we need to promote something that will result in real solutions in the next decade (or ideally, even sooner) – like Gore’s call for 100% Clean Electricity in 10 Years. Tell people that we need to solve this problem in 10 years (which is still way too slow), and maybe they’ll get a piece of that urgency we’re trying to get across.
Hope: Clean Electricity, Green Jobs NOW.
If we want the people to rally around us, we need to explain to them how their lives will be better tomorrow; not how their children’s lives will be better in 2063. And there’s only one way to do this: to promote a solution so ambitious that it will require us to employ every willing citizen in our country. Like Re-Powering our Nation (see the hope?) with 100% Clean Electricity in 10 Years!
But let’s be real here, too: RePowering our country with 100% Clean Electricity in 10 Years will only get done if we fully mobilize our economy behind this goal. Won’t that make it impossible to get done? Not if that same mobilization will guarantee employment for the millions of Americans who are right now, as we speak, begging for work, or really worried about their jobs (which, by the way, it will).
This solution is win-win. Let’s be serious about the solutions if we actually want to solve the problem, and we want people to join with us in this struggle.
Here’s a simple global warming formula that we should start using:
Urgency + Hope = Victory.
right on mr. altemose
Thank you for this very helpful, informative article thats straight to the point without the fluff and bull**** … I love it! We all need to be more like this!
BTW let’s remember that the Waxman-Markey bill is way more than just cap-and-trade. It’s got green jobs language, a renewable energy standard, and pretty awesome efficiency policy in it too. All this definitely falls under the “hope” category: Hope = save money, create jobs, revitalize the economy. While it’s awesome and important to try and get the RePower America asks on the table, we should definitely try and advance the good stuff that’s already on the table and make it a law
I totally agree. There has been a lot of debate going on about bills and little about what needs to be done immediately. We ought to be doing the same as the bailout for the climate because it’s just as urgent or more urgent. Until we don’t make it that clear, Washington won’t take it as seriously as they’re taking the economic crisis.
I suggest you all read Friedman’s latest column:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/opinion/08friedman.html?_r=1
If environmentalists like you people can’t convince people to accept a modest tax increase with out dressing it up in nonsense like “green jobs” or “carbon credits” then you are wasting your time because any stealth policy will be subverted by political interests.
Nicely worded, Craig.
“Let’s be real: Global Warming is deadly fucking serious. Millions of people are going to die if we do not act. The public needs to understand this, and we need to level with them that if we wait until 2050 to solve this mess, there will be blood on our collective hands. The effects are already being felt.”
I feel like every time there’s a post on IGHIH about policy/economy-based solutions, they should all be prefaced with that, or something just like it. I’ve been feeling a loss of urgency in the movement with distractions being tossed around like talk of celebrities going green by building solar powered mansions in deserts, and organic cotton tee shirts (why don’t we buy the massive amount of second-hand clothing instead of wasting more resources?) but the reality is that on top of the climate turning on us and bringing on the death of millions of species (including people) and ecosystems, we are now facing an outrageously serious economic collapse. We really need to keep reminding ourselves of how serious this problem is (while not making ourselves too crazy!), and remember that cap and trade and the like really are oppressive band-aids on bullet wounds.
Copenhagen should be interesting..
Craig et al,
Good points, but let’s not end the discussion here. I’m with you on Green Jobs/economy as our hopeful message. But as for the need for “urgency,” the discussion seems incomplete. I would argue that the call for urgency, i.e. “We’re all gonna die” has been the common but losing argument for the last 20 years when it comes to global warming. Yes, “Millions of people are going to die if we do not act.” Yes, “the public needs to understand this.”
But how?
I also like where you’re going with this, Craig. Thanks for this impassioned, cogently-argued post.
When it comes to the “Green Jobs, Clean Electricity” message, I see that it fits within a hopeful narrative, and is couched in economic terms — which is what this country needs right now — and I understand that in the current political reality, those phrases have currency.
But, if we shift our rhetoric to be only about Clean Energy and Green Jobs, I think we’re going to shoot ourselves in the foot in a number of ways. Here’s why:
1. It doesn’t educate the American people about hard choices we’re going to have to make at both a societal and a personal level with regard to almost every aspect of how we live now. Instead, it’s a somewhat smoke-and-mirrors approach — like tricking Americans into swallowing a climate bill.
2. It doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. Can you tell me how many green jobs or what percentage of clean electricity it will take to reduce CO2 to a safe level of less than 350ppm?
3. It focuses on America, and not the globe. If we want to solve this problem, we can’t look inward and talk only about American jobs. We need to talk about the global contexts, so we don’t come to Copenhagen empty-handed.
While I agree with you that we don’t need to be talking about carbon taxes or cap-and-trade with Americans, I think we owe it to ourselves, to our kids and to those who are suffering the most from climate change right now to be honest about what we want.
I want green jobs and clean electricity just as much as the next guy, but we can easily do both of those really well, and fail to address the climate crisis.
This sparked something in me Craig. Great post. I also agree with Phil. We have to be real with people by calling for a bill to stem the climate crisis, which means phasing out fossil fuels and unleashing the dawn of a new economic and environmental era. We can’t drill and burn our way out of this climate or economic crisis. We can only invent and invest our way out. Now is the time to make that investment. Now because the climate can’t wait. Now because every day we go on without a cap on carbon is a day lost for our childrens’ future. Now because the green sector is the one part of our economy not in decline. Now because the climate movement will not allow another excuse.
Cap carbon for green jobs now!
I fully agree that our messaging needs to shift toward urgency and hope, but I also believe that an educated electorate is an empowered electorate. And while we may be getting bogged down in the minutiae of cap and trade vs. carbon tax, a full and open discussion re: the relative merits of both is important too.
Hey all,
Thank you all for your comments. You raise some good points. I do not mean to suggest that we should limit ourselves to the electricity sector as Gore’s current plan seems to do (though it also includes transportation through PHEVs).
But what I am saying is that we need to ramp up not just our messaging, but the scale of our ask. Please permit me a brief metaphor:
———–Relevant Metaphor——–
It’s 2:55PM. Your friend has been shot. Thankfully, there is a doctor nearby, who rushes to your aid. He patches up your friend, but warns you: “If your friend doesn’t get to a hospital in the next hour, he will probably die.”
You don’t have a cell phone on you, but there’s a crowded restaurant across the street, where you’re sure some people must. You run over there, and shout to the crowd:
“Someone, please help! My friend was shot! Can someone please call an ambulance before 3:45PM?”
No one in the restaurant will pull out their phones. They realize that what you’re saying doesn’t make sense. If your friend was really hurt badly, you would be asking them to call the ambulance right now. They think it’s a joke, or that you’re crazy.
———–Relevant Metaphor———
This is precisely what we are doing with this 2050 garbage. There is, as I said, a cognitive dissonance. People are able to realize that something doesn’t quite add up. It’s not even a conscious thing, but it’s there. And it’s really making us lose.
We need to call for what we need, and we need to call for it in a way that people will get. If we want to have a wonky discussion between cap & trade & a carbon tax, fine. But let’s make sure people understand that whatever we get, we need to do it right f*ing now.
Hey Josh T,
I think you’re totally right that this blog post itself does not contain all of the answers (not suprisingly). I think you’re totally right that the urgency side needs to be more developed, but I really think that even mentioning the year ’2050′ immediately makes us lose on that front. I can’t think of any past social movement that succeeded by talking up what would happen (good or bad) in over four decades.
And Phil,
Basically, I agree with you on most points. Green Jobs & Clean Energy alone – especially just in the US – won’t solve everything, either. But if we are able to inject that sense of move forward NOW full-speed ahead, I think the other ‘wedges’ will be easier to tackle here. And I think we can do all of this in the context of the international negotiations coming up (and stressing that we need to act before Copenhagen, providing at least a limited degree of urgency).
I’m happy this has added to the conversation. I look forward to hearing/reading more of other’s thoughts.
Craig, glad you brought back in the wedges idea. This one seems to have been left in the dust bin, though I’m guessing Gore’s group is using it behind their thinking. http://www.princeton.edu/~cmi/resources/stabwedge.htm
Anyway, let’s tackle part A, then we can move on to part B with our ultimate goal to stabilize around 350ppm.
Get to work!
That’s good, Craig and the folks at IGHIH. Delete any comments that counter your gaiarrhea, lest outsiders who come to this site see that there is anything but complete agreement with ridiculous statements like AGW is “deadly fucking serious”.
In the not so distant future, it will be scientifically clear that planetary/environmental apocalypse caused by AGW was never in the realm of physical possibilities. And then Carbonicus and his followers will be quoting you and the other AGW fearmongerers (Gore, Hansen, Holdren, Romm, etal) from the current era, exposing how nuts you all really are.
Please keep giving us fodder. We need plenty of gaiarrhea for our future “told you so” writings.
Back in the 1970′s, there was a big solar movement. Pres. Carter said that the energy crisis was the “equivalent” of war. (Or something to that effect). Global cooling was the big fear (or was it “nuculer winter”? I forget.)
It was all a bunch of bullshit. It was revealed that the energy used to make the standard solar water heating collecter was more than would ever be collected by the collector. I remember working on a system installed on some super-wealthy pool house that would be in the shade most of the day. There were two 10 ton chillers to keep the pool occupants cool (This was in Houston.) But the guy got his $4,000 rebate for “saving” energy!
I have nothing against saving energy. My wife and I have designed and built two passive solar homes. But the hysteria about our “carbon footprint,” global warming and such is a huge scam. But then I don’t live on govt. grants for global warming research and don’t have any expensive green things to sell with the help of govt. rebates.