In last week’s New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a fascinating article, “How David Beats Goliath: When Underdogs Break The Rules.” In his patented style Gladwell weaves together story after story of underdogs who defied convention to defeat much stronger opponents. 
From the Biblical story of David defeating Goliath, to a junior league basketball team of twelve year-old girls, to the armies of George Washington, Gladwell offers us examples of how an underdog is only an underdog when he plays by his opponent’s rules. He also offers the research of Ivan Arreguín-Toft, a political scientist who analyzed every war fought over the last two hundred years between strong and weak combatants.
The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 percent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful—in terms of armed might and population—as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time…What happened, Arreguín-Toft wondered, when the underdogs likewise acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy? He went back and re-analyzed his data. In those cases, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win…”
What an intriguing piece of data. Gladwell’s article got me thinking about the movement to build a clean energy economy and what we can do to turn the tables and put the odds in our favor. By most measures, we face an indomitable opponent. We seek to transition the economy off of fossil fuels, which represent the core business of the largest industry in the history of human civilization. In just the first three months of 2009, these companies spent $79 million lobbying Congress versus $4.6 million by our side–a 16:1 ratio–and a Common Cause study released yesterday shows that members of the critical Energy and Commerce Committee (where the climate and energy bill is currently being watered down) received an average of $107,230 from the energy sector in the last election. 16 to 1. 16 to 1. Those are tough numbers.
I wonder what would happen if we acknowledged our weaknesses and adopted an unconventional strategy. After reading The New Yorker article, I see four principles of a winning underdog strategy that we can apply to the climate movement:
- Make it a battle of wills, not a battle of skills
- Empower people to think and act in real time
- Attack your opponent where they are weak
- Defy social convention (and be ready to do what is socially horrifying)
Below the fold, I give my take on what some of the implications of these principles are for our movement’s strategy.
1. Make it a battle of wills, not a battle of skills. The first thing we must do is change it from a contest about ability, to a contest about effort. If it’s about the ability to pay for more advertising, to pay for more lobbyists, or to control the price of a gallon of gasoline, we will lose. Major environmental groups have invested far too heavily in Washington DC for the past twenty years instead of building our base of grassroots leaders across the country, which has only begun to change in the past few years. We must resist the temptation to staff up inside the Beltway again and remember where the battle can be fought and won. The passion for building a clean energy economy among ordinary Americans is our greatest strength and we need to build on that strength by expanding our grassroots movement to pass strong legislation and get the US to take a positive role in the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen. We need an all out effort from people who care about the future of this country – young people creating viral videos, grandmothers hosting salons in their living rooms, and families showing up to rallies. If we make this about who has more heart, we will win.
2. Empower people to think and act in real time. One of the advantages of being being a grassroots, decentralized movement is that we can operate in real time. We don’t need to wait for a CEO or Board of Directors to issue a statement. We don’t need to need to convene our leadership to make a decision. Our strength is our diversity, independence, and knowledge of the terrain. Our people know their local schools and communities and can fight the fight on the ground if we give them the tools and information. By using technology from blogs to iPhone apps to Twitter we can give our supporters the ability to counteract a much larger, stronger foe. The Exxons and OPECs aren’t equipped for this kind of contest. We should learn from the Obama campaign, which empowered local leaders with the tools to be constantly organizing, both online and, more importantly, offline. We will win if operate in real time.
3. Attack where they are weak. This might seem obvious, but time and again underdogs fail to identify where their opponents are most vulnerable to attack. While cheap fossil fuels have spurred tremendous growth over the last two hundred years, the dirty little secret is that the era of cheap oil is over. It takes more energy to pump less barrels of oil out of the ground and that trend will only continue. Job growth in the fossil fuel industry has stalled. For every $1 million we invest in coal and oil, only five new jobs are created. Yet, when we invest the same amount in clean energy, seventeen new jobs are created. The future of the American economy is clean energy, creating millions of green jobs that can’t be shipped over seas.
We’ve tried their way and it has led us right into a recession, two wars without end, and an uncertain future for our children. Strong climate legislation is the first step towards turning things around. Good legislation leads to more investment, which creates new jobs, now and in the long-term, and improves our national security. We need to position big oil and coal as a dead-end opposition, and win the public pr battle about how we can create new, good clean energy jobs.
4. Defy social convention (and be ready to do what is socially horrifying). I believe we are making tremendous progress toward strong climate change legislation, but we need to do more. We campaign, sign petitions, lobby congress, and raise awareness. All of that is necessary and important. But to really succeed, we need to go the extra mile. To do the unexpected and raise some eyebrows, while staying true to our values and principles. When Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat in 1955, she defied convention and the black community of Montgomery, AL followed through by doing what was “horrifying” and boycotting the public bus system. We increase our chances of winning, if we don’t play by Goliath’s rules. What will it take? Hunger strikes and fossil fuel infrastructure disruption? A March on Washington? A bus boycott? Remember how arresting the images of millions of New Yorkers biking and walking to work in 2005 was? We did that because we had no other choice and in freezing cold weather. Could we do it again this fall for a higher purpose? Maybe. Or maybe there is a better way…
Bottom line is that in many ways we still seem to be fighting this battle on our opposition’s terms, and right now it looks like we’re losing. We need to rethink the rules of engagement. A conversation is happening across the movement about how to do just that. What do you think we should do?
This entry is cross-posted at Grist.org.
Thanks so much for posting this, Billy. I also read the article in the New Yorker when it came out a week or so ago and it immediately resonated with me. In the midst of all the latest commotion in Washington over the climate bill being debated in Congress, there couldn’t be a better time to stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and think about how we can kick ass this year.
I think your especially correct in point number one, when you write:
“Major environmental groups have invested far too heavily in Washington DC for the past twenty years instead of building our base of grassroots leaders across the country, which has only begun to change in the past few years. We must resist the temptation to staff up inside the Beltway again and remember where the battle can be fought and won.”
Groups in D.C. are doing incredibly important work. It’s the work that the environmental movement has perfected over the last number of years and for other environmental issues, it’s the work that would make a difference. But global warming isn’t another environmental issue. The change were seeking is a complete overall of our entire economy and, for many people, way of life. Enough to call a revolution?
As you say, we won’t win this in D.C. with lobbyists, we’ll win it around the country, and around the world, with a movement. To cite the Gladwell article, just as Lawrence refused to fight the Turks in Medina, we need to refuse to only fight the climate battle in D.C. That’s where the opposition and its money, cynicism, and lobbyists have the most sway. Our strength is outside the beltway. Big Coal and Big Oil can spend all the want, but they’ll never be able to hire as many passionate, committed organizers as we have on our side.
Decentralizing this movement, while staying focused on a clear goal, is what we’re working on with 350.org. Over 600 actions in 52 countries are already planned for the 350 International Day of Action on October 24 — and we just announced the campaign goal a few weeks ago. It’s great to hear that Energy Action Coalition is officially endorsing the day. We have the technology to wire a movement that extends from Cambodia to Colombia to California: let’s do it.
Look forward to hearing what other under dogs are working on, too.
I’m feeling the same way about where we are with the movement. Now that we have a “friendly” administration, we feel like we need to invest even more in DC to take advantage, when, in fact, we should be doing the opposite. 1Sky is working to develop ‘Climate Precinct Captains’ and the Alliance for Climate Protection has hired on hundreds of field organizers, which is a good start. But, we still need to be doing the hard work of education and persuasion, of local mobilization and escalation all over the country, not just calling members of congress who are already bought and paid for.
Bill McKibben just wrote an op-ed in the LA Times that I think dovetails nicely with this one: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mckibben15-2009may15,0,123188.story
One thing that stuck with me was point 3: Attack where they are weak. This requires two parts – figuring out where our opponents are weak and actually exploiting those parts. So far I feel like we haven’t done that – we have been playing the game by their rules: lobbying, media, litigation. Where are they weak? How can we use this to our advantage? I haven’t really thought it through yet, but this is crucial to our success.
I would argue that a significant weakness of your opponents is their low ethos with the public (i.e., who in the general public believes what energy corporations say). Also, they tend to wait until the political and economic winds make them change (i.e., they do not sit around a table and plan the future energy steps of the world, rather they simply try to maintain the status quo).
If the public could be convinced that carbon is a serious AND immediate problem in addition to having a vision of what a low carbon society would look like, that might be a winning combination.
Juliana: I would propose that ‘big business’ is at a low point, in terms of how much the public believes in the power of companies to regulate themselves. Also, mountain top removal is a huge weakness – even the coal lackeys don’t have an answer to that. There should be more though.
Billy: great analysis of a great article.
I particularly resonate with the ‘be ready to do what’s socially horrifying’. Protests, lock-downs, endless phone calls and far more creative things are all arrows in our quiver.
I think your categories make sense, but the tactics don’t resonate deeply with me aside from decentralization. And please keep in mind–twitter, iphone, social media are all important but still are used by a minority of active voters, and need to be combined with real-time, in-person evangelism.
Where are Energy companies weak? Human rights. Ethics. Infrastructure. Image as greedy bastards.
But the mainstream doesn’t see a lot of this, they see the greenwashing through TV and web ads, and take it as green leadership. The battle for the minds of registered votes–those who can hold Congress accountable–will be incredibly tough if we don’t counter the ad campaigns with factual ad campaigns.
To my point: the money matters as well. Obama didn’t win on grass roots activities alone–TV, radio, print, and web ads were critical.
Thanks for the article–really important to keep the strategy discussion going!
How do we really know who the enemy really is? This Climate stuff is very complicated and there are a lot of people trying to make rules for the world that might only benefit some very powerful interests that have billions of dollars to spend on propaganda to help make them rich. Are we sure they are really the good guys? Maybe what we think we know isn’t really true. After all, we are pretty inexperinced and maybe we’re just being manipulated in the same way as Hitler manipulated the kids in Germany. Hitler said the science was settled and that Jews were really subhuman. His scientists apparently proved it to the satisfaction of German kids who thought that by doing Hitler’s will they were doing the right thing.
So many people claim they are doing things for the children but when you take a close look at it they are only doing things for themselves while trying to sound noble.
Apart from being told what to think how do we know that what we are be told is really true? Has anyone here taken the temperature of the world? I haven’t, but I think its impossible to take the temperature of the world. Maybe we should ask someone who says they know how to to this to tell us how they would measure the average speed of cars on the planet and tell us if it is going up or down a little bit on each successive year. How would anyone do that? Which cars would be included in this average? Moving cars? Cars stopped in traffic? Parked cars? Disabled cars? Junked cars? Does it matter which cars are included in this “average”? Well the earth’s atoms and molocules are each really like trillions time trillions times trillions of little cars and the speed of them is called temperature. If you measure the speed in one place for one time you get the speed of a small set of these atoms just like you would with traffic speed meters on one highway on one minute of one day. But how can you take the spped on a few highways for a few minutes and say that it represent traffic speed of all cars on the entire world?
I think we need to think more and believe less on this