Imagine you are living in a village along a stream. It’s a beautiful community with wonderful neighbors and you’ve all been thriving together for ages. Then one day people start to get sick – and after a while, it becomes clear that people are getting sick from the water in the stream. What do you do?
As an individual, you can take care of the sick – and this is a deeply Christian thing to do. If your neighbor is sick, you are called to love him by caring for him. So you do this for a while. But people keep getting sicker and sicker.
Eventually you and a group of people start meeting together to figure out why the water is making people sick. You discover that a factory that was recently built upstream to produce products for your community has been pouring waste directly into the stream, poisoning it. So, having discovered the cause of all the illness, you rally other neighbors together and walk upstream to the factory and tell them they need to stop pouring poison into the water because it’s making your village sick. When you raise this concern with the factory leadership, they ignore you and continue to poison your water. So you go to your village and tell everyone this company is poisoning your water and they should stop buying their products. You spread it around social media. You take the message to your state capital. You call, email, and write letters to your local representatives. Eventually, you build up enough support that the factory’s business gets bad press and they start to lose money. Finally, they agree to stop poisoning your water.
This is an example of collective action working to change a systemic problem.
As an individual, if you don’t question why people in your village are getting sick and just keep caring for them on your own, you will burn yourself out and people will keep getting sick – because all your service, as beautiful as it is, is only addressing the symptoms of the problem, and not the systemic problem itself. And even if you go a step further and do recognize the systemic problem, but then walk up to the factory leadership alone and try to get them to change, they will ignore you – because by yourself you don’t have the collective power needed to make the change. And so systemic change requires two critical elements: first you must move past the symptoms and target the root cause, and second you must partner with others to build enough collective power that you can bring about the desired change.
I wish a compelling moral message were enough to get the fossil fuel industry to look at itself, recognize the harm it is doing to our present world and future generations, and change their ways – but unfortunately for 40 years that has not been enough, so I don’t expect things to be any different today. Dr Martin Luther King wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Those with power, whether individuals, or groups of people, or corporations, like to hold on to power and almost never give it up unless forced to do so. The most jarring exception to this rule is Jesus Christ, who, as we read in Philippians 2, chose to give up divine power and glory in order to take on the role of a servant and live with those with the least. This should be a guiding principle for all Christians – but it is not the way the world works, and so we should expect that collective non-violent power, fueled by prayer, is usually the only thing that can get bad actors in power to change their ways.
So how, practically, can we join with others to build the power necessary to get the fossil fuel industry to transition away from an extremely lucrative business that is destroying our planetary ecosystem? The answer is most emphatically not to appeal to their moral nature. The industry, like all industries, is made up of corporations, and all corporations are designed in their most basic structure to maximize shareholder profits – even if it means destroying the world in the process (as insane as that sounds). They will only change if they believe that a clean energy transition will make them more money than staying in fossil fuels – or if they are forced to change by new laws with effective enforcement. The carrot and the stick are the only two things that can move the stubborn mule that is the fossil fuel industry.
And so, in order to cultivate this carrot and stick environment, collective action usually aims towards one of four core goals:
1) educating the public so as to build climate-oriented social tipping points (carrot);
2) getting representatives elected who will prioritize climate friendly policies that offer benefits for transitioning (carrot) and penalties for continuing to burn carbon (stick);
3) getting existing representatives to pass new climate friendly laws (carrot/stick); and
4) getting local or regional government to enforce existing laws that are being ignored by industries (stick).
Let’s go through them one by one.
Educating the public is the most fundamental aspect of collective action that you can be a part of. Without education, people will not be aware of the devastating planetary harm of continued fossil fuel us, or the amazing opportunities inherent to the clean energy transition. If they’re not aware, they won’t become concerned, engaged, or active. If there are not enough people who are engaged, the status quo will simply continue and send the world steadily over a cliff. With education, however, people can become aware, share their awareness with others, and collective will can start to grow. When there are enough people who care about something, they can start to move the needle – they can start to build advocacy organizations, strengthen votes for climate-oriented candidates, write to representatives, etc. Everything begins with people becoming aware and engaged.
Educating the public can take many forms. A way anyone can do this is by simply talking to your friends and family about the climate crisis. You can do this as an individual – but this action is inherently collective because it invests in the building of broader social awareness. You can then take this to the next level by joining an advocacy group that specializes in building public education and awareness. My own organization, the Climate Witness Project, is focused on educating the church about the climate crisis as a way to build Christian intentionality towards creation health and human justice issues, and to help build the social will to move the needle on our numerous environmental crises. This blog and website are designed for just that purpose, particularly our resource page. You can also find a number of resources on the CWP binational website (www.crcna.org/climate-witness-project), by watching a climate justice documentary we made in Hunting Park in North Philadelphia (www.crcna.org/hunting-park), or by exploring the Evangelical Environmental Network’s website (https://creationcare.org). There are a million other climate education resources out there – just look around.
Second, we can build collective power by electing representatives into our governments – local, regional, and national – who will prioritize climate concerns and push for climate positive legislation. In this respect, one of the most powerful collective actions you can do is vote. We all need to vote as individuals (you can register here) – but we can also partner with organizations that are focused on getting out the vote. The more people are educated on climate, and the more they vote on climate, the more likely we are to get representatives into office who will pass legislation that can make the kinds of systemic changes we need. The Inflation Reduction Act is an amazing example of this – it is one of the most sweeping and powerful climate bills (as well as economic stimulus bills) ever passed in our country’s history – and it is a direct result of the climate-orientation of the representatives in government. How did these representatives get into office? They were voted in by American citizens, which was in turn informed by widespread climate education efforts. Your vote matters – which brings us to this November’s election …
If you live in Philadelphia, the power of your vote to impact the course not only of American history, but of our planet and human civilization as a whole … is terrifying. Philadelphia’s voter turnout will have a huge impact on who wins Pennsylvania, and whoever wins Pennsylvania will almost certainly win the White House. The two candidates America must choose between could not have more starkly different orientations towards the climate crisis. One accurately considers it an existential global threat and has a record of taking meaningful action on it. The other incorrectly believes that the climate crisis is a hoax and intends to continue to invest in the fossil fuel industry, to the detriment of all. At this moment, our global climate system stands on the edge of a knife. The world is transitioning away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy at a steadily accelerating rate – and this transition is creating jobs and improving health even as it fights climate change. But this change isn’t happening fast enough yet, and it is urgent that we accelerate rapidly over the next 4 years in particular. At this precarious global moment, if we install climate active leadership and everything goes right policy-wise, we may still not transition fast enough – but at least there remains a chance. However, if we install a climate denier with the power of the presidency over one of the world’s greatest emitters – we will very likely tip our children and grandchildren over into a catastrophic collective future. It is so very, very important to vote for representative leadership who will speed up the clean energy transition instead of slowing it down – and so we must vote to ensure that that happens. A great PA organization you can partner with to help get out the vote is POWER Interfaith. And there are plenty of others.
Third, we can build collective power by telling the representatives that we have elected to push for and pass legislation that is clean-transition-oriented. It doesn’t matter if you are a Republican, Democrat, Independent, or swing voter – we should all be communicating with our representatives and encouraging them to push for good climate laws that will help our society accelerate our transition away from fossil fuels and towards a clean energy economy. You can advocate for this kind of change by writing your representatives directly – here’s a link where you can find and contact your federal House and Senate representatives: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member. And if you’re in PA, here’s a link where you can find your State House and Senate reps and contact them: https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/. You can also engage your representatives by joining an advocacy organization that is working as a group to strategically influence policy-makers. Advocacy organizations spend all their time focusing on what the issues are, what bills are on the table, and how best to leverage social power to get the desired changes passed – so by joining them, you can give your voice more strategic influence Some great PA advocacy organizations are POWER Interfaith, HERE4CJ, and Philly Thrive. Some great national ones are the Sunrise Movement, EEN Action, and the Sierra Club (to name a few).
Fourth (and finally), you can partner with others to press bad actors to comply with climate laws that have already been passed. Laws mean very little if they aren’t enforced – and many companies will ignore laws they don’t like if they feel they can get away with it – or if they feel the financial benefit of breaking the law will be greater than the financial cost of fighting lawsuits in court and perhaps being penalized. Lots of organizations like the ones above do this kind of work – they serve as watchdogs for bad actors and bring attention (and sometimes lawsuits) to them when they violate good environmental laws. I have personally been involved in watchdog work done by HERE4CJ, POWER Interfaith, and Philly Thrive with the bad actor PGW – Philadelphia’s gas utility. PGW is a city-owned utility, meaning that it is required to develop its future plans in a way that is in line with the city’s ambitious carbon reduction goals. Despite this, PGW has belligerently opposed all forms of oversight and has dug its heals in again and again, essentially adopting a long term natural gas (aka methane) plan that will make the city’s climate goals impossible to attain. They are in violation of their responsibilities – but are not being forced to comply by city council or the mayor (which is another problem). In light of this, the three organizations I mentioned above as well as others have been working to bring attention to what they are doing in order to pressure them to comply. It has not worked yet – which is a realistic picture of how dug in and unwilling the fossil fuel industry is as a whole. But the work will continue – because there is no other choice if we want our children and grandchildren to inherit a habitable world.
Friends, the need is so great – and the movement is building. But it needs to build faster – which means it needs you. It doesn’t matter if you are black or white, rich or poor, male or female, Republican or Democrat – you have a voice. And this movement needs a growing chorus of voices if we are to change our systems at a pace that can turn the tide. Not long from now, the greed and deception of the fossil fuel industry from the mid 1980s through the 2020s will go down as one of the greatest evils of our time, because of its devastating effects on our world and the people living in it – and the fact that these effects were known, lied about, and ignored for decades in order to make a few people wealthy. Do you want to be a passive participant in this? Or do you want to be one of the people who helped turn the tide?
Let’s do this together.
RESOURCES:
CWP Resource Page: www.cwpeasternus.org/resources
CWP binational website: www.crcna.org/climate-witness-project
“This is Hunting Park” climate justice documentary filmed in North Philadelphia and narrated by Grey’s Anatomy actress Sarah Drew: www.crcna.org/hunting-park
Evangelical Environmental Network: https://creationcare.org
Link to find and contact your Federal Senators and Representative: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member
If you’re in PA, link to find your State Senator and Representative and contact them: https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/
Register to vote: https://register.rockthevote.com/registrants/new
EEN Action: www.creationcare-action.com
HERE4CJ: www.here4climatejustice.org
POWER Interfaith: www.powerinterfaith.org
Philly Thrive: www.phillythrive.org
Sunrise Movement: www.sunrisemovement.org
Sierra Club: www.sierraclub.org
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