Rise Up Against Climate Change

We Don’t Need a ‘War’ on Climate Change, We Need a Revolution

Eric S. Godoy and Aaron Jaffe, October 31. 2016 (NY Times)

“… Bill McKibben, the unofficial spokesperson of the climate movement in the United States, points to territory ceded, space invaded, cultural loss and human suffering in saying climate change is not LIKE a world war but IS a world war. War] rhetoric serves a valuable function. It stresses the seriousness of the harm, its structural nature and the need to struggle against it. Wars require people to sacrifice and to share responsibility for a joint effort…[But the] idea that climate change is a war is inaccurate, and a potentially counterproductive frame for organizing the resistance needed to secure a habitable planet.

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By stressing existential threat, war tends to divide the world into allies and enemies, against whom we need to risk all…This approach ignores the environmental movement’s earlier rhetorical and organizational strengths…[in the nonviolent civil rights struggles, antiwar] protests and resistance against nuclear weapons…[that] is alive and well in the language and action of ongoing resistance at Standing Rock...We urgently need to motivate action, but given the ambiguities and dangers surrounding war rhetoric, we need better orienting language…‘Revolution’ can be just as motivating…In other words, Climate change demands not only a race to develop and deploy new energy technologies, but a revolution to democratize all forms of power…” click here for more

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