Climate Action and Environmental, Conservation, and Climate Organizations
Fields of Action #11 — Being Together Enough
We have been exploring the seven characteristics/imperatives/goals of the Climate Movement, listed above. Today’s post is the second in a Subseries on the sixth characteristic, being together enough.
We won’t become the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world without organizations focused exclusively or primarily on climate, such as the Sunrise Movement or The Climate Mobilization, or 350 Ghana Reducing Our Carbon (350 GROC), or The Climate Observatory in Brazil, as well as environmental and conservation organizations that are seriously engaging in climate action, like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in the US, The Green Belt Movement in Africa, the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN) in Burma, and The Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE) in China.
These organizations are greatly needed for the long enough part of the journey (our seventh and final characteristic/imperative/goal). They provide stability. Climate Action Teams may (sadly!) come and go, but many organizations seriously engaging in climate action will still be fighting the good fight in 2030, a good number will be in 2040, and some even out to 2050 and beyond — like the 116-year-old NAACP has done on civil rights in the US. We need such stability and longevity.
Organizations have and will play vital roles in helping the Movement be dynamic enough, especially the first two aspects: tried-and-true, and discipline. Organizations are some of the most important keepers of the tried-and-true, of what has worked in the past to organize people to effect change, to unleash the power of organized individuals with a purpose and a mission.
Organizations have and will contribute discipline to our efforts.
A major benefit of the discipline of organizations is the expertise their people bring, who, after years of education, have worked hard in their careers to develop such needed knowledge. Many aspects of climate action require the expertise of professionals who can be focused full-time on their particular area, such as climate science, biodiversity, policy, regulations, law, forestry, agriculture, economics, finance, communications, press relations, social media, data management, and grassroots organizing. We need such expertise and wisdom. We need folks who have thought long and hard about the myriad subject areas whose knowledge can help us achieve our Major Goal. We need the facts they uncover and the analysis and framing and messaging they provide. We need the disciplined campaigns they create to catalyze climate action.
As we work to be dynamic enough, balancing the tried-and-true and discipline with freedom and creativity, organizations can also help the Climate Movement to be creative in certain areas, including strategic thinking, messaging and communications, and campaigns.
It follows then that one of the most important contributions organizations can make is helping the Climate Movement to be strategic enough. While this certainly won’t be the exclusive domain of organizations, the creation of strategic actions and campaigns takes time and resources. Organizations can provide this.
But, as important as they are, on their own organizations will never make us big and broad and active enough. The vast majority of the Climate Movement won’t be made up of organizational professionals. Even their efforts to grow who they think of as “the grassroots” — i.e., the non-professionals — won’t be enough. On their own they will never get us to 5% (or 400 million) by 2030 and 10% by 2040. While they are much needed for the continual engagement across neighborhoods, communities, businesses, governments, societies and the world, organizations will never provide the strength of numbers to effect the change required. The scale is much too big, and the speed at which we need to become big and broad enough is much too fast.
On their own, organizations won’t get us to where we need to be when it comes to being passionate enough. And without passion we will never be driven to make the changes we need at the speed and scale required.
Nearly all organizational professionals would say if asked that they are passionate about their work. It is part of what keeps them going.
But here’s the thing. When many folks are in professional mode, they rarely express passion. Professionalism certainly has its place. But it lives in tension with the expression of passion, which runs counter to the calm, collected, rational demeanor of what professionalism is supposed to look like. It runs counter to the day-in, day-out everyday work week. When such folks are in professional mode, the L-word is so scarce that many never say it out loud. But it is our passion for who and what we love that will drive and sustain us to victory.
As I’ve said before, not everyone in the Climate Movement has to express overt passion, has to look passionate, i.e., what we think passion looks like. You can be passionate without looking passionate, without appearing to express powerful emotions, even as you have them.
But if no one looks passionate when passion is called for, passion can begin to be so covered up with the cloak of professionalism that we can forget it’s there. People looking passionate, people speaking the L-word out loud, people getting riled up about right and wrong, can give us all permission to reconnect with our passion.
But as I’ve said, to not have our passion burn so bright that we flame out it must be connected to what makes us deep enough. Many organizations focused on climate action can’t help create and nurture within us the deep places. In fact, they rely on the deep places to be there already for them to tap into.
At the core of what makes us deep enough is the fact that the Climate Movement is a moral movement that speaks of what’s right and wrong and strives for justice; and the deepest place, the source from whence we get our power to strive is the L-word. The M-word and the L-word, that’s where our power to effect change comes from.
But when most folks are in professional mode, the M-word and the L-word are a bit of a taboo; they make them uncomfortable; they rarely utter the M-word or talk about things being right or wrong, or why we should do what we’re doing. That’s not what professionals do. With a few exceptions, they talk about how, not why, to do things.
Two of the most common of those exceptions are, first, their discussions, usually in the context of strategic planning exercises, of the values that motivate and guide the work of their organization, that can then be found on the “About Us” webpages under “Our Values.” But such discussions are not about right and wrong; they are not declaring what should be done. They are describing why the organization does what it does — but not asserting that their values should have a hold on everyone else, too. They are invitations to those who also already hold such values.
The second is when they are reporting on some of the quantification of the impacts of their work — e.g., “lives saved”; “children served” — where values are implied but in many cases not made explicit. The latter, of course, is another example of their skittishness of talking about the values they hold, let alone right and wrong.
There may be good reasons for this reluctance, e.g., wanting to unite those with different values and beliefs who nevertheless can agree on particular ends.
The point, however, is that the Climate Movement cannot be so constrained.
There are powerful and vital exceptions to this skittishness, especially Environmental Justice (EJ) and Climate Justice (CJ) organizations, including The Sunrise Movement, who have no qualms talking about right and wrong — or for being passionate, for that matter. Justice is the reason they are in the fight. They exist to stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better for those unfairly burdened with pollution due to race or class or both, those especially vulnerable to pollution, including frontline and fence-line communities as well as sensitive populations, and those more vulnerable to climate impacts due to race, class, ethnicity, religion, or gender. Poverty makes people more vulnerable to climate impacts and less able to build resilience to them. And when we trace back the reason communities are impoverished around the world today, in many if not most cases we find injustice as a root cause. EJ and CJ organizations are not solely focused on reducing pollution; they also want a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone.
Like the EJ and CJ organizations, in the Climate Movement we must readily talk about both how and why. The why is our greatest source of power. For us why must be front and center. Justice is not just a value we have; it is a claim on everyone, as are our declarations that human-caused climate change is just wrong. We must recognize and live into this imperative: on all our Olympian Fields of Action, including environmental, conservation, and climate organizations, we must embody the three demands, desires, and actions of justice: to stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better.
So, to sum up, environmental, conservation, and climate organizations have vital roles to play in the Climate Movement in ensuring we are strategic enough, dynamic enough, and have the expertise we need. They are indispensable in helping to keep us going long enough.
For some of them, they should be accepted for what they are, not what they are not. We must complement their strengths with the strengths of other nonprofit non-governmental organizations or NGOs and Climate Action Teams.
So where’s the hope in recognizing the strengths and limitations of climate and enviro organizations, in understanding that they can’t overcome climate change by themselves? That they can’t do it for us? Where’s the hope in that?
The hope comes from the realization that each and every one of us is needed — not just to make a donation, but to be the donation. Time to get off the couch, out of the stands, and onto our Olympian Field of Action. Each one of us has a role, a position, to play. You are needed. We need you to become the Climate Movement Artist-Athlete you are meant to be. You see, we are the hope we’ve been waiting for. Together, we are making hope happen. Join us!
If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in our Olympian Fields of Action Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.