Climate Movement: How to Get Our Intensity Back! Part Two

Getting Back Our Climate Action Mojo

In my previous post I documented what those of us in The Climate Movement know in our gut: as a movement we’ve lost our intensity. We’re floundering. From whence will come the passion to ignite intensity’s potential?

How do we get back our climate action mojo? How do we get ourselves back on track to become our destiny: the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world?

Intensity From Within

Ultimately the passion that ignites our intensity-potential must come from within, from our Ten Climate Movement Values.

They are our values because they: (1) inspire; (2) guide, and; (3) are valuable to us. They allow us to be deep enough, our third characteristic/imperative/goal. And it is such depth that will keep our passion strong.

All of our values have emotional salience. They shape our thoughts. They are part of our interior lives. They are the highest and best of us. They have the capacity to help us become the people we’ve hoped beyond hope we could be.

But our values are just abstractions, mirages, ciphers — unless we embody them. We must live in and live out our values. The interior must become real in the physical world.

Our supreme value, love, gives us the greatest comfort, the greatest joy we’ve ever known or can know — but only if we make ourselves vulnerable. For love to be deep and vibrant and solid requires trust. But even with the greatest trust, finitude breaks every heart. Deep love requires courage to overcome the fear of vulnerability and loss.

When it comes down to it, our passion for climate action will be sustained if we have allowed ourselves to connect our vision and purpose to who and what we love. If we permit ourselves, especially with the help of others, to become vulnerable for the sake of those we love, vulnerable in giving ourselves to making their world better, if we allow ourselves to extend our circle of love as far as we can, and we pour that love into making our vision a reality, then our destiny is assured.

And so the passion to ignite our potential comes from the L-word, love. But it also comes from our values of justice and beauty and freedom, themselves all infused with love. Love makes us passionate for justice. Love makes beauty more beautiful. Love sets freedom free.

For many, a great wellspring of passion is justice. The classic definition of justice is to give to each their due. What does that mean for us? Justice is where everyone has what they need to live the lives intended for them so they can become who they were meant to be. Where circumstances fall short, that’s where we must implement the three actions of justice: (1) stop bad stuff; (2) set wrong right, and; (3) make things better. We do these to make progress on the Five Dimensions of Justice, as seen below.

Climate change has created, is creating, and will continue to create one of the greatest injustices in history — for some it’s the greatest injustice ever. When we see the injustice of climate change our hearts immediately cry out, “This is so wrong!” For many of us, it is this passion that can ignite our intensity potential like nothing else can. (As I explore in its own Series, justice and hope have a great symbiosis.)

Nothing stirs our passion like beauty, and beauty is all around us if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. Each of our steps within our five dimensions of justice are beautiful. Overcoming climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything is beautiful. Living in balance and harmony with the rest of the natural world is beautiful. Fulfilling our Better Future Covenant to leave our children and their children a better world is beautiful. Passion to ignite our potential, to set free our intensity — it’s in the beauty that each step in our journey creates.

Love is at the heart of it all. But the L-word takes courage, and for many of us the courage to love comes from one another. In our families, with our friends, in CATS (Climate Action Teams) or in other ways of being together we must support one another in igniting love’s passion that leads to justice and beauty and freedom, who themselves become sources of passion that in turn ignites intensity’s potential to create real change in the world around us, to overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances the wellbeing of everyone and everything.

Let’s Remember Why

To engage our Climate Movement Values we must remember what inspired us to take climate action in the first place. To have our passion ignite our potential let’s remind ourselves why we are called to this, the greatest moral cause of our time.

The Facts

Our passion for action comes out of the combination of our values and the facts. When climate facts meet love and justice and beauty and freedom there’s nothing left to do but transform the world into their likeness.

The Bad Stuff: Climate Impacts

• Billions of lives impacted. No one escapes from climate impacts.

• Millions upon millions of deaths.

• One of the greatest injustices in human history, as the poor, who have not caused the problem, suffer its greatest injuries.

• A key driver in human-caused species extinction the likes of which the world has never seen.

• Consequences lasting for centuries.

We must let these terrible climate consequences ignite our passion for action.

We can’t eliminate all of the bad stuff. Overcoming climate change does not mean we will. Rather, we shall overcome it. Bad stuff has happened, is happening, and will happen. But we can lessen the impacts by adapting to them and creating resilience against them. By dramatically cutting and eliminating climate pollution and keeping warming to around 1.5C we can stop even worse bad stuff from happening, especially dangerous tipping points.

Is that it? Stopping the really bad stuff?

Hell no.

Justice calls us to do even more than just saying no to hell on earth. We must also set wrong right and make things better.

The Good Stuff: A Just & Prosperous Sustainability

We are on the precipice of the transformation we’re calling for. We’ve got the tech right now to do what’s needed. And more is on the way every day.

Here’s a little taste from a just released Ember report on solar and batteries:

• Solar is super abundant. Suitable land could generate around 125 times today’s electricity use; more than 90% of people live in places where local solar potential is at least 10 times current electricity demand.

• Batteries turn solar into high-uptime power. With storage, solar can move from intermittent generation to firm, high-availability power: nine out of ten people live where solar-plus-battery systems can exceed 80% uptime, and in the sunniest regions they can reach 99% uptime.

• Solar plus battery is already cheap where most people live.Four in five people can get 80%-uptime power for under $100/MWh; for half of humanity it is under $80.

• The opportunity is biggest where electricity is weakest. Around 760 million people still lack electricity, close to 2 billion have unreliable grids, and 95% of this demand sits in sunny regions where solar plus batteries can already beat planned fossil generation. … 89% of people without access live where that 80%-uptime cost is under $80/MWh; and effectively 100% of people live in regions where costs are under $100/MWh.

• New fossil capacity is increasingly exposed. Of roughly 850 GW of planned coal and gas capacity, about 590 GW sits in regions where solar plus batteries can already deliver 80%-uptime power for under $100/MWh.

• Costs will keep falling. By 2030, with projected solar and battery cost declines, solar-plus-storage power meeting the same uptime benchmark is likely to cost under $80/MWh for over 75% of people, and under $100/MWh for nine in ten.

Why will costs keep falling? Why will things keep improving? Because our Third Source of Catalytic Transformation, ARTC, or the accelerating rate of tech change, keeps churning upwards due to the continual production of useful knowledge turning science into invention and innovation. As a result, profits and price are now working in our favor in the economy.

But ARTC and markets on their own won’t get us to the speed and scale of transformation needed. Speed and scale are why we in The Climate Movement are indispensable. They are why our passion must ignite our intensity-potential for us to push the other three Catalytic Sources of Transformation to play their roles. This includes creating strategic ARTC focused on fulfilling our vision. It includes pushing governments to push markets to create speed and scale.

Our Vision

Speed and scale aren’t the only reasons The Climate Movement is indispensable and why our passion must ignite our intensity-potential. We must ensure what our vision proclaims: overcoming climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.

ARTC on its own won’t lead to justice and the wellbeing of everyone and everything. Nor will governments and markets on their own or in tandem. We must join together with all people of good will to strive towards its reality as we push the other Catalytic Sources of Transformation to play their parts.

So when our vision becomes a reality, what does it look like? It’s where people having plenty of healthy and delicious food they enjoy, a clean and healthy environment, nice homes that are warm in the winter and cool in the summer, reliable clean energy to power our sustainable lifestyle, work that is meaningful, and time to be creative and enjoy the good things in life. Prosperous sustainability means we are all flourishing as we live in balance and harmony with the rest of the natural world.

But without us, without our passion igniting our potential, if we don’t become big and broad and active enough (our first Movement characteristic/imperative/goal), without us pushing for it, it won’t get done.

Every step towards our vision is worth all the passion we can muster.

Intensity From Our Numbers-Potential

The numbers are telling us it’s right there before us, the potential to begin to create what is our destiny: becoming the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world.

Our numbers-potential is just sitting there, waiting for us to realize it.

From the results of three different questions from three different recent polls I determined what I am calling our Climate Movement Potential or CM Potential in the US to be about 30% — meaning that about 30% of the US population are prime candidates for being in The Climate Movement. One poll question suggests that a little less than 2% probably already are a part of The Climate Movement — whether they recognize it or not. (My Climate Movement definition: those who have made a sustained commitment to collective action over time to overcome climate change.)

So we’ve got about 3% left to recruit by 2030. Eminently doable.

That we are within reach of the numbers we need to push our societies to overcome climate change should inspire us and help raise our intensity level.

But I guess we’re gonna have to shout this CM Potential from the rooftops, because when it comes to our potential strength, perception is skewed.

Part of the answer is to stop underestimating the level of concern that exists.

As these Yale/GM graphs above show, 85% either underestimate (61%) or don’t know (24%) how worried Americans are about global warming. Some of the reason is that only 21% are talking to those close to them about climate change.

The same underestimation occurs when Democrats are asked about Democrats and Republicans about Republicans, as seen in the More In Common poll results below.

On speeding up climate action, Democrats think their support for this is a bare majority at 53%, when it is actually an overwhelming majority at 88%. For Republicans the reality is almost a majority at 47% for speeding up action, when they falsely think it is just 22%, a 25 point swing.

So part of our answer is to (1) stop underestimating, and (2) start talking.

Here’s the thing. It won’t matter how big we are if our intensity is in the toilet — which it is right now. We can’t be, as the saying goes, a mile wide but an inch deep.

As I’ve already covered, popular support for climate action and clean energy is pretty good right now. But big doesn’t necessarily mean passionate or deep. We are way down the list when it comes to priorities.

It is The Climate Movement that must change this situation with our passion coming from our values.

But there can also be a connection between growth and intensity that we must nurture: growth creates momentum, and momentum creates intensity. So once we stop underestimating and start talking we can grow our numbers. This can help create intensity and excitement within us, which can boost our efforts to ask or recruit others into The Climate Movement.

Once we start talking, once we break what I call “the Climate Talk Taboo,” we can get more people acting, we can get more people joining, and these things are feedstocks for intensity.

And whatduya know, there’s polling to back this up. As you can see below Yale/GM asked how many were volunteering their time to do political and policy stuff on climate change, and then asked how many would be willing to do so “if a person you like and respect asked you to.”

The graph above, created by me from the Yale/GM report, gives us a sense of both intensity and how many are willing to join The Climate Movement and engage in climate actions. If recruited by someone they like and respect here’s how much the numbers for each group go up:

• Conservative Republicans +9 (from 0 to 9)

• Moderate Republicans +14 (from 7 to 20)

• Moderate Democrats +32 (from 9 to 41)

• Liberal Democrats +43 (from 11 to 54)

• All +24 (from 7 to 31)

Talk about big and broad and active enough! This also provides another data point confirming our CM Potential of about 30%, given that the “All” category goes from 7 to 31% when asked. This is strong confirmation that reaching our goal of 5% in The Climate Movement by 2030, or 16 million in the US, is right there within our grasp.

So what are we waiting for? This is our time, our kairos climate moment.

Let us let the love we have for those we love, our strong sense of justice, the beauty of each step within them both, and the freedom that comes from creating our vision together ignite in us the passion needed to have The Climate Movement maximize its intensity and achieve its destiny.

Join us as we make the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful, our world more just, and our future come faster.

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.