Justice, Hope, and Climate Change

Hope & Justice Series Post #1.0 - Introduction

This Introductory post is the first in an extensive series on Hope & Justice.

Most social movements are moral movements. Bad stuff must be stopped. A wrong needs to be set right. The world can be made better. Our hearts yearn for this because we have an innate sense that this is how the world should be. These desires, these demands, are why moral movements exist.

Much of the power we have as the Climate Movement to achieve our vision, purpose and Major Goal comes from our being a moral movement, which in turn is what we need to be to draw into our cause the numbers we must have to push the other three Catalytic Sources of Transformation to play their parts. In other words, our being a moral movement makes everything else possible. We cannot be the hope we’ve been waiting for if we aren’t a moral movement. For the Catalytic-4 to be fighters for justice we need our movement to be a moral one.

What makes us a moral movement? It starts with what we know in our gut: climate change is wrong and needs to be made right. That is why we exist.

The Climate Movement exists to achieve justice.

In other words, we exist to achieve justice.

Justice is one of our Ten Movement Values, along with love, beauty, freedom, creativity, wisdom, pragmatism, non-violence, sustainability, and success.

While we need all of our Ten Movement Values to inspire and guide us, while they are all valuable to us and worth striving for, it is striving for justice that makes us a moral movement, which gives us much of our power. The other nine are what we need to achieve justice. Take away justice and we won’t exist, and if we don’t exist then the other nine won’t have a movement to inspire and guide.

We are a moral movement on every one of our Olympian Fields of Action because we are seeking justice as Climate Action Athletes wherever and however we strive to perform our best.

Overcoming climate change and creating prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything, properly achieved, creates justice. Achieving justice brings about hope, because human beings long to live in a just world, a world that feels right, a healthy, safe world filled with opportunities for all, a world where our potential as individuals, as communities, as a society, as the world, is unfettered towards its full flowering, a world that is beautiful. As we move towards justice we become more hopeful precisely because it is what we hope for. In achieving justice we are hope-makers and beauty-creators and future-makers.

Justice and hope are a virtuous circle. The thirst, the desire, the longing for justice creates justice; justice creates hope; justice from hope creates more hope; such hope creates even more hope, which inspires us to achieve even more justice. Hope from justice; justice from hope.

Some mistakenly want the pursuit of justice to be drained of desire, longing, and passion, as if they automatically lead to an irrational frenzy where the “cure” is as bad as, or even worse than, the disease. We must reject such either/or thinking.

As a movement our job is to channel our deep passion for justice into achieving it. Our passion, sustained by our love, is an integral part of overcoming climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances the wellbeing of everyone and everything as we make our future come faster and our world more beautiful. This is why we, the Climate Movement, exist. This is why justice is at the heart of who we are. Without our passion for justice we will not achieve our vision, purpose, and Major Goal. For us, passion and purpose are inextricably bound, because our purpose is just and it is what our heart desires.

Our passion for justice fuels our desire, our demand, for justice now. Right away. As a famous saying Dr. King quotes puts it, justice delayed is justice denied.¹ We must make our future come faster by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.

For us to fulfill our calling, our passion must be combined with our Movement Values and the other essential characteristics of our Movement.

As will be discussed extensively in the Olympian Fields of Action Series, since climate change calls for speed, scale, and longevity, to meet this challenge the Climate Movement must be:

1. big and broad enough

2. passionate enough

3. deep enough

4. dynamic enough

5. strategic enough

6. together enough, and

7. long enough.

Justice is at the heart of these seven essential characteristics, these seven movement imperatives and goals. We can’t become any of them, we can’t achieve any of them unless we are working for justice. And if we don’t become them, we can’t play our indispensable role. Then climate change won’t be overcome.

Without our striving for justice there isn’t, there won’t be, a Climate Movement.

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

1. Dr. Martin Luther King referenced this famous saying in his Letter From Birmingham Jail, which is probably where I first read it. (That’s where my mind goes whenever I hear it.) The concept has been articulated variously in writing for over 1,500 years.