The Climate Movement & Political Action in the United States in Our 250th Year
Climate Movement Values: Climate Patriotism Creates Climate Freedom
It’s Time to Make Our Stand
For those of us in the United States, as we celebrate the 250th Anniversary of our country today in the midst of grave threats to our democracy from within, it is well past time for us to recognize that climate change is a great cause of freedom. It is time for us to get political and join forces with allies to defeat our political opponents who are working hard to deny us our freedom. It is time to create broad-based coalitions to enact and implement policies that achieve speed and scale of transformation and free us from climate consequences. It is well past time for us to understand our own power and utilize our power to the fullest.
It is time to make our stand. It is time to be climate patriots together.
Climate Action — A Great Cause of Freedom
Overcoming climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything is a great cause of freedom — in my opinion the greatest cause of freedom in this Century. For every person on this planet climate action is a true act of patriotism.
Climate action helps free us from:
climate impacts harming billions and killing millions;
climate consequences creating national security “threat multipliers” around the world, helping lead to conflicts and even wars;
displacement of millions of climate refugees, forced to flee their homes, with many pushed into other countries;
air pollution and its 6.7 million deaths a year;
dependence from fossil dictators and despots;
corruption of politics by the fossils.
Climate action creates:
freedom from the fossils via abundant, cheap, locally-grown clean energy to power our lives;
freedom to grow our own electricity and dump our dependence on state-sanctioned centralized monopolies;
good-paying local jobs, creating economic freedom for families and individuals;
economic freedom for your communities by keeping local dollars in local economies;
freedom from poverty via prosperous sustainability;
freedom from the injustice of climate impacts;
freedom via the national security and domestic tranquility created by (1) lessening and eliminating climate impacts and (2) the positive outcomes of climate solutions.
All of this together creates climate freedom.
For citizens of every nation, creating climate freedom is to love one’s country and overcome a grave threat to the world. As such, patriotism and climate action are not complements. They’re the same thing. Climate action is patriotism. And climate patriotism spreads freedom all over the world.
Trump 2.0 Stealing Energy From Climate Action
Unfortunately, around the world authoritarianism and wars and economic challenges have sapped the energy and talent of those who could be on their Olympian Fields of Climate Action creating climate freedom.
In the US we have been rocked back on our heels by inflation, i.e., “Trumpflation.” “Affordability” has become a political flashpoint. Nearly 75% of Americans say their income can’t keep up with price increases on food, health care, and other essentials.
Trump 2.0 and all of their egregious corruption, crimes, cruelty, and proto-authoritarianism have sucked the air out of the room, as was their intent.
All of this has stolen energy from The Climate Movement and Climate Action Supporters.
Guess what? Trump et al have power to do this because Trump was elected. MAGA Republicans control Congress because they were elected.
Gee wiz. Elected politicians have power because they are elected. Who knew?
So it’s time to get serious about power. It’s time to get political. Some like the Sunrise Movement have already been there. Time for the rest of us in The Climate Movement to find our way towards political engagement via our three forms of power, or P3: moral power, people power, and staying power.
Time to apply our P3 to the political arena.
Two Kinds of Political For Us
For Climate Movement Artist-Athletes, we can think of “political” stuff in two basic categories: electoral-political and policy-political.
As the name implies, electoral-political has to do with elections.
Policy-political is what politicians (and their political appointees) do once they are elected: pass new laws or amend old ones; fund the government with taxpayer money, including how much programs and agencies receive; enforce the law; promulgate new regulations or modify old ones, and; enforce such regulations.
Many folks don’t differentiate these two. For them, it’s all politics.
For us in The Climate Movement, we’re about both.
Some of you might disagree — we’re not about electoral politics.
You may not like it, but we have to be. Speed and scale demand it. The strategic significance of The Climate Movement is to push the other three Catalytic Sources of Transformation, the other three of The Catalytic-4, to play their roles; and the fourth Catalytic Source is Governments-and-Markets. We must push governments, and governments must push markets. Pushing governments involves electoral politics.
As I’ve said many times, no one’s in charge of The Climate Movement. No one can make you be electoral-political if you don’t want to be. But if many of us don’t sully our hands in electoral politics we won’t overcome climate change.
» Electoral-Political
Right now Trump has made things pretty simple for us in this year’s mid-terms: defeat all politicians who have aided and abetted Trump 2.0. In other words, defeat all Republicans in Congress.
But we have to do more than that. We must push the Democrats, or elect Independents or leaders from other political parties who are climate champions. Our allegiance is not to any political party. Our allegiance is to our vision and those we love, to our great cause of freedom.
The only way we’re going to get change at the pace and size we need is by electing champions and defeating foes and fair weather friends. Climate change ain’t fair weather. So fair weather friends are out.
We must not only work to defeat all Republicans. We must also defeat all fossil-Democrats and fair-weather Democrats and elect champions in their stead, Democrats or otherwise.
These fair-weather folks may say to us when their election rolls around that they’ve changed their tune, they’ve seen the light. But how can we trust them to stay strong when they’ve already shown they will cave, or won’t do what’s needed?
We can’t. They’re out.
To achieve these political objectives using our moral power, people power, and staying power, we must form electoral alliances.
Electoral-political engagement means we must join forces with those who are:
Trump doesn’t care about affordability or that everybody has a fair chance. He’s against real democracy, against real equality and human dignity.
Instead, he’s a breeder of corruption. He’s on the side of corporate oligarchs and greedy billionaires. He’s working hard to rig our politics and our economy. He traffics in racism. And, of course, he’s the worst political leader on climate change the world has ever seen.
In short, Trump — and those who do his bidding and support his efforts — are for what we and our allies are against and against what we’re for. He’s the antithesis of true freedom, including climate freedom.
Thus, it is not that we are aligning with those For and Against what’s listed above as some sort of political marriage of convenience, as if opposition to Trump et al is the only thing we have in common. No.
We are aligned because of our Ten Movement Values compel us to be: love, justice, beauty, freedom, creativity, wisdom, pragmatism, non-violence, sustainability, and success.
And you know what? Trump wants to corrupt and poison these too. We mustn’t let him. Not because we’re against him — let’s not make this all about him! Geez.
Rather, we mustn’t let him corrupt and steal our values because we’re for us, all of us, all of humanity and every living creature. It’s because of who we are. We can’t let Trump steal who we are.
We can’t let Trump steal who we are.
You see, we are for overcoming climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything — including our opponents. That’s climate freedom. That’s climate patriotism.
One thing we must be on constant alert for is the tendency to turn political opponents into enemies. As I’ve discussed before, we don’t have enemies. Our supreme value of love prevents this. We must work hard to defeat our political opponents. But they are not our enemies. We must free ourselves from all efforts to create enemies, for doing so makes us less than who we are, makes us less free.
» Policy-Political
Our second form of political is policy-political. Some folks in policy-circles, including non-partisan policy advocates, may object and say they aren’t doing politics. What they mean is they aren’t doing electoral-politics. For them, policy engagement, including lobbying, isn’t “political.” Well, as I said, for most folks it is.
For us to be policy-political means getting climate action policies enacted and enforced. The former involves engaging both the Legislative and Executive Branches. The latter involves primarily the Executive Branch. This is a Field of Action where our values of pragmatism and wisdom and creativity and freedom come to the fore, even as they are balanced by our values of love and justice.
Here we must form alliances as well, just as we do in electoral-politics. But such alliances can look quite different. Indeed, they can include MAGA voters and elected Republicans and fossil and fair-weather Democrats — our electoral-political opposition! Our opponents aren’t enemies, they are potential allies.
In a future post I will explore polling that shows the potential we have to form alliances with even the most conservative Republicans. And not just alliances. These folks can and should become a part of us, part of The Climate Movement.
Remember: no one’s in charge of The Climate Movement. No one has the authority to say who’s in and who’s out.
I’ve suggested a definition, but it’s just a suggestion: Climate Movement Artist-Athletes are those who have made a commitment to collective action over time to overcome climate change. That’s it. My hope is that many will take my Climate Movement Promise. But folks don’t have to to be a part of The Climate Movement.
Another one of my hopes is that many of our electoral-political opponents will become a part of The Climate Movement and help us achieve policy-political victories!
Furthermore, I also hope that those who don’t consider themselves a part of our Movement but want the co-benefits or good stuff of climate action — cheap, clean, locally-grown energy, good paying jobs, clean air, revitalizing rural America, etc, etc — will create alliances with us to achieve the policy objectives we share.
We Must Maintain Our Identity & Voice
Will these other challenges capturing attention right now drown out our call for climate action? Will they even have Climate Movement Artist-Athletes suspending or lessening their climate efforts?
What we must learn to do is maintain our climate focus and climate action even as we join forces with those concerned with these other challenges. We must keep our climate identity and our climate voice front and center as we come alongside those striving to create a better world by addressing other pressing challenges.
If we don’t, then who will?
What we want is Climate-Action-Plus, not Minus-Climate-Action. Plus, not minus. Both/And, not Either/Or.
For Freedom’s Sake, a Future Filled With Freedom
For those of us in The Climate Movement, freedom is one of our Ten Movement Values. It is valuable in and of itself. It is self-justifying. If someone asks you, “Why are you doing this climate stuff?” or “Why are you doing this political stuff?”, your answer could simply be: “I’m doing it for freedom.”
‘Nuff said.
We are choosing to use our moral power, people power, and staying power through electoral-politics and policy-politics to set others free.
With our P3 we set others free.
And what is freedom?
Freedom isn’t doing whatever the hell we want. That’s a childish understanding of freedom.
Nor is freedom simply the absence of coercion. The fullness of freedom isn’t an absence. It’s a presence.
Freedom is choosing rightly to create a better world, a world where everyone can become what they were created to be, the fullness of freedom. As I said in my post on freedom as a Climate Movement value:
Each one of us was created to be free, and we aren’t all free until all of us are free, because the fullness of freedom can only occur in a just and beautiful world. Injustice makes all of us less free. Ugliness makes all of us less free. Hatred and prejudice and racism make all of us less free. Poverty makes all of us less free. The extinction of species makes all of us less free. Climate consequences — which are connected to all these others — make all of us less free.
The Climate Movement is a freedom movement. When we keep on choosing to overcome climate change we are striving into the fullness of freedom where every step is filled with love, every step creates justice, every step creates beauty, every step heals the world.
Climate patriotism creates freedom. With climate patriotism, love of country and wanting the best for the entire world are the same thing. For freedom’s sake we are creating a future filled with freedom.
So on this 250th year of the birth of the United States of America, as those of us in the USA look back on the struggle for freedom in our nation’s history, it must push our imaginations forward in time.
What will our children and generations yet to come say about us? What will they think of us 250 years from now? Did we use our power for good? Did we make our stand in this great cause of climate freedom?
If we become our destiny, if we step forward into the future we were born to create, if we join this great cause of freedom, then rather than shame there will be pride. Rather than anger there will be joy and gratitude. Rather than sorrow there will be celebration.
That’s our future. Time to get busy. Join us!
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