Reality check: Winning? Being co-opted? Losing? Lost? A battle of stories within the climate justice movement – Sinan Eden

§1. Time is running up. We are going through biblical events, in the sense that disasters of such scale would have produced entire religions in the past. Now they take place monthly.

A large section of the society woke up in 2019 to the climate crisis. From then onward, we needed geometric growth in mass participation, in action impact and in number of organizers. We failed it. Now, the social reality and the climate reality in which we operate are scarier than ever.

There are climate uncertainties: Was this already enough emissions to cross 1.5ºC warming? How about 2ºC? At what degree exactly are the climate tipping points?

There are also social uncertainties: How will societies react to continued heating and unprecedented disasters?

If all future was certain, there would be no reason to fight. The story we tell ourselves and to the public about what is happening and what will happen, will influence what will happen. This means playing with ambiguity, uncertainty and complexity. It also means acknowledging that reality is volatile.

The story we will tell is also about emotions and how we deal with partial, temporary, insufficient, co-opted victory. All victories are exactly like that.

§2. There are now four strong competing narratives in the climate action universe.

§2.1. One is that everything is under control. This is the narrative that the European Commission feeds the big green NGOs who then feed the public. It goes like this: “The governments are doing their best. It’s not enough. They should increase ambition.”

The corresponding public action would be to maintain the status quo and delegate the problem to existing institutional frameworks. In plain terms, vote on elections, sign petitions and donate to NGOs so they lobby more.

This narrative supports itself by the European Green Deal and its auxiliary mechanisms, the new Australian government’s climate policies, Biden’s climate bill, the Irish government’s sectoral emissions targets with the overall goal of halving national emissions by 2030, and Colombia’s new president’s pledge to leave fossil fuels in the ground. The promoters of this narrative would also warn us of the failures of citizen action, for instance in South Korea where a newly elected president withdrew the Green New Deal.

§2.2. The second narrative starts with the premise that the root cause of climate crisis is capitalism. Therefore, any demand incorporated to government policies is considered as a defeat for the movement. Accordingly, the narrative is that the movement is being co-opted.

This narrative is supported by the factual evidence that there is no energy transition but in fact an energy expansion, globally. While there are more and more fossil fuel projects approved and the demand for all fossil fuels is increasing, governments are also giving incentives to extractivist projects for green growth.

Some of the promoters of this narrative would push for alternatives outside the system (cooperatives, permaculture, agroecology, etc.); others would ask the public to reject all institutional solutions and to engage in actions against the system as a whole and.

§2.3. A third narrative recognizes the capitalistic expansion plans and the climate victories. However, it frames victories as victories of the movement and as concessions by the governments.

This narrative is supported by three sets of observations. One, that progress happens even when governments and corporations push against it (like to tremendous growth of renewables during Trump administration in the US). Two, that we were heading towards around 4ºC warming but due to mass mobilizations we are now heading towards less than 2.5ºC warming. Three, that governments and corporations will always push back (like EU’s inclusion of fossil gas as green energy or the caveats in Biden’s climate plan that allow for more fossil fuels).

Accordingly, we are given hope to fight because we can win. And a win won’t look like a government agreeing with us but more like a government conceding to some version of our demands. This narrative calls for more radical, sustained, strategic action.

§2.4. A forth narrative is emerging. It addresses the strong emotions of fear and anxiety with a different angle. It can be summed up as: 1.5 is dead. The argument is: Governments told us in 2015 that we should keep warming below 1.5ºC. Then they did stuff for seven years, and now there is no viable pathway to remaining below 1.5ºC visible in the horizon. Governments know this, corporations know this; indeed, they brought us here deliberately.

Accordingly, we need to go all in. As the third narrative, this narrative calls for more radical, sustained, strategic action, but not so that we avoid climate catastrophe but because climate catastrophe is already here.

All the four narratives agree that each fraction of a degree of warming matters. It matters for millions of lives. They are all in favor of climate action. They disagree on “how far we should go” in our actions.

§3. There is a failure of imagination and an ambition deficit in all of the four narratives. They are all avoiding the truth about their own analyses and strategies.

To put it as clear as possible: 1.5ºC is dead and not dead. On one hand, even IPCC tells us that no geoengineering is necessary to keep warming below 1.5ºC by the end of the century. On the other hand, it is pretty clear by now that below 2ºC warming is incompatible with the capitalist mode of production. The system is not flexible enough. We tested it. It doesn’t stretch much.

All the four narratives are correct in context:

1^st narrative: Governments are doing their best for climate within capitalism.

2^nd narrative: Governments are making their climate action compatible with capitalism.

3^rd narrative: Governments are adapting capitalist status quo to movement’s demands.

4^th narrative: There is no plan to maintain capitalism and a livable planet simultaneously.

This contextualization is telling us a fifth story.

§4. The first narrative tells us to vote. The second tells us to build alternatives. The third and the fourth call for mass mobilization and civil disobedience until the governments concede.

They all tell us that there is nothing beyond capitalism. This is the failure of imagination.

They also tell us that the historical task of the climate justice movement is to pressure governments, not to dismantle capitalism. This is the ambition deficit.

§5. Now let’s leave hegemonic framework for a second. Dream with me.

Even the IPCC (a conservative institution that uses market mechanisms as its main policy tool in modeling) tells us that we could keep warming below 1.5ºC without a technofix. Also, IPCC tells us that that’s extremely unlikely given the current climate pledges.

Even within capitalism, it was possible to cut global emissions by 6% in 2020.

Imagine what we could do if we didn’t have any of the constraints of “the market” (meaning: corporate profits).

Imagine also what they are doing to us, the imminent civilizational collapse in front of our eyes.

I claim that 1ºC is not dead. We can cut emissions drastically starting today; we can dismantle the fossil fuel industry; we can keep warming below 1.5ºC; we can use direct carbon capture to reduce warming further; and we can be lucky to have a natural phenomenon that pushes warming even further down; and we can end up with 0.7ºC warming by 2100. This possibility exists. If we choose to not aim at it, it is important that we are aware of that choice.

§6. Now recall how you got to where you are. Someone told you not to bother to go vote, you did anyway. Someone said petitions are not necessary, you said “but we must raise our voice” and signed one. Someone said marches are not necessary now that you signed a petition, you said “but they are not listening” and marched. Someone said direct action was not necessary now that you marched, you said “marches are not enough” and took action. Someone said disruptive civil disobedience was too much of a public annoyance, you said “what was done so far was not enough” and participated in a blockade. At each step, someone was telling you that the next step was not necessary or not realistic. At each step, you got frustrated by how they were being a denialist or a conformist. Now I am telling you that we need a climate revolution that overthrows capitalism and that we – you and I and a hell lot of more people – need to organize that.

Nothing less will be sufficient.

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