Monday’s post was my last thought on where enviros should go next after Copenhagen’s failure. Grist ’s Jonathan Hiskes reports on what Enviro leaders are thinking post-Copenhagen:
In the month since then, I’ve been trying to find out how the outcome at Copenhagen changed the U.S. climate movement. Whether advocates thought it was a complete failure or just a disappointingly small step, surely it marked a turning point. So what are the big goals now? How will strategy be different from here on out? What are the next moves?
Hiskes found that leaders of the bigger Enviro groups are gearing up to take on Congress. And McKibbin?
350.org cofounder Bill McKibben made a similar point: the focus on Congress is premature. “One of the reasons why it’s so hard in Congress is because they don’t feel any particular pressure,” he said. “There are lots and lots and lots of groups lobbying Congress. But Congress members are good at telling whether there’s anything behind that lobbying or not. I think we have to figure out how to put some pressure behind that lobbying. And the easiest way to do that is movement building.”
“Easiest” is not a word I would ever associate with movement building.
Hiskes asked McKibben, given that all the work around Copenhagen didn’t seem to have much effect,
So what’s the new plan?“I don’t know,” he said. “We threw up a Hail Mary pass and nobody caught it.”…
Next month, 350.org’s core team will gather in Vermont for a strategic retreat.
But some folks are calling for a less DC-centered approach:
Alex Steffen, editor of Worldchanging and an evangelist for what he calls bright green urbanism, offers a different diagnosis. “The COP [Conference of the Parties, or U.N. treaty] process is at best stalled for a few years,” he said. “Given what’s just happened with the U.S. Senate, and the Supreme Court basically allowing open bribery, I see zero chance of a meaningful climate bill coming from the Senate. I think there will be something, but it will be at a level of watered-down-ness that it just won’t matter.”While he’s pessimistic about the national and international efforts, Steffen sees great hope and potential on the local level. He points to a growing number of people who are clued-in on sustainability but who don’t consider themselves activists or environmentalists—people working and volunteering in architecture, design, planning, community development, housing, building, local energy, local food, and alternative transportation.
Such citizens are “reconverging on the city as the appropriate battleground for action,” Steffen said. “I think we’re going to see cities emerge as the fulcrum point for change. If we can change cities profoundly, we may have a shot at tackling climate change.”
It’ll be interesting to see how all this shakes out in the next few months.
