{"id":281,"date":"2020-11-29T08:55:01","date_gmt":"2020-11-29T08:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=128291"},"modified":"2020-11-29T08:55:01","modified_gmt":"2020-11-29T08:55:01","slug":"learning-how-to-talk-what-climate-activists-must-do-in-the-biden-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/11\/29\/learning-how-to-talk-what-climate-activists-must-do-in-the-biden-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning how to talk: What climate activists must do in the Biden era"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story<\/a> was originally published by Yale E360<\/a> and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk<\/a> collaboration.<\/em><\/p>\n

For four years the country has been governed by the GOP and only one guy has gotten to talk \u2014 disagree with him and you became a non-person.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not Joe Biden\u2019s style, and it\u2019s not in the Democratic Party\u2019s cellular structure. Indeed, we\u2019re only a few days in to the new world, and there\u2019s already considerable talking underway. Shouting even. Figuring out how to handle it \u2014 how to make it constructive instead of destructive \u2014 is going to be a big part of making the next four years as productive as they can be. And since we desperately need them to be effective on climate \u2014 and on racial justice, on health care, on immigration \u2014 we better learn how to talk.<\/p>\n

One meta-argument is underway: \u201cleft\u201d versus \u201ccenter,\u201d personified as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez versus some Congresspeople you\u2019ve vaguely heard of from purplish districts who don\u2019t like anyone talking about socialism. But while that splashy fight is drawing the attention of pundits, there\u2019s another subtler communications question that has to get worked out: How do different parts of the Democratic coalition get across the things that really matter to them, like climate change, in a way that makes the point crystal clear, but doesn\u2019t cut off the chance of future dialogue?<\/p>\n

This is inherently hard, because activists are deeply invested in the issues they work on \u2014 often they\u2019re volunteers, always they\u2019re passionate. As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor pointed out in a wise essay<\/a> this week, the pent-up demand for change is almost beyond imagining. Therefore, the urge, when frustrated, to stalk away from your partner in a holy rage will always be there. But those of us who care deeply about climate are married to the Biden administration for at least the next four years \u2014 they know it, we know it. It\u2019s not going to be a storybook relationship, but it can be more, rather than less, successful.<\/p>\n

One useful lesson from marriage is that when there are things you really care about, you have to have a way of getting that across. Here\u2019s the climate example of the week: The Biden transition team signaled in Politico<\/a> last weekend that they were thinking of returning Ernest Moniz to his Obama-era position atop the Department of Energy. For most Americans watching from the sidelines, this won\u2019t even rise to the level where they\u2019d notice; Moniz seems notable only for a haircut that makes him look like an extra from \u201cHamilton.\u201d But for those of us engaged every day in this work, it\u2019s an ominous sign: Moniz represents an old approach to our energy dilemmas, one that\u2019s rooted in the use of natural gas and resistant to the all-in approach on renewables that activists (and scientists) recommend.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Evan Weber, political director of the Sunrise Movement \u2014 the youth-led movement that brought us the Green New Deal \u2014 immediately tweeted out<\/a>: \u201cNo one with fossil fuel ties belongs in Biden\u2019s cabinet \u2026 Moniz\u2019s archaic energy views would build us a bridge to climate catastrophe.\u201d That\u2019s a blunt but not overbearing warning \u2014 it\u2019s different from saying, \u201cSo-and-so must be Energy Secretary.\u201d There are, realistically, a couple hundred people who could do the job, and so this preserves plenty of maneuvering room for the transition team.<\/p>\n

It also hints at the main reasons why this kind of move would be a troubling one for Biden to make. First, it\u2019s a bad idea on policy grounds. Moniz is indeed archaic \u2014 technology has changed incredibly fast since the start of his term at DOE in the second Obama administration. Solar and wind power have seen costs fall on the order of 90 percent, which means we don\u2019t actually need the natural gas \u201cbridge\u201d he sold the Obama administration on; the carbon capture projects he subsidized at DOE were vastly uneconomic. Second, it\u2019s a bad idea optically \u2014 he\u2019s taken lots of money to serve on the boards of various fossil fuel concerns, most notably the Southern Company. His friends will surely argue that all that cash has not affected his views, and perhaps they\u2019re right \u2014 but it\u2019s surely altered how the rest of us perceive him. At various points in the next four years, the Biden administration is going to have to give us bad news on the climate and energy front \u2014 the lack of a Senate majority almost guarantees that. It\u2019s going to need a messenger who people have reason to trust, and Moniz isn\u2019t it.<\/p>\n

Demonstrators call for a Green New Deal at a \u201cFire Drill Friday\u201d protest in Washington, D.C.<\/span> John Lamparski \/ Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

Those signals should be enough for a savvy transition team that is, one hopes, trying to keep Biden out of unnecessary battles, since there will clearly be more than enough trouble he can\u2019t avoid. But the signal also comes from people who earned the right to be heard: The Sunrise Movement, in the wake of a tough primary loss for their guy Bernie Sanders, didn\u2019t walk away. They partnered effectively with the Biden campaign, helping reach a shared policy platform and then delivering millions of phone-banking calls. They are, in other words, a power \u2014 probably the most important electoral force in the environmental movement at this point.<\/p>\n

Moniz\u2019s backers, by contrast, come largely from a bloc of pretty centrist environmental think tanks with no mass following at all, and from the building trades unions who applaud his support for constructing lots of really big and expensive stuff, especially if it has to do with natural gas. Given that the North America\u2019s Building Trades Unions didn\u2019t endorse Biden until October 23<\/a> and that they\u2019d been backing Trump from the first day of his new administration \u2014 well, it\u2019s politically pretty clear that you have to dance with the one that brung you. Which is not to say you hang the building trades out to dry: Biden\u2019s call for unity is real and important, and any plan for the future needs to be very focused on making sure that people currently building oil pipelines have something else to build instead.<\/p>\n

In fact, the ability to figure out a \u201cjust transition\u201d is crucial to making progress at the speed we need to go \u2014 and it\u2019s entirely possible that a guy from Scranton, with deep ties to Rust Belt unionism, is better positioned to do precisely this than most people in the environmental movement. It\u2019s a place where he should be given some room to operate, especially since he\u2019s been willing to say the essential thing out loud: that we must transition away from the oil industry. Those words in the last debate were powerful, and they did not doom him \u2014 not in Pennsylvania or Colorado or in other places with lots of fossil fuel jobs. He\u2019s earned some credibility.<\/p>\n

The environmental movement will win any fight over Moniz, I imagine, but it won\u2019t win every fight. Biden doesn\u2019t have much margin \u2014 even if the Democrats somehow win both Georgia Senate seats and hence take control of a tied Senate, West Virginia\u2019s Joe Manchin has said he won\u2019t vote to end the filibuster \u2014 nor, likely, for anything that looks like a sweeping Green New Deal. And that\u2019s a bitter shame, because it\u2019s all desperately needed. But you live with the political reality you have while you try to build the political reality you need, and simply denouncing the Dems won\u2019t get you any closer to the latter, emotionally satisfying as it may be. Waging important fights while not damaging the Biden presidency, and Democratic prospects in the midterms, and the next presidential election will be incredibly hard \u2014 but since climate legislation (and support for all other progressive legislation) depends on just that, we better figure out how.<\/p>\n

I have a few memories of the last time we were in this position, when Barack Obama was elected in 2008. It was a very different scene, of course: Occupy Wall Street hadn\u2019t happened, Black Lives Matter had yet to be born, Bernie Sanders hadn\u2019t yet run, and AOC had just turned old enough to vote, so there was less of a progressive movement, and much less of a climate movement. The Obama administration was in the midst of the headlong expansion of the oil and gas industry that would eventually make America the biggest hydrocarbon producer on the planet. Climate activists knew what was happening was wrong, but we debated long and hard about whether to take on the Keystone XL Pipeline because we also knew that it meant challenging a president popular with Democrats, the first African American president.<\/p>\n

So when we went to work we didn\u2019t attack him \u2014 instead we explained that we were giving Obama the room to do what he\u2019d said he wanted to do. When 1,254 went to jail after anti-fossil-fuel demonstrations in D.C. at the start of that campaign in 2011, most were wearing Obama buttons, because that\u2019s what we\u2019d asked them to do. A few months later, when we surrounded the White House \u2014 people five-deep around a mile-and-a-half perimeter \u2014 we said he might want to think of it not as a house arrest, but as a group hug. I\u2019m not na\u00efve \u2014 I know Obama didn\u2019t really want protesters forcing his hand on what he thought was a secondary issue. (He was wrong about that, by the way \u2014 Keystone XL turned out to be a critical battle, demonstrating that it was possible to stand up to Big Oil, and hence helping spur crusades against every big new infrastructure project). But certainly it was better \u2014 and more tactically effective \u2014 to take him on in the spirit of unity, not the spirit of division.<\/p>\n

Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally in 2017 as they protest President Donald Trump\u2019s executive orders advancing their construction.<\/span> Saul Loeb \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

Another way to keep the mood from turning impossibly bitter is to remember that Washington isn\u2019t all that counts. In the climate fight, for instance, it\u2019s clear that action from Wall Street is crucial too \u2014 the divestment push, now at $15 trillion in endowments and portfolios, has made a huge difference, as has the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition, which has started convincing financial institutions to ditch fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

And here the Biden administration can provide massive help: Mitch McConnell can\u2019t stop the Treasury Department, the SEC, and the Fed from forcing banks to take climate risk seriously. People in the right positions who understand that risk, like Elizabeth Warren and former Federal Reserve Board member Sarah Bloom Raskin, will make that fight much easier by, say, requiring companies to disclose their climate risk, and by turning institutions like the Export-Import Bank away from fossil fuels. When Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, started down this path five years ago, it sent tremors through the fossil fuel financial complex, and those would be seismic if they came from Wall Street, not just the City of London. It\u2019s possible, in fact, that these could turn out to be the most important climate actions a Biden administration will ever take.<\/p>\n

This will always, inevitably, be a hard marriage. Denied action for so long, and in need of such deep change, the broad progressive movement will rightly demand a lot. Biden will have to deliver all he can. And we will need to figure out a way to keep it from turning into an ugly split that benefits no one.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: Bill McKibben is a member of Grist\u2019s Board of Directors.<\/em><\/p>\n