Inspiration for the Climate Movement from the Vermont 350.org Road Trip

• Vermont 350.org organizers went on a road trip around the state for a Listening Tour on MLK weekend 2011. Organizers visited 8 towns and talked with people about how we can build Vermont’s Climate Movement. I participated in a few stops and here are some of the ideas that inspired me.

1. The Climate Movement is happenin’. Lots of people are working on Climate in diverse ways. Here are some upcoming actions.

The Vermont Climate Day of Action on February 3rd is an important day for Vermont’ Climate Movement. A big turnout of voters will impress legislators. Please organize a carpool with your friends!

The Vermont Chapter of the Citizen’s Climate Lobby is meeting on Feb 26 to learn how to influence politicians.

2. Vermont is ready to lead the US in solving the Climate Crisis. Vermont should “go on the offensive” and take active leadership position that guides the US by positive example. We have a progressive environmental community. Vermont can lead the nation by taking the first steps, showing the way and getting off our butts first.

We should support Vermont’s new governor. Governor Peter Shumlin said he wanted to see solar panels on the top of every Vermont roof. He dreamed big dreams in the 2010 speech to the VECAN conference. He spoke passionately that Vermont should take the lead on climate! After Vermont pulls off a decade of great climate leadership, Shumlin could be the climate movement’s national leader. We should encourage him, aid and uplift him in working on our shared goal of a carbon-free society. Let’s support our allies who are working within the system!

I like the idea of a “Citizen’s Climate Cabinet” to support Shumlin in making positive steps on climate. We would offer ideas and solutions and help where stuff isn’t legislate-able, like lifestyle choices.

Still, Climate Activists need to push gov’t to do the right things that sometimes aren’t politically popular. For example, we want Carbon Taxes! Let’s start small with a penny at Vermont’s gas pump. We want taxes on the things that hurt us, like cigarettes or fossil fuel. The Climate Movement needs to openly endorse and publicly pressure for carbon taxes. Check out the Carbon Tax Center for more info.

3. The Climate Movement should make “the Big Ask”: we want a Carbon-Neutral Great Society. We want our gov’t and society to respond to the Climate Crisis at the scale of the problem.

We need Carbon-Neutral Great Society, where the government and civil society work together to keep humanity alive by aggressively creating a post-carbon world. Let’s not shuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic, let’s steer around the iceberg!

Activists should understand our function. Activists are advocates, the advanced guard. We are the ones who get to ask for big things and dream the “impossible” dream. We push the boundary of what’s possible by our vision.

And so, we ask for carbon taxes. We demand carbon-neutral public transport. We insist Exxon Mobil to pay through the nose when they pollute our sky. We absolutely will save the planet. We solve the climate crisis! We make bike lanes in every town! We encourage the Vermont state gov’t to pass no idling laws, make hemp legal and pass a gasoline tax! Yes!

4. “Solutions to the scale of the problem”. This powerful phrase tells what is actually required. The scale of the Climate Crisis is huge, and requires huge solutions. We need a massive public effort to create a carbon neutral world.

And so we need to work with government. All our small scale private actions are great, but we need government too. The Climate Crisis is really falls under the government’s job description: gov’t job is the stuff too big for individual citizens.

5. The Climate Movement has not told the truth that runaway climate change will cause “The End of The World.” And so people are naturally unwilling to make the difficult changes needed to the scale of the problem. We need to show them the scale of the problem: humanity’s extinction.

People are naturally resistant to make big inconvenient changes to “the inconvenient truth.” They need to see that the Climate Crisis is Really Big, a Total Game Changer, a Planetary Extinction Spasm, the Death of Everything We Know and Love. Runaway Climate Change means the death of Everything. We have been under scaring the children, insufficiently describing the Catastrophic. Bill McKibben politely demurs when describing the future of runaway climate change saying “the future will be unworkable” or “difficult beyond imagination”. Dr. James Hansen is accurate saying “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that one which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that C02 will need to be reduced from it’s current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.”

That’s true. Yet it understates the case by the calm politeness of the language. Runaway climate change means humanity’s extinction, and we need to fight against The Stupid Future with all the strength we can muster. We have a right to live in a world that will live into the future. We need a Climate Revolution to save the planet.

6. The Climate Movement needs to get better at networking on the web.

We need a web-platform to help us work together across the distances of the Green Mountains. For example, did you know about the incredibly beautiful and visionary effort to create Green Island in Bellow’s Falls? They want to turn the industrial wasteland of an island on the Connecticut River into hub for creating a sustainable world. (Cue the applause!) I didn’t know of this effort until meeting those folks on the road trip, and now I want to help them anyway I can.

We need an internet platform that links Vermont’s many climate action groups and helps us work and think together.

7. Climate activists should gather more because it is useful and encouraging. It is worth-the-carbon to drive to get together. Why? Climate activists are islands in a societal sea of ignorance or denial. Our extreme concern about the Climate Crisis is sane, not our own private madness. Our resolve strengthens when we experience that we’re not alone. So it’s important to get together and preach to the choir! And we sing louder when surrounded by a choir.

Further, here is a specialized language for all in-depth topics. The language of climate change includes ice sheets, carbon, 4% temperature increase, sea level, Cancun, etc. We need to meet and speak our climate language.

In summary, Vermont’s Climate Movement is diverse and diffused but alive and kicking. We need to weave ourselves together to win this. As our hero MLK said, “We are tied together in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.” May it be so.