A FUNny feeling about the climate movement

2009 was supposed to be the year of climate action.

Last February, after the inspiring election of Barack Obama and an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, I could taste success. I knew in my heart of hearts that this would be the year that we’d get lasting climate and clean energy legislation. This would be the year that the world’s elected leaders would come to an international climate agreement. This would be the year that we took a global U-turn toward a more sustainable and safe planet.

And I wanted to be a part of it.

So, I marched confidently into the Cook Commons office and declared my intention of taking the fall semester off to be a part of the coming clean energy revolution. No longer would I hear the stories of Midd-kids-past in the halls of Hillcrest or in Le Chateau on Sunday nights. Instead, I would be in the heat of battle on Capitol Hill, smiting fossil fuel lobbyists and profiteering politicians with the moral arguments of the world’s youth. This was my time to shine.

What a difference a year makes.

I did take a semester off, and I do like to think that I did my fair share of smiting as a part of my work with the 1Sky Campaign, but it has become clear to me that 2009 is not the be-all, end-all I imagined last winter. Congress did not conform to my schedule.

Instead, we did not meet the challenge that 2009 posed us. Yes, we made massive leaps toward the creating of an equitable and sustainable clean energy economy —investing billions in clean energy jobs and renewables and efficiency through the stimulus bill, halting the construction of new coal-fired power plants nation- and worldwide, agreeing in principle to a target maximum of two degrees Celsius temperature rise above pre-industrial levels at the G8 meeting in Italy. But do we have a price on carbon in the United States? No. Do we have a framework for a global deal that will safeguard the survival of all countries and peoples? No. Is that OK? No. Do we have to make the best of a crappy situation? Sure.

The other night I was having dinner with a friend (in fact, a Middlebury parent) whose advice I value very much. She tried to be as honest and forthcoming as possible with me, as our elders tend to, and she laid out a very realistic scenario of the future to me. She said, “Are we going to get a climate bill out of Congress in the next year or so? Yeah. Are we going to get some sort of deal out of Copenhagen or in the following year? Yup. But are these political efforts going to be aggressive enough to answer the science? No, so we’ve got a lot of work to do.” And she’s right. The deals on the table won’t be enough to counter the severity of the latest climate science and observations coming from the world’s most vulnerable communities. And that’s scary.

But I don’t think the correct response to this crummy scenario is to panic, to retreat to the hills and live in a bicycle-powered shack eating vegan brownies and writing shoddy I-told-you-so memoirs. Instead, what my friend said is exactly right — we’ve got a lot of work to do.

We must continue to build our climate “movement,” our clean energy call to arms, our blob of committed citizens. And we can’t continue to rely on the tactics of yesterday — the canvassing, the picketing, and the angry letter-to-the editor writing. We can’t even rely on the tactics of today — tweeting, blogging, and flash-mobbing. We’ve got to use the tactics of tomorrow, the tactics that our Middlebury colleagues at 350.org implemented this past month to organize the largest day of political action in the history of the world.

We must have so much freaking fun that no one wants to be left behind.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I really think that the only way we can meet the climate challenge through political action, business ingenuity or sheer willpower is to have a flipping blast. Think about the transformative challenges of the past few centuries. How did the Fathers of the American Revolution, those staid gentlemen of yore, overthrow the oppressive rule of the British? By dressing up in costume and tampering with people’s stuff on boats! Who managed to put a man on the moon? A bunch of computer dorks in hipster glasses and skinny ties essentially geeking out on goofy programming software all the time until they figured something out (sound familiar, GIS students?). My favorite story that I’ve heard from the 350 Day of Climate Action was from a man in Vancouver, Canada, who wrote that the action he was a part of there was one of those rare occurrences that compelled him to hug strangers in public.

Do you remember the feeling on campus last November the night Barack Obama was elected? Do you remember how damn elated the place felt? If we can harness that feeling of positive optimism, that sense of opportunity and sheer glee –— we’ll be able to meet this climate challenge head on. We’ll be invincible.

I’m heading to Copenhagen in a few weeks for the UN climate negotiations and the part I’m most excited for is any chance for an encounter with Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a long time foe of clean energy and climate action. I want to show him how much fun the hundreds of young people are having at the negotiations ­— lobbying their elected officials and performing daily actions directed at the press, but more importantly, just having a freaking blast hanging out with each other. And then I want to invite him to grab a beer with us, and just chill. If we’re having enough fun, he’ll come along. And he’ll be one of us.

Maybe I’m being unrealistic. Maybe fun isn’t a strong enough force to transform the global economy — I must say I still haven’t fleshed out this hypothesis enough. But I’ve tried a whole host of other tactics and I’ve yet to see any of them be too successful. At least this one involves beer.