In 1991, Strong Island trio, De La Soul dropped their second album on wax, “De La Soul is Dead.” Writer, Jeffery Harvey characterized the group’s sophomore offering as, “a kamikaze mission of salvation through sabotage,” noting that the group embarked on a high-wire act of destruction and deconstruction that included a sonic castigation of the corporate takeover of the hip hop brand that resulted in more funding and investment for hedonistic and misogynist manifestations that largely only exacerbated the “nihilism in the streets.” De La Soul believed there was only one plausible pathway – the death of its previous brand they deemed too vacuous and grossly misaligned with a more nuanced worldview.
The U.S. climate “movement,” unlike De La, seems to lack the foresight and awareness of its demise. And without immediate interventions, this lack of awareness could result in the real deaths of millions of people globally.
The 2024 election cycle may have well served the lethal blow to a U.S. climate “movement” that’s been spinning to its nadir in a death knell of ineffectiveness and intransigence. This may not necessarily be the worst thing in the world. In fact, the death of the current iteration of the U.S. climate “movement” may be a key variable in the equation to save the world. And while ineffectiveness and intransigence are part of the causes of its death, the symptoms, that it has been unprincipled, unstrategic, and unsustainable, have been apparent for some time – the 2024 election cycle served as the great elucidator of these symptoms.
We need look no further than June 2023 when four “key” climate groups, League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Next Gen America endorsed then Democratic Party nominee, Joe Biden, for president. In reporting this endorsement, even the neoliberal-leaning outlet, CNBC, seemed flummoxed by the endorsement so soon in the election cycle and so quickly – the title of their piece, Key Environmental Groups Endorse Biden Despite Approval of Fossil Fuel Projects itself proves their confusion of why these groups elected to endorse so quickly.
The CNBC piece explains that four of the largest environmental groups endorsed Biden despite the fact that many climate activist disapproved of many aspects of his climate record, including his administration approving more oil and gas leasing permits than Trump, clearing the way for the controversial Willow project in Alaska (a project specifically called for as part of Project 2025), and his approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which was included as part of a side deal to secure votes for the Inflation Reduction Act.
The endorsements themselves were bad enough, but quotes offered by the heads of these environmental groups can only be described as a clumsy dance of rationalization and flat-out fabrications. Take the Sierra Club Executive Director, Ben Jealous, who at the time of the endorsement proclaimed, “President Biden has acted courageously during a critical inflection point in the climate fight.” He added, “No other administration has done more to move us forward.”
NRDC president and chief executive, Manish Bapna offered some soft criticisms of Biden as part of his endorsement, yet still continued the myopic idea that the president has acted as some kind of white Jesus for climate change, “We recognize mistakes have been made. And when they have been made, we’ve called the president and the administration to account, and we will continue to do so.” He continued, “But this is a clear-cut choice between the strongest climate champion we’ve ever seen and a Republican who would slam us into reverse.”
Both statements were a harbinger of the unprincipled positions and actions “key” and other climate groups took as the election season proceeded. Even reference to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as some exemplar for requisite climate action as an imperative reason to endorse Biden is a contradiction in itself. The legislation has already exacerbated wealth and income inequality. Politico revealed that the highest-earning 25 percent of households, those with taxable incomes of $100,000 or more, got 66 percent of the IRA’s tax credits, worth a total of $5.5 billion. Meanwhile, the lowest-earning 25 percent, with taxable incomes below $25,000, received just $32 million. And, moreover, over $2 billion went to households earning over $200,000 a year alone.
Worse yet, the IRA is set to act as a boon for fossil fuel cartels who are set to receive 100s of billions of dollars due to corporation-friendly changes to the Internal Revenue Service tax code. Climate reporter, Kate Arnoff, details the Big Oil benefits of the IRA in a piece appropriately named, Why is the Fossil Fuel Industry Praising the Inflation Reduction Act. Therein, Arnoff explains that the IRA is set to give fossil fuel corporations money that will allow them to maintain their core business model.
Clearly the IRA is not the panacea too many in the U.S. climate “movement” continue to make it out to be. Which may explain why many groups elected not to endorse Biden in 2023. To this effect, national climate justice advocate Lukas Ross declared, “The Inflation Reduction Act and other policies are not doctor’s notes. You cannot raise them to eliminate legitimate criticisms.” Takes like Ross’s and endorsement holdouts by certain organizations offered some hope that while the U.S. climate “movement” was clearly infirmed, there may be some hope to resuscitate it and maybe even build it back…well, better.
But hope was lost when Harris was installed as the Democratic Party nominee. The rapid ascension of Harris contributed to the rapid decline of the U.S. climate “movement’s” credibility, and its health in the process.
On July 31, 2024, groups who held out on endorsing Biden, released a joint statement announcing their support for Kamala Harris. This despite the fact that her campaign had, at that point, not released a comprehensive climate action platform. In fact, Harris publicly retreated from her support of the Democratic Party’s version of the Green New Deal, support for a national fracking ban, and Medicare for All, which many so called progressives consider a requisite compliment to said Green New Deal.
Harris not only flip flopped on these issues, months after receiving the quid pro nihilo endorsements she touted how casting the deciding vote for the Inflation Reduction Act opened new leasing for fracking – especially in states like Pennsylvania – during her only debate with now president-elect Donald Trump. Rather than push Harris to be better, these groups decided to turn their knives on other targets. – Third Party and Independent candidates like Dr. Jill Stein and Dr. Cornel West who had far superior climate platforms [full disclosure, I advised both candidates and played a role in the development of their climate policy]. In their attempts to point to Dr. Jill Stein, in particular, as a threat to Harris’s chances to win the presidency and, therefore, a threat to climate justice, it became clear that fear of Trump as well as fear of not being viewed as loyal enough to the Democratic Party played a major role in these groups’ endorsement of Harris. The old saying, “fear leads to hesitation, and hesitation leads to the thing you fear the most” has not only manifested, it’s as if the U.S. climate “movement” conjured this idea into a lived reality.
It turns out that prioritizing the preservation of a derelict, classist, racist, and ineffective political party over preservation of the planet and ALL lives on it, especially lives that are currently experiencing a genocide and ethnic cleansing pogrom, is a psycho killer for movements. Talking Heads warned us of this long ago and may as well have been talking about the U.S. climate “movement” because for those of us who have operated in that space for years, this sounds ALL too familiar:
I can’t seem to face up to the facts
I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax
I can’t sleep ’cause my bed’s on fire
Don’t touch me, I’m a real live wire AND
You start a conversation, you can’t even finish it
You’re talking a lot, but you’re not saying anything
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed
Say something once, why say it again?
The failure of the U.S. climate “movement” to push Harris to improve on climate issues must be viewed as a contribution to her ignominious loss to Trump. Equally important, this failure represents the unprincipled and unstrategic contributions to the climate community’s ultimate demise. No other sector behaved in that manner including key formations of the labor sector like United Auto Workers (UAW) whose hold out of a Biden endorsement forced the president to literally join them on the picket line. UAW secured other commitments from President Biden before their ultimate endorsement and the point is climate groups, unlike labor groups, were unstrategic and forgot the old adage, “the one who tries to get something for nothing, generally winds up getting nothing for something.”
Quotes offered by the heads of climate organizations that endorsed Harris demonstrate one of the most unsustainable elements of the U.S. climate “movement,”- its anemic, ineffective and vacuous communications strategy. Hyperbole and hysteria take the place of speaking to everyday people like they’re everyday people. The U.S. climate “movement’s” inability to speak directly to poor and working-class folk may be rooted in the fact that the vast majority of anointed U.S. climate imprimaturs are not everyday people – they’re coastal, affluent, largely white, and least likely to be disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis…for now, anyway. This may also explain the relative silence of the U.S. climate “movement” on the current situation in Palestine. If a movement and its leaders cannot even utter a tweet on the everyday situation faced by Palestinians, you simply cannot trust them to be speaking about the everyday climate justice issues disproportionately faced by vulnerable and marginalized communities.
As the Democrats just learned, as part of the electoral spear chucking it just experienced, even $1.6 Billion and a rotating cast of wealthy movie stars, musicians, and athletes cannot substitute good and genuine messaging that speaks to the hearts and souls of poor and working-class people. The U.S. climate “movement” died because it never learned how to communicate who’s dying, right now, from a climate crisis that is, in part, exacerbated by the imperial mode of living enjoyed by far too many agents of the U.S. climate “movement” and their professional managerial class lifestyles.
We don’t need a U.S. climate “movement” autopsy, we need a new corpus of work and strategy altogether and this requires some hard and big decisions that are associated with leadership, money, and influence – who holds it, who receives it, and whose opinions/scholarship are most transmitted/communicated.
Even now in the climate “movement’s” postmortem phase, we’re observing too many trying to be the first person or group to be reactive rather than the first people and coalitions to be strategic. And it just needs to be said that in this moment, when poor and working class people just rejected the Democrats and their acolytes who, in large part, form the nonprofit industrial complex, we probably don’t need to be hearing from Bay Area and New England-based millionaires, nor agents of the nonprofit Professional Managerial Class whose lives are not going to be as impacted as those who will absorb the most harmful consequences of their decisions – not just as it pertains to the most recent elections, but also their general decisions that rendered the U.S. climate “movement” impotent, inert, and stuck in a ditch of intransigent stasis flapping around like a fish out of water that knows each breath it takes is likely its last.
To be clear, this is not to suggest that said millionaires and other affluent white folk (and affluent folk of all races/ethnicity for that matter) don’t have a place in the climate movement, but I am absolutely proclaiming that these folk cannot be the primary collective for the climate “movement.” I don’t believe in cancel culture, but I absolutely believe in consequences culture.
Death is not an endpoint – Gandalf the Grey/White reminds of this in the Lord of the Rings saga when he explains to Pippin, “death is just another path, one that we all must take.” Indeed, the death of the U.S. climate “movement” can lead us to white shores and a far green country under a sunset as he professes – but this will require quotidian, principled, and transformative work on our end as part of the U.S. climate movement’s resurrection. You don’t have to believe in the great Palestinian revolutionary Jesus Christ to believe in resurrection, (and I know that saying this as a proud anti zionist Jew may be provocative- and I don’t give a f%&k because provocation in this moment is requisite and lifesaving). I would argue that the climate “movement” needed to let many things that lived far too long die, which now puts it in a better position to resurrect the teachings of revolutionary actors who may not have been known “environmentalists” but whose teachings offer more lessons for principled climate justice seeking than many of the living and contemporary climate and environmental imprimaturs. Here’s a list to get you started:
- Audre Lorde: Survival is a Promise
- James Baldwin: No Name in The Street
- Ella Baker
- Kwame Ture: Black Power: The Politics of Liberation
- Walter Rodney: The Groundings with my Brothers
- V.I. Lenin: State and Revolutions – which is an admonishment of social democrats, like the ones who pulled the strings of the former U.S. climate movement in typical alabaster puppet master fashion.
My dear comrade, sister and one of the great administrators of my conscience, Marla Marcum, co-founder of the small but mighty Climate Disobedience Center once said, “We must be brave enough to let things break into tiny little pieces, and strong enough to build something better with these pieces.” This requires less of a #resistance2.0 and more resisting the same conditions, voices, and ideas from leading the new U.S. climate movement to a junction of the same myopia that ended the previous one. We must resist post-election pontifications and communications from an afterlife with recommendations forged in willful ignorance, and complete with messages littered by shoddy, reductive and sophomoric analyses. We, the people, must not be seduced by these voices and must disregard the white noise they represent – because those aren’t your ancestors speaking to you from beyond whom you’re hearing, they’re the last throes of a desperate cadre of bad ideas clinging to maintain any semblance of relevance.
Instead of reactionary fundraising emails asking people to donate so that your organization can “stop Trump from killing the climate” and “resist” him in general without a reified or comprehensive plan…Instead of more bait and click sign on letters that serve more to allow groups to brag about how many signers you got on a letter that rarely changes anything policy wise to protect working class and poor people, and instead of reactive one day marches that lead people to nowhere but the same big circle as the last march (and NO the retort to “Whose Streets” cannot be “Our Streets” if you purchased a permit for a given amount of time to be on said street and you’re liaising with cops), the new U.S. climate movement needs to do the one thing, right now: An Act of Accountability – a genuine mea culpa initiative for its complicity in delivering us to the moment we find ourself in.
So let us hold and enjoy a New Orleans-style second line funeral because there are some things to celebrate for sure – but mostly we need to celebrate the end of this era of the U.S. Climate “movement.” We must be resolved to let its body decompose such that it can nourish new roots that grow us out of the mindset of environmental and climate justice and facilitate the embrace of a mindset for climate and environmental liberation.
The death of the U.S. climate “movement” has delivered us to an empty archipelago that provides excellent and exciting opportunities for evolution and transformation – the same conditions that allowed for Darwin’s finches and other species to thrive and survive on the Galapagos islands by eching out their role in harmony and synergy, through a symbiosis of interdependence and collaboration rather than competition and comatose strategies that contributed to the demise of the previous climate “movement.”
The answers are there for us too – we just need to ask the right questions while eviscerating questionable elements that kill rather than nourish and sustain movements.
No Compromise
No Retreat
Free Palestine