Everybody Needs a Climate Thing - by David Roberts

There is simply no way to take on climate change as such.  It is too comprehensive.  It is necessarily approached via proxy, via a Climate Thing, whether it’s renewables or nuclear energy or localism or pipelines or … birds.
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What would an efficacious social response to climate change look like then ...?

It would look less like a movement and more like a federation, not of groups that are climate-focused — at least not all of them — but of groups that are climate-aligned. 

And indeed, insofar as there are civil-society efforts afoot on climate change, that’s what they look like.  The Keystone battle has been waged by a federation of groups worried about water pollution, oil spills, corporate power, and much else.  The strategic genius of the Bill McKibbens of the world was to insure that the federation is climate-aligned, that the school of fish was swimming in the same direction.  Climate became the meta-movement.

All those factions now have a story to tell about how their local concerns are part of a larger, righteous historical fight against climate change.  Their Climate Things are aligned with climate mitigation; by working on what’s closest and most important to them, they are also, at the same time, working together on climate.  By working together on climate, they also solving their local concerns.  Cognitive consonance.

That’s what a powerful social response to climate change would look like:  as many people as possible working on their passions in a way that is oriented in the direction of climate mitigation or adaptation.  Because climate is so broad and comprehensive, it is likely to capture few people’s top-of-mind attention, as polls have consistently shown (and psychologists keep explaining).  But for the same reason, it can play a supporting role in almost any socially conscious change.  It can exert a tidal pull.

Read more at Everybody Needs a Climate Thing