Hello there. Spread the word, friends.
Back in January, Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse gave a speech about climate change on the floor of the Senate. He had done so for the previous 278 weeks the Senate was in session as well, dating back nine years. And then he stopped.
The impetus for starting that streak of so-called “Time to Wake Up” speeches, he has explained, was frustration with the Obama administration’s timid approach to climate legislation. The impetus for continuing it, one can assume, is that over those nine years the country did not exactly wrap itself in climate-solutions glory. The impetus for stopping the run, clearly, was the new administration’s vocal commitment to flipping that narrative entirely.
“All the present signs suggest optimism is justified,” he said, again back in January, though not without some hesitation. Those “present signs” included a raft of executive orders from the Biden White House aimed at reducing emissions (and rolling back some of the absurdities unleashed by the previous administration), appointments like John Kerry as a Special Presidential Envoy on Climate and former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy as the first-ever White House National Climate Advisor, and, later on, the inclusion of substantial climate-related measures in the massive infrastructure bill unveiled at the end of March.
All that being said, here is a tweet:
Well, that was a fun few months.
Whitehouse went on to say that climate has more or less fallen out of the stalled infrastructure discussions, that climate groups and advocates are engaged in what he considers counterproductive infighting, and that the corporate world continues to be AWOL on the issue. (“All the major corporate trade associations suck—all of them.”)
The slowed momentum is obviously concerning, but I think one mistake here is to assume there is even a “corner” to turn when it comes to climate. That idea has dominated the narrative since at least 2009, when the UN meeting in Copenhagen was supposed to represent the world’s climate fix launch party—until it very much didn’t. We’re constantly supposed to believe that this issue which has stymied humanity for decades now is just about to crest the top of the roller coaster, as if all the coordinated opposition to action will somehow melt away once they all finally just get it.
Here are two stories from CNN and the BBC, eight years apart, and trust me when I say I could have found one for every year in between:
Understanding the scope of the climate crisis almost requires a hope that we will in fact crest that roller coaster, because a fits-and-starts approach certainly feels like it means catastrophe. (Well, more of it.) But the better way to think about it is simply to extend the metaphor: the roller coaster has more than one rise, and more than one fall, and a whole bunch of twists and turns.
Just this year, along with all those reasons for optimism laid out above, climate advocates threw a party over a victory in a Dutch court against Shell, and the loss of Exxon board seats to a supposedly pro-climate action “activist hedge fund” (which, I dunno, have you met hedge funds?), just to name a few. It seemed like a pretty good year! But then the infrastructure talks went off the rails, companies started logging some of the last old-growth forests in British Columbia when instead we should be planting a trillion trees, and the Biden administration failed to block a Russian natural gas pipeline that environmentalists have called a “climate policy cul-de-sac.”
There is no corner to turn, not really. It’s too big a problem, with too many tentacles, and too many people and corporate and national interests, for some switch to suddenly flip. (Let’s just assume that I’m mixing metaphors on purpose to demonstrate the point.)
“A new dawn is breaking,” Senator Whitehouse said in his last climate speech. “And when it’s dawn, there is no need for my little candle against the darkness. My little ‘Time to Wake Up’ pilot light can now go out.” And then he finished with a literal mic drop:
Fine theater, so far as it goes (I think I could hear two people clapping; Senate floor speeches are almost never attended by other Senators). But I’m just not sure how you can look at the last thirty or forty years and assume that a few days of good news means we’re in the clear. To his credit, Whitehouse did say: “Instead of urging that it’s time to wake up, I close this long run by saying now, time to get to work.”
Even if his subsequent despair a few months later is justified with climate-infrastructure talks floundering and the issue waning from public view somewhat, taken together it seems to be taking too much of a short view in general. Imagine the infrastructure bill passes, replete with climate-friendly provisions; the next UN climate talks in Glasgow somehow go perfectly and produce brand new international commitments; Biden continues executive order-ing the hell out of the issue, producing demonstrable results; and throw in whatever other pet climate policy you’re into these days. Even with all that, there will still be stubborn industries and ignorant politicians and giant steps backward. Yes, weirdly enough for me, this is sort of an optimistic take, if a backhanded one: even non-linear progress is still progress.
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