Needed: Achievable Climate Goals
By Toby Ball,
Guest Blogger
www.tobyball.com
Three years ago, I was the field organizer for the Carbon Coalition finishing up work on the Climate Change Resolution Campaign. Back then, nobody’d had a strong read on how the town meetings would go. Despite a strong cohort of Carbon Coalition representatives working to pass the resolution in more than 180 New Hampshire towns, reaching out to people and organizations across the ideological spectrum and in a variety of public and private sectors – state legislators, members of the religious community, businesses and chambers of commerce, regional planning commissions, environmental groups. . . we really didn’t know how things would go.
The dynamics of town meetings are unpredictable – a single, persuasive individual can sway the public debate, for instance, or the room might be filled with people of a particular political persuasion for a reason completely unrelated to the Climate Change Resolution. In retrospect, we needn’t have worried. The Carbon Coalition representatives were motivated, savvy, and did the hard work to maximize their chances for success. More than 90 percent of the Resolutions passed in town meetings or, in some towns, on traditional secret ballots. Each town had a story and you could blog for a year about them – but I wanted to mention one in particular which speaks to my larger point.
At a screening of An Inconvenient Truth, I met this guy George who agreed to become the Carbon Coalition representative in his town. As part of his effort to educate the residents in his town, he arranged for a library talk by a member of the Carbon Coalition Speaker’s Bureau. Nobody showed. Not one person. George was understandably disheartened by this lack of interest, but redoubled his efforts, pamphletting cars during church services, getting a letter to the editor in the local newspaper, and other, similar actions. George’s town voted by ballot and the Resolution passed by a 60% to 40% margin. When I called him to congratulate him, he couldn’t believe that 40% of the people had voted against it. I said, George, from where your town was just a few months ago to here – you should put out a shingle as a political consultant.
You may be wondering at this point whether I’m using this whole blog post to recall past achievements, but I assure you that I’m only going to do that for the first half. I’m outside the climate change community these days. I spent more than a year working on the Durham Energy Committee before writing commitments made that impossible. I’m no longer immersed in the day to day of climate change politics and activism and what I see from this less-intense distance is not entirely heartening. What were the main climate change-related stories I saw in the media in the past year? 1. Pieces on the irony of debating climate change legislation during a snowy Washington D.C. winter (I won’t link to any Fox-related posts). 2. Climategate. 3. How the ecological disaster of the BP oil spill had a reverse spin in Congress, driving off-shore-oil enthusiasts away from energy and climate legislation. You could make a good argument that the “failed” Copenhagen climate meeting is in there somewhere, as well. In short, the major climate change news stories, based on an unscientific survey of one person – me – were, if not dismissive of the scientific consensus, at least not sympathetic.
Why is this? To a degree, I think that “New Study Show Arctic Sea Ice Receding Faster than Previously Thought” stories just don’t capture the imagination at this point. People get the gist and either believe or don’t. Two of the main stories I mentioned above had overt irony (So funny that it’s snowing in Washington during the winter!) and controversy (Scientists perverting the scientific process!), selling points decidedly lacking in articles on scientific studies. I think the other factor, and this is the point of my post, is that there haven’t really been huge, newsworthy national/international accomplishments in climate change, or if there were, they didn’t make it to me.
People have changed light bulbs and bought more fuel-efficient cars, campuses and businesses are more climate-friendly, and, in New Hampshire, more than a hundred local energy committees formed in the wake of the Climate Change Resolution Initiative are at work; but there isn’t a regional or national goal (or goals) that is tangible or immediate enough that people would pamphlet cars or organize library talks or do the kind of community and local organizing that the Carbon Coalition showed can be done. There is energy and talent out there, waiting to be mobilized. Marches and events are fine – important for demonstrating support; but commitment is something else, something that people in New Hampshire demonstrated in 2007.
It is important that we identify goals that are both concrete and tangible on a visceral level to truly engage the majority of Americans concerned with climate change. Cutting the parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere by 2050 is not exactly a rallying cry. People need to have achievable goals to reach on a reasonable timeline (not 2020 or 2050) that produce results that you can see. If we can’t do this, I worry that the media will continue to push the “controversy” and public support and enthusiasm will wane.
–Toby Ball was field organizer for the Carbon Coalition during the Climate Change Resolution Initiative. His first novel, The Vaults, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in September. Tobyball.com
Tags: carbon footprint, Carbon Management, clean air-cool planet, Climate action, climate change solutions, climate negotiations, climate policy, Energy Efficiency, Fundraising, global warming, Local Energy Committees, Maine business, sustainability
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