Unprecedented Climate Mobilization

This is a practical follow-up to David Griffin's seminal book on climate change, Unprecedented, which I reviewed in these pages last year. It builds on the final chapters a year on from Paris, which looks increasingly like another episode of 'deadly delay' as governments continue to promote business as usual, putting us on an eventual collision course with natural systems. The problem is that climate change is a long emergency rather than an immediate crisis, which makes it much harder to galvanise the kind of World War II mobilisation that the authors - and Lester Brown more generally - think is essential. However, it was encouraging to read that a motion to declare a World War II style climate emergency was passed almost unanimously at a full Democratic Party Platform Committee meeting, although the subsequent election of Trump and his choice of director of the EPA has very different implications. A number of chapters are devoted to leadership in political, media and other sectors, but the real hope has to lie in citizen activism using social media as well as underground strategies. The encouraging message is that it really only takes 5% of the population to mobilise to put pressure on governments to change their policies. The legitimacy of power can be questioned, and it is clear that we need, as the authors suggest, a massive interventionist democracy involving the worldwide network of climate activists, now supported, significantly, by Pope Francis. On a personal level, we each have a responsibility to act on behalf of our children and grandchildren.