Are we screwed, p.28
Are We Screwed?, page 28
Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Sanders’s young supporters occupied them. A Tufts University study found that by June more people under 30 had voted for Sanders than for Clinton and Trump combined. “It’s hard to overemphasize how completely and utterly [Sanders] dominated the youth vote to this point,” reported the Washington Post.78 The young people who voted for him were sick of political leaders who cared more about their careers and their parties than about the long-term threats facing society. They wanted someone who would take their future seriously. By voting in record numbers for Sanders, my generation had debunked the stereotype that Millennials are apathetic and cynical when it comes to politics. We’d created a massive social movement infused with our unique values. We’d shown the power of our idealism. We were proving, in the words of Sanders, that we “want a say in the future of our nation.”
And that, after all, is why fifteen thousand people had gathered here tonight in Seattle. “We can change the status quo,” Sanders practically shouted into the microphone. The roars of cheering and applause that erupted around me were staggering. Hesitating for only a second, I added my voice to them. Outside the world was burning up. The planetary changes that we were inflicting were existentially terrifying—and everyone my age could potentially live to see their full doomsday impact in our lifetimes. We had no choice but to fight this injustice and all the political and economic leaders who perpetuated it. For years the prospect of doing so had intimidated me. I felt daunted by it. But right now I felt different. Surrounded by thousands of people who shared my generation’s values in the floodlit bleachers of Safeco Field, I truly felt like a better future was possible. I felt like that future wasn’t very radical at all. I felt like it was the only option we had left. And tonight I felt like it was within our reach.
Afterword
SO ARE WE SCREWED?
The only word I could use to describe the expression on my face and all the other people around me on U.S. election night in November 2016 was shocked. Several dozen of us had gathered in Vancouver to watch the results. Even as the night began, Donald Trump was still a joke. Free shots if he wins, we all laughed. By the time Trump made his victory speech I felt like I was in a parallel universe. At Bernie Sanders’s rally in March my generation’s worldview felt unstoppable. Now we had to deal with a bigoted 70-year-old white man who called climate change a “hoax,” referred to oil as America’s “lifeblood,” and vowed to “cancel” the Paris treaty. If there was ever a time to despair for the future, it was now. Yet when I thought back on all the people my age I’d met while writing this book I couldn’t help but feel a strange flicker of hope. I realized that the lessons contained in their stories could be drawn from to prevent Trump from totally screwing us over—and to build a safer, more equitable, and less destructive world.
I know that the very first step toward creating it is contained in Peter’s story. His decision more than a decade ago to reject mainstream society was more powerful than even he had realized. Each day that he spends out on Denman Island, he’s confronting everything Trump stands for: a system that privileges money over morals, the national interest over the global one, and political partisanship over his generation’s survival. Peter hasn’t yet been successful in resisting that system’s inertia, but by dedicating his life to questioning its logic, he’s shown that it doesn’t have to be inevitable. He’s shown that our current way of life is based not on inviolable laws but on our collective values.
And when our values start to change, our world changes along with them. I’d gotten my first glimpse of how profound those changes can be when I spoke with Bradley Johnson. His decision to become an artist in Brooklyn instead of a tar sands worker in Fort McMurray might not seem like a big deal, but he was rejecting an economic system that pursues short-term profits with little regard for the consequences. When millions of other people his age came to the same conclusion, it caused an employment crisis in North America’s oil and gas industry, put $100 billion worth of new projects at risk, and called into question the basic operating principles of capitalism. This happened because people my age decided there is more to life than making the most money possible. It wasn’t the result of some carefully coordinated effort. It was the by-product of a generational values shift.
It took someone like Phil Aroneanu to grasp the untapped potential of this shift—and what could be achieved by channeling it toward a specific, society-transforming goal. That realization was the result of years of hard work. It began when he decided that his global identity superseded his national one and he set out with six other Middlebury grads and their adviser Bill McKibben to build a planet-spanning network of young people imbued with that worldview. The true power of what they created was revealed when they aimed that network against the Keystone XL pipeline, transformed the project from a national debate about a piece of steel into a global referendum on climate change, and ultimately convinced President Obama to reject it. It proved what could be achieved when a new generation’s worldview went into battle against an older one’s.
Influencing a world leader’s position on climate change was one thing. But it wasn’t until I met Andrew Frank that I realized how much power my generation had to actually choose our leaders in the first place. For years, that hadn’t been obvious to many of us. When Andrew chose to take a stand against Canada’s Conservative government—and lost his progressive activist job in the process—he in effect joined millions of other young people in declaring his independence from partisan politics. But the question of how my generation could meaningfully participate in a system that we had rejected wasn’t answered until several years later, when a surge of young voters like Andrew cast their ballots strategically to end the ten-year petrostate of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Canada’s election showed that when the conditions are right, people my age can be a potent electoral force—and that leaders who ignore our unique worldview do so increasingly at their peril.
What the young people at the center of these generational shifts shared in common was a rejection of mainstream society. They’d questioned its operating principles, threatened its ability to make profits, influenced its political leaders, and removed them from office completely. But if my generation was truly going to be less screwed, we couldn’t only abandon the status quo—we had to build a better one to replace it. What Chloe Maxmin showed me is that the values of this new system already exist within millions of young people, and when they’re given the proper outlet, they can propel rapid and immediate change. This is what allowed the small fossil fuel divestment campaigns that student organizers like Chloe started in the fall of 2012 to within three years spread to more than four hundred universities and influence trillions of dollars worth of economic activity.
It was the same dynamic that, in the final month of 2015, helped end more than three decades of diplomatic stalemate on climate change. For as long as people of my generation had been alive, world leaders had failed to set aside their national differences and fight together to ensure a safe future on this planet. At the COP21 climate talks, the generational injustice of this situation became impossible to ignore: older leaders were pushing for a weak agreement whose consequences they wouldn’t have to live with. At first the outcries of young people like Erlend Knudsen and Morgan Curtis seemed drowned out by the power politics that dominate each year’s round of talks. But my generation’s sense of shared planetary fate, our belief that the gap between the national interest and the global one is shrinking, in the end seemed to have a profound impact on key negotiators. Though the final Paris treaty contained many flaws, it was also an important victory for our worldview.
Of course, the treaty was just a framework for a new global status quo—it didn’t have the power to simply will one into existence. That job requires plenty of money and innovation, two resources that feel limitless these days in a place like Silicon Valley. Its leaders seem genuine in their desire to create a more equitable and less destructive world. The young tech executives at the helm of the sharing economy in particular, as well as the millions of people my age responsible for its explosive growth, have the power to create that world. If the expressed ideals of this $335 billion sector become reality, we have the potential to rewrite the rules of mass consumption, accelerate our transition to renewable energy, and help lift billions of people out of poverty. But for now that’s a big if.
Leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Lyft co-founder John Zimmer may claim to take inspiration from indigenous culture. But I learned from young people like Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers that the progressive society promised by Silicon Valley requires more than simply improving our technology. To actually create a just and livable future on this planet, we have to take a long, hard look at systemic injustices and do everything we can to address them. Around the world indigenous peoples are still struggling to overcome a centuries-old legacy of colonial violence. These are people often feeling the worst impacts of climate change and of the fossil fuel extraction that is causing it. And until tech companies like Facebook and Lyft can meaningfully address the injustices that Elle-Máijá has spent much of her adult life confronting, it will be hard to take Silicon Valley’s promise of social progress seriously.
A more convincing version of that promise came from Bernie Sanders. He campaigned for the Democratic nomination on the set of values that had been growing in tandem with my generation. He called for an economic system that improved society and the planet, brought an awareness of global issues to a national election, and put his political ideals above his partisan affiliations. Sanders channeled the desire for transformative change that many people my age so desperately yearn for. It was the primary reason that millions of young supporters like Saba Hafeez rallied behind him—and turned what began as a fringe candidacy for the 2016 Democratic nomination into a passionate social movement whose repercussions will be felt for years. Sanders’s success came not from creating a Millennial revolution but rather from tapping into one that was already well underway.
That was the primary lesson I had to repeat to myself on election night as I threw back beer after beer and thought anxiously about the future. On the surface, the world looks very bad right now. We are hurtling toward an absolutely terrifying ecological abyss, and nobody in charge seems to want to do anything about it. But in the hearts and minds of millions of people my age, a new vision of the future is taking hold. It’s full of infinitely more hope and possibility than the one our political and economic leaders tell us is inevitable. That future won’t come easily. We are going to have to fight for it every step of the way. The victories I’ve explored throughout this book (and the young idealistic leaders behind them) are just the beginning. None of it is enough to avoid the planetary catastrophe that someone like Trump seemes determined to create. But the lessons we can learn from their stories take us ever closer to a world that does.
Which is why, as my partner and I left the election night party in stunned silence, I finally found myself ready to answer the question that had started this entire journey—the question at the heart of my generation: Are we screwed? I had intentionally put off answering it for years. I’d danced around it. I’d evaded its implications. But with an aging climate change denier now in the White House, it finally had come time for me to face it. The Vancouver sky began to spit rain. A Pacific wind howled down the empty nighttime streets. I took a deep breath and turned over the question one more time: Are we screwed? I said the first word that came to my mind: No. Was this how I actually felt? I asked myself the question again and again, and still it was the only answer I could give. No, I thought, we are not screwed.
How to Not Screw Up the Climate
A GUIDE FOR DAILY LIVING
You know that climate change is a big deal. You’re aware that a primary cause of it is our outdated way of doing politics and economics. You badly want to create a better system. But it all seems so daunting. Is it even possible for someone like you—with loads of other issues and responsibilities demanding your attention—to make a difference? And if so, where do you even start?
By asking that question you already have started. Caring enough about climate change to want to do something about it is the first and most important step toward a livable future on this planet. What you should do next, though, is stop worrying about the fact that in a million small ways your daily existence is contributing to climate change. Be strategic in your concern. Nobody can live a perfectly sustainable life within the structures of our current society. Or as Bill McKibben has noted, “Changing the system, not perfecting our own lives, is the point. ‘Hypocrisy’ is the price of admission in this battle.”1 As an individual, you have more leverage than you might think to win it. Hopefully by the end of this resource guide, you’ll get a better idea of how.
READ
Begin by educating yourself. Though there are endless books you can read about climate change, most of them are disempowering and boring and not worth your time. For a variety of reasons, however, the five books I’ve listed below definitely are worth your time, and they’re as good a starting place as I can think of—besides reading my book and getting all your friends to buy it!—to gain a high-level understanding of the causes, impacts, and solutions to our current planetary crisis.
1.Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. New York: Henry Holt, 2014. For learning in precise, and gripping, scientific detail how we humans are destroying everything of biological value on this planet.
2.Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014. For appreciating the extent to which our crisis is really about a system of global capitalism that cares more about making money than about your future.
3.McKenzie Funk, Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming. New York: Penguin, 2014. For going inside the minds of businesspeople so driven by the bottom line that they’re hoping to profit from the damage caused by climate change.
4.Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. New York: Doubleday, 2016. For confirming in exhaustively reported detail that fossil fuel billionaires are indeed attempting to manipulate our political system in their favour.
5.Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism. New York: St. Martin’s, 2015. For sketching out a plausible—though sometimes breathless—vision of the future where we build a society that doesn’t so badly damage Mother Nature.
For solid daily news coverage of climate change, I would start by reading one or several of the following: the Guardian, Vox, Grist, Quartz, and the New York Times. In general, a good way to evaluate the quality of an outlet’s coverage—besides the amount of stories it does—is to look at how it frames the issue. Any outlet giving serious airtime to deniers of climate science is obviously not a great source of information. But also consider the following biases: Does the outlet continually diminish solutions as fringe or impractical? Does it portray the climate as primarily a left-wing issue? Does it rely on the same pundits over and over? Does it make climate change feel hopelessly complicated? Does it make you feel disempowered most of the time? A yes answer to any of those questions means you should probably be looking for climate news elsewhere.
CONSUME
Attempting to take responsibility for the climate impacts of everything you consume in an average day is a recipe for mental breakdown. At worst it will lead you to a psychiatric unit—which is what happened to an Australian seventeen-year-old who became so anxious about his carbon footprint that he refused to drink water.2 Add to that the fact that many so-called eco-friendly companies or products are in fact nothing more than attempts by the same corporations who got us into this mess to greenwash their image. (Remember BP’s “Beyond Petroleum” campaign?) In my opinion, there are more effective ways to leverage your concern about climate change than in the consumer marketplace. But here are a few areas where you can actually have a direct impact.
1.Meat. Eat less of it. Meat production is one of the biggest single contributors to climate change. A worldwide shift toward low-meat diets, one academic study estimated, could reduce the costs of fixing global warming by 50 percent.3
2.Compost. When you send food waste to a landfill, it can’t decompose properly. The result is methane, a greenhouse gas 72 times more potent than CO2. Composting all the food waste sent to U.S. landfills would be like taking millions of cars off the road.4
3.Canvas bags. Switching from plastic to canvas bags won’t make a huge reduction in emissions. But using a reusable bag communicates to neighbors and friends and strangers that you care about the climate. And a values shift grows faster when it’s visible.
TRANSPORTATION
This is another tricky one. Ideally, we’d all be getting around on electrified mass transit powered by solar panels and wind turbines. But in many parts of North America you simply need a vehicle to get by. Even in high-density cities like Seattle and San Francisco and New York, it’s not always possible to, say, do your weekly grocery trip via the city bus. Though this is a favorite argument of right-wing pundits for not shifting off fossil fuels—“Why, even Al Gore needs to drive and fly”—don’t let the fact that we live in a system with suboptimal choices dissuade you from demanding a better one. Unless you can afford an electric car, I suggest you use your transportation choices as an opportunity to think systematically. Sure, you need to drive to work today, but as you do it, consider what improvements to your neighborhood, transit system, city—whatever—would make you less reliant on fossil fuels. Change begins with imagining a different future.
