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climate movement
It's Time for Philanthropists to Get Into Climate Emergency Mode
It’s time to spend aggressively. With the world on fire, the greatest risk, by far, is for philanthropy to move too slowly and too timidly.
Sep 10, 2024
As a clinical psychologist turned climate activist and now a funder of disruptive climate protests, I have witnessed the profound disconnect between the urgency of our climate crisis and the tepid, cautious response of the philanthropic sector. It brings me close to despair, as I know that incrementalism or philanthropy-as-usual can’t possibly be effective at protecting humanity.
The public is in a mass delusion of normalcy — sleepwalking off a cliff — and philanthropy is complicit. Philanthropy has treated the climate as one problem among many that should be dealt with in a “business as usual” way, including all of the philanthropic sector’s incrementalism and caution.
This is entirely the wrong approach. What’s needed is for philanthropy to treat the climate emergency like the crisis it is. There’s a recent precedent for this: In 2020, as COVID ravaged populations worldwide and governments seemed unable to attack the problem, the largest foundations marshaled their resources and quickly poured an estimated $10 billion into the development, testing and deployment of new vaccines. Their efforts saved millions of lives.
Unfortunately for all of us, the climate is an order of magnitude more dangerous than COVID. It’s time to spend aggressively. What good is an endowment if Copenhagen, New York City and Seattle are under water and Silicon Valley is burned to a cinder by perpetual wildfires? Foundations need to recognize that their missions — whether in medical research, education, or social justice — are all threatened by the climate emergency. There will be no hospitals, schools or social services on a dead planet.
There will be no hospitals, schools, or social services on a dead planet.
In order to meet the moment, foundations must engage in organization-wide reckonings, learning together about the scale and urgency of the climate emergency — and the fact that traditional philanthropy has thus far not been able to reduce emissions globally. Foundations should ask, given the acute nature of the crisis, what are the ways they should depart from their usual “philanthropy as normal” mode, and get out of our comfort zone.
Philanthropies must reassess their grantmaking strategies and priorities in light of the apocalyptic nature of the climate emergency. Particularly, they should re-evaluate their approaches to risk, efficacy and conflict. The greatest risk, by far, is for philanthropy to move too slowly and too timidly. Continuing down our current path will lead to horrific outcomes. To be prudent, we must be bold. That means making big bets on new groups and new people.
Philanthropies must also not be afraid of conflict — and be explicit about the need to fight and end the fossil fuel industry, and the politicians who support it. The Carmack Collective and Equation Campaign have both done this, shaping their missions to fight fossil fuels.
Foundations should interrogate and explore with an open mind what is the highest leverage, fastest, most effective way that they can use their resources to respond to the climate emergency. One way I advise funders to think about this is by asking: Who, ultimately, will cover the cost of the transition to zero emissions, which will need to be on the scale of World War II? Is it philanthropy? Of course not. Only governments have the kind of spending power — and legislative power — that we need. Philanthropy, with its significant resources and influence, has the potential to shake the public awake and spur the government to this necessary mobilization, but not to execute such a mobilization itself.
Philanthropy has a unique and critical role to play in addressing the climate emergency. By acknowledging the calamity we face and adjusting their operations, philanthropies can lead society into the “emergency mode” necessary to avert disaster.
How can philanthropy help create a society-wide mobilization? There is only one way: Funding social movements.
Throughout history, transformative change has come about through movements and social revolutions. From the civil rights movement to the women’s movement to ACT UP and the gay rights movement, authentic people-led movements drew attention to the cause, drastically moved public opinion, and forced governments to change, adapt and respond.
Philanthropies should shift from funding large legacy, incremental environmental organizations that have demonstrated an inability to act on the speed and scale necessary, to younger, dynamic groups that leverage effective tactics, crisis communications efforts and disruptive activism.
Supporting disruptive protests may be one of the most cost-effective strategies for addressing the climate crisis. A 2021 analysis by Giving Green revealed that each dollar invested in protest activities could reduce emissions by six metric tons of carbon, due to its influence on legislative outcomes. Additionally, a study published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review found that donations to organizations like Extinction Rebellion or the Sunrise Movement are six to 12 times more impactful than contributions to top-rated climate charities.
One reason is that nonviolent disruptive actions achieve media coverage at a rate no other initiatives can match. Climate Emergency Fund’s disruptive grantees were featured in over 75,000 articles in 2022 and 2023 worldwide. The disruptive activists we support are forcing a reluctant media to cover their actions, whether halting national sporting events, shutting down private airports or disrupting political speeches. These activists embody the emergency mentality. With their actions, they demonstrate the degree of their alarm and the seriousness of the crisis.
And yet these approaches are seriously underfunded. Philanthropic funding for climate change represents only about 1.5 percent of total philanthropic contributions. Within this small portion, the amount allocated to grassroots climate activism is so minimal that it isn’t even recognized as a distinct grant-making category in the ClimateWorks Foundation’s 2022 report on climate philanthropy.
The Carmack Collective, Equation Campaign and the Climate Emergency Fund, where I am the executive director, are three groups supporting people-led organizations fighting the fossil fuel industry. The larger JPB Foundation and the Sequoia Foundation have also demonstrated commendable efforts in funding people-powered movements and aggressive climate action. These organizations exemplify the kind of leadership needed.
Philanthropy has a unique and critical role to play in addressing the climate emergency. By acknowledging the calamity we face and adjusting their operations, philanthropies can lead society into the “emergency mode” necessary to avert disaster. The time for half-measures, white papers and panel discussions is over. Philanthropy must act now, boldly and decisively, to help save our planet for future generations.
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Why I March: The Importance of Climate Movement Unity
This push to end the reign of fossil fuels has allowed the climate movement to act as one giant machine in a burst of collective action.
Sep 17, 2023
The following is part of a series of opinion pieces Common Dreams is publishing in the lead-up to the March to End Fossil Fuels on Sunday, September 17 in New York City. Read the rest of the series and our complete coverage here.
It had never struck me until recently how many environmental activist groups there are. Within the U.S. alone, there are around 28,000 different environmental groups currently operating, from small grassroots organizations to giants of the climate movement like 350.org, Greenpeace, and Sunrise. Among these groups, there is also a huge array of sometimes conflicting opinions that reflect the sense of uncertainty that often goes hand in hand with the fight against climate change.
As someone who would consider himself an environmentalist, the sheer amount of people, groups, and perspectives that circulate around the matter of climate change can make it feel like I am not part of a movement with a coherent goal, but rather a highly competitive sector of an “activism industry.” As climate change bears down upon us, the environmental movement needs to fight as one. People uniting as one to drive world leaders forward is essential to stopping climate change; it is also what makes the March to End Fossil Fuels special.
Anybody who follows a climate-related Instagram account probably knows that today, September 17, the March to End Fossil Fuels is taking place in the middle of New York City in order to persuade the Biden Administration and the U.N. to initiate phaseout plans for fossil fuels. This is for good reason; the event is the biggest climate protest that has occurred since the pandemic, with a turnout goal of over 50,000 people.
When the decision-making power required to save the planet from climate change lies in the hands of very few people, the only way forward is with the strength of overwhelming numbers.
The protest is an impressive display of unity within the climate movement when taken in a vacuum. It was organized as a joint effort by a variety of New York grassroots organizations as well as larger U.S.-based coalitions such as People vs. Fossil Fuels. The planning team for the march spans generations and regions, drawing in all manner of people. What is perhaps more impressive is that the actions taking place during the week of the march are not limited to New York alone. There will be over 400 different actions taking place around the same few days across the world. This push to end the reign of fossil fuels has allowed the climate movement to act as one giant machine in a burst of collective action.
I became involved in environmental causes because I wanted to be a part of something greater than myself. Frightened by the future that might come to pass if climate change ran its course, I started joining climate lobbying groups when I started high school in the hopes that I would be helping bring a larger movement forward. In the time since then, I haven’t necessarily found this to be the case. In fact, I have noticed that there is a surprising amount of discord between climate advocacy groups, to the extent that people often refuse potentially advantageous collaboration on the basis of minor differences in opinion or specialization. I find that the refusal of many environmentalists to work with people who do not share their exact beliefs to run contrary to the need for collaboration that is so necessary to stop the climate crisis. As such, I am overjoyed to see people coming together on a scale like that of the march in order to fight the fossil fuel industry.
The climate movement has been shaped by the sluggishness and weakness of world leaders in responding to its concerns. When the decision-making power required to save the planet from climate change lies in the hands of very few people, the only way forward is with the strength of overwhelming numbers. This is not something that the climate movement can achieve as a group of independent actors; to stop climate change, everyone must move together as they are doing now.
The necessity of collective action in relation to climate change does not stop when the March to End Fossil Fuels and its companion actions end. In the aftermath of the event, there will inevitably be considerable momentum left over; people will be angrier than ever at how world leaders and global capitalism aid and abet the destruction of the planet. My hope for the activist community surrounding climate change is that this momentum is used to keep people together to push for newer, bolder action. Coalitions like the one that planned the March to End Fossil Fuels are powerful political tools that could potentially be used to even greater effect in relation to specific issues such as climate education, regenerative agriculture, or corporate accountability.
Climate change has many facets, all of which need to be brought into the light for the crisis to be solved. The climate movement has proven on many occasions that it has the ability to unify around a cause, and, as the climate crisis gets worse and worse, it must continue to do so. The March to End Fossil Fuels is a call for people to unite against the biggest threat to our planet that we as a species have faced, and it is one that I suggest we all answer.
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The Battle of Lützerath Marks Beginning of a New Stage for Global Climate Movement
The dominant system of capital and state has already made its choice: it wants collapse and will violently confront anyone who opposes it.
Jan 31, 2023
In early January 2023, in a tiny village in western Germany, tens of thousands of climate justice activists faced off against thousands of police in a showdown over the fate of the fossil industry in central Europe. The gigantic mobilization of means to secure the destruction of a village and the expansion of one of the world's largest open-pit coal mines—Garzweiler—in the center of Europe marks a new historical moment. To consider what happened in Lützerath as a defeat of the movement is to misunderstand history.
In Lützerath two historical forces clashed. On one side, the climate justice movement, which has been organizing for decades and since 2019 has become a global mass movement. In opposition to this was the German coal multinational RWE, backed by thousands of police coming from at least 14 German cities to defend the decisions of the German federal government and the government of North Rhine-Westphalia. More than symbolic, the battle of Lützerath was fought on the initiative of the climate justice movement to halt the extraction of 280 million tonnes of coal from beneath the devastated village.
Over the past two years, hundreds of activists have occupied the village houses. Meanwhile, the federal and state governments and RWE have negotiated and coerced the inhabitants of Lützerath, shortened to Lützi, to vacate the houses they inhabited. Earlier this year, more than 300 people set up various structures to actively resist the destruction, preventing the eviction and demolition of the houses and felling of the forest, scheduled for the 10th of January by a German court. The activists who were there, as well as others who joined in, barricaded houses, doors and windows, streets, built houses in trees, and prepared for the clash.
On the other side was not just one company, but much of the German state apparatus, put on the field in favour of the expansion of the Garzweiler mine and the fossil fuel industry. The German state mobilized thousands of police and their infrastructure from all over the country to drive out the activists and let the machines through. The German police used RWE media companies, RWE trucks, facilities and machines in their action, in a true public-private capitalist partnership. The German state spent millions of euros to secure the right to the destruction of Lützi by RWE.
At the center of the decision to destroy the village for the expansion of the coal mine is The Greens, a political party in Germany. It is part of the government of North Rhine-Westphalia in coalition with the CDU (right) and part of the German federal government in coalition with the SPD (centre-left) and the FDP (centre-right). The Vice-Chancellor and Minister of Economy and Climate Action is Robert Habeck, former leader and member of The Greens. This party's election results in 2021, with 14.8%, were achieved after the huge mobilizations for the climate in the country. The party justifies its support for the decision to destroy Lützi in order to expand Garzweiler by indicating that in this way RWE will bring forward the end of coal to 2030 instead of 2038. However, the Garzweiler expansion only means that it will burn coal faster, which actually makes the situation even worse in terms of the climate crisis.
On Wednesday, the 11th of January, rows of police on foot, on horseback, and in jeeps marched on this hamlet like an army—complete with tanks, helicopters, and water cannons—ready to fight a real enemy. In Lützi they found dozens of activists hanging from tripods in all the streets, on the roofs of houses and balanced on tree tops. The police apparatus needed climbers, but brought shields, batons, and pepper spray instead. They came looking for violence which they found only at intervals and in small clashes. Meanwhile, RWE employees were cutting down with chainsaws the trees where activists resisted, cutting down the forest to make room for more coal. They didn't stop for a moment over the next three days, with shifts of police pulling out and arresting activists one by one into the early hours of the morning. It looked like it would all be over before the weekend. It was then that they received news that there was an underground tunnel, dug by the activists, where two people—self-named Pinky and Brain—were holding out under Lützi, closer to the coal but away from the heavy hand of the police. Brute force, the thousands of police deployed, the veritable war arsenal used, and the millions of euros spent could not do it all.
Outside Lützi, the issue became huge in communication terms, with part of the German press and the far-right calling the activists "climate terrorists," while headquarters of The Greens and RWE were occupied and international solidarity actions took place in countries all over the world. A poll was conducted in Germany about keeping Lützerath, and 59% of people were in favor of saving the village and just 33% in favor of demolition.
At least 35,000 demonstrators came to Lützi on Saturday, including Greta Thunberg. Thousands of police surrounded the demonstration as it progressed while others surrounded the village. More than a thousand protesters stormed the Garzweiler mine and forced coal mining work to stop. Police made violent charges in hollering small groups, trying guerrilla tactics against the activists, although the most striking images turned out to be the arrest of Greta and a group of police officers mired in mud, crawling to try and get to their feet before a "mud monk," immune to sinking. The police managed to prevent the demonstrators from "recapturing Lützerath," but needed to use all sorts of means to do so. In the following days, the Ende Gelaende coalition stormed the Garzweiler mine and forced coal mining to stop numerous times.
Only on January 16th did Pinky and Brain came out of the tunnel under Lützi, of their own volition, as the police had not been able to remove them. On the 23rd the police and RWE declared the village evicted.
Lützerath is at this moment razed to the ground. Next to it, the coal mine that will begin to engulf it looks like the surface of the moon, a territory unrecoverable for thousands of years. This was the achievement of the alliance formed between fossil capital and the German state.
The arrest of hundreds of activists and the expected sentencing of some of them to prison terms will be the institutional steps that follow. But something essential changed with the battle of Lützerath. The massive mobilization and use of state resources to ensure continued destruction was deemed necessary. And it will be much more so as the climate crisis worsens.
In the UK, draconian new laws against the right to strike and on political demonstrations have been passed in an effort to stop campaigners with Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, the remnants of Extinction Rebellion, and the strong wave of strikes. Climate activists in several countries in Europe are being preventively detained to try to stop major disruptive actions. In the United States, a climate activist protecting a forest in Georgia was allegedly murdered in cold blood by police.
Of course, none of this is new in poorer countries in Latin America, Asia, or the African continent. What is new is that they are happening even in the power centers of capitalism.
In the choice between halting climate collapse or ending the privilege of capitalist profit, the system has decided: it will mobilize whatever resources are necessary to maintain the destruction. Not only will it not do what it recognizes as necessary and what it has signed up to in agreements like Paris, but it will use brute force to keep the insatiable profit machine running, even at the cost of climate collapse.
Any consequent climate protest—or social resistance of any threatening kind—will have to be banned.
This will be done both with the backing of The Greens in Germany and Labour in the UK, and by so many political organizations more concerned with order than life. They have chosen the camp of catastrophe.
If we remember that the announced president of this year's climate summit is the CEO of one of the world's largest oil companies, we close the knot: the institutional way to stop the climate crisis has hanged itself in public and we can all watch its swinging corpse. No election and no summit will stop the path to catastrophe designed by capitalism. Without the action and courage of the climate justice movement there will be no path forward. As well as stopping the damage currently done, it must build the transformation that the historical moment we live in demands.
The battle of Lützerath marks the beginning of a new stage. The dominant system has already made its choice: it wants collapse and will violently confront anyone who opposes it. In Lützi, the movement has already shown that it will not retreat. The time has come for the movement to move forward.
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