What is a Climate Mobilization?
Why do we need it?
What would it include?
Since introducing the Pledge to Mobilize, I have received many of these questions about what, exactly, The Climate Mobilization is advocating, and whether or how it is compatible with other proposed climate solutions.
Ezra Silk, deputy director of The Climate Mobilization and I have just published our most thorough answers to these questions to date. The Case for Mobilization is a 50-page document that uses bullet points and clear language to lay out the reasons why we are already in a climate emergency, and why national economic and social mobilization is the only way to fight climate change that can actually secure our civilization and democracy. It is the most comprehensive articulation yet of our vision.
We hope that Mobilizers will find The Case for Mobilization useful in sharpening their arguments and recruiting efforts, and that interested or skeptical people will read this document to understand what TCM is all about. Please take a look. Constructive comments and feedback on this document are very welcome!
Thank you to Michael Hoexter and Philip Sutton for invaluable input.
Rapid, government led changes in the industrial state of the nation do not have a happy history. New Zealand tried a “Think Big” bid for government led quick industrial change that was quickly a laughing stock. All the Warsaw Pact countries abandoned the concept the moment the Soviets no longer forced it on them. Peron’s attempt was successful only briefly too.
They’re not even successful in their own terms — the war effort in WWII was ridiculously wasteful in its hastiness and lack of careful planning. That it had to be done does not mean that it was done efficiently (in terms of money for effort). That’s why it was abandoned more or less the moment the war finished. If it had been going very well, why did they not continue it? Why did the US not go onto war footing for Vietnam?
There’s a reason people distrust central government enforced economic changes — it is because they are pretty much uniformly dreadful. To get away with them you need to be non-democratic. And merely saying that your mobilization with will “save” democracy doesn’t make it true. Most people recognise that no vote means no democracy.
You need to expand why your mobilisation will be successful where others have failed. With economic theory and examples, not just a stated “this time is different”.