As I write, Bill McKibben is being interviewed left and right, Tom Ashbrook is interviewing Naomi Klein and pushing her to outline a vision that isn’t capitalism-as-we-know-it, Time magazine is saying this could be the largest march of its kind — which raises the question of what kind it is — and the People’s Climate March is propelling reactions by politicians, oil tycoon heirs, churches and academic organizations, and others in advance of the UN Climate Summit.
The questions now are:
- What is this movement (of movements) that is taking shape, and how will it grow? Is it the Climate Justice movement, or the People’s Climate movement, or something else? Or will it just be branded as environmentalism redux, with all the attendant limitations of that terminology and tradition?
- Will the centrality of social justice concerns and its critique of neoliberal capitalism get diluted as the movement goes mainstream (if it does that)?
- Will it build the momentum that’s needed to spill over into effectiveness the way environmentalism did 40-some years ago, launching a decade of legislation that helped respond to the most serious ecological problems of the time?
- Will it become truly global, not just in its inclusion of solidarity events in 166 countries, but in activating and effectively politicizing the billions of people whose future is at stake as deregulated carbon capitalism pushes us all off a global climate cliff?
Time to watch, act, think and rethink, define our terms carefully, and shape the images that will motivate change.
