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Bill McKibben is mad at a lot of people, like Kathy Hochul, Governor of New York State, for walking back the Manhattan traffic congestion plan. The fossil fuel industry and carbon capture. (Well, nearly all of Big Oil and their pals are well-deserved objects of McKibben’s scorn.) University publications that supported natural gas (i.e., methane gas) as a bridge fuel. Capitalism’s refusal to rein in its climate excesses. But the longtime climate activist and professor at Vermont’s Middlebury College is not mad at the youth climate movements that are challenging the Biden administration to do more, even if they aren’t yet ready to endorse Joe Biden for President.
Why are youth climate movements exempt from McKibben’s critiques?
Let’s call it the gift of youth. Their energy gives climate action from all ages “oxygen.” They were the force that joined in raucously with the fossil fuel divestment campaign. They argue that the Green New Deal is the one and only option for a sustainable future on Earth. They held a sit-in in front of the US Speaker of the House’ office and rallied the support of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
McKibben reminds us that “they worked hard, and effectively, to pass Build Back Better, even as Joe Manchin cut it down into the Inflation Reduction Act.” At a meetup in front of Manchin’s houseboat, they refused to forget his obstruction. One Sunrise organizer spoke with passion about Manchin’s climate action betrayal.
“He needs to look us in the eyes and tell us that his actions will be responsible for millions more deaths around the world, and like millions of people who will have asthma who wouldn’t have otherwise, or millions of people drinking polluted water.”
McKibben calls the Sunrise Movement’s resilience “a rare display of political maturity and effectiveness among any progressives, let alone young ones.”
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Sunrise, the leading group among youth climate movements, has a mission that is unyielding and idealistic. They want to win a Green New Deal that will:
- Stop the climate crisis
- Create good union jobs for all
- Invest in racial and economic justice
- Reimagine the government to be by and for the people
Yet the Sunrise Movement’s hesitancy to endorse Biden for President has caused backlash to erupt.
Newsweek calls them “an influential national group.” Axios delivered a “scoop” that the Sunrise Movement, “a national organization of young progressives that helped President Biden shape his 2020 climate agenda, is withholding its endorsement of him in 2024.” The New Yorker offers a concise summary of the Sunrise hesitancy to endorse the Biden-Harris ticket.
“Despite having passed the largest public investment in green energy in history and signed numerous regulatory measures, Biden may well have to run without the support of, or possibly in the face of active opposition by, the youth wing of the climate movement.”
Matt Yglesias, whose personal blog at The Atlantic attracted 2 million page views in a month, has added Substack — like many of us — to his writing repertoire. His attacks on the Sunrise Movement have become the fodder for secondary texts, too, as his layers of animosity against Sunrise do hold kernels of truth. “Imao — I hope everyone who gassed this institution up with money and coverage is proud of themselves 🙄🙄🙄”
Heated writer Emily Atkin decried Yglesias, refuting his claim that the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is being harmed by the Sunrise Movement.
Why hasn’t McKibben jumped on the slap-around-Sunrise bandwagon? Instead of condescending, he has a lesson to impart for us all.
“A job of older people is to bring to bear the somewhat wearying but valuable experience that simply living longer allows you to accumulate. We admire Biden for the good things he’s done, and we know that Trump can and will make the bad parts worse, beginning with his promise to radically accelerate the climate crisis. But I’m glad, for one, that the young are making the witness that they are.”
Other Youth Climate Movements Challenge the Status Quo
Several other youth climate movements are also rising during this election year to let their voices be heard. In fact, the Sanders Institute Gathering in Burlington, Vermont brought together a number of youth-led climate action groups earlier this month. As Common Dreams reported, several experts and organizers at the Gathering suggested that an opponent like the well-funded fossil fuel industry requires “growing the movement and seizing political opportunities to implement lifesaving policies.”
Jamie Minden, senior director of global organizing for the youth-led group Zero Hour, suggested that, in order to win, “we need to go on the offensive, because defense has not been working. Now is the time to go for the jugular.” Minden wondered if, within the next 5 years, the world as we now know it would be recognizable.
Friends of the Earth (FOE) president Erich Pica described how youth climate movements are organizing aggressively on a particularly strong issue: the degree to which US consumers and taxpayers are made to pay for massive federal subsidies and enormous tax breaks. The End Polluter Welfare Act “is the organizing vehicle,” Pica said.
“We’ve gotta get support behind it. We’ve gotta get members of Congress on it. We’ve gotta get community activists out there in the streets.”
Estimates indicate the Act would save US taxpayers up to $170 billion over a decade. If not passed, Big Oil could profit even more significantly if Trump gets elected — after all, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted if they donated $1 billion to his campaign.
The Act’s reintroduction last month was “an important step,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, an organization that grew out of the Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. “The thing is, we need a movement and a strategic opportunity to be able to get that policy over the finish line.”
Rev. Lennox Yearwood, president and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus, described the youth climate movements as too independent to be fully suggestful: “siloed, segregated, progressive.” Deaths due to the climate crisis are horrific, but so, too, is paying fossil fuel companies “to kill us,” Yearwood told the audience.
“Their business plan literally means a death sentence for our communities. The issue on taxation allows us to once again broaden our movement, allows us to go to Republicans, go to Democrats, to go to Independents, and go across this country… and say simply: ‘Your tax dollars are going to go to those who are rich and are killing our communities. Do you want that?’”
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