Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
For Marie-Eve, there is something very powerful about a lateral approach like this beer project. “It’s not a project that talks about climate change”, she told me. “It’s about water. And fun. It’s about having a beer for a cause, and it reaches into wider networks. One old man I met (and he was not sensitive to environmental issues) said “they can’t touch my beer!”, which for me was a great sign that we were doing it right”.
When – as with climate change – we are dealing with something scary, unprecedented, wicked, and huge – something which causes a lot of anxiety, depression, and despair [a word whose etymology, in French and in Spanish, seems to derive from the lack of hope) – hope seems integral to our future.
Your body makes itself from the matter around you. What you eat, drink, inhale, touch, and experience literally becomes you. You are your environment, and it is you. Releasing toxic substances into the environment means injecting them into bodies, human and non-human. The climate system connects everyone’s environments.
We live in times where there seems to be a crisis in just about everything – from the so called financial sector, through the contemporary mass migratory processes, to the severe corrosion of the social fabric.
Neither glitzy, eloquent nor subtle, Brecher methodically lays out an interlocking vision of direct action within a constitutional legal framework to build the powerful nonviolent climate insurgency necessary to turn the ship around.
The movements for climate justice and environmental justice are about healing deep wounds of injustice and oppression via environmental action. Climate action can, if done right, be a powerful force for making a society more equal and advancing human rights. It can be a catalyst for positive social change.
The climate mobilization we need represents, not just a temporary break from the status quo, but the bridge to a sustainable future with justice for all.
This April, two powerful mobilizations will take place in D.C. and around the world, one to stand up for science and truth, the next to defend our climate, jobs, and justice. Together, the March for Science and the Peoples Climate March provide a powerful way for all of us to take action—together.
Because if individual action can’t alter the momentum of global warming, movements may still do the trick. Movements are how people organize themselves to gain power—enough power, in this case, to perhaps overcome the financial might of the fossil fuel industry.
This reframing cannot just be a messaging strategy, but a real change in our approach that aligns a longer-term climate plan with measurable short-term solutions that can make a positive difference to people’s lives.
Our purpose should be to force governments and corporations to do what must be done. There is no other way that this is going to happen.
There is no degrowth without climate justice. My argument, which I presented as someone involved not only at the theoretical level, but also in concrete efforts to bring degrowth and climate justice together in terms of practices and people, is presented here in a concise way.
