What’s the Future We Are Fighting For?
I love a peaceful protest, a demonstration, a rally. I love the energy of being with people who care as much about something as I do. And sometimes, I just want the satisfaction of stomping away my frustration that a march so readily provides.
Envious of the tens of thousands who would be in the climate march in New York City last weekend, I went to one of the parallel events in Sacramento. I knew it wouldn’t be like NYC, but after this crazy summer of climate catastrophes I felt pulled to join in any way that I could.
The last climate march I went to was part of the youth-led Global Climate Strike in September 2019. There was so much energy – yes, anger about a future that might be stolen, but also a sense that anything was possible and that momentum was on our side.
In stark contrast, this time I was decades younger than most of the people at the event. The throwback language used by some of the speakers seemed to be a cut and paste directly from Vietnam War protests (referring to people as “brown, red, and yellow” – in 2023?!). There was a small contingent of young activists and only a handful of families.
Even though I knew the theme was “End Fossil Fuels,” I was still surprised at how negative the vibe was. It was all about being against something, without actually being for anything. Speakers pointed to the many horrors of fossil fuel extraction and use, but I didn’t hear one mention of clean energy. No mention of the recent changes to the California building code on embodied carbon. No mention of the bills Governor Newsom is going to sign requiring climate impact and risk disclosures by big companies doing business in California (props to the woman with a homemade sign about these bills – including their bill numbers!). There was a big sign next to the stage acknowledging that just two days before, California filed a lawsuit against the five largest oil and gas companies in the world for their decades of deception and the damage they have caused, but I didn’t hear any speakers mention it.
I had brought my 10-year-old daughter with me and she found the whole thing depressing and scary, including the “giant puppet show” (can we retire these relics, please?) so we left early.
It’s easy to be against something terrible. We need to stop doing this bad thing and go back to normal. But fossil fuels are so integrated into our society that we need to be more than just against them, we need to champion the future we want: healthy, powered by clean energy, equitable and just, and with a thriving natural world. We need to articulate what this future looks like. This is what made the green building movement so exciting at the beginning – this new way of building made a possible future tangible.
The most successful movements help us transform our current feelings (anger, frustration, grief) into new feelings (belonging, hope, agency) that drive change. To make climate action feel inevitable and to bring more people into the movement, let’s focus on the feelings we want to create and the amazing future we can build together.
