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the Climate Crisis and why it matters
the Climate Crisis and why it matters
The climate crisis can be defined as a culmination of environmental issues brought about by global warming, climate change, and human activity involving the extreme emission of greenhouse gases. Climate change negatively impacts not only our ecosystems and biodiversity, but our access to necessary resources such as food and water, most notably through the loss of nutrient rich soils. As our global temperatures rise, natural disasters become all the more prominent, and this continuous destruction could lead to the displacement of countless numbers of people, with those already impoverished being most vulnerable. With our current rate of global emissions, "temperatures could rise to above 3 degrees Celsius by 2100, causing irreversible damage to our ecosystems" (un.org). It's not just an environmental issue, but a global one, and its effects will shape the future of our world. Neoliberal practices of burning fossil fuels only exacerbate the consequences, and it's clear that their agenda places profit before the conditions of our environment. Given this, it is extremely vital that we take action to combat the climate crisis now, before it's too late. The Sunrise Movement exemplifies this urgency, and their unified efforts are working to challenge this corrupt neoliberal agenda by pushing for a Green New Deal.
foundations of the sunrise movement
foundations of the sunrise movement
The Sunrise Movement, founded by Varshini Prakash and Sara Blazevic, began in 2015, and was launched officially as a nonprofit organization in 2017. That same year, the planet saw temperatures rise to the second highest average in 137 years—beat out only by the average global temperature for the year prior1. According to NASA, these temperatures were accompanied by decreasing amounts of arctic ice and support the observation that the planet is in fact warming2. Notably, the Sunrise Movement emerged not only amid one of the hottest years on Earth, but also following a tumultuous presidential election in which the environment was a top issue for American voters3. With the climate crisis only worsening and a lack of urgency to effectively resolve it, it became clear that it was necessary to combat the issue at its political roots.
Thus the Sunrise Movement began to mobilize, with a focus on implementing leaders who would make climate change and its harmful effects on the environment a priority. In pushing for a Green New Deal, they hope to move away from neoliberal practices of fossil fuel burning, and transition to clean energy alternatives, while simultaneously upholding their goal of creating millions of good paying jobs. The Sunrise Movement is responding not only to the visible disruptions in natural landscapes, but also to the more tangible experiences of regular people across the globe—those who have lost their homes, families, or health to local natural disasters caused by climate change4.
1https://climate.nasa.gov
2https://climate.nasa.gov
3https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/07/07/4-top-voting-issues-in-2016-election/
4https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-optimistic-activists-for-a-green-new-deal-inside-the-youth-led-singing-sunrise-movement
“I’m 25 years old. We’ve known about the climate crisis for twice as long as I’ve been alive in this planet and we have yet to do something that scales our action and economic activity to combat the crisis. [Fighting climate change] is about survival and existence. Are we going to take action over the next 10 years to ensure our generation has a livable future, or are we going to continue to kick the can down the road and resign ourselves to live a life filled with chaos, violence, and uncertainty?”1 — Varshini Prakash
1https://everbluetraining.com/17-insightful-quotes-about-green-new-deal/
“...[the] priorities of neo- liberal policies are to expand market forces, facilitate open competition, enhance mass production, reduce the state's anti-poverty programs, attract foreign investment, and maximize consumption. In effect, such neo-liberal policies are likely to expand industrialization (causing environmental pollution); globalize consumerism (encour- aging consumption of environmentally hazardous products); multiply the emission of Co2 and CFCs (worsening the greenhouse effect and ozone layer depletion); over- exploit natural resources (depleting nonrenewable resources); increase the number of urban poor and rural landless (forcing them to build more slums and clear more forests); and, thus, threaten the realization of sustainable development objectives.”1
—Haque, p. 199
1https://www.jstor.org/stable/1601575
Neoliberalism's Role in the Climate Crisis
Neoliberalism's Role in the Climate Crisis
Besides neoliberalism's more direct contributions to climate change through explicit fossil fuel emissions and acts of deforestation, it inherently prolongs the crisis by limiting democractic efforts to regulate or challenge much of their environmental polluting agenda. Privatization and deregulation under neoliberal policy has given large corporations the freedom to contaminate our atmosphere and waters without being held responsible, all for accumulating as much profit as possible. In order to effectively manage the climate crisis, it requires regulation and strategy that can mitigate these ramifications, but this is nearly impossible to achieve with neoliberal aggressions against collectivized planning. The Sunrise Movement represents a direct challenge to this free market status quo in that they tackle these concerns at their core, by ending, "the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect(ing) leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people." With more environmentally aware individuals in office, slowly but surely, we can not only raise awareness about the urgency of the climate crisis, but also enact more meaningful legislation that will regulate much of the harmful repercussions of neoliberal policies.
Direct Impact & Environmental Concerns
Neoliberalism promotes massive production and consumption, which climate activists and scientists deem is occurring at an unsustainable rate1. Consumerism is, according to environmental experts, simultaneously providing employment and contributing to environmental destruction2. Producing goods requires the extraction and use of natural resources (such as oil), resulting in both the transformation of land for manufacturing and rising greenhouse gas emissions3.
The effects of climate change are also disproportionately felt in the Global South where neoliberal policies create export processing zones, build factories, and destroy massive amounts of land to plant only a few types of profitable crops4. These environmental changes (for example, deforestation combined with flooding or fires) force people out of their homes and countries5. Under these conditions, local governments are weakened and thus the capacity to protect local environments is substantially minimized6.
In 2017, a report released by Oil Change International (and reported on by The Guardian) found that “G20 nations provide four times more public financing to fossil fuels than to renewable energy”7. Environmentalists, such as the Sunrise Movement, argue this demonstrates that wealthy nations and neoliberal leaders are more concerned about the preservation of large corporations than the detrimental effects on the environment. It is precisely these concerns that the Sunrise Movements addresses.
1https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/consumerism-earth-suffers & https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/951, pg. 202
2https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/consumerism-earth-suffers & https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/951, pg. 202
3https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/consumerism-earth-suffers
4 Harsha Walia, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021), pgs. 64-74 & https://www.jstor.org/stable/1601575
5 Harsha Walia, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021), pgs. 64-74
“We could be on the brink of a new age of health and prosperity. But a greedy handful of wealthy fossil fuel executives are standing in the way of progress. Forty years ago they knew the truth about climate change and they knew it was their fault. Ever since then, they’ve been covering up the science and buying out politicians to help them. Money talks. Rather than being punished, they’ve been rewarded by corrupt politicians. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson is now negotiating climate treaties for the United States and Exxon is raking in cash while people around the world are hurting. To keep up this scheme, they pit us against each other by skin color, political party, and where we live. They say that one community must suffer for another to thrive. We say, no more.” 1 —Sunrise Movement
Neoliberal response to climate crisis
Neoliberal response to climate crisis
"The United States has taken a different path than many of its counterparts, tending to rely on a “market-regulation” approach whereby consumers express their desire for specific welfare practices through their purchasing decisions. The challenge in this trend is that it asks for the challenging valuation of natural resources and asks consumers to make choices in the aggregate that will achieve environmental goals when they may not be in the best position to do so."1 —Czarnezki & Fiedler
Neoliberal response to climate change is characterized by an adherence to free market and profit maximizing strategies, even within the context of developing environmental policy2. Notably, neoliberal policy addresses environmental damage, and consequently climate change, as an “externality” which industries are not directly responsible for3. This is most clearly demonstrated through emissions trading schemes, or ETS4. Emission trading schemes are designed to reduce emissions through government distribution of carbon emission permits5. ETSs create a market for permits. By obtaining these permits, critics argue, industries and corporations are able to avoid being held individually responsible for reducing their environmental impact—and in many cases, can get away with making little to no changes in how they operate their businesses6.
Additionally, neoliberal policies and attitudes emphasize the significance of individual action7. As a result, consumers assume partial responsibility for the climate crisis. For example, consumers are encouraged and expected to go ‘green’ to save the planet—cutting out meat, using “eco-friendly” products, switching to energy efficient lightbulbs8. Consequently, consumers (rather than producers) are also then made to be partially at fault if nothing improves.
1pg.40 https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=ulr)
2pg.40 https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=ulr)
3pg. 613 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1045235410000961
4pg. 611, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1045235410000961
5pg. 613, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1045235410000961
6 pg. 616, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1045235410000961
7pg. 331, https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/earth/earth-02-00019/article_deploy/earth-02-00019.pdf
8 pg. 331, https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/earth/earth-02-00019/article_deploy/earth-02-00019.pdf & https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2017/jul/17/neoliberalism-has-conned-us-into-fighting-climate-change-as-individuals
Additional Resources
Additional Resources
Climate Crisis and Consumerism: https://youtu.be/x0ckvo2Z5BU
Charts to Understand Climate Change: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21428525/climate-change-cause-charts-china-us-responsible
Research on Fossil Fuel Company Contributions to Climate Change/Ocean Acidification: https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep24076
Global greenhouse gas emissions data—https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data
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