Autumn Odone
ENG 110
Section B
11 November 2018
Solving Climate Change Through Social Change
Climate change has become an issue so catastrophically large that people have begun to give up on it. What could one person possibly do on their own? Well, nothing. Which is exactly why social cohesion plays an imperative role on the road to end climate change. Both Kathleen Dean Moore, nature writer and philosophy professor, and Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and environmental activist in the movie Do The Math, believe that this is the most crucial point in time to get involved in the movement. If we do it right, we could potentially alter the outcome of the future for the better. So how does one go about changing the future of humanity? Bill McKibben would say you need to go out and “make a little noise” (1). You need to grab people’s attention and not let go. Moore, in Mary DeMocker’s interview “If Your House is on Fire,” sees a separation of “what people want from what they really care about” where we see prioritizing the clothes we wear instead of the decaying world we leave behind for future generations (7). Charles Duhigg, reporter for the New York Times and author of “From Civil Rights to Megachurches,” would hand over his three-step process where social change occurs in waves, starting small then spreading through a community. But what if we could take all these ideas and put it into one? Overall, McKibben, Duhigg, and Moore all offer their expert advice on how to initiate social change in terms of solving climate change: civil disobedience, weak ties in a community, and moral obligation.
We are scouring every corner of the Earth to find a solution to climate change, a topic that creates a lot of controversial arguments. This argument is addressed by a sociologist studying consumption, time use, and environmental sustainability named Juliet Schor who is featured in Do The Math discusses the damage of the fossil fuel industries. Schor tacks on to McKibben on how we are still releasing carbon at an infinitely exponential rate when we should be reducing them. She says, “You can’t keep increasing your economy infinitely on a finite planet” (2). There is only so much money and fossil fuel available, and once those resources are gone we won’t ever get it back. Once we run out of fossil fuels, we will be forced to turn to renewable energy. The problem with that, as McKibben mentions is that we are still investing in fossil fuel rather than renewable energy, something that could be considered counterproductive in sustaining human life. McKibben also discusses how fossil fuel industries don’t pay for the carbon emissions they produce (5). To put it simply, your everyday American citizens are paying millions of dollars to pollute the environment, yet the ones creating the pollution don’t pay for anything. In my town, we can’t even dispose of our trash bags for free; the trash company requires a specific trash bag in order the use the service which we have to purchase from the grocery store. Fossil fuel industries aren’t paying for the fumes pouring out of their smokestacks, we are.
As Schor and McKibben state, these large carbon-emitting companies aren’t paying for their waste which means somebody has to. Those “somebody’s” are future generations. McKibben approaches this much more directly than either Duhigg or Moore with his acts of civil disobedience and protests. In his documentary series he mentions, ”…I’ve been kind of forced to go against my sense of who I’m most comfortable being. It seems like it’s the thing that’s required now… Be a little uncomfortable. Push other people to be a little uncomfortable”(1). He explores the idea of pushing our own as well as other peoples’ limits in order to create change. In order to find a solution to climate change, everybody needs to be on board with making potential sacrifices. Future generations won’t know some of the greatest wonders of the world unless we let these companies know that what they are doing is wrong. If you show that you’re okay with being uncomfortable, then other people will start to be okay with it, too.
The idea that McKibben presents us with of change spreading like ripples is similar to Duhigg’s idea about weak ties, despite both having very opposing views on how exactly to go about initiating social change. Duhigg observes social change occuring in a three-step process rather than civil disobedience; the process begins with close friends speaking out, then acquaintances or members within a community, and finally people who are complete strangers. Duhigg says, “A movement starts because of the social habits of friendship and the strong ties between close acquaintances” (87). Based on Duhigg’s explanation of Rosa Parks’ influence in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, her friends and close acquaintances began the protest against segregation. This was the very beginning of a large movement which leads to the next part of the formula described as a form of peer pressure where he says, “the social habits that encourage people to conform to group expectations… spread through weak ties” (92). People in Montgomery began following in her friends’ footsteps which amplified the civil rights movement. After news of this uprise spread, the final part of the formula could commence. It requires the movement to become self-propelled. Duhigg says, “For an idea to… become self propelling… [leaders] give people new habits that help them figure out where to go on their own” (100). When people feel like they are able to solve a big problem on their own they feel empowered. That empowerment is what causes the movement to become self propelling which spreads the idea for change like wildfire. In other words, after the movement no longer requires so much effort from the leaders to get people involved, the people can carry on that idea infinitely.
Another angle to take on approaching social change is discussed by Kathleen Dean Moore; she elaborates on how people feel as though there is a moral obligation to work together against climate change, an addition that could be enlightening to the climate change movement. People feel obligated to help because other people in their community are also helping, yet another idea similar to Duhigg’s. In Moore’s interview with Mary DeMocker, Moore begins to discuss the urgency with which to approach climate change and how exactly future generations have a chance to stop it from completely obliterating the Earth. In the interview DeMocker says, “…Paul Crutzen proposes that the planet has entered a new geologic epoch he calls the ‘Anthropocene,’ meaning the ‘era of man…’ characterized… by mass extinction.” to which Moore responds “Our generation is witnessing the end of the old era and the start of a new one, when human culture will determine the future of the earth” (3). This quote emphasized the power that humans have for the future and the fact that we even have power at all. Humans will determine the fate of civilization; whether we decide to stop climate change or not will be the deciding factor. Using moral obligation in combination with Duhigg’s theory of weak ties to bring people even closer together could be the push that the climate change movement has been looking for to make something happen.
There are several comparisons between Moore and Duhigg’s approaches to climate change and Bill McKibben’s’ that could be the connection needed to achieve change; McKibben sees the importance of humans taking action and how that is critical in determining the outcome of the future. He says, “Very few people on Earth ever get to say, ‘I’m doing the most important thing I can be doing…’ but you guys get to say that…” (14). When McKibben said these words, he amplified the idea that everybody can get behind the fight that he is presenting us with. Though some may argue that civil disobedience isn’t morally correct, McKibben explains how the fossil fuel industry is causing the environment detrimental harm with no tax tacked on to the back of it (5) which is not morally correct. With regard to climate change, Moore, Duhigg, and McKibben believe that this is the most crucial point in time to get involved in the movement and that, if we use our moral obligations to fight against what isn’t right, we could potentially improve the outcome of the future.
To summarize, in order to achieve widespread social change and potentially end climate change, we must take strategies for approaching this issue from McKibben, Duhigg, and Moore and use them in combination. People in a community may begin taking bikes instead of cars to cut down on carbon emissions; the moral obligation to help the environment by staying connected to those around you, as suggested by Duhigg and Moore, pushes people to stay together. When the government passes a law that could be detrimental to the environment, such as the Keystone Pipeline discussed in Do The Math, people see their hard work going to waste and are willing to come together and stand up for what they believe in. If everybody does their part in fighting the morally unjust, then there won’t be a need for a war to prevent climate change.
Works Cited
DeMocker, Mary. “If Your House Is On Fire.” The Sun.
December 2012 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/444/if-your-house-is-on-fire
November 2018
Duhigg, Charles. “From Civil Rights to Megachurges.” Emerging,
by Barclay Barrios, 3.0 ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.
Do The Math. Produced by Bill McKibben, 350.org, 2013 http://math.350.org November 2018
