Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Time For Greens To Focus On Voters, Not Pols

By Amy Harder  

Bill McKibben

Environmental activist, founder of 350.org campaign

Congress will not act on comprehensive climate legislation for at least the next two years, and longer if a Republican becomes president in 2012, says environmental activist Bill McKibben. So McKibben, who founded the international climate campaign 350.org, is advising his fellow green groups to stop worrying about lawmakers for now and start working to change the minds of the voters who elect them.

McKibben, who will be in Washington this week to advocate action on global warming, said climate talks on both the domestic and global levels have all but shut down since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid punted on a climate bill this summer. "I think, frankly, the next couple years will be a quiet time legislatively given the likely outcome of the November elections," McKibben told NationalJournal.com late last week. "And we better use that time to build a real movement -- the thing we haven't had in the past."

He says environmental groups should drop green jobs and national security from their messaging strategy and warn voters that the planet is facing a worsening environmental peril, a striking difference from what members of Congress -- especially key Republicans, like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- have favored.

Edited excerpts of the interview follow.

NJ: What type of repercussions do you think the Senate punting on comprehensive climate legislation has had on domestic efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and global climate negotiations?

McKibben: I think it's ground to an effective halt. I think it's pretty clear we're going to be unlikely to get significant legislation in the next two years. And I think without it, the odds for doing anything really meaningful on a global basis are close to nil.

We [350.org campaign] work in 181 countries. We're probably the most widespread climate campaign that there has ever been. I think it's pretty clear talking to our folks all over the world that this sort of U.N. process thing is going to -- at best -- lurch forward until the U.S. finally steps up. And so I think, frankly, the next couple years will be a quiet time legislatively given the likely outcome of the November elections. And we better use that time to build a real movement -- the thing we haven't had in the past.

My sense watching things in Congress was that our green groups gave it their very best shot, and as it turned out, they were significantly outgunned. The energy industry has so much money that they're able to fairly easily block even a very mild and tame legislation, which this was.

And since we're not going to compete for them in cash money, we better figure out some other currency and I think that currency is going to have to be bodies and passion. And that's what we tried to do as we build movements.

NJ: Some people have said that the PR and messaging strategy deployed by environmental groups wasn't critical enough to convince key moderate Democrats and Republicans to support the climate bill. Do you agree?

McKibben: I think we probably have some lessons we can learn. One of the things is that, clearly, it doesn't do enough to just talk about energy independence or some amorphous concepts like that. We better be quite honest and talk about the very real peril that the planet is in.

NJ: But members of Congress have said framing it in terms of the economy and national security are the best ways to connect with voters.

McKibben: At the moment, that's where the discussion has been happening, but it hasn't worked. And my guess is that if we can build the movement that really highlights the danger that we're in and the moral urgency of this situation, then maybe we can change the politics. Clearly the numbers don't add up the way they are now politically. And that's a good thing to know. The groups inside the Beltway that led this fight -- there is a real credit not only for fighting but helping us figure out what the possibilities are and aren't. Simply trying to repeat the same thing again, I think, would be a big mistake -- using the same series of arguments that the real issues are green jobs and energy independence and that the way around it is this sort of complicated trading scheme.

NJ: Why do you think the messaging focused on economics and national security hasn't worked?

McKibben: Because there is too much money on the other side. ExxonMobil made more money last year than any company in the history of money.

Our environmental movement is a noble enterprise, but it's called to [protect] the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or tasks like that, which are hard fights but not comparable to taking on the center of the economy. For that, we need a real movement large enough to give congressmen and senators some credible idea that they can be either rewarded or punished for their positions on this. And right now we don't really have that.

NJ: Should the environmental movement be more critical of lawmakers in terms of their support for climate legislation?

McKibben: I think, for the moment, not worrying constantly about what is going on in Washington may be key. We need to build this movement all over the place as fast we can and as big as we can. And if we do that, Washington will have a way, in a sense, of taking care of itself. Politicians are -- if nothing else -- extremely good at reading their little human barometers. [They're] able to read the slightest shifts in public sentiment. We've got to make some pretty mighty shifts in public sentiment, and if we do that it'll be a lot easier to talk to those senators and congressmen.

NJ: How do you think environmental groups can get the support of the moderate Democrats and the few key Republicans who are essential for passage of any climate bill?

McKibben: I think our main task right now is to not worry about senators and congressmen particularly. Not for the next couple of years, because not that much is going to go on. Our task is to worry about building the movement to then make it possible to exert some real pressure. Most of the real action is not going to be inside Washington the next couple of years, is my guess.

NJ: Some groups are still holding out hope for the Senate to pass a renewable electricity standard, though.

McKibben: Yeah, let's hope something small and useful happens, but clearly we're not going to get anything that makes a real powerful dent in our energy architecture, I don't think.

NJ: How does EPA regulation factor into this debate?

McKibben: The EPA can clearly play a useful role -- it will take time, it may encounter lots of litigation, but when you've only got a few cards in your hand, you need to play them all. Maybe it will help buy a little time while we build that movement.

NJ: What happens if the next president elected is a Republican who doesn't support climate legislation or whose position is that global warming is not occurring?

McKibben: I think it would put it [comprehensive climate legislation] back another four years given the current state of affairs. You get out a little further into the future and there are a lot of unknowns, and some of those unknowns are going to play a big part in this. What happens in the natural work will play a real role in how the politics of all this is shaped.

NJ: Even in the wake of America's largest environmental disaster ever -- the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill -- Congress still could not pass a climate bill. What's your take on that?

McKibben: The real issue -- and it's an important one -- was that the oil spill, in a sense, was the opposite kind of issue from climate change. What happened in the oil spill was something going wrong, an accident, a mistake. What is happening with climate change is things happening just the way they're supposed to. It's not when BP makes a mistake that we have climate change, it's when BP executes its business plan perfectly. If that oil makes it out of the gulf, to the refinery and into the gas tank of your car, it still causes an environmental catastrophe, and that's the point we have to get across. As tragic as the BP spill was, it didn't really illustrate what was going on with climate. I was disappointed that the president didn't manage to make that connection more forcefully. Because I think he probably could have. I'm afraid that nature is going to provide us with more opportunity to make these same kinds of connections going forward.

NJ: How do you respond to what seems to be a growing consensus among conservatives both in and outside of Congress that climate change is not happening?

McKibben: For the moment, it's become a sort of article of faith among certain kinds of ideologues that physics and chemistry are wrong. And somehow outwit them. I think that is unlikely to last. My guess is that sooner or later, conservatives will realize that the least conservative thing you can possibly do is double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and just see what happens. Real conservatives who are interested in stability will, I think, eventually will come around. But for the moment, you're absolutely right. We've decided for some reason to make climate change part of our political football match instead of the scientific issue that it is.