{"id":7966,"date":"2015-05-09T07:30:09","date_gmt":"2015-05-09T12:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7966"},"modified":"2015-05-09T07:30:09","modified_gmt":"2015-05-09T12:30:09","slug":"want-to-change-the-future-pay-attention-to-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7966","title":{"rendered":"Want to Change the Future? Pay Attention to the Past."},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"postTitle\">\n<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/ensia.com\/voices\/want-to-change-the-future-pay-attention-to-the-past\/\" target=\"_blank\">WANT TO CHANGE THE FUTURE? PAY ATTENTION TO THE PAST.<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"postIntroText\"><strong>From Mandela to MLK to McKibben, history offers lessons aplenty for climate activists<\/strong><\/div>\n<p>We all know the plotline: Single-minded, passionate activists attempt to take on immense money and power, hidebound ideology and bureaucratic paralysis to turn the tide on the most important issue ever.<\/p>\n<p>We could be talking about climate change. But we could also be talking about the abolition of slavery, marriage equality or countless other political struggles from history. Each of those other movements holds a bonanza of lessons for climate activists on how sweeping change succeeds or fails.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Abolition: Angels and Aloofness<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>No movement was ever more entitled to the moral high ground than abolitionism. What can climate activists learn from the anti-slavery movement?<\/p>\n<p>First, being on the side of the angels may not matter. Abolitionists\u2019 morality and common sense ran headlong into arguments of economic necessity and states\u2019 rights in defense of slavery. Similarly, states\u2019 rights and economic need are rhetorical refuges in climate debates today. So don\u2019t wait for common sense to prevail. Abolitionists waited for decades, and it still took a catastrophic war to resolve things.<\/p>\n<p>Second, smug aloofness doesn\u2019t help. Abolitionists were viewed as effete and elite, eggheads and dilettantes. So much so that they even repelled one of their own. In his\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.emersoncentral.com\/selfreliance.htm\" target=\"_blank\">1841 essay\u00a0<em>Self-Reliance<\/em><\/a><em>,<\/em>\u00a0the existentialist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson called out abolitionist leaders for what he saw as their \u201cincredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off\u201d while ignoring social ills in their own northern backyards.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"pullquoteWide\">If enviros made the rebirth of coal towns via renewable energy a priority, Appalachia\u2019s coming Reconstruction Era could replace perpetual bitterness with prosperity.<\/span>Today\u2019s environmentalists are similarly perceived as being detached from the grim realities of coalfield towns, and that has opened up opportunities to blame green groups and regulators for the decades-long and inevitable market collapse of King Coal.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WANT TO CHANGE THE FUTURE? PAY ATTENTION TO THE PAST. From Mandela to MLK to McKibben, history offers lessons aplenty for climate activists We all know the plotline: Single-minded, passionate activists attempt to take on immense money and power, hidebound ideology and bureaucratic paralysis to turn the tide on the most important issue ever. We [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[14,5287,5288,141,3484,328,5289,1729,656],"class_list":["post-7966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-activism","tag-climate-activism","tag-climate-activists","tag-climate-change","tag-dissent","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-king-coal","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-protest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7967,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7966\/revisions\/7967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}