What is Critical Climate?

There’s a famous story about president Franklin Roosevelt. A couple of years after he got in a woman came up to him. She said, “You promised us social security. Where is it?”

He said, “I’m not going to get you social security. You’re going to have to make me do it. Because I’ve got the banks against me. I’ve got the corporations against me... So you, the American people, are going to have to make me and congress do this.”

And they did.

- Michael Moore

Many of the Earth’s mechanisms for processing Co2 are on the brink of failure due to rising global temperatures. For example, warmer oceans will kill plankton which process enormous amounts of Co2. Warming oceans will also release Co2. This will create a cycle of increasing temperatures. There will be no going back to a safe climate. In time famine, floods and other ecological disasters will cause hundreds of millions of people to flee their homes (see www.WakeUpFreakOut.org).

In line with climate science, the grassroots climate action movement (ClimateSummit.org.au) is calling for 100%  renewable energy for Australia by 2020. Research groups like Beyond Zero Emissions (BeyondZeroEmissions.org) have detailed plans which show that the technical transition is affordable and achievable provided we can muster the political will.

But to do this we must learn that petitions, waving signs and other forms of begging do not work. In 2003 the 500 000 people strong Australian anti-Iraq war protests showed that it’s not enough to be correct or even popular. If an issue seriously challenges big business politicians will ignore it. It is safer for a party to lose an election than it is to lose the support of big business and their media. This is why even The Greens don't set policies in line with the climate science 

(VoteClimate.org.au). In order for a movement to be successful it needs to be based on people power ie. sustained mass civil disobedience.

For example in 2000, despite the pro-corporate World Economic Forum being supported by both the Labor and Liberal parties, a 10 000 people strong protest blockade shut down their meeting at Melbourne’s Crown Casino. In 2008, the APDSE war profiteers conference (scheduled for Adelaide) was cancelled because the government feared a repeat of the radical protests at the 2007 Melbourne pro-corporate G20 meeting. In 2009, after years of being ignored, Melbourne's taxi drivers won safer working conditions by organizing a wildcat strike & blockade of Melbourne streets. The anti-Iraq war movement quickly grew to a massive size. The climate movement can do the same. But we need to make sure that it has an understanding of how to be successful. Critical Climate is a growing network of hundreds of people. But in order to carry out the types of mass actions that can’t be ignored it will need to be much bigger. Help us grow the network. Join our 'union for the climate' - a network ready to support and carry out mass actions of non-cooperation in order to force a real response to the climate emergency.