Climate Change and Civic Renewal
By Trygve Throntveit
Climate change affects every Minnesotan, as it affects every human being on earth. But it does not affect us all equally.
In the United States, black and brown communities bear the brunt of the economic and health costs. Meanwhile, many communities dependent on agriculture and fossil fuels for their economic livelihood fear that climate mitigation efforts will affect them disproportionately, in negative ways.
This raises a complex question: What would climate justice look like, how do we get there, and who gets to decide?
One answer is that it must look like, depend on, and include all of us. As conciliatory as that answer sounds, however, any approach that embodies it invites controversy, in at least two important ways.
First, it suggests that calls for the federal government to mobilize and deploy the economic and social resources of the nation to "win the war" against climate change need to be qualified.
War talk is inspiring. But it also tends to divide people into enemy camps, or loyalists and traitors. Whatever one's moral perspective on this issue, it makes no strategic sense to further alienate those worried about losing their jobs to climate mitigation by painting them as enemies or traitors. This is especially true in a closely divided federal government, as President Biden's emphasis on climate-friendly jobs in traditional industries suggests he knows too well.
Second, in a country aspiring to democracy, the means of achieving climate justice cannot be separated from the end itself. Once again, this means less emphasis on the federal government as savior and more on citizens as solvers. That, in turn, means acknowledging the fears and soliciting the ideas of those who fear climate mitigation will mean loss of lifeways and livelihood.
There are several benefits to an inclusive, citizen-centered approach. As Boston-based civic environmentalist Carmen Sirianni has long argued, inviting the creative input of citizens and communities, rather than enlisting them in prefabricated plans, leads to better solutions to thorny problems. They are better because they incorporate practical local wisdom that no government official or expert could have. And they are better because they get the buy-in of more of the people whose embrace of the solution—a light-rail line, or a high-protein, cold-weather crop, for instance—is critical to its success.
A more localized approach, catalyzed by federal legal, fiscal, and logistical aid, is thus a more effective and efficient approach. The same is true for a depolarizing approach.
Including climate skeptics in decision-making processes that affect their immediate interests and communities does not mean that they get to veto the will of a climate-conscious majority. It does mean that they get some say in how real trade-offs and genuinely founded fears get addressed. Again, this is not merely a moral argument. It is a strategic one. Having a say and some shaping influence on political outcomes is what allows people to move on to the next problem—or better yet, shared goal—rather than exit the system.
Luckily, we have good working models of citizen-centered, civically empowering climate action. Thursday's panel, featuring Sirianni along with Minnesotans Catherine Fleming of Project Sweetie Pie, Winona LaDuke of Honor the Earth, and Bruce Morlan of Braver Angels and, previously, the Conservative Climate Caucus, is a good way to learn about some of them.
The severity of our climate change problem is due, in part, to the exclusion of too many black, brown, young, poor, or otherwise marginalized people from the decisions of government, business, and other institutions. We can't predict the consequences of excluding different types of people from our climate solutions. But the risk of negative consequences—for sustained climate mitigation and for our democratic culture—should factor into the calculations of anyone who cares about either.
Trygve Throntveit is Director of Strategic Partnership at the Minnesota Humanities Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Global Fellow for History and Public Policy at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. You can follow his scholarly and civic pursuits on Twitter @throntv.