Millions of us woke up on November 6 with more fear, anger, and sadness. We woke up with resilience and determination. We woke up with questions. How could this happen? Could I have done more? And for many Americans who live in rural areas that have driven this country’s swing towards extremist candidates like Donald Trump, these questions go even further. What is happening in my hometown? What can we do? What’s next?

To every rural American adult, one answer is simple: run for office.

In 2018 and 2020, we teamed up in two rural conservative state legislative districts in Maine. With Chloe as the candidate and Canyon as the campaign manager, we reached beyond the choir, talking to folks who had been left behind by the political establishment and built a movement that transcended divisive partisan politics. We won—both times. First, shifting the vote margin by 22 percent to win a very conservative House district, then defeating the incumbent Senate minority leader to flip a rural state senate seat that has remained progressive ever since.

No matter what community you live in, rural organizing is tough work. But with Trump winning a second term, it’s never been more urgent to build power at the local and state level. Our future depends on it. Our neighbors and our families depend on it. And when we organize strategically, we can activate our communities, shift the margins, and even win in places that the establishment has written off. That’s why we started Dirtroad Organizing in 2022 to train and support rural leaders across the country. 

This cycle, most of our alumni ran for office and either won or outperformed their predecessors in an election that saw most rural districts move even further to the right. Their organizing bucked the trend and shifted the margins in rural districts in Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wisconsin, Iowa, Oklahoma, Missouri, Ohio, New Hampshire, Vermont, and West Virginia.

In Wisconsin, Sarah Keyeski, a licensed professional counselor, won a state senate seat campaigning on public education, reproductive freedom, mental health, and affordable childcare. In Montana, Melody Cunningham won a seat in the state legislature after spending more than a year going door to door listening to people’s concerns and emphasizing her background advocating for “the voices of those who are often not heard,” focusing on healthcare, public education, and affordable housing. In northern Vermont, Leanne Harple won a House race by just 120 votes. Leanne, a public school teacher, centered the stabilization and support of rural schools, affordable housing and childcare, the environment, and access to healthcare.

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These candidates made headway by organizing with everyone, not just the people who thought like them. They did this not by spending thousands of dollars on television ads, but by knocking on thousands of doors to connect with their neighbors and listen to their concerns.

Now, as we face another four years of Donald Trump, we know that the resistance must be strong in rural communities to hold ground and build back power. Dirtroad Organizing is looking for the next generation of brave, bold rural leaders to organize and run. People who are already serving in their communities, and are more concerned with improving the lives of ordinary people than impressing the powerful.

If you can, run. If you can’t run, ask a friend to run. Tell them how you will help them, and let them know that there’s a national movement ready to train and support them every step of the way. Believe it or not, you can win.

We’ve also seen dozens of candidates win another way—even when they didn’t get more votes than their opponents. Candidates who use their races to build a volunteer base, register hundreds of new young voters, or increase awareness of local resources have a big impact and shift margins long past Election Day. In northern Montana, David Arends, a physician’s assistant, lost to a longtime incumbent but outperformed the predicted vote margin by 9 percent. He ran on education, community revitalization, and bridging the political divide, promising to create nonpartisan workgroups within the district to facilitate discussion, problem-solving, and the development of ideas for potential legislation. This is what we need more than anything in rural areas: real and lasting political infrastructure that bridges partisan divides to win real victories for working people.

Rural America is filled with vibrancy, love, hope, and compassion. And yes, rural America is also where Trump’s base has gained considerable ground. In rural communities, 70 percent of elections are uncontested. Now more than ever, it’s time to organize.

Take our Defend Democracy Pledge. You’ll get connected to an incredible network of organizations that are ready to support people like you that want to run, support a friend to run, or organize in your community. We’re partnering with GALEO Impact Fund, West Virginia Can’t Wait, RuralOrganizing.Org, Contest Every Race, Forward Montana, SURJ, Change Tennessee, and others to ensure that you receive the community, support, and training that you need. Whether you want to run for office or organize, Dirtroad Organizing and our incredible state and national partners will support you. Join the movement of hardworking rural and small town Americans to invest in our communities and defend democracy.

You are not alone. We will do this together.

As we approach the November election, fear and anxiety dominate. The presidential and other federal races are, of course, center stage, but there are other candidates who are critical to pulling our democracy back from the brink. They are rising above partisan politics in the most unlikely places to unite voters around pragmatic policies that improve the quality of life for their families and their neighbors.

We’re talking about downballot rural races and the bravery, courage, hope, and commitment it takes for progressive candidates to organize in the overlooked corners of America.

We are the codirectors of Dirtroad Organizing, the only national training program for progressive rural organizers and candidates. This year, Dirtroad Organizing is supporting 72 leaders who are doing the intense and vital work of building bridges in small towns that have been split apart by partisan wedges.

Why do rural races matter? Our democracy was designed to privilege voters spread out across large geographical areas. Rural voters have outsize political influence, yet over the last 15 years the liberal political establishment all but abandoned organizing in these communities. Resources were directed by top-of-the-ticket campaigns toward a political calculus that relied on squeezing every bit of turnout from the most populous areas. Overlooked by this strategy, rural America lurched to the right.

While conservatives slashed budgets for vital rural services, creating insecurity and fear, their scapegoating tactics manipulated and inflamed rural voters. Political opportunism expressed in a new politics of anger, exclusion, and hate drove extremism and polarization in many rural communities. That extremism took root in town halls and state legislatures, while bleeding into congressional races, the Electoral College, and ultimately the judiciary. Now, democracy hangs in the balance.

The solution—like the problem—is hyper-local, beginning in our small towns and rural communities. There lies the best hope for our country. It means we organize, invest, and run for office in these communities, rebuilding trust door by door, conversation by conversation.

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Dirtroad Organizing is galvanizing and training the next generation of progressive rural organizers, staff, and candidates who are leading this democracy work. Each day, these new leaders are listening to neighbors and reclaiming common ground from beneath the scorched earth of national politics. We provide training and mentorship to support this work and help forge a viable path towards the policies needed for a durable, just, and equitable future. This new politics is rooted in community and values, not partisanship. It’s not always about winning in these tough districts—it’s about doing the deep organizing that doesn’t end on election day.

You may not have heard of our candidates, but they are doing the often joyful, often tough, always heroic work that can turn the tide in rural America.

Chris Wier, Oklahoma State House District 4

Meet Chris Wier, a 23-year-old Cherokee citizen running to represent their community in the Oklahoma legislature. They have built an intergenerational campaign predicated on meeting the basic needs of the community by fighting for quality healthcare, fully funding public education, protecting tribal sovereignty, and standing up for their rural way of life. A typical campaign weekend often sees Chris and their volunteers knocking doors or writing postcards to voters all afternoon, then finishing off the day with a cookout and bonfire.

Lucia Valentine, West Virginia State Assembly District 97

In West Virginia, two young women and best friends—Lucia Valentine and Maria Russo (below)—are running for the State Assembly in adjacent districts where they grew up together. Lucia has been an environmental advocate in the West Virginia Legislature fighting for cross-partisan legislation to protect clean water for all West Virginians. She is translating that expertise into a strong campaign with a focus on collaboration and a vision for a future where young people can thrive within their state and contribute to its growth and sustainability for generations to come.

Maria Russo, West Virginia State Assembly District 100

Rooted in her childhood community, Maria Russo runs a small farm and advocates for a healthier West Virginia. She is a former public school teacher and coach, a public policy strategist, and a clean water advocate. Her work with the West Virginia Rivers Coalition helped get the 2023 PFAS Protection Act passed and signed into law by Republican Governor Jim Justice. Maria and her volunteers are focused on reaching beyond the base: registering young voters, showing up for forums hosted by groups with opposing ideologies, and driving down long dirt roads to reengage disillusioned voters across the district.

Derek Hawn, Tennessee State House District 41

Born and raised in rural Eastern Tennessee, Derek Hawn is a paramedic and first responder educator. Talk with Derek, and you will hear insight into the reality of rural America unlike any other. His experiences serving the people in his community as a first responder have become the foundation of his campaign. “I see daily where the healthcare system is failing us,” says Derek, and he believes that “access to affordable healthcare should be a right, not a privilege.” He is acutely aware of the importance and impact of local relationships, and he loves to bring people together over live music and good food to talk about the issues that matter to them. His welcoming and down-to-earth nature has fostered a new spirit of politics in District 41, which emphasizes social bonds, community engagement, and valuing every voice.

Vern Masters, New Hampshire Grafton County State House District 1

Vern Masters is running in Littleton, New Hampshire. This small town may sound familiar to you if you read this New York Times article giving voice to the queer rural resistance in this corner of the country. Fighting for young rural voices, Vern is a powerhouse and a much needed bridge between community organizers and the legislature. “The North Country can be an isolating place if you’re one of the weird kids,” says Vern. “But it takes so many personalities and people with diverse interests to build a functioning, healthy community that can take care of itself.”

Kathryn Larson, Idaho State House District 1

Kathryn Larson decided to run out of civic duty and a desire to serve. She has been spending the majority of her time driving across the district meeting voters and developing relationships with the people in her community who feel left out of the political process. Kathryn’s love for her home state influences her views on the role of local politics. She is deeply influenced by the stories of the people in her district and spends time getting to know every person she talks to. She writes about the impact of some of these encounters in a series of blog posts called Tales from the District, and these stories are what drive Kathryn’s campaign.

Michelle Higgs, Indiana State House District 60

In Indiana, Michelle Higgs is transforming the rural conversation across the state. She organized the Indiana Rural Summit, galvanizing more energy and attention towards rural organizing in her state. Her organizing has created a broad coalition across a dozen gerrymandered districts, bringing voting bases together across district lines with an overarching goal of working together to solve big regional issues like like employment and economic stability, child and family well-being, and affordable and safe housing. Michelle’s district spans 461 square miles, but she has built a strong team that’s knocking on hundreds of doors a week to cover every part of it.

Jen Tracy, Missouri State House District 120

In Missouri, Jen Tracy is working on creating inclusive and commonsense politics, engaging with her community through events and volunteer actions that emphasize civic empowerment and voter readiness. From hosting “Empowered & Informed” events to discuss women’s voting rights, ballot measures, and the election process to connecting with voters directly through canvassing, to answering questions over good food with a “BBQ&A” for her district, Jen is fostering open, meaningful conversations about issues like healthcare access, education quality, and economic opportunity centered on shared values rather than party.

David Arends, Montana State House 18

In northern Montana, David Arends is giving voters a choice in a district that—for the past 12 years—has had uncontested elections for state representative. Building a campaign based on communication, honesty, and showing up, David has revived campaigning in his huge rural district that borders Canada. David is a physician’s assistant of 16 years and truly understands the dynamics of his rural corner of America. “We’re getting so much support from conservative circles who are ready for a change here,” reports David. In the face of a smear campaign that demonstrates the worst of politics, David has stood strong in his commitment to building a positive politics that brings his community together, rather than tearing it apart. 

Melody Cunningham, Montana State House District 97

Also in Montana is Melody Cunningham, bringing joy, love, and a background of fierce advocacy to her rural district. Melody began her career as a high school chemistry and physics teacher for girls from underserved, inner-city areas before moving into a long career in pediatric oncology. She describes her passion as “amplifying the voices of those who are often not heard.” Melody has been knocking doors and talking to voters since last winter, building a formidable base in her bid to unseat a powerful incumbent representative and fight for healthcare, public education, and affordable housing.

Linda Alvarez, New Mexico House District 32

Linda Alvarez is running in New Mexico’s Hatch Valley. Linda is proud to come from a multigenerational farming family and is deeply rooted in her community. She knocks on hundreds of doors in her district every week and has earned the endorsement of local unions, veterans, and educators that span the ideological spectrum. Over the past few years, Linda has been traveling across New Mexico advocating for individuals with disabilities, and her passion for protecting the rights of all people has been a guiding factor for her campaign. When she’s not campaigning, you can find her playing third base for her community softball team.

Sarah Keyeski, Wisconsin State Senate District 14

Last, but certainly not least, meet Sarah Keyeski! She is running for one of the most competitive state senate seats in Wisconsin. You may have heard of her from this podcast in The New York Times detailing how her campaign connects with rural voters on priorities like education, reproductive freedom, mental health, and childcare. The daughter of a dairy farmer, Sarah’s love for her home state is infectious. Although Sarah left her hometown of Cashton, Wisconsin, to pursue a career as a licensed professional counselor, she was called to return to her rural roots to raise her six children with her husband. Sarah’s passion for making her community a better place led the people in her district to ask her to run for office. Since then, she has been enthusiastically running a campaign grounded in compassion, contribution, and courage.

As we work to fend off authoritarianism and preserve our democratic institutions, the heartbeat of rural America defines our horizons. Chris, Lucia, Maria, Derek, Vern, Kathryn, Michelle, Jen, David, Linda, Melody, Sarah, other Dirtroad candidates, and all community-centered rural organizers have their fingers on this pulse. Their daily on-the-ground campaigns can keep our democracy alive as they connect with people on the most fundamental level: face to face. And these campaigns will continue to be essential sources of change well beyond November.

Through grassroots campaigns, communities can transform, take power, feel empowered, and make change. Every campaign is an opportunity to rebuild and overhaul our politics and our communities. The Democratic Party has forsaken rural America, relinquishing a tremendous amount of political power that has left our fight for social justice on the brink of despair. Yet we have managed to win two campaigns in Republican-leaning districts. How do we account for these victories despite the odds? And, more importantly, how can we translate this vision beyond our districts—to rural communities and campaigns across the country?

We need a new way forward that goes beyond the tired traditional campaign playbook. One of the primary lessons of how we won is through a new type of campaigning. It is on the campaign trail that we can and will build movements that shift our culture toward a more respectful, inclusive, and just path.

1. RESPECT EVERYONE

Our campaign movements are made up of people from all walks of life. We respect the intelligence of the people whose votes we are trying to earn and who we are campaigning with. We respect diverse perspectives and viewpoints, even if we disagree. This is more important than ever in these divisive times. We move backward when interactions devolve into arguments with each person putting up walls and digging deeper into their opinions. There is something to be learned from every person. Everybody has their own story and is a product of their experiences.

This is how we see people and how we train our volunteers to approach conversations at the doors. Take the time to listen to why somebody believes the things they do, and you’ll begin to understand why they think the way that they do. You may not agree with them, but when understanding—rather than anger or judgement—is the starting point, the conditions for worthwhile dialogue are created.

People have great intuition about how you view them. It doesn’t take an unforced error that is the magnitude of referring to people as “deplorables” to make people turn away. They pick up subtle clues everywhere to connect the dots. Sending a clickbait email with an all-caps subject line might work a few times and rake in some extra donations, but it erodes trust over time. It cheapens you, and it cheapens those you are trying to reach. It betrays a disrespect for the recipient’s intelligence and their time.

The final piece of mail that we sent out in 2018 is a good example of how we deliberately demonstrated respect in our communications. We sent a small card to conservative voters who were highly likely to turn out to vote. It was a photo of one of the hand-painted pallet signs leaning against Chloe’s barn with the text “Chloe Maxmin is a trusted leader. Don’t take our word for it, do your own research,” followed by Chloe’s and her opponent’s name and the URL for their campaign pages. It was elegantly simple and demonstrated a respect for the voters’ intelligence, as well as a self-respect that Chloe was confident to stand on her two feet in an unbiased side-by-side comparison with her opponent.

2. LISTEN

People always ask us how we won. Our biggest answer is listening. We cannot emphasize this enough. We see listening as an act of liberation, resistance, and revival. We live in a democracy that is woefully disconnected from and unrepresentative of the people it is supposed to serve. Public opinion has little bearing on whether legislation is passed, and citizens’ referenda are routinely ignored or altered. Meanwhile, corporate money and lobbyists work to ensure that the monied elite—and no one else—have the ear of legislators. Politicians rarely show their faces in rural communities and show little interest in understanding the needs of the people who live there. In this oligarchical society, and in this digital century, it is a radical act simply to show up, meet a person face-to-face, look them in the eye, and listen. As it turns out, people have a lot to say.

So many candidates and campaigns are all about output. They clog people’s mailboxes, televisions, social media feeds, and radios with their message. Their canvassers show up at people’s doors or on their phones and see how much of their script they can read off before the voter gets fed up and ends the conversation. We did our fair share of pushing our story by traditional means too, of course, but we balanced it by seeking heaping portions of input and conversation. We spent most of our time working to have authentic conversations with voters and gain genuine understanding.

Every time we trained new canvassers, we told them that the most important thing they could do was to listen. If they found themselves in an argument over policy, then they had already lost.

To skirt around a controversial word or topic in favor of finding areas of mutual agreements is not to cede that ground. You don’t change a worldview in a conversation. If that’s your theory of change, you’re going to be discouraged real quickly. Human and political change is a slow process. It is the long-distance grind of decades—one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. You have to lay the foundation first, before anything else can happen.

When you’re campaigning, see people as humans, and focus on areas of agreement. What are our common hopes, dreams, fears, and frustrations? When we listen, thin tendrils of trust begin to sprout out of fallow ground. The possibility of a relationship grows. Even if we don’t convince the other person, we become a little bit more open to each other’s ideas, interested in each other’s experiences. Remember, it is not our responsibility to do everything all at once.

Listening also informed our decisions and the way we campaigned. As we’ve discussed, listening to feedback from volunteers who were running into diminishing returns on the phones in summer 2020 led us to pivot our direct voter-contact tactics. The single most common piece of positive feedback that the campaign received from voters was that they appreciated our commitment to staying 100 percent positive in our messaging. As the opposition attacked us, this feedback from listening to people at the doors bolstered our confidence in staying the course and not trading blow for blow.

Just as we all have our share of flaws as people, our political parties and our ideologies are inevitably flawed. Love means accepting one another, flaws and all, and seeking to understand and support.

Love in public mirrors this. We spend too much of our energy trying to cut the other side down in politics and paint their views in the most uncharitable light possible. We create stories about “the other” with very little factual basis. As the artist Anne Truitt put it, “Unless we are very, very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on pre- conceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves.” If we spent half as much time trying to listen and genuinely understand the other side as we do trying to prove ourselves right and others wrong, we could really get somewhere. We need a whole lot less judgment and a lot more empathy in our politics.

3. TRANSLATE TO RURAL AMERICA

There is a dynamic at play in too many liberal and leftist spaces whereby people’s tremendous empathy stops cold when it comes to people who support Trump. They create the most uncharitable picture of the imagined people who voted for him. Ironically, this inability (or outright refusal) to empathize is one of the same character flaws that the left tends to ascribe to Trump voters.

Many people in rural America have been bombarded by the deliberate, twisted words on Fox News, conservative talk radio, web forums, YouTube, Facebook, and other social media channels to the point that there are certain phrases or ideas that are nonstarters in many rural communities. For example, Dolly Parton, when asked in a podcast by Radiolab host Jad Abumrad whether she considers herself a feminist, flatly rejected the label. The hosts then talked with a Dolly Parton scholar and asked if it bothered her that Parton doesn’t identify as a feminist. There was a pause, and then she replied that it bothered the part of her that went to college. What the scholar was suggesting is that over time a word or idea can be manipulated to the point that it comes to mean radically different things from one person to the next. Further, such words have a political charge powerful enough to electrocute a cow. We try to have a discussion about feminism but end up heatedly talking past each other because we ascribe radically different meanings to the words that we’re using.

What we find in campaigning is that it is usually more productive to avoid charged labels and discuss ideas instead. For example, we could often reach someone who might be up in arms over the term “feminism” but who agrees with the need to eliminate the wage gap and ensure equal pay and opportunity. Many people in our community want affordable health care, but they don’t want to talk about Medicare for All because relentless right-wing messaging has made these words toxic. So many of the values and ideas that we talk about can resonate in rural America if we can translate them into a rural context.

The reality is that people must be given an on-ramp before we can have any hope of moving them. In this case, what we had to first demonstrate was a clear understanding of the fear and oppression of poor and middle-class rural Americans. That challenging work must be done in conversation and dialogue with them, such that interactions are generative and have the potential to result in a mutual revealing of truth in conversation together. Only once their struggle has been illuminated can you begin to move people, to help them see how their oppression is connected to the oppression of others: the oppression of communities of color, immigrants, disabled people, trans people, and so on. That work is only possible if it is built on an existing relationship. If you don’t have that trust and mutual understanding and you try to skip straight into opinions about these other issues that you disagree on, you’ll hit an impasse. So, conversation by conversation, we strived to move beyond our heated divisions and search for areas of common ground and mutual understanding.

ar from the bright lights of the Bronx, where a fiery star rightfully dazzles the left, there is a trailer at the end of a dirt road in the most rural county in the most rural state in the nation. All the curtains are drawn. I knock on the door. A man emerges from a cloud of cigarette smoke, skeptical of the stranger on his doorstep. “Hello, my name is Chloe Maxmin. I’m running for state representative. I was stopping by to say hello and listen to any issues that you’re thinking about this year.” He invites me inside. As a young woman canvassing alone in the middle of the woods, the worst thoughts cross my mind. I dismiss them. We simply talk. At the end of our conversation, he says: “You’re the first person to listen to me. Everyone judges what my house looks like. They don’t bother to knock. I’m grateful that you came. I’m going to vote for you. Thank you.”

These are the conversations that we have every day in rural Maine House District 88, where history is being made. We are two young community organizers with a friendship forged in the fire of campus activism whose love for the small towns in which we were raised called us back to our rural roots to build political power in traditionally conservative districts. Chloe, age 26, is the candidate. Canyon, age 25, is the campaign manager. On June 12, 2018, we won our Democratic primary with 80 percent of the vote. Two towns ran out of ballots as more people showed up to vote for Chloe than had voted in any previous Democratic primary, breaking record turnout by 41 percent. We’ve been endorsed by President Obama, MoveOn.org, the former head of the US Small Business Association, and many local organizations. Now we head toward November, seeking to be the first Democrat ever to win this Maine House seat. One thing is clear as we canvass rural roads, talking to Republicans, independents, Democrats, and the unregistered: The left abandoned rural America, leaving its citizens behind. Our campaign shows that building true representational political power in 2018 and beyond requires investing in state-level politics that translate progressive values to the realities of rural America and revive faith in local political movements.

The story of Maine District 88, which includes Chelsea, Whitefield, Jefferson, and part of Nobleboro, is the story of so many communities left behind by politics-as-usual. Chelsea is a working-class town in Kennebec County with one of the highest property-tax rates in the state. The other towns are in Lincoln County, which is the most rural county in Maine and the oldest county in the nation. Health-care costs leave most people in the district one emergency room visit away from financial disaster. Local schools struggle with shrinking budgets. Nearly 20 percent of our children live in poverty.

As organizers, we see that politicians ignore the will of the people. This pattern is clear in Maine. Since 2016, Maine voters approved five citizen initiatives—to fund schools, institute ranked-choice voting, expand Medicaid to 70,000 Mainers, increase the minimum wage, and legalize marijuana. All of these initiatives were either drastically altered or altogether ignored by our state government. Our governor has vetoed more bills passed by the legislature than all sitting governors since 1917 combined.

Our campaign in District 88 is more than just a small House race. It is an opportunity to pioneer new ways of restoring faith in politics, fighting for our overlooked communities, and listening to all perspectives. Our political system may fail us. We may be disillusioned. But everything that we care about circles back to politics. Our individual well-being revolves around our collective responsibility to hold our politicians accountable. We simply cannot afford to give up on politics.

Our House race has unlocked four key lessons for the left to author a new future.

First: Power is in the local. During Obama’s presidency, the GOP stalled federal policy while quietly sweeping state legislatures. The result: unprecedented gerrymandering, relaxed pollution regulations, voter-ID laws that disenfranchise citizens, rejection of Medicaid expansion, climate denial, and other items on the American Legislative Exchange Council wish list. Democrats lost 968 state legislative seats during Obama’s presidency, the largest net loss since World War II.

We must adjust course in order to reclaim local politics. The imperative to uncover common ground from beneath the scorched earth of division has never been more urgent. In our House district, we can talk with every voter, listen, understand, and learn from all perspectives. We organize sign-painting parties with local artists, house parties with neighbors, canvass days with friends, and celebrations with local bands. We build relationships to reengage citizens and restore faith in politics. We are empowered with a new understanding that each voice and vote truly counts, as these races are often decided by just hundreds—or even dozens—of votes. Change occurs when we recall the strong values that bind us through authentic conversation, dignified disagreement, and mutual respect.

Second: Youth leadership can ignite change. Millennials are on the verge of surpassing baby boomers to become the largest living generation in 2019. We are the largest voting bloc in America. Yet, we are grossly underrepresented in American politics, with only eight millennials currently in Congress. The average age of the Maine legislature is 54. Still, both parties keep running the same candidates who bring the same perspectives to a broken process. We need fresh points of view, creative energy, and passion injected into politics.

Young people across the country are running for office, engaging vigorously with politics, and organizing for candidates and causes. We came of age in the Great Recession, 40 percent of us saddled with student debt, all looking toward a future of climate chaos. We are keenly aware that politics-as-usual is failing every American except the rich and powerful. Almost two-thirds of us “have more fear than hope” about our democratic future, and 77 percent of us blame politicians. Now we are one of the most politically active generations in history. In District 88 and beyond, everyone is fed up with the current political climate. It is time for something new.

Third: We need to focus on the rural. Victories of leftist insurgents such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley are vital, but the Democrats’ biggest challenges are not in New York City or Boston. Look at the map of the 2016 election results. The first thing that struck us on that fateful November day: Hillary won almost every urban center, and Trump swept the rural vote. The greatest support for Donald Trump came from small rural towns like ours. From 1999 to 2009, neither party held a significant advantage among rural voters. Today, Republicans have a 16-percentage-point advantage.

As staffers on numerous campaigns in multiple states, we witnessed the Democratic establishment’s neglect of rural areas. We’ve seen state campaigns siphon volunteers from rural races to boost urban turnout. On one campaign, funding that was promised by the state caucus was withdrawn at the last minute to pay for TV spots in metropolitan markets. On a daily basis, we talk to voters who haven’t been contacted by a Democratic campaign in more than a decade. Even Tom Perez, Democratic National Committee Chair, said in a recent interview that “you can’t door knock in rural America.”

The reasons for this shift are complex. But, after knocking on thousands of doors in rural District 88, we see the consequences of a failed political calculus. No one has taken time to listen to people’s stories, struggles, hopes, and needs.

Fourth, and most important, campaigns are the new social movements. What if we looked at political races as social-movement campaigns? They provide us with the opportunity to organize, listen, connect, create community, and build leadership. In 2008, Barack Obama built a grassroots political movement, but on Election Day he essentially said, “Go home. I’ve got this.” In the words of Marshall Ganz, the great organizer behind Obama’s 2008 campaign, Obama “demobilized the widest, deepest and most effective grass-roots organization ever built to support a Democratic president.” In the decade that followed, the left lost massive amounts of political power.

Bernie Sanders understood Obama’s squandered opportunity. In 2016, he articulated a transformational vision of political revolution. He encouraged people to run for office at every level and engage in a movement that would outlast his campaign. Bernie told us that “real change never takes place from the top on down…. It always occurs from the bottom on up.” That is why we look at our House campaign as part of a larger social movement. We use the same organizing tools as with community organizing, but our aim is explicitly political.

These four doctrines are the foundation of our campaign. We dig into the local, cultivating relationships and utilizing the resourcefulness of our rural communities to build a rooted movement. We understand and embrace our power as a young political generation on the rise, ready to take leadership and transform the system. We see that rural America is alive and beautiful, eager to be heard and remembered. Many have welcomed us into their homes and honored us with stories of family members who are registering to vote just for our campaign, who are voting Democrat for the first time, who have never voted in a midterm but now are because our movement gives them hope. We view our campaign as a movement, built on shared values and authentic conversations. We build real political power, with lasting muscle for the long fight, with an inside-outside movement that elects authentic representatives to fight for everyone and continues to organize beyond the election to maintain pressure on our politicians.

November 6 must be the day that we all rise up to definitively take ownership of our democracy and author our own future. Until then, we’ll be mobilizing voters. We trust that you will be too. After all, there’s no better October evening than one spent bouncing down long dirt driveways riddled with potholes, meeting new people, listening to their stories, and encouraging them to use their power to help write history.

Harvard Management Company executive Colin Butterfield recently took divestment activists by surprise when he announced that he would not invest in fossil fuels, including minerals, oil, and gas. “I clearly feel that we are stealing from the future generations,” he said. “When you go out there and invest in natural resources, and you start looking at what’s happening in the world of natural resources, it’s pretty scary.”

For the students of Divest Harvard, a movement I co-founded in 2012, this is a welcome and long-awaited sign that reason and righteousness can prevail. Butterfield acknowledged what we have long fought to instill in our community: Every dollar of profit from fossil fuels is a theft of the future. This is the case even without the official sanction of university leaders who have stubbornly refused to acknowledge that fossil-fuel investment constitutes what Harvard Professor Jane Mansbridge called “an immoral bet.” Harvard President Drew Faust has stubbornly refused even to debate divestment with students and faculty, let alone exert moral leadership on this urgent subject. Such has been the state of affairs in the world’s wealthiest and most prestigious university, whose cherished motto is veritas—truth.

Butterfield’s declaration brings home two critical lessons for today’s citizens and activists. First, youth are the true leaders in our age of climate justice. As Bill McKibben wrote in The Guardian upon hearing Butterfield’s announcement, “Credit a remarkable campaign. Harvard students—like those at so many other places, including Penn and Cal where campaigners are currently sitting in—waged a relentless fight, even as officials told them no over and over again.” Second, Harvard’s bottom-up path to change is one more sign that too many people at the top of our most powerful institutions have forfeited—through intransigence, inaction, self-interest, or ignorance—their right to lead. Good and reasonable people from every corner of our society are forging new paths toward the future. In the matter of climate chaos, we will no longer wait for the people at the top to approve.

If you’re just learning about Divest Harvard, it’s worth noting the fierce dedication with which Harvard students sustained this “relentless” campaign to educate our campus, engage our administration, and resist the status quo. Our first meeting in 2012 drew 10 people. In two years, over 70,000 people had signed on to our campaign. Over 270 members of Harvard faculty joined the call for divestment. We were the first campus to hold a referendum on divestment: 72 percent of Harvard students called for their school to divest from the 200 largest fossil-fuel companies. We blockaded Massachusetts Hall, our president’s office building, for over 24 hours, asking for nothing more than a public dialogue on divestment. Harvard arrested a student—the first campus arrest since the Vietnam War and the first of the fossil fuel–divestment movement—rather than facilitate an open discussion. More than 180 people around the world joined us for a weeklong fast.

We sued Harvard University for failing to divest. Students organized a sit-in, again at the president’s office in Massachusetts Hall, but were forced to leave after 24 hours: University administrators had police block access to bathrooms. We organized Harvard Heat Week, a week-long shut-down of several central administration buildings. Hundreds of alumni came back to campus, including Bill McKibben, Darren Aronofsky, and Cornel West. The rallies that week were the largest of their kind in Harvard’s history. Four Divest Harvard members were arrested outside the Harvard Management Company’s headquarters in downtown Boston. This spring, students once again blockaded University Hall in their call for fossil fuel divestment.

“Looking forward, we’re excited to work towards a policy that institutionalizes full fossil-fuel divestment,” said Divest Harvard student Naima Drecker-Waxma after Butterfield’s statement. Because as much as we celebrate Butterfield’s seeming pause from investing in fossil fuels, we must also remember that divestment has always been about more than selling stocks. With divestment, civil society stakes its moral capital on the transition to renewable energy. It slices through the fog of fossil-fuel propaganda to reveal an industry that shamelessly destroys the earth’s climate system for the sake of profit and power. Divestment aims to build a broad-based movement, because everyone, everywhere has something to divest—from personal investments to city or state pension funds. Combine the creation of a social stigma with grassroots power, and you have a movement that can catalyze new political and economic opportunities for bold climate solutions.

And with this as our guide, we’ve produced results. To date, 718 institutions and over 58,000 individuals comprising $5.45 trillion in investments dollars have divested from fossil fuels. Student movements at the University of California, Stanford, Yale, London School of Economics, Oxford University, and dozens more have pushed schools to align their investments with the values of higher education.

By staunchly dismissing divestment for years, Harvard President Faust and the rest of its leaders appeared both unjust and clueless. History came knocking at their door, but they were too busy rearranging the deckchairs to notice. As painful as the fight at Harvard has been, it’s prepared us for the next phase of struggle. The lack of moral leadership we experienced at Harvard is now reproduced at the national level. Trump’s election has led to a White House and federal government overrun by deniers; but instead of denying moral responsibility like Harvard, the Trump administration denies reality altogether, most recently by beginning the process of withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. Climate action cannot afford to wait for this White House.

There’s a new wind blowing, and it comes from smart citizens working with elected officials in cities and states who are determined to strategically accelerate the energy transition and resist the most destructive ambitions of the fossil-fuel industry and the politicians who have sworn to protect it. And we’ve seen change. Last year Portland, Oregon, became the first city in the country to ban all new fossil-fuel infrastructure. The small town of South Portland, Maine, passed a landmark ordinance that single-handedly blocked the flow of tar sands across New England. Maryland’s state government banned fracking. Of course, we have all been inspired by the brilliant water protectors of Standing Rock. Two hundred thousand people marched in the streets of DC on April 29, and more than 370 satellite marches across the country joined in solidarity. Hundreds of citizens are training to run for office and reclaim all levels of government by, for, and of the people. As a graduate of the student divestment movement, my focus is on building local political power in my home state of Maine.

There is a profound power-shift taking hold of our country, and it’s not just aimed at the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. It’s an uprising of friends, family, and neighbors who answer the call for climate justice that our failed leaders have ignored. As institutions like Harvard continue to flunk the moral tests of our age, we are finding ever-more creative and powerful ways to enact the changes that are required to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. This wave is led by young people who have been on the right side of history for years. We’re following our moral compass. We’re not waiting.

The 2016 election should set off a huge alarm for anyone who cares about the future of this planet. Its message? The climate movement’s political-organizing strategies have failed to influence the conversation. Three facets of the election season expose the climate movement’s profound lack of political muscle.1

Accountability

It’s no secret that Hillary Clinton’s climate platform leaves a lot to be desired. She at least thinks that climate change is real, but she supports fracking, accepted over $500,000 from the fossil-fuel industry (more than Trump), and promoted oil and gas extraction around the world. We need Clinton because Donald Trump is a racist, sexist, bigoted demagogue who denies climate change, would dismantle the EPA, retract the already weak Paris Agreement and approve Keystone XL.2

The climate movement can pressure Clinton in a way that is impossible with Trump. As Bill McKibben says: “Our job is to elect someone we can effectively pressure.” The climate movement has already shown that it can influence Presidential politics. The climate movement successfully pushed Obama to reject the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines and pressured Clinton to make statements during her campaign on Keystone XL, the TPP, and related issues. “We have seen that, when we apply pressure, we have leverage over Clinton,” writes Becca Rast, an organizer with 350 Action.3

I want to believe that the climate movement can influence Clinton’s climate platform—not just in rhetoric but in reality—but I am skeptical. If we assume that our success in pressuring Obama predicts success with Clinton, then we may be headed for trouble. President Obama rejected two pipelines, but also championed the fracking boom, authorized hundreds of offshore fracking sites, allowed massive fossil fuel extraction on federal lands and celebrated the deeply flawed Paris agreement. In a recent high-profile event on climate change with Leonardo DiCaprio, Obama defended fracked gas, proclaiming that we have to live in the “real word” even though it’s “not going to save the planet.” He may have done more than any other President to act on climate, but that’s still not enough. Obama represents the business-as-usual theory of change that spells catastrophe for youth and frontline communities.4

So far, there’s a similar story with Clinton. Activists have birddogged her throughout the campaign and won some victories. She opposed Keystone XL and said that she would support a moratorium on all oil, coal, and gas extraction on federal lands. These statements are important steps, but other components of Hillary’s climate plan undermine her good words. In the last debate, she called natural gas a “bridge to more renewable fuels.” Her only mention of climate change was: “So I have a comprehensive energy policy, but it really does include fighting climate change, because I think that is a serious problem.” She talks about the climate crisis like it’s just another issue, not a massive existential crisis that threatens everything that we love. One of her many leaked emails revealed her true thoughts on climate activism:5

“…my view is I want to defend natural gas. I want to defend repairing and building the pipelines we need to fuel our economy. I want to defend fracking under the right circumstances…. I want to defend this stuff. And you know, I’m already at odds with the most organized and wildest. They come to my rallies and they yell at me and, you know, all the rest of it. They say, ‘Will you promise never to take any fossil fuels out of the earth ever again?’ No. I won’t promise that. Get a life, you know.”6

A new report from Oil Change International concludes that to avert complete climate catastrophe, the world must immediately cease all fossil-fuel extraction and transition to renewable energy by 2033. There’s no wiggle room—no space for Clinton to reject one pipeline and approve more offshore drilling. The climate movement has yet to build the political power than can achieve these kinds of goals. If we want Clinton to keep fossil fuels in the ground, we need fresh, creative, influential tactics that can truly hold elected leaders accountable to people and planet.7

Fear/less

After Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race, Clinton became reluctant to lead boldly on climate for fear that she would lose moderate voters and wealthy supporters. According to the Guardian, before Sanders dropped out, Clinton gave 42 speeches and mentioned climate change 18 times. After Sanders’s endorsement, Clinton delivered 40 speeches with only eight climate mentions.8

How can Clinton so easily take the climate vote for granted? She knows that we will support her because a Trump presidency would break the planet. I think that there is a deeper reason too: She doesn’t fear or even understand the climate vote. Our electoral power is not yet strong enough to push Clinton to support real action for climate justice.9

We know that Clinton does cater to some voting blocs. She reflected language from the Black Lives Matter movement in the first debate, signaling that she pays attention to on-the-ground protests. She’s also incorporated rhetoric and platforms from the “Feel the Bern” movement to win young voters, like calling for debt-free college. If the climate movement wants Clinton to shift her policies radically and keep fossil fuels in the ground, we need to figure out a way to ensure that our political voices cannot be ignored.10

Regression

In 2000, actual climate policy was discussed for a total of 14 minutes and three seconds during presidential debates. In 2004: 5 minutes and 14 seconds. In 2008: 5 minutes and 18 seconds. Then, in 2012, there was no mention of climate in any debate. In 2016, climate was discussed for 1 minute and 22 seconds, but the conversation was almost all about whether climate change is real or not.11

The climate test this election is: Do you believe in science? As the world teeters on the brink of irreversible catastrophe, one would expect presidential candidates to debate climate solutions. Instead, to win points in 2016, all Clinton has to say (as she did in the first debate) is, “I think it’s real.” In fact, many of the very short climate-change mentions in her speeches declare that she accepts climate science. “If you believe climate change is real…then start voting” she said in Ohio. “I believe that climate change is real,” were her words at the Democratic National Convention. “We need a president who believes in science,” she declared in Florida. A recent tweet from Clinton’s account read: “We have a choice between taking serious steps to combat climate change—and refusing to admit it even exists.”12

We have regressed to a bar so low that it’s practically touching the ground. Of course, the well-funded denial machine has instilled doubt across America for decades. Their efforts stall action and shape conversation. Trump capitalizes on this doubt. But this regression is also another signal that the climate movement has yet to discover the new strategies and tactics that can truly influence politicians, hold them accountable, and force the conversation forward. It seems like Clinton does the bare minimum because there’s no immediate incentive to elevate the conversation and no consequence for just sliding under the preposterously low bar.13

To protect what we love the most from climate chaos, we need climate policy. Very few politicians champion climate leadership. That is why the climate movement needs political strategies that are as effective and powerful as possible. The climate is changing. We need to change too.14

Sophie Harrison was sitting in Stanford University’s library finalizing her senior thesis on climate policy when her phone buzzed with bad news. After making headlines as one of the first multi-billion endowments to divest from coal, Stanford’s administration had just rejected oil and gas divestment because “it could not evaluate whether the social injury caused by the fossil fuel industry outweighs the social benefit it provides.”

Two days later, shocked and disappointed, Sophie and her Fossil Free Stanford comrades gathered outside Stanford Memorial Church as their President discussed his inspirations for social change in a speech titled “What Matters to Me & Why.” The students’ message to him: climate change matters, and we are why.

Over the past five years, thousands of students like Sophie have called on their universities to divest from fossil fuels. With lawsuits, sit-ins, teach-ins, blockades, marches, meetings, negotiations, faculty letters, and alumni support, these students sent a clear message: if universities truly claim to invest in students’ futures, they must divest from fossil fuel companies that jeopardize those futures. In the face of this growing movement, many administrations continue to ignore students’ voices and reject divestment. This article asks students what they think, feel, and experience when their universities reject fossil fuel divestment and how they sustain the strength to move forward.

More Than Moving Money

For decades, fossil fuel corporations have captured the political process and thwarted climate policy. Grassroots climate action spreads, but not quickly enough to out-flank corporate influence. Meanwhile, the climate crisis grows more urgent.

In this context, the fossil fuel divestment movement sprang to life. It aims to challenge corporate power, achieve climate action, and grow the climate movement. Divestment stigmatizes the fossil fuel industry in order to degrade its political influence and legitimacy. With corporations on the defensive, opportunities for meaningful climate policy can emerge. Divestment also provides the foundation for broad-based inclusive action. Everyone is part of an institution with something to divest—from an alma mater’s endowment to a city or state pension fund. The fossil fuel divestment movement is about more than moving investors’ money.

On campuses, divestment also means more than the word technically denotes. For many students, it’s the way to engage their peers around climate change. As Jesse Baum, a former organizer with the University of Vermont’s divestment campaign, told me, “for students, this is probably the most direct way that you can combat the fossil fuel industry and collectivize your actions.” Alyssa Florack, a student organizer with Climate Justice at Boston College, added,“climate change isn’t really addressed on our campus in any other way.” Warren Beecroft from the University of Utah—a school with close ties to the fossil fuel industry—says, “climate efforts are almost non existent” on campus beyond the divestment drive.

Crisis of Hypocrisy

Entering Harvard Yard each day for class, Canyon Woodward read the words “Enter To Grow in Wisdom” inscribed above one of Harvard’s grand wrought iron gates. As he left the Yard through the same gate, he read “Depart To Serve better Thy Country and Thy Kind” overhead. Those themes that once inspired him soon rang hollow for Woodward, who was then a leader of Divest Harvard. He internalized the wisdom of Harvard’s climate scientists and social movement theorists calling for urgent climate action. He spent his days in LEED certified buildings and slept in dorms powered with renewable energy. He listened to President Drew Faust call for “necessary trouble” to confront social justice.

Woodward and his peers tried to serve their world by calling on Harvard to divest its $36.4 billion endowment—the largest in the world—from fossil fuels. (Woodward and I co-coordinated Divest Harvard together for a semester.) Harvard University arguably enjoys more influence and power than any other university on earth. How better to serve the planet than to lead on divestment and climate justice? But Divest Harvard was dismissed with disdain. Its objectives and actions were denounced as radical. President Drew Faust called divestment a distraction. The administration refused to engage in open dialogue, despite the support of more than 70,000 students, faculty, alumni, and community members.

Harvard’s reaction to Divest Harvard represents a hypocrisy that forces students to question the validity and values of educational institutions. As Woodward told me: “One of the fundamental tenets of a university is to teach and inspire critical thinking, to contribute meaningfully to society. If you don’t apply that internally, then it totally erodes the core foundation of your purpose. These universities that are supposed to be creating a better future can’t continue to profess those ideals in good conscience if they’re also actively engaged in supporting a business model that erodes our shot at even having a livable future.”

Almost every student I spoke with expressed profound disillusionment over what they saw as the hypocrisy of their administrations. “I’m in classes learning about climate change and all these reasons that would support divestment,” said Elizabeth Ventura from Divest Northeastern University. Sophie Harrison at Stanford asked: “How can the university tell me that it’s investing in my future and at the same time bank on the destruction of my future? It’s against the work that I and so many of my peers are going to spend our lives on.” Universities need to understand that rejecting divestment undermines their educational purpose and legitimacy. It challenges my generation’s faith in the leadership and governance of all formal institutions.

Listen. Don’t Hear.

Divestment has also become one of the principal vehicles through which student voice permeates halls of power—including university boardrooms and executive offices. Student organizers devote time, energy, and often their health to develop campaigns and contribute to their schools. Such students regard a “no” to divestment as a sign that their schools do not respect the voices, efforts, or world-views of the very people that they educate.

This destructive dynamic dominates NYU’s divestment campaign. The administration initially told students that they could meet with the full Board of Trustees if the University Senate voted for divestment. NYU Divest organized the faculty, student, and administrative members of the Senate body. The Senate passed a resolution in support of divestment.

Olivia Rich and her comrades at NYU Divest prepared for a meeting with the full Board. Then NYU said that only two members of the Board would meet with divestment advocates. Frustrated with a broken promise a year after the Senate resolution, NYU Divest launched a sit-in inside the elevator that led to NYU’s administrative offices. The students’ demand: to meet with the full Board of Trustees, as promised. After 33 hours, students ended their sit-in after the administration threatened to suspend them. Still, NYU Divest managed to secure a meeting with eight members of the Investment Committee (the total board consists of sixty-eight members). Students met with the Investment Committee in May 2016. Rich described the meeting: “We did a power point presentation. We gave them a lot of research. They didn’t really ask a lot of follow up questions. It was hard to tell if they were following us or not.”

After the meeting, there was no further word from the administration. Then, in June—during summer break—a university-wide memoranda declared that NYU would not divest from fossil fuels. Rich said: “We didn’t know when we were going to get an email. We don’t even know why they chose not to divest. They didn’t address many of our arguments and misrepresented the ones they did mention.” What’s more—the administration over-rode faculty, student, and administrators voices through secret proceedings in a “flippant disregard for facts or public support,” as Rich described it.

NYU is not the only school where an administration relied on stonewalling and secrecy. After the first meeting between Climate Justice at Boston College and BC’s administration, there was “no response,” Florack said. “We thought it was going to be open dialogue, and it became pretty apparent that they had already made up their minds.” Ventura from Divest Northeastern said that her school’s administration “just avoids us as much as possible.” After a year-long public dialogue about divestment at MIT, the administration released a Climate Action Plan that completely rejected divestment. “They said ‘no’ to everything,” said Ioana Knopf of Fossil Free MIT. “We just didn’t know how they reached their decision, and we didn’t understand.”  Trustees and Presidents sometimes only hear words. They do not listen.

Climate Justice: Brought To You By The Status Quo

Most student organizers play by the rules early in their campaigns. They ask for meetings with their administrations, gather petition signatures, wait for committees to produce reports. When students receive that dismissive “no,” they are forced to figure out how to create change in a static system where business-as-usual leads nowhere.

Bobby Wengronowitz of Climate Justice at Boston College recalled the early days of the BC campaign: “We played a lot more of their game. We were trying to go through proper channels, and we got the undergraduate student government to endorse a resolution. It was almost unanimous.” CJBC managed to secure a meeting with their President. The students prepared thoughtful arguments about the benefits of divestment to Boston College. Wengronowitz said that the students were “trying to speak in the President’s language” and “sell it to him.” Despite the approach, the administration, “pretty much just ignored us. By pretty much, I mean entirely. It might as well not have happened,” said Wengronowitz. He added: “It made us have to do other things…it moved us to take a much more direct action-oriented approach. We’re going to continue to build power, and we’re going to continue to disrupt. That’s where our power comes from.”

Fossil Free MIT (FFMIT) faced a similar situation. At first, FFMIT and the administration agreed to public dialogue about divestment. The administration organized a “divestment debate.” The administration “convened the MIT Climate Change Conversation Committee, charged with organizing a campus-wide conversation.” This committee produced a report that recommended divestment from coal and tar sands. The university subsequently released a Climate Action Plan that rejected divestment and instead proposed shareholder engagement. Knopf recalls “that feeling that you’ve spoken out and thought that you were understood. The university’s actions didn’t reflect that.”

Outraged, FFMIT changed its strategy. Students launched a sit-in that lasted for 116 days. As Knopf told me: “The sit-in started because we wanted to show that the administration can’t just ignore what we’ve been talking about.” Students realized that the administration didn’t understand the moral or existential imperative of fossil fuel divestment. So they employed a tactic—the sit-in—that allowed them to demonstrate the urgency and passion of their campaign. This allowed students to engage in further dialogue with the administration. They explained their motivations, and the administration discussed its rationale “We were able to have some really honest conversations,” Knopf said.

The Moral Clarity of Youth

How do students find the power, passion, and courage to continue the fight on campus after that ominous “no”? One motivation is a clear vision of justice that never wavers. Most little kids are taught to respect the kinds of people that run universities: the academics, financial experts, philanthropists. These are also the people who are supposed to recognize and foster solutions to major social challenges. When these “experts” and “societal leaders” reject divestment, one might expect young people to question their own motivations or rethink their reasoning. What struck me during my interviews is that these young people know what is right and what is wrong. Rejection does not obscure their moral clarity. “We’re standing up for what’s right,” said Rich from NYU. Josh Lappen, a rising Senior at Stanford University, added that the process of battling with the administration “increased our resolve to make our university into something better.”

Unlike their universities, students don’t pick and chose when to apply their values. Harvard University, for example, can choose to care about climate change when it comes to campus greening but not investments. As Woodward pointed out, the moral hypocrisy “erodes” the very importance of morality. Florack from Climate Justice at Boston College adds that the social justice values of Boston College—a Jesuit school—are “so clearly violated by continuing to invest in fossil fuels…to deny that investing in fossil fuels isn’t contributing to the problem is just so wrong.” The fight for change in the age of climate chaos requires the moral clarity of youth.

Love and Hope

No matter the challenges that today’s young people confront, love and hope reign supreme. Lappen from Stanford told me that “the fundamental idea of divestment is founded in hope…that we can improve systems that are fundamentally flawed.” From classrooms to Boardrooms—fossil fuel divestment campaigns build a movement to change how our society responds to the climate crisis. Imagine the strength, faith, and endurance that it takes to fulfill that vision.

Divestment is also based on a deep love for universities. Elizabeth Ventura from Northeastern loves her school. Her entire family has attended Northeastern. She told me: “We’re a school that wants to invest in the international community. We should be concerned with global safety. That’s directly related to fossil fuels.” Stephanie Glanzmann from the University of British Columbia’s divestment campaign echoed this idea. “It’s burned in my brain that I chose this school because it was going to be more progressive. I’m going to try and make that image a reality.” Students choose their schools for a reason. They are devoted to improving and contributing to what they love.

In one of their first official acts, Maine Governor Paul LePage’s new appointees to the three-person Maine Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) board ignored their own staff’s recommendation and approved a LePage-backed plan that would force Mainers to fund a dangerous expansion of natural-gas pipelines. In researching this abuse of power, I concluded that the corruption of Maine’s political leaders has reached a new level of calamity that directly flouts the Declaration of Independence. The gap between climate justice and climate policy is now so profound that it jeopardizes Americans’ rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In this unprecedented moment in history—when our world teeters on the brink of irreversible global climate catastrophe—it’s time to draw inspiration from our country’s founding document.

Manifestations of climate change appeared all around us this year. July was the hottest month in recorded history. More than 60,000 homes were damaged by a one-in-a-thousand-year flood in Louisiana. A wildfire in California forced 82,000 people to evacuate their homes. The residents of Shishmaref, Alaska, voted to relocate as climate-induced sea level rise swallows their homes. Drought dominates the Northeast. Heat waves shock the East Coast. The Standing Rock Sioux fight desperately to protect their land and history from a 1,172 mile pipeline that would carry up to 570,000 barrels of crude oil daily. A new report concludes that the world is already locked into 1.5C warming—the reddest of red lines for frontline communities and future generations.

Now come with me to Maine, where climate change threatens our way of life, and an egregious abuse of power has barely been noticed. Maine is uniquely impacted by climate change. Most of our economy depends on a healthy environment—from our seafood industry (gotta love that Maine lobster) to our farms to our winter businesses. In the age of climate chaos, we can no longer rely on seasons to come with the predictability of days past. Economic viability is threatened. The Gulf of Maine warms faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans. Lobsters move north to colder waters. Dry summers decimate farms. Ticks dominate our woods. Warm winters pummel snow-dependent businesses. Climate action is an existential necessity for Maine.

Unfortunately, our governor could not care less. He denies climate change. He was the first incumbent governor added to the League of Conservation Voters’ “Dirty Dozen” list for his deeply anti-environment and anti–climate science agenda. He vetoed a study on climate-change adaptation for Maine. He vetoed one of the most progressive solar-energy bills in the country. I could fill pages with more examples.

Most recently, Governor LePage wielded his power in an attempt to force Maine ratepayers to fund expansion of natural-gas pipelines. This sounds outlandish, but it is a true, complex, and ugly story that reveals the blurred lines between industry and government. Worried about rising energy costs, Maine’s legislature passed a bill in 2013—two years into LePage’s administration—that “would prod energy companies to expand the region’s pipeline capacity…. The bill directed the PUC to study whether it made sense for ratepayers, through utility contracts, to buy up to 200 million cubic feet of natural gas, at an annual cost of no more than $75 million.” In other words, Maine’s government wanted to thrust the cost (and thus the risk) of pipeline expansion onto Mainers. Never mind the fact that Page ran on a bogus tax-reduction platform that opportunistically appealed to beleaguered Maine voters. The “pipeline tax” required ratification from all six New England states.

The two principal bidders for natural-gas supply were Spectra Energy’s Access Northeast proposal and Portland Natural Gas Transmission’s Continent to Coast project. Spectra Energy would not only expand capacity but also attempt to reverse the flow. This means that New England’s natural gas would not come from offshore wells in Nova Scotia but from Marcellus shale fracking sites in Mid-Atlantic states. Another fact: The Continent to Coast project would utilize TransCanada’s pipelines, the company that tried to build the infamous Keystone XL pipeline.

What are the consequences of this proposal? The Conservation Law Foundation calculated that expansion would cost each Mainer about $96 per year for almost 20 years.

Mainers would also suffer the health and safety risks of natural gas infrastructure. Malfunctions at a natural gas station in Searsmont shook homes, produced a jet-engine-like roar, and released gas into the air. A gas leak in Orono caused streets to close. Another gas leak in Augusta forced evacuation of many buildings and was considered so dangerous that even the pro-industry MPUC found it necessary to impose a $307,000 fine on the gas company for safety violations. Pipelines and compressor stations can also explode, threatening hundreds of lives. Impacts in Maine exist alongside consequences for communities on fracking’s frontlines: cancer, asthma, drinking-water contamination, earthquakes. Natural-gas leaks also release methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, significantly exacerbating climate change. The human error involved in natural-gas infrastructure also jeopardizes communities’ well-being. A report from DeSmog Blog exposed “serious problems and lawbreaking” during the construction of one of Spectra’s pipelines.

Although Governor LePage championed the pipeline tax, the Maine Public Utilities Commission retained authority to approve or reject the proposal. The MPUC commissioned three reports, all of which confirmed the unnecessary risk of pipeline expansion. In June 2016, the MPUC’s own staff concluded that expansion is “not in the public interest” and “not reasonably likely to be cost-beneficial.” Although non-binding, the MPUC staff report was expected to influence the three commissioners’ final vote.

In July 2016, the MPUC commissioners defied their own staff, the reports of independent experts, and any consideration of the public well-being to approve the pipeline tax. Thankfully, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently ruled the pipeline tax “invalid” because it would “re-expose ratepayers to the types of financial risks from which the Legislature sought to protect them.” This means that neither Massachusetts nor any other New England state can force ratepayers to fund pipeline expansion. Still, Maine’s government approved this outrageous plan and still has the option to expand capacity through the Continent to Coast project without the pipeline tax. The fight is not over.

A line has been crossed. This Maine saga is one of many examples that demonstrate how our political elites’ behavior jeopardizes Americans’ rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In Maine, lives are at risk as dangerous fossil-fuel infrastructure continues to grow. Our liberties shrink as our governor and his appointed MPUC commissioners attempt to exploit the state for the sake of the natural-gas industry. The Pursuit of Happiness is undermined for Mainers whose livelihoods collapse in a climate changed world.

These fundamental rights are not only threatened in Maine; they are at risk across the country and around the world. Four hundred thousand people lose their lives to climate change every year. Countless more are threatened by natural disasters to come, fossil-fuel infrastructure explosions, oil-train derailments, pipeline leaks. The liberties of communities like the Standing Rock Sioux and the Shishmaref in Alaska are already limited as they are forced to fight desperately for their homes or abandon them altogether. The pursuit of happiness is threatened for families who face the first and worst impacts of a warming planet and for future generations, who may be doomed to survive, but never thrive, on Planet Earth. When it comes to climate change, the inaction of our political elites represents the “long train of abuses” that our Declaration of Independence warned us about. Our leaders jeopardize the well-being of every human being and living creature in American and on this planet.

What to do? I am skeptical of our ability to hold leaders accountable with traditional activist methods: bird dogging, protests, and mass demonstrations. These strategies pushed President Obama only so far. We stopped the Keystone XL pipeline, but we still fight countless other infrastructure projects. The natural-gas industry has flourished under his watch. With Hillary Clinton’s pro-fracking commitments, I doubt that we can push her to accept the mantle of climate leadership in time to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. She recently recruited pro-fracking former Senator Ken Salazar to lead her transition team. Nor is anarchy a solution. We need government, because political change impels systems change that mitigates climate change. Moreover, the timeline of physics prevents the possibility of reinventing our political system.

As the Declaration states, it is the “Right of the People to alter” our government. We will need creative citizen-led measures like impeachment to stop the power-hungry motives of politicians like Governor LePage. We should rally as never before in support of down-ticket candidates who understand the responsibility of political office and the fight for climate justice. There are millions of Americans who are committed to the power of the vote. Can we use our remaining democratic power to compel political change on the local level, where the people’s voice still maintains some influence? Is there a way for the people to have the final say?

The fate of the many is in the hands of the few, who too often abuse their power. We pay the price. Now it’s time for the people to ensure that our voices are stronger than political elites’. They no longer have the “consent of the governed” to threaten what we love. We must “provide new Guards” for our security, safety, and happiness.

With the presidential election less than three months away, how are our nominees doing on climate change? Donald Trump rarely mentions climate. When he does, he mocks it. Hillary Clinton? She’s excited to say that she believes in climate change, while condoning fracking and lauding the deeply flawed Paris agreement. Still, we know that we need Hillary, and we must do everything we can to elect her. Most importantly—our movement must be more powerful than ever to push Hillary into the climate leadership that the earth demands.

How can the climate movement develop the political power to fight effectively?

To glean a few answers, I looked to what I regard as one of the most successful examples of social change in the modern era: the neoliberal coup. Between 1975 and 2008, an ideological movement called “neoliberalism” evolved from fringe theory into the dominant economic paradigm of our age, with great help from the Republican Party, and then, the Democrats as well.

Although the GOP is currently a global symbol of cynicism and desperation, it was not always so. The party apparatus facilitated a massive historical transformation over the course of several decades. The climate movement has no shortage of profound ideas, so my question is: What can the climate movement learn from the Republicans’ neoliberal coup?

FIRST, SOME BACKGROUND

Neoliberalism’s rise is well documented in books like Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste, by Philip Mirowski, and A Brief History of Neoliberalism, by David Harvey. What I share here is merely the surface of an incredible story of social change.

Economist Friedrich Hayek convened the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) in 1947 to develop an economic and social vision that would inoculate society from totalitarianism and collectivism. The idea was to make a decisive break from the state-centric regimes and ideologies of the first half of the 20th century. Hayek’s view held that individual freedom depended on replacing the state with the market as the means of economic coordination. The “invisible hand” of the market, he believed, produced more efficient and effective solutions along with more motivated, competitive, and autonomous people. The new body of theory that elaborated these ideas came to be called neoliberalism.

For decades, neoliberal economists were considered fringe theorists and excluded from Washington’s policy elite. The successes of the New Deal, and later the war effort, persuaded Americans that public institutions could meet shared societal challenges. In 1958, 73 percent of Americans trusted their government.

All that changed in the 1970’s. Stagflation—high unemployment, high inflation, and stagnant growth—gripped the US economy. Keynesian policies did little to alleviate the crisis. Many began to criticize government interventions for compounding the problem. Hayek and his American protégé Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1974 and 1976 respectively, raising the profile and legitimacy of the neoliberal doctrine that had been developing in the shadows for 30 years. Friedman was accepted into the inner circle of policy-oriented economic advisers, and Washington began to turn to his neoliberal frameworks. As Friedman explained, “when the time came that you had to change…there was an alternative ready there to be picked up.”

The advice was to embrace free markets and deregulation as the solution to stagflation. In 1976, President Jimmy Carter became an aggressive advocate for deregulation. Then came neoliberalism’s true champion, Ronald Reagan, in 1981. He mesmerized the country (and the world) with free market idealism expressed in anti-big government rhetoric, policies, and practices. Reagan’s focus not only produced decades of neoliberal policies in the White House but also birthed a massive ground game to infuse local politics and American culture with neoliberal values.

Something extraordinary happened in the decades that followed. Republicans recruited popular support with what Reagan called an “unswerving commitment to freedom” even as new neoliberal policies actually aimed to protect wealthy individuals and corporations. Reagan slashed the top income tax rate from 74 percent to 38 percent. Deregulation freed companies to ship jobs to low-wage countries. These practices set the stage for the rapid growth of income inequality that now marks our society. Historian David Harvey notes that “the median compensation of workers to the salaries of CEOs increased from just over 30 to 1…to nearly 500 to 1” between 1970 and 2000.

Despite the growing evidence of rising inequality and political manipulation, millions continued to support the neoliberal vision of deregulation and free markets. In 2002, 80 percent of Americans believed that the free market was the best economic system. The Pew Research Center reported in 2014 that “majorities across the globe are willing to accept some inequality to have a free market system.”

Meanwhile, the climate movement marches forward, noble in cause, fighting for the people, committed to protecting everything that we love from chaos. Despite its righteousness, the movement struggles to influence the bones of politics and society. According to Gallup, Americans’ concern for climate change is relatively unchanged since 1989—moving only from 35 percent to 37 percent. Although 63 percent think that global warming is happening, only 48 percent think that humans cause it. We have no political champion in the highest offices. Our leaders avoid bold climate action, settling for weak compromises that allow crisis to grow unchecked.

Neoliberal thinking is now the status quo among Republicans, many Democrats, and most major institutions—it’s called “The Washington Consensus.” It was the Republican Party, though, that adopted neoliberalism as its guiding framework and propelled it to a level of political and cultural commitment to which most social movements can only dream. Despite the very different values and strategies at play, there are practical components of social change in the neoliberal triumph that have relevance to the climate cause. If a movement that produces so much suffering and corruption can overtake society, then a righteous movement of the people should be able to do that and more.

THE THEORY: SHARED VISION FOR A LONG GAME

The Republican’s neoliberal movement rests on a shared vision and a long-range understanding of how to translate that vision from theory to practice. From the very beginning, neoliberals were committed to a disciplined long game. MPS began articulating its vision in 1947, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that its ideology burst onto the public stage. During the intervening years, an extensive global effort prepared for the moment when neoliberalism would emerge victorious. As Daniel Stedman Jones writes in Masters of the Universe, this gestation period “helped turned neoliberal thought into a neoliberal political program.” The movement sustained a long term vision in order to build the power, insight, and agenda for political and cultural domination.

Neoliberals also insisted on a unified vision. For example, Jones writes that the 30-year neoliberal incubation from the 1940s until the 1970s “was held together by the Mont Pelerin Society.” Philip Mirowski writes that it was “a relatively shared ontology…with a more-or-less shared set of propositions about markets and political economy.” United by an explicit theory of change, the movement could operate in many different fields while furthering the same goals. This coordinated front made it possible to drive a new political, economic, and social agenda.

These principles of shared vision and a long-game perspective translated into the GOP’s conceptual and policy apparatus. As Jones writes, the 1980s witnessed “a fundamental move to a new political culture dominated by the free market…. Neoliberal thinkers and activists helped shape the changed economic approach epitomized by Thatcher and Reagan’s governments.” Every president that followed—both Bush presidencies, Clinton, and Obama—was thrust into an agenda already shaped by neoliberal politics. The durability of this transformation is reflected in the 2016 Republican Platform. The section on “government” reads: “Much of what the federal government does can be improved, much should be replaced, and much needs to be done away with or returned to the states.” This is the very vision that Reagan inculcated into the Republican Party in 1981, when he said “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

The climate movement has developed as a social force since the 1980s, but it does not yet have the shared vision or long game capable of changing the core of American society. Our work tends to be defined by months or years, not decades. For example, the movement developed a multi-month plan around COP21, the international climate negotiations last December. Organizers prepared for COP21, rallied during COP21, and coordinated actions during the spring of 2016 to continue momentum. But where is our long game? Where is the intellectual framework that unites us, propels our work forward, coordinated and cohesive? As Robert Brulle, Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science at Drexel University, told me: “I don’t think that we have a long game at all…. Greens have really ceded the long-term intellectual arguments…to the conservative movement…. If you want to have long lasting staying power, you have to carry it out into the long term.” We need to know what we’re about, where we are going, and how we will get there.

The neoliberal movement’s vision was forged among an exclusive group of thinkers and then fed to a political party that champions elites. The climate movement will need to produce a shared vision in ways that are consistent with our democratic values. It’s been done before. In 1991, 300 delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit crafted the “Principles for Environmental Justice,” a vision that still guides the environmental justice movement today. What if 300 climate activists convened to develop our movement’s framework?

THE PRACTICE: WADING INTO THE MAINSTREAM

An important step in the neoliberal ascent was clean, clear, compelling messaging that exemplified neoliberal values, garnered support, and could flow through the Republican Party. One word did most of the work: freedom. People should be able to do what they want, Republicans urged. The government shouldn’t interfere. The market knows best. These messages appealed to the economic frustrations of millions of people. They also allowed elected officials to pursue almost any agenda for the sake of freedom. Just look at George W. Bush’s rationale for the Iraq War. As he said at the beginning of the war: “The greatest power of freedom is to overcome hatred and violence.”

Another key component of the mainstream infusion was think tanks—institutions that incubated ideas and policies. Neoliberalism’s converts developed a “transatlantic network,” as Jones calls it, that established think tanks to further the cause. As Jones comments, these “nodes” absorbed ideas from neoliberalism’s Founding Fathers and turned them into innovative policy formulations. It was these think tanks that then nurtured neoliberal thinking for three decades, maintained close relationships with Republican politicians, and ultimately fed innovative policies to Washington’s elite for mainstream diffusion. The Heritage Foundation was ground zero for the GOP’s original position on individual mandates for health insurance. (In 1983, Ronald Reagan told a Heritage gathering that they were leading an “intellectual revolution.”)

The American Enterprise Institute, another conservative policy incubator, worked closely with George W. Bush, who said: “I admire AEI a lot—I’m sure you know that. After all, I have been consistently borrowing some of your best people.” Republicans’ attacks on environmental regulations and climate science stems from outfits like the Cato Institute. As historian Phillip Mirowski told me, “The real action is in the think tanks these days.” Mirowski adds that the left has “no conception of the amount of regimentation it takes to achieve something like this.”

The lack of a shared intellectual platform, clear mainstream messaging, and methodical implementation leaves the climate movement playing defense. The most prominent example is our endless battle against climate denial, a campaign that has been incubated in think tanks and propagated by many Republicans. A quick glimpse into the pervasiveness of climate denial: A recent study found that “oil industry ads outpaced climate-related coverage by almost 5-to-1” on CNN after 2015 was declared the hottest year on record. In the classroom, climate education is riddled with climate denial and misinformation. How can we make a new world when we’re constantly fighting the old one?

The best defense is a good offense. Brulle agrees that we need to “start taking examples from how effective the conservative movement has been and try to apply some of the strategies…. we need to expand our tactics to encompass some of this.” We focus on local specific campaigns to defend ourselves against the ever-present threats to home, family, and life. This work is crucial, but we also need to take the time to develop a vision, incubate our thinking, develop policies, disseminate new intellectual frameworks, and implement new action strategies. Some will say that the climate movement doesn’t have time to develop this kind of intellectual and political apparatus. My response: We don’t have the time not to. (A quick note: I am aware that the Republican neoliberal offensive was well funded by elite interests. I think that funding the climate movement’s growth is possible… but that’s an article for another time.)

THE POLITICS: FROM THE WEST WING TO WEST VIRGINIA

The next lesson to learn from the Republican neoliberal coup is the impressive top-down and bottom-up political apparatus. As Mirowski told me, true success stems from having a “central intellectual guide and a set of projects at the local, individual, parochial level.”

Neoliberalism found its most effective political champion in Ronald Reagan. He was the first successful politician in the postwar era to orient the American political system around a pro-business, pro–free market, anti-regulation framework. George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush advanced the cause after Reagan. Clinton and Obama pushed it hard too. But the Republicans also developed a genuine grassroots strategy. They intentionally activated new constituencies to solidify bottom-up support for the neoliberal vision. In the 1970’s, the GOP allied with evangelical Christians, the white working class, and later the white middle class under the banner of “freedom” and “free markets.” These voters reliably elected candidates who championed the neoliberal cause.

The climate movement simply does not have this kind of electoral or political power. We don’t have a top-down champion. Bernie Sanders was the only climate leader among the 2016 Presidential candidates. His climate leadership was not enough to win him the nomination. Hillary Clinton supports fracking and has set weak climate goals. Donald Trump has already checked out to another planet.

We’re outnumbered on the grassroots front too. According to Gallup, climate change is of “below average” importance this election. Only 58 percent of “consistently liberal” citizens vote all the time, compared to 78 percent of “consistently conservative” voters. Clinton is reluctant to lead boldly on climate for fear that she will lose moderate voters and wealthy supporters. Her vice-presidential nominee supports fracking and offshore drilling. The “climate vote” isn’t yet powerful enough to win political leaders’ attention or commitment.

Harnessing political power is the next challenge for our movement. It means finding new ways to influence politics while holding elected officials accountable for their actions. As a Nation Fellow this year, I am writing a book that explores concrete solutions to this challenge: How does the climate movement become a more effective grassroots political force?

The bad news is that the Republican neoliberal coup—united behind a cohesive ideology and a thoughtful political, policy, and PR long game—successfully infiltrated the very marrow of American culture and politics. Here’s the good news: The climate movement can do this, and do it better. We know that nothing can compare with a movement that fights for the many, not the few. Bernie Sanders’s political revolution demonstrates that many Americans are already in rebellion against a political class that protects only elites. The climate movements offers our society truth instead of denial, survival instead of chaos, justice instead of injustice, equality instead of inequality, and democracy instead of oligarchy. Our own unified vision, methodical long game, mainstream communication strategies, innovative policies, and political power can be forged by, for, and of the people.

Yes, reorienting our politics and society around climate justice is a monumental challenge, but it’s a challenge that we must face if we are to avoid the worst of climate change. Our movement can accept this challenge because we march in the name of love. What can stop us?

I come from Maine, a small but mighty state. Don’t hold our demagogic governor against us; we are a beacon. The Maine Democratic Party was the first to abolish superdelegates. Mainers confronted the fossil-fuel industry, preventing tar sands from traversing our state. We are one of the only states in which the number of local farms increases while the age of farmers decreases. Now we send a warning to the rest of the nation: beware of Big Solar. Here in Maine, we’ve learned that the solar industry is not always the force for good that many believe it is.

“Big Solar” companies emerged to help catalyze and profit from the transition beyond fossil fuels. These companies build large solar farms and provide infrastructure for home owners to go solar. Their efforts are paying off. This year, the United States is set to double solar-energy development. For the first time, solar installments outpaced growth in the use of natural gas. Yet a drama fresh from the Maine State Legislature shows that Big Solar is prioritizing its business model over necessary innovation and the sovereignty of local communities.

L.D. 1649, “An Act To Modernize Maine’s Solar Power Policy and Encourage Economic Development,” was a groundbreaking solar bill that appeared before the Maine legislature in its most recent session. The bill proposed an additional 248 MW of solar power and a new solar purchasing and credit system. As Maine’s Portland Press Herald (PPH) reported: “The Maine solar bill would have replaced net metering with an innovative but untested alternative credit system that was crafted by a coalition of local solar installers, top Democrats, the state’s public advocate, utility companies and the state’s clean-energy and conservation groups.” This historic coalition and novel system attracted attention across the nation.

LD 1649 not only pioneered a new path for solar policy but also prioritized flexibility for energy consumers. Maine State Senator Chris Johnson, a strong proponent of the bill, told me: “Under the current system of net metering, communities don’t have a viable option for solar. People are not paid for the extra energy that they produce. This new system would have opened possibilities for people to be paid for the power that they produce in four sectors: grid scale, community level, commercial/industrial, and small business/residential.”

Unfortunately, this bill and Maine’s climate leadership was squashed by Governor, Paul LePage, in April 2016. The legislature failed to garner enough votes to override LePage’s veto. Since the bill’s defeat, solar projects have been scaled back or canceled, as they are no longer considered financially viable. Johnson said that he’s spoken to several local solar installers who are losing work due to uncertainty around Maine’s solar future.

Beneath the familiar headlines decrying Governor LePage’s regressive agenda was the critical fact that he was not alone in lining up against Maine’s solar bill. His cause was joined by another actor: Big Solar. SolarCity and SunRun—the first- and third-largest residential solar installers in the United States, respectively—spent thousands of dollars on a full-scale offensive to defeat Maine’s solar bill. Why? Big Solar’s business model is based on net metering, a standard solar-crediting system that LD 1649 would have replaced. As The Portland Press Herald stated, Big Solar was “fearful that the bill would threaten their business model,” so these “national companies took steps that helped LePage and Republicans, at the expense of local solar installers and their Democratic allies.” In follow-up research, the PPH found that Big Solar “feared the new, untested credit system would catch on in other states,” further threatening its modus operandi. In other words, Big Solar chose to protect its business model at the expense of community-based energy innovation that would have made solar energy accessible to many more people.

Is this the renewable energy revolution that you imagined?

Last year, I wrote in The Nation about an idea called the “radical now.” Progressives describe a brighter future that prioritizes positive values: equality, empathy, justice. Yet change-makers often do not reflect these values in their day-to-day lives. The ideals of a new world stay trapped in the future, perpetually out of reach. The “radical now” means that we need to embody the values of a better world now, in this world. We risk repeating destructive cycles when we do not live the radical now.

The actions of Big Solar in Maine do not represent the radical now. Rather, they echo many of the fossil-fuel industry’s defensive behaviors. Big Solar, of course, does not produce an energy that threatens everything that we know and love. But—by choosing to defend its business model over the innovation, agency, collaboration, and creativity of local communities—it has aligned itself with climate change–denying politicians like LePage. It advocates for status-quo policies that slow the growth of solar energy. It ignores the voices of local people and businesses. I work towards a clean-energy future, but not one like this.

In my state, an extraordinary coalition has attempted to live the radical now by creating a new system that would spread solar energy to new constituencies and sectors. Big Solar’s opposition to this crucial work is a warning to the rest of the country of a new growing power. Maine’s experience is also an opportunity to reflect on the world that we create. We need solar power, big and small, to move beyond fossil fuels. Will Big Solar perpetuate the abuses of Big Oil? Or will it be the “radical now”? It’s up to us to choose the kind of world that we want to create.

My generation will be the first to have lived an entire lifetime in a climate changed world. We witnessed the first climate impacts. We will experience the worst. We were born into this crisis and did nothing to cause it. Everything that we know and love—from our backyards to the existence of Planet Earth—is threatened.

This is a generation unlike any other.

What is it like to grow up with this new climate reality? I spoke to six young people who have been working on climate change from a young age and know what it’s like to grow up with this crisis. Their ages range from 13 to 29. Each confronts a different face of the crisis, from the coal mines of West Virginia to the drought-stricken plains of Kenya. Their words offer a glimpse into the challenges, heartaches, opportunities, and hope of growing up with climate change.

There is one key theme that unites these young people: the commitment to self-determination. Each has crisis thrust upon them. They know that climate change will inevitably impact their futures, homes, families, communities. There is a sense of doom, of unavoidable catastrophe. They could be passive victims, absorbing the consequences of a warmed world. They could allow climate change to dictate their destiny.

Not these brave champions. They refuse to be defined by the world they inherited. Instead, they define climate change as the opportunity to create a different world. They choose to protect what they love, to create the kind of life that they want, to fight with all their souls for a better future. They define their own fates. They declare that agency, power, and possibility can exist amid crisis.

The courage of youth in the age of climate crisis is to stand up for what is loved rather than to ignore what is feared. It is this courage that will save our world. As J.R.R. Tolkein so famously wrote:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

“My people are an endangered species.”

Ekai Nabenyo. 23 years old. Active since age 19.
Founder and Chair, Locodein Community Based Organization
Turkana, Kenya

Ekai works to build climate resilience in Turkana, Kenya. He started an advocacy organization to engage his community around climate change and the impacts of local oil and gas companies. He also spearheaded a project to build a school in his town. More information here.

I began working with my community for a clean and safe environment after learning about climate change and understanding its impact on my home, Turkana, Kenya—the poorest and driest county in Kenya.

I was born and raised in a pastoralist community that was majorly pegged on nomadism. I experienced the tough realities of climate change in my community. I served as a herds-boy, taking care of my grandfather’s livestock and moving from place to place looking for green pastures and water. I saw a beautiful Turkana that was green and cool. The immediate environment in Turkana was our only source of food. Wild fruits were readily available while in transit with our goats and sheep. Our animals were so healthy and well-fed that we would get enough milk and blood at any time. Droughts and famines were rare. They would come once a year, last for one or two months, then rains would come. The soil and the people were happy.

More than 15 years later, I now see a Turkana that is dry, hot, and arid. The temperatures are increasingly rising. The water levels of Lake Turkana, our only lake, are dropping due to massive water evaporation from the scorching sun. Our pasturelands are drying up, and the greener pastures that I used to know are no longer available. Droughts have taken over, and the entire community is extremely worried. That is the reality of climate change in my place. By God’s grace, however, my people have managed to survive despite the harsh climatic conditions.

As a Turkana person, climate change directly affects my life. It affects nomadism, our main source of livelihood, and affects our way of life generally. It defines me, it determines what quality of life we live, and commands the way in which we carry out some of our cultural practices. I am worried about my future as an individual and our future as a pastoralist community. If not collectively tackled by this generation, Turkana people face the imminent threat of being wiped off the face of the planet Earth by the changing climate. The increasing aridity and harsh climatic conditions mean that my people are an endangered species, and we are concerned about the future now more than ever. We are a very worried population.

“If I’m not going to do this, who else is going to?”

Junior Walk. 26 years old. Active since age 18.
Outreach Coordinator, Coal River Mountain Watch
Coal River, West Virginia

Junior was born and raised in West Virginia and dedicates his life to fighting the coal mines that threaten his home. He currently works for Coal River Mountain Watch. More information here. 

My grandfather was a union coal miner. I grew up in a coal camp. My water was poisoned growing up. It came out of my tap red for years. My elementary school was situated next to a coal prep plant. Coal truck and trucks rumbled by my house every day. It’s been pretty well instilled in me at a young age that the coal company was not my friend.

When I was 17, I wanted nothing more than to go to college and actually make some something of myself. I quickly realized that you need money to go to college. I was the first person in my family to graduate high school, let alone have any inking of a clue about scholarships. I went to to work for a coal company. I was 17 when I started and 18 when I quit. I felt like I had blood on my hands. I was just continuing that cycle of poisoning people. I went to work as a security guard at a strip mine. After work one day, I stopped in at the Coal River Mountain Watch office. Since then, I’ve been working to stop the coal industry.

We might get the mines shut down, we may not. They’re very powerful. The coal industry owns this state lock, stock, and barrel. The best that we can hope to do is test the water, turn that data into the DEP, keep on the DEP, and get coal companies to pay a fine. Every penny that we cost them is a penny that they can’t use to blow up that mountain and get at that coal.

I’ve had opportunities to leave here and do other things with my life and do things that no one in my family has had the privilege to do. I’ve turned them all down. If I’m not going to do this, who else is going to? Here, living on the front lines, my day to day is all about getting those coal mines shut down. I want the beauty of my home to exist next year. That’s my main driving motivation.

“Break the wall”

Carter Ries. 15 years old. Active since age 8.
Olivia Ries. 13 years old. Active since age 7.
Co-Founders, One More Generation
Atlanta, Georgia

Olivia and Carter founded One More Generation, a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness about endangered species. Their goal is to ensure that all animals last for one more generation. More information here.

Growing up knowing that the earth was slowly dying because of humans was horrific. As kids, we did not know what to do. Instead of waiting, we educated ourselves about projects being done to reduce climate change.

Climate change has made a huge impact on what we do in our everyday lives. We feel like it confines us. It may sound silly, but—at first—we felt like we were trapped inside a wall that kept growing, and every time we tried to break it down, it kept growing. The increase of height is due to the fact that not enough people know about the problem. It gets very frustrating that only a small percent of people actually care about our world and what we are doing to it. The more that we ignore our planet crying for help, the more it will continue to die. But, if you can educate people about the issue, then you will have more force, tools, and power to break down the wall. That is what we are trying to do: break the wall.

Climate change defines everyone who interacts, thinks, or takes action upon it. We have gained a great sense of knowledge and leadership from it, and we are grateful for that. Right now, this generation and generations to come have really got to step in, and say enough is enough. If we don’t, then everything will suffer. My kids, your kids, animals, parents, friends will all suffer from the consequences of the actions that we could have taken yesterday. We pushed it off until today, and now it is too late. But, at the same time, we know that education can empower people around the world to stand up and make change.

“Reality is not yet set in stone”

Victoria Barrett. 17 years old. Active since age 14.
Plaintiff, US Youth vs. United States Government White Plains, New York

Victoria is an Action Fellow with the Alliance for Climate Education. She was instrumental in an effort to mandate climate education in New York City. She is also one of 21 youth plaintiffs suing the US government over the climate crisis. More information here. 

It’s hard to condense all the feelings, thoughts, and experiences that come with living as a young person facing the harsh reality of climate change. There are moments of hope and confidence. There are also days and experiences that make you wonder if the fight for a sustainable future is even worth it.

Every time I see an ad for BP or get an emergency drill test for Indian Point Power Plant on my television, I’m suspended in this moment of disbelief—disbelief that not everyone can care as much as I do about the planet that we live on and the people who will inherit it. These moments in which I lack confidence are always refuted by a text from a friend that I made on this activism journey, or an update on the lawsuit, or even just a text from a school friend.

Little everyday things are a reminder of what youth activists are fighting for. They’re not a break from the current climate reality but instead a reminder that the reality is malleable. Reality is not yet set in stone. Despite the harsh facts of climate change and the implications they carry, I have hope knowing that my generation is fully capable and ready to alter the future that has been determined for us.

“The task of our generation”

Alec Loorz. 21 years old. Active since age 12.
Founder, iMatter.org
Ventura, California

Alec founded iMatter, an organization that empowers young people to address the climate crisis. iMatter has rallied thousands of youth across the nation to demand climate action in their communities. More information here.

When I saw Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth at age 12, I felt that I was called to be a part of the movement to end the climate crisis. I started giving speeches and presentations about the issue when I was 13. I spoke to hundreds of thousands of people, organized marches, wrote articles, met with leaders, and became known as a voice for my generation.

Climate change has come to utterly define me. And even though I am grateful that this work has given me some amazing opportunities and shaped me into the person I am today, this crisis is a heavy burden to carry.

Earth is suffering deeply. I am often overtaken by the grief for all that has already been lost and the fear for what the future will bring. What we are doing to our living world is deeply disturbing, and I feel angry and ashamed to be a part of a culture that feels entitled to manipulate and destroy all who we see as “other,” just for the sake of money, power, and perpetual human progress. I, like many others, feel trapped in bondage to this system, a system that no longer serves us, and wreaks absolute havoc on the living world.

We are ready for something new. And after years of struggling with a deeply numbing depression, I am ready to play my part in bringing our people through the transition to a regenerative world. I am working now on a campaign called Circle of Fire, which aims to bring together visionaries and leaders to articulate the emerging story of our time and to enact the systemic shift to a world that fulfills us and connects us again with our landscapes and communities. This shift will not be easy, and there is surely more grief and turmoil to come. But I am confident that we can bring this transformation about. I believe that this is the task of our generation.

“It is unfair. But you are capable.”

Shadia Fayne Wood. 29 years old. Active since age 7.
Co-Coordinator, Survival Media Agency
Oakland, California

Shadia is the Executive Producer of the Survival Media Agency, a company that links freelance photographers and videographers with climate and social justice organizations to produce high quality visual media.  She also founded Project Survival Media, a “global youth media network” that produces documentaries about the climate movement. More information here.

My earliest memory of climate change is from 6th grade. My science textbook called it a ‘theory.” I thought: that’s crazy because climate change is real.

When I was 18 months old, my whole community rallied to make sure that that wasn’t a reality that we would have to live with. There was already an inactive toxic waste site nearby making people sick. Throughout my years, continuing to work on environmental and climate justice as a kid, I learned that communities like ours shouldn’t have to be bombarded by pollution from other places. That we all have rights to clean air and clean water and that no one should be expendable.

I think that it’s important for children to understand the world that they grow up in. I definitely remembering having times when I felt overwhelmed and had stress headaches because of my climate work. I remember talking with my mom and grappling with the future and the world and my place in it all. Everything is so much bigger than I will ever be. That’s a really hard thing to grapple with. For children, they need to understand that they didn’t create this problem, but they have to deal with it. It is unfair. But you are capable, you are empowered, you have agency, and there are so many beautiful amazing people around you to help you do your part.

At 11 pm on a cold Wednesday in February 2014, bleary-eyed Divest Harvard members gathered to discuss the campaign’s future. The group, which calls on Harvard to divest its 37.6 billion dollar endowment from fossil-fuel companies, was deeply torn. We had worked tirelessly for 18 months to build a campus movement, helping mobilize 72 percent of college students in support of divestment, organizing rallies, and hosting forums. Still, after multiple meetings with our administration, there was no progress toward divestment. Some in our group wanted to “shake,” continuing dialogue with the administration in the hope that our voices could spark its conscience. Others wanted to bypass Harvard to try to “make” a new reality. They argued for escalation—blockades, sit-ins, and increasing forms of civil disobedience. Shake or make? That was the question.

The future of the fossil-fuel divestment movement today mirrors the dilemmas that Divest Harvard faced that frigid night. The movement oscillates between two paths forward. “Shake” aims to reorient existing institutions towards a climate consciousness. “Make” tries to confront, transcend and transform existing systems on the premise that only new structures can save us.

The shakers and makers of fossil-fuel divestment define its future. How are these distinct strategies playing out? I talked with youth leaders across the divestment movement to find out.

Fossil-fuel divestment organizing earned the title “historic” within three years of its inception. The first campaigns bubbled up on a few campuses in 2010. Led initially by Swarthmore students, divestment stood in solidarity with those on the front lines of fossil-fuel extraction. In July 2012, Bill McKibben wrote a now-famous article in Rolling Stone that showcased fossil-fuel divestment as a primary strategy for confronting climate change. Three months later, 350.org staged the “Do the Math” tour. Almost immediately, more than 100 campus campaigns emerged.

In October 2013, a report from Oxford University declared fossil-fuel divestment the fastest-growing divestment campaign in history. Now there are more than 400 campus and hundreds of off-campus campaigns. Over 500 institutions with more than $3.4 trillion in assets have divested. Hundreds of students have risked arrest. HSBC, the World Bank, and other major financial institutions have endorsed the economic rationale behind divestment. Even politicians—like Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley—now reject fossil-fuel money.

Fossil-fuel divestment has become one of the principal ways that youth engage with the climate movement. The movement aims to weaken the fossil-fuel sector’s influence in three ways: (1) pivot capital towards clean energy investments, (2) stigmatize the industry to create political support for climate action, and (3) ignite a massive social movement to fight the fossil-fuel industry. “It’s really mobilizing young people and making them feel like they do have a voice,” emphasizes Daphne Chang, a founding force behind Mt. Holyoke’s divestment campaign. The movement provides an inclusive platform for action.

Young people see another key goal of divestment: to hold institutions accountable in the age of climate crisis. Young Jong Cho, a campaigner for 350.org and 350 action says, “The divestment campaign and movement is more about highlighting the influence of the fossil-fuel industry on many of our institutions…[and] pushing our institutions to take a moral stance on climate change.” The climate crisis requires educational institutions to rethink how they operate and whether their practices threaten communities and jeopardize students’ futures.

Last spring, students organized the first nationwide coordinated escalation and activism surged. Since then, the movement has been in a “valley,” as Shea Riester, a young college alum who supports student activists, observes. “Generally, though,” he added, “you have valleys happen after spring escalations.… I think we’re going to see another round of escalation this spring…continuing some of this momentum.”

And he was right.

This spring so far, more than 40 divestment advocates have been arrested during campus protests. Four Divest Harvard students were arrested after a sit-in. Dozens of UMass students were arrested during an occupation. Yale announced partial divestment. The University of Mary Washington divested. The surge of student activity revived fossil-fuel divestment on campuses and reminded the world that student power is alive and well.

But the future of fossil-fuel divestment is defined by the tension between shake and make. This tension has existed since the movement’s inception, though it has not always been directly acknowledged. On the one hand, divestment is a financial tool of “the system.” The movement “shakes” things up within the current system by showcasing the total numbers of assets that have been divested, celebrating large pools of money that forswear fossil fuels, and highlighting financial experts’ support. At the same time, the movement uses divestment to confront the system and “make” a new reality. The divestment movement tackles the fossil-fuel industry, redirects capital towards new economies, and builds a mass movement working for climate justice.

Some campus campaigns accept divestment as a tool of traditional finance and aim to shake endowments into financial instruments that support a transition away from fossil fuels. These students build relationships with trustees to explore green investment opportunities. They encourage support for investments in climate solutions. These campaigns can be used to “facilitate incremental steps” or to look for “moments where interim compromises may exist, like a commitment to invest in local community development,” suggests Ophir Bruck, a former leader of Fossil Free University of California who now works in the sustainable investment field. For campus shakers, divestment is a way to change the conversations within administrations and reallocate endowments’ investments toward a livable planet.

In the finance world, shakers aim to use the existing economic system to rechannel capital towards investments in carbon-free technologies and capabilities. Lily Tomson, a student organizer with Positive Investment Cambridge, describes divestment as “genuinely trying to shift the financial territory.” Fossil fuel divestment adheres to its literal definition: a financial mechanism to move capital from one set of assets to another.

Campus makers, in contrast, see divestment as a tool to radicalize students against the fossil-fuel industry and any institution that colludes with its practices. They regard divestment as demanding more than just a shift in investment strategies. They aim to birth a new ethos of confrontation in the face of corruption and crisis. Riester sums it up: “We’ve seen how many hundreds of students have been at the table…and how little that has gotten them.” Instead, he says, students need to commit to nonviolent civil disobedience, “putting it all on the line” and not being afraid to “demand divestment in that direct way.” Divestment becomes a symbol for what young people are willing to do for all that they love. The end goal may not be whether a school divests or not. Power is built from struggle.

This view holds that divestment can be used to disrupt the economic system and build a new economy. Katie Hoffman, who co-founded the University of California’s divestment campaign, told me, “Finance for finance sake is one of the greatest challenges we’re up against in our society right now.” Iliana Salazar-Dodge, a senior divestment campaigner at Columbia University, paints a vision of this new system in a recent op-ed: “Worker-owned businesses and local funds are springing up across the nation…. They are building something beautiful.” Divestment and reinvestment can not only accelerate the clean-energy revolution, they can also be the building blocks of a new economy.

Shake and make contradict each other in many ways, but these two approaches also allow for broad engagement. Will divestment be able to succeed on both terms? Or will the different aims produce internal divisions that pit one activist against another and jeopardize the ability to build power? Can shake and make coexist? It’s an age-old tension between radicalism and reform made more urgent by the existential threat of climate change.

I have argued in the pages of The Nation that fossil-fuel divestment is a step towards true political prowess for the climate movement. Divestment stigmatizes the fossil-fuel industry, limits its political influence, and creates new political space for real climate solutions. To fulfill this theory of change, the divestment movement must actually claim that new political space. It needs to pivot its networks and engage with electoral politics.

Divestment can be an opportunity to make a new kind of politics. It’s time to “look beyond the divestment movement,” says Becca Rast, a US Campus Organizer with 350.org. “That includes young people running for office.” As many interviewees argued, divestment organizing trains a new generation of politicians. Campus activists learn the tools of politics immemorial: how to negotiate, organize, and engage in collective decision-making. When these millennials run for office, they will infuse new perspectives, capabilities, and values into our political system.

The shakers know what they are for: the shake modifies endowments, shifts the finance sector, bird-dogs politicians. But can the agents of destruction be shaken quickly enough to become agents of salvation?

The makers know exactly what they are against, but their solutions are still developing. They use direct action to confront and expose the status quo but still face the work of creating fresh solutions and new systems. This work takes time, effort, and creativity at a moment in history when we race against physics. Can the makers become a regenerative force in time?

After a winter snow, I watch the branches of Maine’s pine trees bend under the weight. I shake the branches and watch the limbs bounce back to their proud height. I feel satisfied to have released them from their burden. There are times, though, when the branch cannot snap back. It’s too damaged to withstand the next storm, and the trunk itself is compromised. No matter how much I shake, its life is over. A new tree will one day take its place and, in time, a new forest will grow.

A few months ago, I woke up with a “berning” need to join the Bernie Sanders campaign. I had followed the evolution of the revolution because of Bernie’s outstanding climate platform, and I wanted to do more. I canvased in New Hampshire ahead of the primary and interned with the campaign, immersing myself in the “Feel the Bern” movement’s theory of change.

As Bernie’s campaign marched into my life, I could not help but compare its strategies to those of the other cause that dominates my world: the climate movement. Climate organizers have worked for decades to build a mass movement, an effort that produced the largest climate event in US history when 400,000 people marched in 2014 in New York City. Yet within six months of launching his campaign, Bernie had drawn that many people to his rallies. As the climate movement struggles to build electoral power, Bernie has inspired more people than ever to vote and engage with the political process. Up close and personal, I learned that America’s new political uprising and its leader offer invaluable lessons for climate activists.

1. Shared vision: The Sanders campaign revolves around a unified, concrete, and identifiable vision defined in the platforms on Bernie’s website. People can easily understand the values and objectives of Bernie’s political revolution. When it comes to climate change, for example, the senator envisions a country in which we “reclaim our democracy from the billionaire fossil fuel lobby.”

In contrast, the climate movement does not have a unified vision for the future other than a general imperative to avoid climate catastrophe. This makes it confusing for outsiders and even those within the movement to understand exactly what we are fighting for. Some organizations, including a few of the “Big Greens,” support natural gas as a bridge fuel. Yet more and more groups reject natural gas, citing health and environmental risks. Each approach represents different values and futures. Can the climate movement create clarity by rallying around a common vision?

2. Beyond human-as-usual: Bernie understands that there is no room for human-as-usual compromise when it comes to climate change. He is the only Democratic candidate to oppose fracking and reject all fossil fuels. He is not afraid to stand up to the fossil-fuel industry, famously saying: ‘To hell with the fossil fuel industry. Worry more about your children and your grandchildren than your campaign contributions.” Bernie also condemned the international COP21 climate agreement when he declared that it “does not provide” the “bold action” required. Rather than succumb to the status quo and its acceptance of endless compromise, Bernie Sanders’ climate policy stems from a fact-based insistence on climate justice.

Many climate organizations stand with Bernie’s strong positions. Others are willing to compromise and settle for weaker action. The reaction to COP21 shows the range of opinion. Both the heads of the Sierra Club and Avaaz hailed the Paris agreement as a “turning point.” The head of Greenpeace said, “The wheel of climate action turns slowly, but in Paris it has turned.” Yet many young climate activists consider the agreement profoundly unjust, condemning youth and front-line communities to a future of climate chaos. One of the major climate-justice delegations to COP21, It Takes Roots, wrote after the talks concluded: “The COP21 agreement is a failure, condemning humanity to a slow and painful death.” How can these perspectives be reconciled?

3. For, not against: The first thing that popped up when I visited Hillary Clinton’s website was an ad that read: “Republicans should do their job and fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court.” Donald Trump’s homepage features an attack on John Kasich. But Bernie’s website opens with: “This is your movement” amid a backdrop of human faces. He spends little time attacking his opponents or differentiating himself from Hillary. Instead, he relentlessly focuses on what he stands for: climate action, healthcare, affordable education, equality. He is less anti-Hillary or anti-Republican than he is pro-people and pro-planet.

The climate movement can learn from Bernie’s steadfast and consistent commitment to engaging our better angels. Too much of our messaging reflects what we are against: the fossil-fuel industry, political capture, coal, oil, natural gas… We don’t tend to emphasize what we stand for. As Cam Fenton, a Canadian climate activist, wrote earlier this year: “We have too often based our vision on opposition to our opponents, and that’s left us unbalanced.” Why? Perhaps because we lack that unified vision. As a result, the climate movement is more a reaction against what we fear than it is a movement for a better future.

4. Meaningful easy engagement: The Sanders campaign knows how to engage people. Have you seen map.berniesanders.com? It shows every Bernie event, office, and volunteer opportunity in your area. Anyone can learn how to get involved and contribute to the political revolution.

How does someone “join” the climate movement? There is no movement-wide infrastructure for action or a map with all the climate organizations and actions in your area (as far as I know). Most generic ways to participate, like changing lightbulbs joining a march or writing your congressmembers seem futile in the face of implacable climate upheaval. Groups like 350.org are working at it, but the climate movement has not yet figured out how to engage masses of people.

5. The view beyond: Despite these successes, Bernie Sanders and the political revolution have—so far—failed to do one big thing: see past the current campaign. Right now, Bernie’s call to action is focused on his presidential bid. How do people join the revolution? They get out the vote for Bernie. But will Bernie and his team build the leadership and infrastructure to transform the campaign into a movement—a real political revolution? What lies beyond Bernie 2016?

Long-term mobilization is a profound problem for many climate campaigns. Take the movement to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. Organizations devoted enormous resources to block its construction. There were huge marches in DC. Over 750 communities across America organized actions against the pipeline. As a result, Keystone XL was rejected. But what happened to all those folks who sat on a bus for 10 hours to march against the pipeline? Where was the post-campaign plan to help these activists pivot and engage with local contests over fossil fuel infrastructure? We must look beyond what’s right in front of us if we want to build and maintain power,

I am 23 years old and have lived in Maine all my life. I can already see that the Maine that raised me is different from the one I live in today. Winters are warmer. Ice melts sooner. Buds bloom earlier. The local economy reverberates with the impacts of an unstable planet. My heart breaks to see all that I love most fall prey to climate change. That is why I work towards a climate movement that can truly protect all that we love. The Bernie Sanders revolution holds lessons that we can learn from right now. Learning from the Bern can help us avoid a future of burn.

When I was younger, I used to be zealous about changing light bulbs. Then my focus shifted to changing the systems that determine how we use energy, because, as the saying goes, “we need system change, not climate change.” As a youth delegate to COP21—the international climate-change conference in Paris last December—I witnessed the most sophisticated political skills the world has to offer focus on one goal: to change the fundamental components of our energy systems. They failed. In Paris, I learned that there is an even deeper level of change required to prevent climate catastrophe. It’s not system change—it’s human change.

COP21 was a big deal before it began. Unprecedented international commitment to address climate change set the stage for a global binding treaty. More than 150 nations submitted emissions reduction goals, compared to the 27 countries that made commitments ahead of Copenhagen’s COP15 in 2009. President Obama said that COP21 was the “best chance we have to save the one planet we have.” The grassroots movement fully engaged as thousands of people marched around the world to demand climate action. No doubt: Paris was an historic moment.

By December 12, 2015, over 190 nations arrived at consensus, producing a 31-page agreement. For the first time, an explicit global commitment existed to end our dependence on fossil fuels. There was instant praise. A headline from The Guardian read: “nearly 200 nations sign in end of fossil fuel era.” John Kerry called it a “victory for all the planet and future generations.”

Christiana Figueres, the highest-ranking UN climate-change official, tweeted:

“We have made history together! #ParisAgreement at #COP21 unites the world for a better future.”

COP21 was not the silver bullet to stop all climate chaos, but it was recognized as a huge victory for international collaboration. Celebrations erupted across Paris.

I was surrounded by exuberance but had never felt more alone, grieving instead of joyful. Yes, COP21 was a political triumph, but I could not overlook a mountain of bare facts. The agreement is weak and profoundly unjust, condemning youth and frontline communities to bear the full brunt of climate catastrophe. There is no clear date by which the world phases out fossil-fuel use. There is an appalling lack of financial support for frontline communities facing the worst climate impacts. Even if all countries adhere to their non-binding emissions-reduction targets, our planet will warm 2.7C–3.7C, a level far beyond what is safe. The hypocrisy of COP21 was overwhelming as—during the negotiations—President Obama signed a bill expediting permits for oil and gas pipelines. At 3 am on December 12, headlines declared that John Kerry threatened to walk out of negotiations if developed countries were required to provide financial assistance to developing countries. A debate over “shall” or “should” dominated the final hours of COP21.

The night before negotiations ended, I stumbled out of a meeting at 1 am and found myself on a shuttered Parisian street lit only by a few dim lamps. The cold wind whipped my cheeks, but my chest burned red hot with rage at the politicking that was celebrated while my generation faced doom. The worst pain came from images of my home that flashed before my eyes. I’ve already seen so much change in my short lifetime: The animals on our farm shed their coats during winter warm spells, only to freeze when the cold returns. Spring comes early. Summers are hot and dry. My heart broke at the thought of all that I love most falling prey to the chaos of politics and climate change. Anguish filled my soul as I realized that the best politics that the world has to offer are not enough to avert disaster.

Then a revelation stopped me in my tracks. The euphoria around COP21 was fully merited. The agreement represents the best of what humans have learned to do over centuries: to use the political arts of compromise and negotiation to overcome conflict and unite disparate groups. But here’s the thing: COP21 demonstrates that even the best of what humans have learned to do is not enough. The climate emergency demands something else, something that lies beyond the known threshold of human political arts, beyond the known functions of the human toolkit, beyond the best that we have already achieved.

The idea that we can no longer operate according to “business-as-usual” or “politics-as-usual” is by now a cliche. What struck me that night and drives me now is a different idea: we can no longer afford to be human-as-usual. In the age of changing climate, human-as-usual is not enough.

Under that murky, light-polluted Parisian sky, I suddenly felt a sense of renewed clarity. I realized that our political systems are built to master human-to-human confrontation. Major historical struggles have been “us versus them.” Compromise was essential for the development of society and civilization. But today, our foe is not each other. Our foe is physics, and the physical world does not negotiate. It does not train on the art of compromise. We enter an unprecedented era of “us versus it.” We need to find new ways of being in which we are all on the same side, supporting one another as we confront the limits of physics. The very facts of the climate crisis require us to depart from the familiar territory of human-as-usual.

What does it mean to move beyond the human-as-usual? To be honest, I don’t know how it’s done, what it feels like, or if people are capable of achieving new ways of being human. But I do know that we have to try. Crisis has always been the crucible of creativity, and that’s exactly what we need now. As long as we celebrate the outcomes of traditional political behavior, even at its best, we are blinded to the breakthroughs that may occur when we refuse to be as we have been before. Most importantly: If we fail to reach for un-usual behaviors, we will find ourselves reproducing the very behaviors and systems that created the climate crisis in the first place. This assures a never-ending cycle of shortfall and destruction.

Last week, we remembered the life and words of Martin Luther King Jr., a man who summoned all people to reach beyond anger and hatred towards love and hope. In his “Christmas Sermon on Peace” in 1967, Dr. King said:

“We will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.”

The climate crisis calls upon humanity to unite in ways that are novel, transcendent, creative, and brave. Not-human-as-usual is the seed of a new forest in the making, one that is unlike any that this world has known.

If you see me in Paris, you’ll notice my black eye. One early morning, I raced to the métro near our delegation’s hostel in a state of dizzy stress, a too-heavy bag slung across my chest and bleary with fatigue from long days at COP21, the UN climate conference in Paris. I bought a ticket, rushed through the swinging door, but before I knew what happened, the door swung back hard and hit me in the face. I staggered onto the train and slumped into a seat. The side of my face throbbed, and I could feel the bruise blooming around my eye.

I’ve had a few days to contemplate my black eye, and I’ve come to see it as a metaphor for the deeply contradictory predicament of youth at this most significant of world negotiations on averting climate catastrophe. When it comes to climate politics, we find ourselves having all the power and no power at all.

The thousands of young people here are universally earnest, eager, informed, determined, compassionate, committed, and focused—willing to sacrifice time and energy to the urgency of the climate crisis. We’ve come of age with the knowledge that our futures are insecure in the face of extreme climate disorientation. We are the only global generation in the history of humanity that knows it is impossible to count on the future being anything like the past—that our homes and all that we love will be transformed or destroyed. Traditional institutions have failed our generation in the face of the climate threat, so we have learned from a young age to stand up for what we love. We plan actions and craft messaging to assert that power is in the hands of the people. We don’t “wait on change.” We organize our communities, lobby to divest, and shut down fossil fuel infrastructure. Our narrative asserts our ability to create change in the face of crisis.

But here at COP21, we constantly strategize over how to impact the negotiations, how to have our voices heard, and how to influence politics and policies. There is a deep sense of frustration that often shades into despair. Despite immense tidal waves of energy and dedication, our voices are excluded. We knock on doors, but most of those doors are slammed in our face. We call for rich nations to provide financial support for vulnerable poor countries that face the first and worst climate impacts. John Kerry announced on Wednesday that the United States pledges $800 million in climate finance. Meanwhile, the US spends $37.5 billion annually on fossil fuel subsidies. One of the core youth demands at COP21 is financial support for countries that are already experiencing (and will soon experience) severe climate impacts. We regard this as a necessary act of justice. Yet the United States has avoided the idea of reparations, reportedly demanding that vulnerable nations never seek compensation from rich nations. The quality of action that we seek remains elusive.

The youth narrative of hope and change clashes with the realpolitik of COP21 and climate politics. There is a howling disconnect between what we know society needs to address and the solutions that are proposed in negotiating rooms. Youth spend their days running on the renewable energy of love as they try to figure out how to influence political actors. But so far we have not translated the enormity of our generation’s historically unique experience of risk and insecurity into the kind of effective political clout that would push forth a strong ambitious agreement.

This paradox is an illustration of “the mobilization gap.” I discovered this phenomenon as I wrote my Senior Thesis at Harvard College. Those in the climate movement see our goals as political but don’t believe that we have the clout to achieve these political goals. At COP21, I see youth working towards goals and solutions that cannot be accomplished without politics. But our efforts have so far failed to impact politics on the scale of what’s necessary. There is a gap between what we do on the ground and the political willingness to create the policy environment in which climate solutions can take root. When it comes to youth, the mobilization gap is most dangerous. It’s essential that political leaders feel the urgency and risk that only a young person can know.

As a result of the mobilization gap, politics has become distant from the people. But I refuse to believe that we are doomed to a world in which youth voice never permeates the halls of decision-makers. The challenge now is to close the mobilization gap by inventing new modes of action that channel popular commitment into political pressure. It means finding new ways to influence politics while holding elected officials accountable for their actions. As a Nation Fellow this year, I’ll be working on a book that explores concrete solutions to this challenge: How does the climate movement become a more effective grassroots political force?

My delegation, SustainUS, often gathers to sing a song by climate artist Rachel Schragis that includes these lines: “There are some places you’ve been that I have not been to. There are some places that we have not been to yet. Everywhere I go I see a different situation.… but everywhere we are we know the same thing.” As we sing, people hum and create a beat with their hands. My friends close their eyes to feel the presence of vibrant souls, gathered together, sharing the pain, rejoicing in the inspiration and solidarity.

The lack of political action on climate change has not destroyed young people’s joy and passion. But we have banged our heads on the doors of political intransigence for far too long. It’s time to figure out how we become a powerful movement with agency and effective political power. When it comes to having an impact on our political system, having our voices heard, holding our leaders accountable—there are some places that we have not been to yet.

Paris, France—It’s the first night of COP21. Free food and action planning are the irresistible combination that draw dozens of youth to an art space in late-night Paris. The passion in the room is real. So is the fear as our generation bears the burden of unprecedented global upheaval.

I ask myself: Why is it that we feel this issue so deeply, but global leaders do not? For us, the climate crisis is a matter of identity. It’s personal, profound, existential. But for the heads of state who speak at COP21, climate change is politics and policies.

* * *

My family watches the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy each holiday season. I look forward to the Ents’ uprising, no matter how many times I’ve seen it. The Ents, for those unfamiliar with Tolkein’s world, are the ancient tree-beings of Fangorn Forest in Middle Earth. They learn that the evil warlord Saruman is building power at the edge of the forest to wage a massive war. The Ents call a meeting to discuss how to address the threat. Their language (Ent-ish) is slow and tedious—it takes them nearly all day simply to say “hello.”

Merry and Pippin—two Hobbits traveling with the Ents—are outraged by the slow pace of conversation. If Saruman’s forces win, their home—the Shire—and all of Middle Earth will be submerged in darkness and evil. Merry and Pippin frantically interrupt the Ents’ discussion, pleading for a sense of urgency and rapid action. “Our world teeters on the edge of doom!” they cry. “Do something!” they scream. The Ents begrudgingly make their way to the edge of the forest to better understand Saruman’s plans.

The Ents emerge from the deep woods to discover that Saruman has obliterated a massive tract of Fangorn Forest. They stand stunned, staring in disbelief at a hideous graveyard.  Their mothers, fathers, cousins, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, friends had once stood proud on that land, but they were slaughtered as fuel for Saruman’s takeover. Something shifts in the Ents’ collective soul. Reeling in pain and shock, they let out mighty bellows to summon the entire forest. The Ents storm Saruman’s castle and demolish his operations.

What shifted for the Ents? At first, Sarumon was a far-off political abstraction that didn’t affect their sense of self and shared fate. But the assault on family and home turned a distant threat into an immediate challenge to their identity. In an instant of illumination and revulsion, the fight became personal. As suddenly as “the bursting of a flood that had long been held back by a dike,” it had finally become clear that “our trees and our lives are in great danger,” Tolkien wrote.

Climate change, for most, is a far-off political issue. It doesn’t define who we are. This is because the climate movement is one of very few social movements that are not defined by identity. My wise friend Kirin Gupta rightly observed that the civil-rights, LGBTQ, women’s-rights, and Black Lives Matter movements are each centered on a central aspect of our beings: gender, sexual orientation, race, religion. Whereas climate change is a scientific phenomenon.

How do we create common identity around climate change? How does everyone—from youth activists to world leaders—feel the crisis in their souls? We do it through love. Climate change becomes a personal issue of identity for all when we understand how it affects what we cherish. The sad reality is that the climate crisis has and will affect all of our lives. We will each experience an urgent connection with this emergency. Once something threatens who you are and what you love, you have no choice but to take action.

To each politician, global leader, and decision-maker at COP21 and beyond, I ask: What do you love? What are you willing to do for all that you hold dear? Can you feel the pain, the possibility, of losing your home, your family, your community? Hold on to that feeling. Bind it to your heart. That is what I feel. That is what my generation feels.

My greatest hope for COP21 is that global leaders can secretly become Ents. I hope that the endless effort of youth to convey the dire urgency of this crisis works its way into their hearts. I hope that they find a way to grasp what we feel and make it their own. If they do, it will become impossible to delay meaningful action any longer. I hope that they realize that they have the power and the ability to move beyond the slow ambiguous conversations of the status quo and lead the world out of crisis. Just like the Ents.

As they marched to challenge Saruman, the Ents’ leader, Treebeard, declares: “if we stayed at home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later. That thought has long been growing in our hearts; and that is why we are marching now…. we may help the other peoples before we pass away.”

The UN climate conference in Paris, COP21, is fast approaching in December. Coincidentally, last week the UK Met Office—Britain’s National Weather Service—declared that the planet will pass 1C warming by the end of the year, moving the world’s climate into “uncharted territory.” The US presidential primaries are in full swing with one party rife with climate change deniers. In this context, one question rises above all others: Does the climate movement have the political clout to save planet Earth?

As a youth climate activist and co-founder of Divest Harvard, I focused on this question for my senior thesis. I asked: How does the climate movement mobilize political power, and how effective have its political efforts been? After interviewing dozens of climate movement leaders, I identified what I call “the mobilization gap.” Movement leaders identify their goals as political, but they don’t see the movement as having the political power to achieve those goals. This dissonance has not yet been recognized—let alone addressed—but it jeopardizes the success of all our work.

Three recent examples illustrate the mobilization gap.

1. #sHellNo

One word lit up the climate movement last spring: kayaktivist. The Obama administration had just granted Royal Dutch Shell permission to drill for oil off Alaska’s shore. In May, hundreds of people took to the water in protest and kayaked across Seattle’s Elliott Bay. Their message: “sHell No.” In June, kayaktivists blocked one of Shell’s Arctic-bound drilling rigs in Seattle. In July, 13 Greenpeace protesters hung off a bridge in Portland, Oregon, to stop another Shell rig from departing. Kayaktivists supported from the water below, making national headlines. Organizations like 350.org, NRDC and CREDO issued statements and petitions, protesting Obama’s decisions to allow Arctic drilling.

Then in September, Obama became the first sitting president to visit Alaska. His goal: to confront the human and environmental impacts of the climate crisis. Staring forlornly at a rapidly vanishing glacier, Obama spoke with a reporter from Rolling Stone. In his interview, he appeared to be resigned to a status quo that remains frozen despite the melting mountains of ice. For example, when asked about his approval of Arctic drilling, Obama claimed that he couldn’t stop Shell, lamenting that, “regardless of how urgent I think the science is, if I howl at the moon without being able to build a political consensus behind me, it’s not going to get done.” His rhetoric reflects a political climate in which the work of the kayaktivists and those of other broad-based organizations opposed to Arctic drilling are considered futile idealism—the political equivalent of howling at the moon. The movement has yet to provide Obama with the cover needed to reject Arctic drilling as a matter of political necessity. When the Obama administration did suspend auctions for two offshore drilling leases in October, the low price of oil and lack of competitive bidding were cited as reasons—not political or existential requirement.

2. Keystone XL

After four years of organizing, the climate movement celebrated a huge victory on November 6 as President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Kerry rejected the Keystone XL pipeline. After the announcement, movement writers penned titles like “The People Rejected Keystone XL,” “When We Fight, We Fuck Shit Up: Keystone XL and Delegitimizing Fossil Fuels,” and “#NoKXL: The Day the People Won.” The common message was that the movement’s resistance elevated Keystone XL as an issue and built effective political power.

But there was one person who wasn’t as enthusiastic about the people’s fight against Keystone XL: President Obama. He accused the climate movement of using the pipeline as a “campaign cudgel,” countering that it would not be the “express lane to climate disaster” that opponents claimed. He cited national security, climate change, cultural heritage, and America’s credibility as a climate leader as the reasons why Keystone XL had to die. But he neither credited the movement nor the massive uprising that brought Keystone XL to the forefront of national and global politics.

There is no denying the significance of the Keystone XL decision and what it means for fossil fuel–infrastructure resistance in the United States. The movement deserves its much-celebrated backstage credit for this success. But we still need to recognize that the Obama administration’s rhetoric points to a deep reluctance to credit a growing grassroots movement. Our movement still needs the kind of political power that compels public legitimation and recognition. How is it that all of Washington is terrified of the NRA, but Congress still debates whether climate change is caused by humans? The climate movement must create an inescapable riptide of political necessity that redefines acceptable political action.

3. COP21

The failure to build political necessity at the local and national levels cripples our ability to meet the world-historic challenges of international coordination around climate action. The 21st UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP21) is about to commence in Paris, France. It represents one of humanity’s last opportunities to develop a legally binding agreement for global emissions reduction. Hundreds of thousands are expected to mobilize in the streets of Paris. A planet-wide march will occur on November 28 and 29. The largest-ever European civil disobedience for climate change will take place in Paris on December 12—the last official day of COP.

Yet it looks like no treaty will emerge from Paris. Kerry has already said that there will “definitely not” be a binding agreement. Christiana Figueres, the UN climate chief and highest-ranking climate-change expert in the UN, warned that any agreement in Paris would not include a global price on carbon. Political systems fail to act on climate despite the urgent pleas of scientists and unprecedented global grassroots activism. The lack of political clout on the local and national levels are only magnified at history-making moments like COP21.

These three examples illustrate the mobilization gap. We need politics to address climate change, but political systems are unprepared for this crisis. A movement builds power for political ends without being able to achieve the policies needed to address a fast dawning catastrophe.

How do we close the mobilization gap? How can we create a political system in which acting on climate is common sense not uncommon idealism, political necessity not political risk? My experiences as a youth activist and my thesis research have driven me to explore new solutions for building an unstoppable political force for climate action. During the next year, I will be a Fellow with The Nation. I’ll be writing a book on this topic and exploring answers to these questions in an ongoing series of articles in this space.

It’s my generation and those on the front lines of the climate crisis who will pay the price if the climate mobilization gap remains unaddressed. That is why we will always howl at the moon.

On June 18, Pope Francis released his encyclical on the environment and climate change, calling for urgent climate action. In it, he makes the religious and moral argument for addressing the climate crisis, emphasizing the need for “technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels” to be “progressively replaced without delay.”

The encyclical aligns the Catholic Church with the grassroots climate movement, not with institutions that produce and ignore crisis. “Particular appreciation is owed to those who tirelessly seek to resolve the tragic effects of environmental degradation on the lives of the world’s poorest,” he writes. “Young people demand change.” This is the wisdom of a leader who understands that the choice to confront the climate crisis now lies with the people. Institutions will follow.

Pope Francis also demonstrates how influence should be used in a time of crisis. With privilege comes the responsibility to advocate for the people who power has silenced. This message is shared by the fossil fuel divestment movement, which calls on prominent individuals and institutions to convert their privilege into heroic moral leadership. Pope Francis understands: He has even recruited Nation columnist and author Naomi Klein to join his efforts. His call to action and recognition of grassroots organizing will give activists far greater leverage to push Catholic institutions to divest from fossil fuels.

The pope lives what I call the “radical now,” demonstrating how power and politics must be challenged in the name of what we love. He’s not waiting for the future, nor are we.

The Guardian recently reported that Harvard University has increased its investments in fossil fuels by almost seven fold over the last few months.

I co-founded Divest Harvard almost three years ago. We campaign for Harvard to divest its $36.4 billion endowment (the largest educational endowment in the world) from fossil fuel companies. Why? At the institutional level, it is both immoral and irrational for our University to invest in these firms. Harvard educates us for the future. The effort, money, and resources spent on our education is subverted by its support for companies that threaten to obliterate our futures. It is also hypocritical for Harvard to green our campus, pioneer clean tech research, and educate students about climate change while profitting from fossil fuel extraction. On the macro level, investing in the fossil fuel industry endorses its business model, which is fundamentally opposed to a livable planet. It also enables climate denial and the industry’s capture of our political system. We demand divestment because that is the only acceptable position for an educational institution.

Divest Harvard students have met with members of the Harvard Corporation three times. We have met with the Harvard Management Company, and we have spoken with President Drew Faust during 10-minute appointments at her bi-semesterly office hours. In our meetings, we’ve heard the same arguments repeated incessantly. We’ve been told to “thank BP.” We’ve heard excuses that, if the University divested from fossil fuel stocks, others would demand divestment from sugar! Most of Harvard’s arguments are summed up in Faust’s October 3, 2013 statement opposing divestment.

During these same three years, close to 70,000 people have signed onto the Divest Harvard campaign. The national divestment movement has grown to over 400 campaigns. Divestment pledges from Stanford University and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund highlight the more than $50 billion in assets that have been divested from fossil fuel companies to date. Contrast this with Harvard’s dismissal of Divest Harvard and its recent purchase of fossil fuel stocks. In trying to make sense of this, I have come to understand Harvard’s reaction to the fossil fuel divestment movement as an example of the same kind of thinking that created climate change in the first place.

Here’s how to think like Harvard:

First: Refuse to question your fierce commitment to the status quo. Harvard charges forward instead of stepping back to confront profound contradictions in its own practices. Harvard’s direct holdings in the top 200 fossil fuel companies jumped from $11.8 million to almost $80 million last quarter. This contradicts its responsibility to students’ futures and self-professed commitment to sustainability. This is akin to a government, whose primarily role is the protection of its people, spending billions of dollars on fossil fuel exploration with no regard for its catastrophic implications.

Second: Reject systemic thinking in order to trivialize the challenge of change. Harvard tweaks its behavior instead of creating new operational frameworks. For example, Harvard said that the University can be more effective through shareholder engagement with fossil fuel companies, rather than divestment. The problem is that the past shows that engagement with fossil fuel companies is ineffective and incapable of achieving the fundamental energy transition we need. President Faust has introduced campus-wide sustainability practices, making Harvard one of the greenest campuses in the US. But this is nonsensical when you consider that much of Harvard’s campus could be underwater relatively soon if we continue on our present course. At that point, lightbulbs won’t matter.

Similarly, the US government crafts regulations that fall dramatically short of what is needed to avert the worst of climate change. The EPA’s new regulations on coal power plants would reduce CO2 emissions 30 percent of 2005 levels by 2030. To limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, the UN-designated “safe limit,” the US needs to reduce emission 57 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Obama’s commitment to climate is encouraging, but the hard truth is that, to avoid climate catastrophe, we need far bolder action.

Third: Suppress dialogue to maintain control. Since the fall of 2013, the Harvard administration has refused to engage in public dialogue about divestment. In fact, Harvard demonstrated that it would rather arrest students then engage in open debate with Divest Harvard and the wider University community. The administration will now only meet with us off-the-record.

Others in power use the same strategy. Remember during the 2012 Presidential Elections when no candidates uttered the words “climate change?” Or take the vast amount of climate denial that is spread to suppress and confuse action on climate?

I remember the moment when I learned I was accepted to Harvard. I was in my mom’s car. We pulled into an ally behind a restaurant so I could connect to Wifi on my iPod Touch. I read the email, my heart skipped a couple of beats, and I burst into a smile. Coming from a rural Maine high school, I was overwhelmed by the honor of a Harvard acceptance. In my mind, Harvard symbolized the world’s knowledge, wisdom, and truth. I imagined Harvard as the embodiment of action guided by reason.

Harvard President Drew Fast said in her October 3rd statement: “The endowment is a resource, not an instrument to impel social or political change.” As a Harvard Senior, I am ashamed to see that our endowment—and hence the entire University—does impel social and political change: social change that accepts the status quo at the expense of everything that we love; political change that privileges corporations over people and oligarchy over democracy. Instead of being a beacon of truth and rationality, Harvard exemplifies the institutional processes that turned climate change into climate crisis.

I am an activist because I refuse to believe that this is the best that Harvard can do, just as I refuse to believe that this is the best that our civilization can do. Right now, Harvard is the climate crisis, but there is still time for Harvard to be the solution.

Here’s a question that my fellow youth climate activists and I face: do we use existing systems to build a better world, or do we try to create new systems that bypass the ineffective institutions that have abandoned our generation?

The recent midterm elections starkly highlight this dilemma.

Let’s start with the Republicans. The party knew exactly what it was doing. It produced disciplined and coordinated candidate platforms guided by comprehensive databases mastered for insights into each individual voter. The result was targeted messaging that masked the party’s true intention: empower elites to maintain the status quo of entrenched economic inequality and destructive climate change denial. Intentionality, control and power supported the Republican platform. The party has skillfully created a “false mandate,” changing American politics with ~4.3 million votes and billions of dollars in campaign contributions.

The Democrats failed to develop a coherent strategy of their own. Confused and timid, the party tried to distance itself from President Obama. New candidates and incumbents alike failed to provide a compelling vision for voters. There was little unity and cohesion. The grassroots network that elected Obama didn’t activate to produce the voter turnout needed to turn the tide.

This is where the dilemma arises. What are Democratic and Progressive platforms to do in this situation? They can attempt to play the Republican’s game by using clever messaging to manipulate a population into supporting their agenda. Tom Steyer this approach, pouring millions of dollars of his own fortune into key races with the hopes of counteracting conservatives; financial influence. Steyer’s theory didn’t play out exactly as planned but he did win four of seven races in a very tough electoral year for Democrats.

But if the Democrats take the Steyer approach, does it only perpetuate the broken, ineffective, and corrupt system that is modern American politics? It is time for progressive politics to forge new paths and create agendas that build trust and transparency, revolutionize campaign funding and ensure that politicians respond to constituents over lobbyists.

Obama built an unprecedented grassroots network that catapulted him to office in 2008. Where are those networks now? Obama abandoned them after his election. He failed to build on the extraordinary momentum he achieved. Now the same grassroots have abandoned Obama. As I wrote recently for The Nation, the fossil fuel divestment movement can lay the foundation for the next wave of political mobilization around progressive causes. The movement targets corporate influence and is building a powerful new consensus around the need for bottom-up change.

This isn’t an “either-or” situation. We need to excel in the politics of the system—Steyer’s approach—but we also need the grassroots strategies that create alternative structures. We need complementary strategies. As we create this new vision of what our world can be, it’s important to understand what’s broken in the existing systems so that we don’t perpetuate the same abuses and corruption.

If we’re going to challenge the influence of money in politics and reinstate the voice of the American people, then it’s high time that we start acting like it. We must learn to act in ways that align with the kind of world that we want to create. Voting is just one of many tools in our kit.

In a recent appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, I referenced data from Harvard’s Institute of Politics showing that only 20 percent of my generation trusts the federal government, the lowest percentage in the past five years. I argued that the fossil fuel divestment movement, which aims to create new political space, can help restore the lost faith of young and old alike in our political system.

John Avlon, editor of the Daily Beast and a panelist on the show that evening, reacted aggressively, denying even my premise: “There’s a generation that was engaged and is now apathetic…but if they decide, then, [that] they’d rather change the world by being a slacktivist rather than going out and voting, they’re not only undermining our democracy—they are going to compound the problems we’ve got right now.”

Avlon grossly misinterprets the reality of my generation, today’s youth activism and what I said. We may be disillusioned, but we are not apathetic. We are engaged and determined to take action in thousands of new ways. We are not waiting on the sidelines for a miracle, and we are not giving up on the power of our vote—in fact we’re saving it.

The fact is that data from the Pew Research Center shows that “adults of all ages have become less attached to political and religious institutions in the past decade, but millennials are at the leading edge of this social phenomenon.” And understandably so: my peers and I grew up watching Clinton’s impeachment hearings. We came of age during eights years of Bush-Cheney, witnesses to the politics of fear and destruction. Climate denial has percolated throughout society as the planet hurdles towards an unprecedented state of emergency. We were hopeful when we elected Barack Obama. But he has turned out to be the change that we can’t believe in.

This picture of disaffiliation is complicated by a strong drive toward activism. millennials are more optimistic about the future than any other generation. Half of us are political “independents,” but we vote heavily for liberal policies and candidates and believe in an activist government. Another report from Telefónica supports these findings: 40 percent of millennials believe that we can make a global difference. While we may be skeptical of traditional institutions we use new technologies to create alternative networks and communities through which we mobilize political action. As I said on Real Time, our new forms of engagement are aimed at taking back democracy and restoring it to government of, by, and for the people.

The most urgent and significant example is the fossil fuel divestment movement. My generation understands that the world is on the brink of irreversible climate catastrophe and that our futures are at the frontlines of this crisis. Fossil fuel companies control 2,795 gigatons of carbon reserves—five times more than is safe to burn if the world is stay below 2 degrees Celsius of warming—the UN-declared reddest of red lines. The world has already warmed .8 degrees Celsius since 1880, and this has contributed to the hurricanes, typhoons, droughts, floods that already wreck havoc on our planet. Two degrees warming will change our planet but not destroy it. But if we do nothing, the Earth will warm 4 degrees Celsius by 2100 and become uninhabitable.

This climate crisis is the defining issue of my generation, and we are determined to alter the course of our indifferent government. Students nationwide are pioneering the fossil fuel divestment movement because we will not watch today’s leaders gamble with our futures. Our movement has two goals: first, we are stigmatizing the fossil fuel industry and highlighting its profoundly anti-social behavior, thereby weakening its political influence. Simultaneously, we are building a broad inclusive grassroots climate movement. Just about everyone in the US is part of an institution that has something to divest—from an alma mater’s endowment to a state pension fund. So we are creating the foundation for something big and bold. Already there are around 400 divestment campaigns on campuses in the US alone, and 50,000 students joined the People’s Climate March in New York City.

A movement like this can hold politicians accountable to their constituents, calling on them to stand up for federal action on climate change. This movement can also use its networks to mobilize Americans during election seasons. We can put out the call to vote for candidates that are paying attention to climate issues and pledging to push for climate legislation.

The divestment movement also represents a fundamental rethinking of modern society. At this unprecedented moment in human history, we must question the systems that created the climate crisis in the first place. We are not aiming to merely tweak society. This isn’t about engineering our way out of a problem. We are creating a new system of values that revolutionizes how we interact with the Earth and with each other.

So when it comes to our political system, the divestment movement refuses to continue banging on the doors of a political system captured by a rogue industry that insists on putting its profits above the future of the planet and all its inhabitants. Instead, we are creating a movement that reveals the corruption of this process. We are not forsaking our vote, but we see that we must address the fossil fuel industry in order to restore the value and power of our vote.

My generation has the courage to turn disillusionment into hope. Even though our politicians and business leaders have failed us, we know that there is too much at stake to give up. We believe in all of our futures, and we refuse to lose heart. We really do believe in the possibility of a better world.

We are the change to believe in.

This is my tenth year as a climate activist—I just turned 22. Raised on a farm in Maine, there is one word that best describes my journey: evolution. My 12-year-old knees trembled when I first spoke in public. I was the epitome of introversion. I avoided rallies because they scared me. Now, I’ll gladly lead a rally. I’ll chant, if I believe in a cause. I’ll speak in front of anyone at any time. I’ll participate in direct action, if I think it’s necessary. Purpose gave me a voice.

Back at the beginning, I didn’t know that this kind of evolution was possible. I didn’t have role models who had traveled these roads. In the hopes of providing some guidance to other young climate activists, a decade seems like a good time to take stock of the lessons that I’ve learned.

My career as an activist began when I joined a campaign to protect a place I dearly love, Maine’s North Woods, from aggressive corporate development. I did research, testified at public hearings, wrote letters to newspapers and public officials and worked with local environmental organizations—all to protect my home.

When I entered high school, I was surprised that there was no environmental club, so I started the Climate Action Club (CAC). We began with small projects—letter-writing campaigns, recycling batteries, energy audits on classrooms. Eventually we launched the largest reusable bag campaign in the state, became the first school to install solar panels as a result of a student initiative and without government subsidies, won national and international awards and galvanized a movement in our school and community. We were even featured on the Sundance Channel. I learned that one person and one group of passionate committed individuals can build a powerful movement. This is when I started First Here, Then Everywhere, a website that aims to connect youth activists and spread the message of youth empowerment.

During the summer of 2012, I discovered the frightening power of the fossil fuel industry. That’s when I co-founded Divest Harvard (DH), a student-run campaign calling on Harvard to divest from fossil fuel companies. We join hundreds of divestment campaigns worldwide in a movement that aims to open political space for climate legislation by stigmatizing the fossil fuel industry.

Divest Harvard, just like the CAC, began with a small group of people in a room trying to figure out how to launch a campaign. Within three months, we had over 3,000 students in support of divestment, and we were featured in news outlets around the world. Now, as we enter our third year of campaigning, Divest Harvard is continuing to build momentum with almost 70,000 people who have publicly declared their support. It is yet another example of First Here, Then Everywhere.

I have distilled eight lessons from my first decade as an activist. The first four relate to effective strategies in the climate movement. The last four reflect my personal growth as an activist.

1) Adopt an “all of the above” climate strategy. The climate movement is unique for many reasons—one of which is that the potential audience is greater than that of any previous social movement. Therefore, the strategies and tactics used to engage people must be as diverse as people themselves. I strive to provide inclusive, varied and individualized avenues for engagement in campaigns.

2) Because climate change is urgent, it means that we need to be thoughtful—not reactive. I’ve been in a lot of situations where there is a dire sense of urgency to act because climate change is so pressing—even if the action is risky, ill-timed or counterproductive. Yes, climate change is urgent, and yes, we need to act quickly. But this urgency requires us to act strategically and thoughtfully because there isn’t time to fix major mistakes and cause mass alienation. We have one opportunity to build a climate movement, and the window for action is drawing to a close. So let’s make sure that we are thoughtful about our campaigns and do things right the first time.

3) Create choice points. Essential to good storytelling is the “choice point.” This is the moment when someone makes a decision that defines their narrative. For example, one of the powerful facets of the fossil fuel divestment moment is that it forces a choice: As an investor, will I support climate destruction, or will I move my money into climate solutions? The choice defines the person or institution. Creating choice points for yourself and others allows commitment to take shape. When it comes to voting or taking climate action—a clear choice can turn the tide.

4) Confront power to expose power. I learned this lesson through two experiences. First: the fossil fuel divestment movement. The movement puts the spotlight on the fossil fuel industry and the injustices that it perpetrates—from impacting frontline communities to political capture to climate denial. Divestment aims to expose the ways in which the fossil fuel industry uses its great power against the interests of society. This issue has become a focal point of international attention through conversations and confrontations over divestment.

Similarly, Divest Harvard exposed Harvard University’s values when we organized our first act of civil disobedience. Our campaign had called for an open public meeting on divestment with the administration for nearly a year. Our meetings with administration officials were off-the-record, leaving us no way to fully expose the shortcomings of their arguments. But Harvard refused to engage in public dialogue, despite the fact that free exchange is a core value of a Harvard education. Last spring, we resorted to direct action to create momentum towards an open meeting. We blockaded the doors to the administration building, while asking for a public debate. The result? The school arrested a student for the first time since the Vietnam War protests. Later that day, Margaret Atwood spoke on campus. When asked about the DH arrest that morning she said: “Any society where arrest is preferable to open dialogue is a scary place.”

5) Don’t use activism as a crutch. One of my professors gave me this piece of advice. I’ve often felt guilted into doing activist work. I’ve worried that taking time off or saying “no” to something would make me a “bad activist.” But activists need to be fully developed as people. I’ve been intentional about enabling all parts of my identity to flourish because I am more than just an activist. An effective activist is also an effective human being.

6) Don’t be afraid to evolve. Allowing myself to evolve has been central to my effectiveness as an activist. There have been times when I felt myself becoming ideologically attached to a certain theory of change. This made me reluctant to explore alternative avenues and perspectives. Now I try to remember that evolution is a necessary and natural part of life, including activism. It’s a process to embrace. I’ve felt frustrated and angry at the ideological rigidity of some activists’ and their refusal to entertain new ideas and strategies. Open and ever-evolving dialogue is necessary to grow a movement.

7) Look to your peers. I have many adult role models, but there is something uniquely energizing in the social solidarity among peers. We are the first generation that will feel the effects of climate change. We are fighting for our futures. We understand each other when we say that we may not want to bring children into a climate-wrecked world. This connection will sustain our movement for years to come. We commiserate, deliberate, and celebrate.

8) Connect with your deepest sources of motivation. The beautiful thing about the climate movement (and most social movements) is that the motivation for action originates in love and empathy. Even if—on the surface—the climate movement seems to be about hating the fossil fuel industry and raging over political gridlock, the motivation is love for home, family, places, people, landscapes, creatures, ideas and the possibility of a better future. I’ve come to realize that connecting with this core inspiration for action is crucial to building a sustainable movement. We can’t nourish ourselves on hate. Let love and empathy give you purpose so that you can find your true voice.

As MLK once said: “In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late.”

On April 7, Harvard President Drew Faust released a statement on climate change and Harvard’s investment strategy. This news came after months of pressure from students, faculty and alumni who were disturbed by her initial rejection of demands for fossil fuel divestment. The demands were first raised in October 2013 by a new student group, Divest Harvard, which was part of a growing national campaign. Faust’s announcement—which introduces Harvard’s creation of a Climate Change Solutions Fund and commitment to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment and Carbon Disclosure Project—finally acknowledges Harvard’s responsibility for its investments. However, as members of Divest Harvard, we are deeply disappointed with the university’s continued failure to address the urgency of climate change.

A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lays out the sobering reality of the climate crisis. By 2100, much of our planet will be uninhabitable if civilization continues on the business-as-usual trajectory. Forget grandchildren, and who knows what kinds of catastrophes we will live through. This is the future we currently face without radical action. We must actively fight for the world we wish to inherit because the stakes are too high to tolerate inaction any longer.

President Faust’s statement only amplifies the moral inconsistency of Harvard’s continued investment in the fossil fuel companies that are devastating the planet and blocking climate solutions. The first part of the plan commits $1 million to investment in climate research. This is an important step forward, but it cannot be taken in good faith while the university’s $32.7 billion endowment is simultaneously invested in the corporations that drive climate destruction, fund science denialism and manipulate the political system. Now that Harvard is committing to investing in solutions, the university must make a simple choice: invest in our future or continue to support its destruction. The science is clear, and the moral line has been drawn.

The second part of the plan is a recommitment to Harvard’s on-campus sustainability efforts, with a focus on the greenhouse gas reduction goals adopted by the university in 2008. The problem is that Harvard is not even on track to reach its 30 percent reduction goal by 2016. The effort is commendable, but not nearly as much as Harvard could do, and reveals an unwillingness to take a critical moral stand when it comes to fossil fuels.

President Faust’s statement also lauded the fact that Harvard has become a signatory of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment. This point has come under fire from critics who point out that signing on to the voluntary PRI framework does not require actual change and is little more than a symbolic act. Symbolic or not, this move indicates that Harvard is finally recognizing the ethical and political significance of its investments with respect to climate issues. Thus, we are hopeful that the April 7 statement is an indication that President Faust may be ready to begin translating her words into action.

Lastly, Harvard’s decision to sign onto the Carbon Disclosure Project—which combines shareholder power to push corporations to disclose greenhouse gas emissions—seems insufficent to move the fossil fuel industry. It’s highly unlikely that shareholder resolutions will force these corporations to respond to climate change. Only divestment and political action can achieve this goal. There are multiple examples in the past, including evidence from Harvard’s shareholder votes, that support these statements.

We are not alone in our dismay over Harvard’s continued inaction. Recently, more than 100 prominent faculty members sent an open letter to President Faust and the Harvard Corporation, deploring the “troubling inconsistency” of the university’s failure to seriously consider divestment. In their letter, faculty emphasize the urgency of divestment, framing it as “an act of ethical responsibility, a protest against current practices that cannot be altered as quickly or effectively by other means.” The letter also challenges President Faust’s argument against divestment on political grounds: “If the Corporation regards divestment as ‘political,’ then its continued investment is a similarly political act, one that finances present corporate activities and calculates profit from them.”

Indeed, the fossil fuel lobby is one of the most powerful political forces in the world, and divestment is a tactic that directly aims to destroy the political influence of that industry. The faculty’s letter has garnered widespread support, including over 20,000 people who have signed a petition asking Harvard to divest.

The motto of Harvard is Veritas—Truth. Fossil fuel companies are waging a war on truth, throwing the full force of their economic and political power into climate denial campaigns and political corruption. We must provide a platform of leadership with which the Harvard community can be proud. We must require that Veritas once again guides our actions and those of the university that we love. Until Harvard divests, we have an obligation to our planet and our collective future to continue pressing. We will escalate the pressure on a scale that is consistent with the urgency of the climate crisis.

The Brower Youth Awards annually highlight the top environmental youth leaders from across North America. Award recipients undergo a rigorous application review process and represent the best, most creative, young environmental leaders of today.

Chloe Maxmin, 21, of Nobleboro, Maine, a regular writer for StudentNation and an undergraduate at Harvard University, was one of this year’s Brower Youth Award winners for her long history of environmental activism. Maxmin has a history of starting movements—she founded the first environmental club at her high school and built a student sustainability movement that continues to this day. At Harvard, she’s keeping up the momentum as co-founder and coordinator of Divest Harvard. She researched Harvard’s endowment and past divestment campaigns, and led the first campus vote on fossil fuel divestment in the world. She is also the founder and sole contributor of the online youth environmental network, First Here, Then Everywhere, which she hopes to build into a thriving hub of discussion and support for young environmentalists.

Maxmin sent us her acceptance speech, given in San Francisco on October 18 in which she outlined three new institutional responses to climate change and divestment.

Combating Climate Change

On October 1, another Divest Harvard activist and I sat in the office of Harvard’s President, Drew Faust. It had been over a year since we launched our movement. We had the support of over 3,000 students, over 170 faculty, almost 600 alumni and countless community members.

The frustration in the room was palpable. As I continued to press our arguments, President Faust interrupted me and asked: “Chloe, if you were president, what would you do?”

Two days later, I checked my e-mail and learned that President Faust had released a statement opposing fossil fuel divestment. I wasn’t surprised. It repeated the same arguments that we had been hearing for a year. It reiterated the notion that Harvard is an academic, not a political, actor—which is to say that it somehow stands outside the realm of action.

My aim tonight is not to repeat these discussions. Instead, I want to take seriously President Faust’s question…Chloe, what would you do?

I’d like to suggest the first three principles of a new institutional response to divestment and the climate crisis.

I.

Vaclav Havel, poet, playwright, dissident and former president of Czechoslovakia,was a man whose life combined scholarship, art and politics because he knew that that all derive from the same source: a love of the world. He insisted that we need to reawaken in ourselves what was once known and then forgotten: that the only real hope for us lies in “a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the earth…”

The farm in Maine where I grew up, the meadows, lake, and trees…these are the roots that have filled me with an inexpressible love for this world, my family, my home, my community, friends, the people I will never know, the people I have yet to know.

Not all of us have grown up in Maine, but we all have places and people that we love.

The climate movement often seems like it’s fighting “against something”—against indifference and political gridlock. But this is a struggle “for everything” that we care about.

This is the first principle of a new response: That our actions as individuals and institutions can be re-founded on love for one another, for all that is alive, and especially for the systems and creatures of this earth who have no voice.

II.

Two years ago, I learned that tar sands could come through Maine and that Exxon owns 76 percent of the pipeline.

Citizens in South Portland Maine recently campaigned to block the flow of tar sands through Maine by passing the Waterfront Protection Ordinance. The ordinance failed to pass by 200 votes. The opposition (pro–tar sands interests) were out in full force. But I didn’t anticipate the audaciousness of their effort. While the Protect South Portland coalition put $42,000 into the election, the Maine Energy Marketers Association poured almost $600,000 into stopping the ordinance.

This is exactly why I am involved with the fossil fuel divestment movement. The only way to diminish the hegemony and influence of this industry is to draw a moral line in the sand that rebrands it as anti-social.

This is the second principle of my response: Freedom depends on politics. It is up to us to take back “the political” and re-establish it as it was meant to be: a commitment to freedom through action.

So when President Faust says that Harvard is not a “political actor,” I say: By supporting an industry that corrupts elections and coerces society, are you not being political?

But instead of this politics of silence, we seek the politics of courage.

III.

Our society’s institutions and leaders have been complacent in the face of climate change. We have stood by as our government has failed to act, as the fossil fuel industry has lobbied its way to riches, as the Arctic melts, sea levels rise, fires spread, droughts consume and floods erase.

Divestment says: enough is enough. Take a stand. Recognize that our system is broken, and take a step to fix it.

This is my third principle of a new response: People can summon the courage to work miracles.

When we take the first steps towards a better world, we don’t know what will happen. But we can’t be too scared to find out, and we can never be too scared to fight for what we love.

Hannah Arendt, a great philosopher who knew that politics could never be separated from life, wrote that every time an action disrupts the status quo, it’s a miracle.

People can author such miracles because we have the freedom and courage to establish a reality of our own.

With these three principles—love, politics and courage—I say that we are the miracle workers. And we are the miracles.

To echo the words of, Bruce Springsteen, “It takes a leap of faith to get things going. In your heart, baby, you must trust.”

Students at Harvard University are urging the administration to divest from fossil fuels. (Flickr/Kelly Delay)

We are taking our future into our own hands.

Harvard students, alongside thousands of others worldwide, are pushing our university to divest from fossil fuels. Our message is simple: if we do not uproot the political influence of the fossil fuel industry, we will face catastrophic climate change.

Harvard University President Drew Faust made a statement on October 10 opposing divestment and siding with the fossil fuel industry. We look to leaders like President Faust to support efforts that better the world and are disappointed that she has chosen the wrong side of history.

President Faust’s response reveals fundamental misunderstandings about our movement. We do not expect divestment to have a financial impact on fossil fuel companies, as President Faust implied. Divestment is a moral and political strategy to expose the reckless business model of the fossil fuel industry that puts our world at risk. It exposes the fossil fuel industry’s influence on our democratic system, its perpetuation of climate change denial, and its continued extraction of hydrocarbons that heat our planet. Divestment calls on citizens to build a powerful climate movement and pressure elected representatives to enact meaningful legislation.

The time has come for institutions to take a stand on climate change by divesting. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I report (IPCC WGI) shows that the world is currently warming ten times faster than at any other point in the last 65 million years. The globe is on track to warm over four degrees Celsius by 2100, a level that is incompatible with current civilization. We need political climate action now, and neither Harvard nor any other university can responsibly rely solely on research and campus greening to push forward such action. Claiming that research and education alone can achieve necessary political legislation is idealistic.

When the science of human-induced global warming became clear two decades ago, fossil fuel companies could have adapted their business to be compatible with a stable future. Most major environmental groups advocated for this shift with substantial effort and resources. Yet fossil fuel corporations continued to extract carbon reserves in the pursuit of profit, foisting unfathomable costs on our generation and beyond.

In dismissing our calls, President Faust accuses our movement of hypocrisy because “we are extensively relying on those [fossil fuel] companies’ products and services for so much of what we do every day.” But we do not claim to be above the system in which we live. It is nearly impossible not to use fossil fuels because industry-crafted policies block a transition to renewable energy sources. Divesting is a step towards transitioning to the energy economy that we need. Institutional action is necessary to confront systemic failures like the climate crisis.

President Faust wrote that Harvard should not be a “political actor” and insisted that endowments are not tools for social change. This myopic view denies Harvard’s proud history of political action, which includes divestment from tobacco corporations and oil companies supporting genocide in Darfur as well as partial divestment from apartheid South Africa. More importantly, it fails to acknowledge that investments are inherently political whether we like it or not. Claiming neutrality at this moment in history is claiming ignorance of the world’s problems.

Many leaders, including President Faust, suggest shareholder engagement with the industry rather than divestment. But Harvard has proven this strategy’s inadequacy. In 2011, its Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility voted against a shareholder resolution to establish a committee within ExxonMobil that would shift the company towards environmentally sustainable energy. Harvard considered the resolution “unreasonable in asking the company to address such a major shift in its business focus.” Given this decision, it’s hard to believe that shareholder engagement can ever convince an industry to write off most of its assets or even convince the fossil fuel industry to confront climate change.

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Our generation and the generations to follow will judge today’s institutional leaders on whether they chose to defend our future. True leaders do not cling to the status quo of climate degradation and false neutrality—they transform the world for a better tomorrow.

We call on Harvard and institutions around the world to stand up for our futures.

Alex Suber argues that divestment can't be viewed as a panacea for fossil fuel consumption.

Demonstrators in Melbourne, Australia demand action on climate change. (Flickr/Takver)

The climate movement can’t  be compared to any other social movement in history. Here’s why it’s unprecedented and why we need new strategies to transition from the current climate movement of the few to a vibrant worldwide movement of the many.

First, the climate movement is historically unique in scope and urgency. Never before has an issue involved every single human being on this planet, and never before has the window for action been so short. (An International Energy Agency report states that we have until 2017 to start the transition away from fossil fuels before irreversible calamity.)

Second, the climate movement challenges human nature. Past social movements have focused on immediate and visible injustices. People fought against the here and now for a better tomorrow. That model of activism is consistent with human nature: we are creatures of immediate benefit and short-term thinking. But climate change is a completely different animal. Yes, global warming is having an undeniable and tangible effect on people’s lives. But by the time enough people–especially in the US–have experienced enough of the consequences to be compelled to action, it will be too late to mitigate the effects of rising planetary temperatures. Therefore, fighting climate change means fighting something that is abstract now but will be real later. This requirement defies the deep pull of human nature. It is antithetical to our normal ways of thinking and acting.  This is new territory. There is no parallel in human experience.

Third, past social movements have largely relied on the active participation of those affected to push for change. But with the climate movement, we’re not talking about injustices against one age group, region, gender, sexual orientation, or race. Every single person on Planet Earth is or will be affected. A social movement cannot expect every individual–with their varying passions, interests, perspectives and capabilities–to join the cause. We can't expect everyone to devote time and energy to organizing for climate efforts. This is where new strategies and tactics are vital. Climate activists must provide wide ranging opportunities for others to take action. Our passion is fighting climate change, but we have to recognize that not everyone is prepared to give the same amount of time and effort. We can structure our campaigns so that others can donate as much or as little time as they are able, while still having a meaningful impact. For example, we develop the networks, and then we call on people to come out for a one-hour rally. Or instead of exhorting people to put solar panels on every building, we can start non-profits that install solar panels and provide free solar energy educational curricula for schools.

Fourth, since the climate movement encompasses every single person, individualized messaging is essential. Each person will connect to climate issues for different reasons: social solidarity, real estate values, love of nature, concern for their children, uncertainty about food and water sources….the variety of motives is endless. Activists can’t rely on a one-size-fits-all rationale. Climate activists need to think inclusively and connect climate change to what others care about, showing how the skiers, farmers, property owners, human rights activists, health providers, poverty advocates, and every interest group has some way in which their immediate concerns are linked to global warming. That is how the movement will grow as it learns to accommodate each voice on the planet. 

We’re in uncharted territory. Ironically, our most important lesson from history is that we cannot rely on historical precedent. We are forging a new movement, and we have to do it in a new way.

(Credit: Flickr/Takver)

A new movement to convince colleges and universities to divest from fossil fuel companies that own the majority of global carbon reserves has taken off across the nation. The inspiration for this wave of activism originated in a Rolling Stone article by Bill McKibben last summer. Coordinated by 350.org, divestment is spreading like wildfire. With cities, religious groups, individuals, and 210 campuses already involved, divestment has brought climate change to the forefront of local and national dialogues.

I became an environmental activist at the age of twelve, and my commitment has never wavered. Still, I have been frustrated by fragmentation and insularity within the environmental movement. Now as a student leader of Divest Harvard, I have seen how divestment is engaging more students than any similar campaign in the past twenty years. Why is it so successful?

Today, people live in a cloud of mistrust. Only 6 percent of Americans claim much confidence in Congress, 7 percent in Wall Street, 13 percent in big companies, and 19 percent in the White House. Individuals withdraw into personal social networks and communities to shield themselves from institutions of which they’ve grown skeptical. Past environmental campaigns focused mostly on changes that target those very institutions in which people have lost faith. They were exhorted to pressure politicians to “vote climate” or to use their consumer power to curb large corporations like Exxon. Such campaigns required persuading people to set aside their mistrust. It was always an uphill road.

Divestment has opened up the climate movement to many new participants because it has found a way to bypass mistrust and hopelessness while forging a more inviting road to optimism and concrete action.

Here’s how:

The divestment movement effectively creates a sense of “us” by welcoming everyone: the only qualification needed is to be a member of the planet. This new vision unites self-interest and collective interest: each person’s fate is tied to the fate of all. Everyone must come together and make the same demands. Divestment builds on this awareness and provides a platform for social cohesion as global warming’s effects—droughts, floods, wildfires, hurricanes—threaten lives and property.

The divestment movement has not only helped more people understand that they’re all in the same boat, it has also highlighted the naked facts about the fossil fuel industry. The divestment movement illuminates the fossil fuel industry’s deeply anti-social practices as the basis upon which its current wealth is founded. The industry insists on prioritizing private profit above human survival. Everyone is in the same boat, but the fossil fuel industry is on course to sink us all. That makes it “us” against “them” in this fight.

The divestment movement exposes the coercive tactics of the fossil fuel industry and challenges its free market mythology.  Critics say that divestment isn’t necessary if individual consumers simply use their buying power to choose to not purchase fossil fuels. But the divestment movement confronts that sophistry, revealing how the fossil fuel industry coerces consumers into using carbon-based energy.

This coercion is set into motion by the fact that the major companies hold 2,795 Gigatons of carbon in their reserves. Their stock prices are high, in part, because they’re planning to burn all of it. Yet only 565 Gigatons can be burned in order for the planet to remain below 2 degrees of global warming—the upper limit set by the UN as safe for human habitation. Therefore the science dictates that the most powerful industry in the world should keep 80 percent of its reserves in the ground, which would destroy current valuations and force the industry to adopt a fundamentally different business model. The industry has been determined to avoid this scenario, resorting instead to targeting elected officials who support climate legislation and pouring millions of dollars into political lobbying, spending twenty times more than the clean-energy lobby.

Profits means lobbyists, and the fossil fuel lobby means subsidies. Fossil fuel companies received $72 billion in federal subsidies from 2002 to 2008—six times the funding that went to renewable energy. The renewable energy industry has been forced to compete in the shadow of this unfair advantage. This amounts to de facto coercion of consumers, as most people have no alternative but to use carbon-based products in an energy market that fails to foster fair competition.

The industry also misleads the public by underwriting a massive communications campaign to undermine the science of climate change. Around 97 percent of climate scientists confirm anthropogenic global warming. Yet only 44 percent of Americans believe that most scientists agree the earth’s atmosphere is warming at an unprecedented rate, and 36 percent say that there is disagreement among scientists. The gap in the data is mostly due to the influence of paid climate change deniers. The Koch Brothers and other wealthy donors give millions of dollars to shadowy organizations like Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, which then give that money to entities like the Heartland Institute—an extreme right-wing think tank that propagates anti-science and anti-global warming commentary.

The new sense of “us” against “them” gathers strength and moral purpose as the movement raises awareness of how society has been coerced. But the divestment movement also critically provides a strategy for bypassing the institutions that people are most cynical about, especially Congress. Instead of trying to effect change through an institution that most regard as hopeless, divestment asks people to use their own social networks and communities of interest as the platform for collective action. Suddenly the ability to influence the fossil fuel industry seems both plausible and feasible because success does not depend upon hitting the same old brick wall of the political system. People can take matters into their own hands and bring the fight directly to the fossil fuel industry in the form of pressure on its share price, its leaders, and its business model. The movement provides a way for people to declare not merely that the emperor has no clothes but that he is a pariah, a rogue, and an outcast, recklessly indifferent to humanity’s interests and life as we know it.

The divestment movement has enabled students and citizens around the country to realize that it is time to take a stand together on climate change.  It’s opened people’s eyes to the illegitimacy of the opposition’s power. And most importantly, it’s provided a concrete strategy that doesn’t ask individuals to place their faith in institutions that they do not trust.

To build on the momentum, environmental leaders need to understand the basis for the movement’s new success and continue to build on the new spirit of inclusion and hope. The challenge will be to apply relentlessly these lessons to future campaigns. As Bill McKibben said: “Climate change is the single biggest thing that humans have ever done on this planet. The only thing that needs to be bigger is our movement to stop it.”

Credit: Students for a Just And Stable Future

In the 1980s, students across the United States pushed their schools to divest from companies that supported apartheid in South Africa. Today, college students are using the same tactic by calling on their universities to divest from fossil fuel companies. This new movement aims to address what South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls the human rights issue of our time: global warming.

The economic and human cost of the climate crisis is increasingly being felt in the United States and around the world. This summer’s drought across the Midwest foreshadowed the possibility of our nation’s breadbasket turning into a permanent dustbowl. Recently, Hurricane Sandy demonstrated the terrifying consequences of rising ocean temperatures and increasingly powerful storms. Globally, the outlook is grim: some estimates predict that 100 million people are could die in the next eighteen years because of climate change and the impacts of fossil fuel use.

The world is currently on track for a catastrophic 6 degrees Celsius warming, despite three decades of increasingly desperate warnings from scientists. Grassroots efforts to alter individual behaviors have failed to create the necessary scale of change. The fossil fuel industry has shown its willingness to use unimaginable wealth to suppress even the weakest of climate bills. Despite past failures and in the face of new challenges, the student wing of the climate movement has been infused with energy and hope over the past few months as the fossil fuel divestment movement spreads.

Fossil fuel divestment campaigns now exist at forty-seven colleges and universities nationwide. More campaigns are expected to kick off as 350.org’s Bill McKibben travels to twenty cities across the country in November on his Do the Math tour. The tour, which aims to promote divestment and energize the climate movement, originated from an article published by Rolling Stone last August. McKibben laid out the shocking mathematical reality of the climate crisis: the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies own 2,795 gigatons of carbon in their reserves, but if more than 565 of those gigatons are burned, then it will be difficult for the environment to stay under 2 degrees Celsius of warming (the upper limit considered safe by the UN). The battle to prevent the climate crisis is clear: either fossil fuel corporations change their practices soon or more people will find their lives and livelihoods irreversibly and tragically altered.

At Harvard University, the campus chapter of Students for a Just and Stable Future launched Divest Harvard, calling on the administration to divest Harvard’s endowment from the top 200 publicly traded companies that own the majority of fossil fuel reserves. Harvard has a $30.7 billion endowment—the largest of any university in the world. While the endowment lacks transparency, students have received confirmation from the CEO of HMC that Harvard is invested in the fossil fuel industry, and public SEC filings confirm investments in fossil fuel companies like Petrobras and WPX Energy. Harvard’s enormous wealth gives it the power to directly weaken fossil fuel corporations and send a strong message to other investors by divesting. Harvard also has the moral authority to stake a claim against the fossil fuel industry and take a lead in this movement.

The Divest Harvard campaign grew quickly after launching in September of this year, mobilizing undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and staff. Students have petitioned, hosted educational events and participated in a National Day of Action for Fossil Fuel Divestment with seventeen other colleges. Over 1,000 Harvard community members and several student groups have endorsed the campaign, and the undergraduate student body will soon vote on whether to support fossil fuel divestment during student government elections next week.

Harvard President Drew Faust has called sustainability “one of the paramount issues of our time” and the university has made an effort to live up to that statement through campus greening efforts. For instance, Harvard committed to ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals, installed renewable energy and became the first higher education institution with fifty LEED-certified buildings. However, the positive impact of campus projects is inconsequential when compared to the climate damage done by Harvard’s investments in fossil fuel corporations. And, to great disappointment, President Faust has repeatedly affirmed her support for Harvard’s fossil fuel investments, stating in meetings and public forums that the endowment is not a tool to pursue social goals and exists solely to fund the university.

In response, students point to several examples where Harvard has used its money for social good. The university fully divested from tobacco corporations for public health concerns and partially divested from apartheid South Africa for human rights reasons. Today, the climate crisis threatens the survival of millions, if not billions of people, and yet President Faust—in a public meeting—insisted that Harvard divests only in the “most extreme of circumstances” and that she does not “feel compelled to do that at this time.”

In the face of the Harvard administration’s continued resistance to fossil fuel divestment, student support for the Divest Harvard campaign has grown stronger. Meanwhile, the national divestment movement continues to spread, spurred on by recent success at Unity College and the increasing sense of urgency after Hurricane Sandy. Students are the sleeping giant that rose to end apartheid and fight for many other just causes. Now more and more students are mobilizing against business as usual in the fossil fuel industry.