Connecting the Peace and Climate Dots
The Sunrise CLIMATE Movement
Let’s face a second crucial fact: whether as separate issues–or as properly connected–our elites (and the major parties and corporate media who reflect their agendas) don’t give a flying frack about peace or climate. This fact is clearly illustrated by their deafening silence about the twin apocalyptic threats of nuclear war and climate Armageddon throughout the midterm election campaigns. A silence which Noam Chomsky rightly brands
“moral depravity.”When elites (and their political and media lackeys) wish to bar all policy action on an issue, they simply shroud the issue in silence. And blather endlessly about distractions to crowd the far more serious (but taboo) issue out of media space. That the peace and climate issues have been given the silence-and-distraction treatment is compelling evidence they are taboo issues our elites don’t want discussed, much less acted on.
What I hope I’ve established so far is that
peace and climate are tightly interconnected life-or-death moral issues, both subject to political and media conspiracies of silence and distraction, that our ruling elites have overwhelming vested interests–contrary to humanity’s interests–in not acting upon. What follows is that peace and climate activists have an overwhelming vested interest in joining forces (and making a huge public stink) on these tightly linked life-or-death issues, now tabooed from mainstream political discourse.
As the real adults in the room, peace and climate activists must play regent to the willful, destructive, “child king” of our ruling elites, overruling their edict that everyone must overlook their unspeakably reckless acts of juvenile vandalism. While the planet literally burns.
The only important strategic question, for peace and climate activists desperately savvy enough to join forces, is whose issue should take the lead as the banner issue. I’ll argue here that it should be the climate issue, but framed not merely as a call for climate action but for climate justice, where world peace is rightly viewed as an absolutely critical precondition for addressing humanity’s climate emergency.
So my case here depends partly on arguing that
climate justice–which includes peace–is the master moral and political narrative of our times. But even more importantly, it depends on highlighting a potent newsmaking force for climate action–and latently for climate justice and peace–already on the ground:
the Sunrise climate movement.
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/12/03/peace-activists-best-hope-the-sunrise-climate-movement/Sunrise is a movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process.
We're building an army of young people to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people.
We are ordinary young people
who are scared about what the climate crisis means for the people and places we love. We are gathering in classrooms, living rooms, and worship halls across the country. Everyone has a role to play. Public opinion is already with us - if we unite by the millions we can turn this into political power and reclaim our democracy.
https://www.sunrisemovement.org/who-we-are/Lurk369:Best of Bookmarks
