Reform vs. Revolution

Most of my ‘climate’ friends are reformers. It makes sense. They grew up thinking that the system worked and the way to make change was to work within it. They are working within the system. The work needs to be done and they are doing what they can.

What reform looks like

One example if this reform is a friend’s efforts in creating a group called The Defenders of North SeaTac Park. When the Port of Seattle wanted to build a parking lot within the park she created a petition to stop them. Realizing that reacting to port plans as they happen is exhausting, she proactively created the Defenders group to create a consensus agreement for local groups, politicians and citizens to sign and show their support for protecting the park and the surround area. The group is working within the system to protect residents living near the airport. I applaud the groups efforts.

Another example of reformers are my friends at South Seattle Climate Action Network and the various People for Climate Action groups in the Seattle Area. These groups work tirelessly to understand local ordinances and continually push for more resilience, more energy efficiency and more equity. They consistently do the work of reform, attending meetings, making public comments, drafting documents — working within the system in any way they can.

Many of the members of these groups have been long time environmental activists. Some are newly awakened to gravity of our planetary situation and the need for much stronger protections against ecological devastation and rising temperatures. But they all are content to work within the system. They are avid, dogged reformists.

Why reform isn’t enough

I have difficulty joining them is this work. It feels superficial — not the change making we’ll need to be able to live in the world we’ve already damaged.

As a former elementary school teacher, I am drawn toward simple analogies to clarify thinking. A favorite is the bath tub analogy. The water in the tub represents the CO2 in the atmosphere and the concomitant environmental damage the corporatization of the world has caused. If the tap is on full blast, then using a tablespoon to keep the tub from overflowing is not going to solve the problem. This is what the reformers are doing. It keeps us actively working, but is not enough. We need to turn off the tap, to get to the source of the problem stop it. This is what the revolutionaries aim to do.

The biggest reason I am pushing for revolutionary change is time. We have let the problem go on too long. Tipping points are set in motion and we don’t have the time for these slow, incremental reforms to prevent us from passing the ‘safe’ limit of 1.5 degrees of warming.

Every year the temperatures rise. Every year the fires rage, droughts parch and floods destroy. Rather than working within the existing political system, a revolution creates a new system. All the research and work I do is to help society move toward a non-violent revolution. I believe it is not only possible, but necessary.

Looking at the climate chaos that is happening now, we can see we are working on a different time table than we had imagined. 20 years ago we had time for reform, now we do not. With all respect to my hardworking, dedicated reformist friends, there is a context where reform becomes the wrong path, one that is both strategically and morally the road to extinction leaving one path forward — revolution.

Here I want to share a mathematical analogy presented by Roger Hallam.

Consider this analogy. Your car is heading toward a cliff at a momentum unit of 20. There are four of you — two revolutionaries (pushing back at 6) and two reformists (pushing at 3). The total unit of pushback is 18 (6+6+3+3). This is less than the 20 momentum so the car rolls over the cliff.

The outcome is binary — either the car stops or it goes over a cliff. There are only two outcomes. To stop the car you need 4 revolutionaries: 6 x 4=24 — greater than 20 to get the car to stop.

The situation becomes direr in the following context: 4 reformists are pushing against the car (4 x 3 = 12). Everyone who is honest enough can see that they are going to fail. Think about COP 26 with three years to save the world. Four revolutionaries are on hand to stop the car (4×6=24) but the cannot get to the car because the limited space to stop the vehicle is occupied by the reformists.

You can see the point. In Endtimes, that is, when you are objectively about to lose everything forever, the unavoidable strategic and ethical logic points to only one course of action — to remove the reformists from the field of play. If we had fifty years then we could all be friends. If we have three, and we do only have three, then it’s us or them.

So here I sit with this simple mathematical analogy in my head, on my mind. I’m already railing ( often silently) at friends and family who don’t find the issue of planetary destruction to be pressing enough to even ponder changing the way they think or act. Now I see that even reform isn’t going to do the trick. It’s revolution or extinction. Reform will delay the rising temperatures. Reform makes us feel like everything will be okay.

Greenwashing with terms like ‘carbon neutral,’ ‘carbon capture,’ and ‘net zero’ let us go on in a fantasy world. At least Jamie Oliver pummeled carbon offsets. If you haven’t seen his video, you really must.

But reformist ideas, that we have time, that we can make incremental changes, also feel wrong. I can see one friend swiftly trying on reform and seeing that it will not be enough. She isn’t a revolutionary yet, but she is often telling me how her thinking has changed in a short period of time. I tell her not to chide herself with, ‘If I had only known then’ and be happy that she understands now.

I know I need to spend less mental energy on my ‘pretending everything is fine’ friends and nudge my reformist friends toward the realization that we need to be making bigger and bolder, not smaller ‘more achievable’ demands.

If you agree with this then join Extinction Rebellion or any other civil resistance group around the globe. Bring civil resistance into the conversation. Sign up for a Non-Violent Direct Action (NVDA) training and bring a friend along.

Now is the time.

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This post was previously published on Medium.com.

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