Snippy snippy.
Wondering why climate legislation (and health care, and everything) is getting nowhere? Because it’s business as usual with big green and progressive groups.
One symptom: sniping smart progressive media with hedging and a ‘strategic’ wet blanket.
The Story of Cap and Trade is a climate justice approach to proposed legislation to regulate US greenhouse gas emisions. In short, a climate justice approach puts equal emphasis on who wins and loses in the course of capping carbon, while a straight climate change approach just tries to put a hold on carbon.
The Story builds off of the popular ‘Story of Stuff’ video, and makes compelling and provacative arguments about the folks running impending carbon markets. It uses widely-employed populist tropes focusing on bankers and billionaires who ruined our economy to get folks motivated for better climate solutions.
Which, aparantly isn’t good enough for some people. Grist throws a dreary wet blanket on the whole thing, claiming that it “missed it’s mark” on a number of points. The response makes a number of strategic errors, number one of which being confusing good rhetoric for policy analysis. It’s classic liberal wallowing: getting tied down in policy-speak instead of trying to frame the debate.
More importantly, it mis-judges the gravity of the emotional battle left un-fought on climate change. The deniers are just more evocative when it comes to setting the stage for what needs to be done. Paul Rosenberg from OpenLeft hit the nail on the head when he described the difficulties climate action supporters face in dealing with the ‘climate-gate’ email leaks.
Beating them means embracing simple strong messages that deal squarely with the contemporary rhetorical environment. It means not making the most hated people in America (Goldman Sachs) your ally of convenience, saddling you with their baggage and none of the good language they use to defend it. It means letting folks looking for more than politically convenient solutions set the terms for debate.
If the health care reform process has taught us anything, it’s that cutting off the left-activist wing of the movement substantially weakens the center hammering out a deal. The folks looking to stop climate change need to learn it, and learn quick.
