THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
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Global Climate Action Summit 2018
Blog 3: Render unto Caesar
Alison Holmes reports from the heart of the GCAS
www.globalclimateactionsummit.org
If there is a ‘big message’ of the Global Action Summit (GCAS) it is that we can’t wait for those ‘at the top’ to act, but we must do something now – wherever we may be. The role of non-governmental actors be they civil, local, tribal, or state has never been more welcomed, heralded and championed as it has already been this week at every event, from every platform, and every speaker. This is reflected in the fact that well over 3,000 cities, states, businesses, and all kinds of organizations have committed themselves to address climate change since President Trump announced he would pull out of the Paris Accords. So this event is a call to action like no other with each speaker offering an inspiring story, and an issue, case study, or plan they want to explain and promote – and a shocking number have formed their own organization to take on each task.
Such confidence, such chutzpah, and some might even say such millennial cheek. However, there are at least two dangers. The first is that a cacophony of voices and instruments does not necessarily create music. As precious as each individual voice and story may be there must surely come a moment of reckoning, a balancing of priorities, and an allocation of resources. The downside of each person ‘stepping up’ to create their own niche program to address the major issues of the day is the lack of overarching plan, reconciliation of disparate interest or clear way forward but only a crowd, hub-bubbing along. The second is the danger of smug. Many of the most well-intentioned activists of climate change still too often frame their discourse in the language of ‘what’s best’ – but it seems that a) what they actually know best about is their own narrow concern and b) they expect everyone else to follow them. So - who knows best about what? Is it ever really possible to step outside our own worldview without sounding at least a tiny bit patronizing? For all the talk of many voices rising in common cause, do we not also need to talk about how we agree to coordinate and align our issues and causes?
Subsidiarity is a fancy political word that basically just means that each level of governance needs to understand and respect the linkages and connections to other levels and levers of power. For the United States, this may be particularly challenging in a moment in which the national government is backing away from or actively driving out any acknowledgment of the issues presented by climate change, but the fact remains that even the best intentions and innovative projects are but dots in the wider picture. At some point, they will need to connect. The arts, generally well represented here at the GCAS, make this point eloquently through two specific expressions. The first, was a group of dancers on stilts with the tag line that trees are “a solution a billion years in the making” the other is the “long view” polar bear. The trees moved and danced outside the Forests, Food and Land Day event the while the polar bear, made of repurposed car bonnets, stands guard on Henry Bridges Plaza.
The common message is simply that the ‘long view’ is actually right here in front of us and stewardship of that future must be a daily constant. Perhaps the only missing element is a recognition that the necessary flip side of the ‘many voices’ is a fundamental commitment to compromise.
