Interview with “Sire”, a youth climate organizer in his 30’s.

What brought you into climate work and the climate movement?

It’s hard to say specifically – I think everyone has some sense of the general urgency of this problem. Sunrise Movement presented itself to the world with a kind of boldness, a kind of courage, that really did remind me of the energy of the Civil Rights movement — something quite apart from the elitism/chauvinism of technology-class driven utopianism, which, like many other things, struck me as the Climate Change equivalent of “Waiting for Godot.”

How would you describe your approach to organizing and mobilizing young people on climate?

I am moreso the mentor, having arrived at being early 30’s. But you’d find that everyone in the world stays up late thinking about what needs to be done. In a lot of ways, sober conversations about how dramatically the world needs to change has become a counterculture in itself. Here, too, we find every kind of person – troubled, inspired, broken, or emboldened – but made honest. The lucidity of night discussions serves to give a kind of follow-up to other run-of-the-mill conversations that happen during the day — the endless round of meetings about meetings, the coming-from-or-going-to of new demonstrations, the rounding of corners in regards to travel plans, and etc. etc..

Do you see any differences in your approaches based on age? 

I’ve learned that the difference in how effective I can be depends moreso on individual willingness and openness. There are friends I currently mentor who are just 21 years old, but we talk everything from the nuances of the Black Panther movement and the limits of racial tribalism to the relationship between the sciences, the social sciences, and the concerns of the climate justice movement (all connected by intersections of both intellectual interest and moral imperative). And there are friends, finishing up Grad School, 26 years old, ready to “hand it over to the next generation,” which is striking to me, because no one that young really has a place to say anything like that at 26. Just goes to show how quickly peoples’ willingness to keep the fight up closes up and the rationale for more “practical” compromises with the world is baked into people.

Thinking back to before the pandemic, pre-March 2020 – what did you consider the most effective way to engage and mobilize young people on climate? 

Well, I think that the approach to direct action — classic things like bodies blocking pipeline construction and pressuring public officials in person — those things had the highest utility because they’re the most honest commentary on where we are, and the urgency of the situation.

During the pandemic, what were the primary ways that your organizing and your job changed? 

I didn’t really think too much of the notion that online organizing posed too much of an obstacle, to tell you the honest truth. Think back to the “I am the 99%” campaigns during Occupy. A lot of that was part of the populist/online space political landscape, and still was very effective as a means of public demonstration — got coverage, got interviews, pressured the discussion in the election campaigns for president, the whole works.

I sort’ve thought that if Julian Assange could run his podcast from house arrest at the Ecuadorian Embassy, none of us should have much trouble maintaining politically-sharpened instincts during a hyper-political year, filled with its own uprisings, evidence of a government capable of mass-scale financial relief during an emergency, and so on.

And do you feel that positively or negatively impacted your ability to achieve your goals? 

PERSONALLY, I was okay. I am conducive to more introverted tendencies, and the people I got to talk with — including Noam Chomsky and Vivek Chibber — I could do so from the comfort of my own home.

Do you think it’s important to build a sense of collective confidence or efficacy among peers? And is that more difficult to do with online organizing and activism? 

Yeah, it’s more important to focus on the maintenance of morale and outlining a program of action than a current tendency in a lot of movements to degrade to a sort’ve personalization of politics (eg a meeting about a meeting, where everyone calls everyone a sexist, racist, and on and on). I think the collective efficacy has more to do with mobilizing around what everyone instinctually can sense is worth their attention, than a culture of endless ZOOM meetings where everyone wants to make everyone happy.

Do you see any parallels between the ways in which the U.S. govt has handled Covid and the way that it could address climate change?

Yeah, absolutely. As stated in the above, programs which were de-facto test-runs of things like a federal-scale Universal Basic Income showed that large-scale social changes could be implemented with RELATIVE ease during COVID and with little kickback. Similar large-scale policy reorientation in addressing climate change could happen too, if we needed treated the necessity of a Green Transition like the emergency it was.

Similarly, do you see any parallels between the ways in which the U.S. public has handled Covid and the way that it could address climate change?

Sure. There’s the attitude of some denialists, while the bulk of people are willing to play their part if they can.

How do you feel about the Biden-Harris Administration’s approach to climate action, and any actions they’ve taken thus far?

I think even the Civilian Climate Corps is essentially piecemeal, to tell you the honest truth. Clara E. Mattei at the New School is a very important economist who even challenges the far limits of what we regard as politically possible. When she challenges the full of our economic system, showing the linkage between supposedly opposing schools of economic thought, like Keynesianism and austerity economics, she also is showing that our thinking necessarily involves going beyond nostalgia for the Golden Age of Capitalism, the New Deal, and therefore The Green New Deal, if we’re concerned about creating a sustainable world.

As it happens we’re not even at the level of having presidential support for The Green New Deal, and the idea that Biden is the most progressive president since FDR is laughable.

How do you generally feel about the state of the youth climate movement and our prospects for progress? Are we moving in the right direction? 

I put a lot of hope in the youth because they’ve rejected so much of the failed world they’ve inherited. That’s a good thing indeed and in many ways people in my position — not young, not old — are at a stage of deciding what kind of person they want to — an ally to the future, or an apologist for the past.

I hope there is more of the former among my peers.

Anything else you would like to share?

Not so much. I think that Climate Defiance is the rightful heir to Sunrise Movement. Hopefully, they will not get caught in the non-profit trappings the way that so many things that begin with great promise do.