World leaders aren’t taking the climate threat seriously. Or, they might say they are taking it seriously—but as author and scholar of democracy Dana R. Fisher notes, it’s nowhere near enough.
“Current responses to the climate crisis from the state, market, and civil society sectors will not save us,” she writes in her new book, Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action. “Saving ourselves, “she argues, “will only be possible with a mass mobilization driven by the pain and suffering of climate shocks around the world.”
It’s a brutal conclusion—but Fisher’s views are not to be discounted lightly. A professor of sociology at American University in Washington, D.C., she has drawn upon her decades of research to write Saving Ourselves, which summarizes some hard truths about what will be needed to reckon with our new climate reality. Her thesis is, first and foremost, people-focused, and concerned with empowering collective action. “Barring a world war or widescale economic depression,” she writes, “the type of radical social change needed is most likely to be initiated by civil society” employing “either nonviolent or more confrontational tactics.”
Saving Ourselves is a further development of Fisher’s “anthro-shift” hypothesis, coined in collaboration with fellow researcher Andrew K. Jorgenson. This is the concept that risk—either the experience of risk or the perception of it—can serve to drastically alter how society interacts with the environment. A big enough shift, accordingly, could generate the sort of lasting systems change needed to combat the climate emergency.
But how will that work in practice?
The Covid-19 pandemic is, on the one hand, a useful example of such a shift, Fisher says, in that initially it caused a sudden, global mobilisation in response to a threat—in this case a novel virus. But it is also illustrative in that it changed very little about how systems work or how people behave in the long term. Indeed, our existing systems’ resistance to change in response to the virus is itself widely regarded by experts as a systems failure.
In Fisher’s view, the effectiveness and longevity of a social shift comes down to perceived risk. “The experience of risk that people had with Covid was insufficient to get to large-scale systemic change,” she tells me. In turn, this suggests that an imminent sense of more extreme risk is required to persuade large numbers of people that they must take matters into their own hands. The journey to accomplish change will be long and hard, and new generations of climate activists should learn from similar struggles—in particular, the history of the fight for civil rights, which gave rise to the environmental movement in the 1970s.
Fisher breaks her argument down into five hard truths, beginning with:
1: “No one else is going to save us”
Without a mass movement of people mobilized by the threat of climate shocks, Fisher believes, political and economic systems will not be compelled to change. “Instead of waiting for a slow and ineffective climate regime to save us,” she writes, “we need to identify and acknowledge our power, then figure out how to harness it effectively so we are prepared to survive what’s coming.”
2: “Saving ourselves is a long game”
Fisher warns that, as urgent as the climate threat is, the institutions and systems we’ve built are huge and unwieldly, and forcing them to change course will take prolonged, focused action over many years. Global climate action has proceeded at a snail’s pace not least because of the deep influence of the fossil fuel industry, which has “played a role in slowing down climate progress at the international level as well as within nation states (and regions) where they hold concentrated power.”
3: “Saving ourselves involves taking power back”
Fisher believes far more people will need to become active in the climate space in order to generate the political and economic incentives to change the current system. While some activists use “outsider tactics”, from throwing food at paintings to civil disobedience in order to keep climate change in the headlines, Fisher shows that “insider tactics”—using existing political, legal and economic structures—are growing in power and efficacy. Climate litigation cases reaching the courts now number in the thousands, while shareholder activism and political lobbying is increasingly impacting business and political decisions.
4: “Saving ourselves won’t be popular”
Climate activism will—and in Fisher’s view, should—include direct and confrontational protest actions, and civil disobedience. Direct action, she says, can “elicit shock and gain public and media attention, and direct action to disrupt as part of a broader campaign.” Despite the numerous public and media criticisms of such actions, and disapproval from some parts of society, evidence from research shows that such disruption “may actually be a very effective way to increase recruitment” for a cause.
5: “Saving ourselves will take a disaster (or many)”
“Without a sustained shock that has tangible consequences in terms of social cost to people and property, the subsequent social change (like we saw during the early days of the pandemic) will be ephemeral,” Fisher warns. A sustained shock, she writes, “will involve sections of the world becoming uninhabitable, leading to mass migration as well as pain, suffering, and death around the world.” Reducing that suffering, she says, will require communities “to embrace solidarity, and cultivate resilience.” The more coordinated such efforts are, “the less people will suffer and die before we get to the other side.”
Such conclusions can be hard to stomach, but it is also hard to deny Fisher’s observations. As more than 25 years of climate negotiations have shown, incremental steps have not pushed global climate action far enough fast enough. Fisher’s view, therefore, is that short of such a huge social shift in industrialised countries—such as the U.S., Canada and Norway—there will be no way to bring about a “legitimation crisis”, whereby political leaders fear they could lose power if they don’t substantially address climate change.
“I think what we’re likely to see is actors continue to do the least they possibly can while maintaining political and economic power,” she tells me, giving the example of the Biden administration’s pause on LNG exports—an action she believes was taken because the Democratic party “know they need climate voters and young people.” But while acknowledging the Biden presidency has made some significant strides on climate—here Fisher cites the Inflation Reduction Act—she reiterates “it’s just not enough.”
Pinpointing exactly what will be enough, however, is hard to do. Rather than one big shock eliciting action, Fisher says, “it’s much more realistic than an anthro-shift will manifest itself by various climate shocks happening simultaneously in multiple locations.” Even then, it’s hard to forecast what exactly that might look like: early on in Saving Ourselves she suggests that, “beyond responses to repressive and autocratic rule … examples of sustained activism at this level of engagement are scant.” Just as the world’s climate is now moving into uncharted territory, so, then, must its social movements.
What should give everyone—not least activists—pause when considering Fisher’s hypothesis is that, while such a shift isn’t going to be easy or painless, neither will it be fair. Impacts will take place unevenly from place to place, and cause more harm to less privileged communities and communities of color. The thesis of Saving Ourselves, then, should be a profoundly uncomfortable one. For, even if “predominantly white” climate activists are becoming increasingly concerned about equity and racial justice, as Fisher has found, they won’t be the people who will suffer most when those shift-inducing shocks arrive.
And yet, it is this very injustice, Fisher argues, that could itself act as a most potent call to action. The murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020, for example, sparked what have been described as “the broadest sustained protests in U.S. history.” The collective moral shock and sympathy generated by such events, Fisher surmises, can cause previously unconnected individuals to become invested in mass protest movements. “The climate movement,” she writes, “would be wise to learn from this moment in the struggle against systemic racism in the United States.”
To some, Fisher’s brand of “apocalyptic optimism” might seem to rely too much on the better angels of our nature for a way out of the climate crisis. But it is worth asking: if hope can’t be found—or nurtured, as a discipline—within everyday people, then where is it to be found?
In the final analysis, there’s no denying Fisher’s ultimate assertion: “The future is up to us.”
Published by Columbia University Press, Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action, by Dana R. Fisher, is out now.