Moving the Movement Forward

As Communications Coordinator at the UKYCC over the past year, one of the things that I’ve come to realise is that if the youth climate movement is going to grow, it needs to become both more positive, and a lot more inclusive.

By positive, I mean that it needs to stop being a movement that is seen as only beingagainst things (flying, roads, consumerism, coal and, at the fringe, capitalism itself) and redefine itself as a movement for a cleaner, safer future- aspirations which tap into the basic human desires of every single one of us, whatever our political leanings.

It’s a progressive message- one that says it’s time to take the World forward into an era of secure energy, cleaner cities and affordable transport. It’s a shot across the bows of the Jeremy Clarksons out there who accuse us all of being wimpy, hair-shirted, cave-dwelling neo-luddites, intent on waging war against the modern World. Such a message is perfectly capable of being aspirational, shamelessly irreverent, testosterone-filled and all the other thing which appeal to your average Top Gear fan- we just haven’t dared to frame it in those terms yet.

A well as redefining itself as a progressive, rather than reactionary force, it’s also time for the climate movement to diversify its culture and become more inclusive. We need a movement that embraces not just the cultural assumptions of the political left and the heritage of the environmentalism of our parents, but one which is also open to the politically agnostic mainstream and yes, the Right’s traditional attachment to things like civic pride and sense of duty.

There’s nothing radical about ghettoising climate change as the post-cold war hobby horse of the left. Nor is there anything radical about scaring the shit out of people by indulging in constant orgies of ‘disaster porn’. Nor do we do our futures any service by shutting ourselves off in self-righteous subcultures which end up wholly detached and irrelevant to the mainstream of the societies they purport to lead.

The only real, (and indeed democratic) route to climate safety is a movement which genuinely speaks for the majority of people- not just the small, impassioned minority. To do that, we’ve got to be willing to appeal to the hopes and aspirations of the mainstream of people in this country, and to do it in a language that they understand and relate to. As so often, the problem isn’t – ‘why aren’t they listening to us?’ so much as why aren’t we listening to them?