Climate activists, modern Renaissance artists

A little over fifteen years ago, my parents were driving home to West Tennessee after visiting me in Nashville when they had to pull their car over due to flooding. Mom called me panicked, unsure if it would be the last time we spoke, as the water was rising around them. Once they were safe in a rescue boat, they called again to assure me they were alright. But the floods had killed 21 people; disaster areas were declared in at least 30 counties; and the media hailed it as a “once-in-a-lifetime” event that wasn’t covered nationally until the waters were receding. By then, the flooding had destroyed Music City icons like the Grand Ole Opry, and in the weeks after, I remember cleaning up homes where the waterline was all the way to the ceiling. 

That should have been my climate freakout. I knew enough about climate change then to know we were in some trouble. 

It’s easy, though, to think someone will come along and “fix” it the way the world mobilized to find a vaccine for COVID-19. There are so many good ideas and solutions floating around today, it seems, yet none address carbon emissions at the scale or speed we need. Worse, with all the greenwashing lies the media spews, it’s easy to get suckered into the propaganda that action is already underway when it’s not. It’s even harder to wrap your head around how bad things are when communication about climate has been cleverly turned into the oil industry’s “carbon footprint” lie to make climate everyone’s responsibility, thus not the responsibility of polluters. 

So I understood climate was an issue. But there were all these barriers to really grasping the scope and urgency. Or how I fit into the puzzle. 

What I didn’t know for another decade or more was that we are facing the very real possibility of our own extinction within our children’s lifetimes. I shouldn’t have had to find that out by getting to know climate scientists. I shouldn’t have had to join a climate change organization to learn just how terrible it is. But because our media has cozied up to Big Oil for ad revenue, here we are. 

I’ve come to believe, with some social science backing me, that the solution to our biggest problem won’t be solved yet by carbon capture or regenerative technology. Oh sure, there’s a world where scaling up those solutions – alongside, first, phasing out fossil fuels – as part of the effort will come. But our biggest problem right now is the political will to act. And the only people who can provide that solution are activists. That’s literally the primary function and role of mass protest: to set the political agenda. And there’s real hope, I believe, if we choose to go all-in on building a social movement to lay the groundwork for climate populism – before it’s too late. 

Last week, I was in Europe trying to do just that – connecting with likeminded friends and supporters who know the power of peaceful protest and the impact it can have. And each meeting was inspiring and exciting, but oddly enough, I found surprising hope as well in the architecture and the art I kept encountering. 

Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising. Standing in front of a four or five-hundred year-old statue that’s been carefully carved in stone can remind anyone of the power of humans to create.

The architecture of Paris, in particular, got me thinking about the power of innovation to bring about immense good. In terms of climate collapse, human innovation got us into this mess but human innovation can get us out. There’s something sickly beautiful to the notion that we can create and we can create things that are so incredibly beautiful. But at the same time we really risk destruction when trying to do so. Walking that balance with a sense of justice requires a level of care most of us cannot fathom.  If the human condition is truly frail and weak, the only way out is to lean into that reality with honesty. At the same time, you don’t reach the infinite beauty of Paris and what it grew into over time without long-term planning somewhere in its history. Someone in their past actually spent time thinking about what the future would look like – and now we have to do that again if we’re to survive. But it’s not just that they did it; it’s that they had the will to plan it with care.

That I would see that kind of creativity – or the ability to achieve the political will we need – in activists today may seem silly. Throwing soup on a painting or powder on Stonehenge might even seem contrary to a love of art and architecture – certainly a critique I’ve received. But in a way, climate activists must be today’s Renaissance artists. They hold the responsibility to bring about widespread social commentary. They can make us laugh and cry and fill us with a sense of awe and hope. They are design professionals, digital creators, public relations managers, artists and artisans, fundraisers and accountants, and able to outsmart the political class and media elite alike. Frankly, they don’t get enough credit for what they are able to make happen with a little savvy and creativity – and money.

These “once-in-a-thousand-year” climate shocks like what my parents endured fifteen years ago are about to become commonplace. We can moan that our lives are disrupted by climate activists, or we can have our lives disrupted by weather events on repeat. In time, we’re going to have to find the political will to act – and hopefully not before it’s too late.