WORLDFIRE - Chapter 18, Part II

Mobilizing to Rescue Civilization

We’ll start with the costs of passively letting the worldfire burn. As far back as 2006, the “Stern Review: Economics of Climate Change” warned that absent an urgent global response, changes to the climate risked economic disruption on a scale similar to the Great Depression. In 2009, the International Energy Agency warned we will pay an extra $500 billion every year we delay cutting carbon emissions. Others calculate the cost of inaction as higher. In 2015, Citibank, which no one would ever accuse of being a tree-hugging institution, issued a report subtitled, “Why a Low Carbon Future Doesn’t Have to Cost the Earth,” projecting $44 trillion in lost GDP by 2060 if the world fails to act to reduce carbon emissions. The financial advisory firm Deloitte pegs the cost to the global economy from unchecked global heating as much higher: $178 trillion over the next 50 years. The World Economic Forum’s 2016 annual survey, where more than 700 experts “assessed 29 separate global risks for both impact and likelihood over a 10-year time horizon,” found that “failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation is the number one global risk in terms of impact.” That’s right, the world’s financial elites identified the climate threat as the greatest near-term risk to the global economy.

Major global reinsurers like Swiss Re and Munich Re have also been ringing the climate alarm bell for years, but it doesn’t take an insurance agent to see that insurance premiums will skyrocket as climate disasters intensify. In 2014, Lloyd’s of London, the world’s largest insurance market, called on the insurance industry to incorporate climate threats into their business models. Then under unrelenting pressure from climate campaigners, Lloyd’s in 2020 announced it would stop investing in new coal plants and coal mines, tar sands, and Arctic energy exploration by 2022, with a 2030 target date for fully phasing out insurance coverage for those sectors. Yet most of the major insurers are continuing to invest in fossil fuel projects while simultaneously limiting or eliminating coverage for the public (in 2023, State Farm and Allstate took the unprecedented step of no longer accepting new homeowner and business insurance applications in climate-ravaged California).

Prominent investors are also sounding the alarm. Schroders, one of the world’s top fund managers for managing climate risks, has publicly warned that a global temperature increase of 6˚C (10.8˚F) or higher would result in “up to 50% long-term loss in global GDP,” not that there would be a society left upon which to base a GDP in a 6˚C world. In 2020, Mad Money host Jim Cramer told CNBC: “I’m done with fossil fuels. They’re done.” Declaring that fossil fuel companies are in “the death knell phase,” Cramer asserted: “The world’s turned on them… It’s going to be a parade that says, ‘Look, these are tobacco. And we’re not going to own them.’ They’re tobacco. I think they’re tobacco. We’re in a new world.” A leaked report produced by JPMorgan Chase, the world’s top fossil fuel financier, had some similarly stark warnings for its clients about the seriousness of the climate crisis. Their 2020 “Risky Business” report cautioned the big bank’s clients that “likely the situation will continue to deteriorate, possibly more so than in any of the IPCC’s scenarios.” The report also darkly declared: “We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened.” And this: “Something will have to change at some point if the human race is going to survive.” This is what JPMorgan Chase believes. Please let that sink in for a moment.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been keeping close tabs on how much climate chaos is already costing us. In the 1980s, billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the U.S. were costing us roughly $21 billion a year. In the 1990s, it was $32 billion a year. In the 2000s, it nearly doubled to $60 billion a year. In the 2010s, it climbed to $96 billion a year. NOAA has also tabulated 396 disasters since 1980 where damages were $1 billion or more. The overall cost of these disasters to U.S. taxpayers was nearly $2.8 trillion. The cost in human lives: 16,499 Americans dead.

As you can see, not putting out the worldfire is what will lead to our ruin. A fossil fuel economy is far more expensive than a fossil free economy. It is the cost of climate inaction, not the cost of climate action, that should have everyone alarmed.

Now let’s look at the economic benefits of actually containing the worldfire. Given all the fossil fuel propaganda we’ve all been force-fed for so long, the following finding may shock you. A 2018 report commissioned by The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate–comprised of former heads of government and finance ministers, economists, and business leaders–found that making the transition to a “low-carbon, sustainable growth path could deliver a direct economic gain of US$26 trillion through to 2030 compared to business-as-usual.” You read that right. A $26,000,000,000,000 economic gain. The Commission also found that “taking ambitious climate action could generate over 65 million new low-carbon jobs in 2030… as well as avoid over 700,000 premature deaths from air pollution compared with business-as-usual.” The report emphasized that it “is not just about avoiding a future we do not want. It is about creating the future that we do want.”

In 2020, the World Economic Forum similarly advised that “people- and nature-positive development” would provide “annual business opportunities worth $10 trillion that could create 395 million jobs by 2030.” That’s not a typo. 395,000,000 jobs. A 2021 paper released by a research team at Oxford University affirmed that “compared to continuing with a fossil-fuel-based system, a rapid green energy transition will likely result in overall net savings of many trillions of dollars.” A report by the Carbon Disclosure Project found that cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by more than 4,800 corporations saved these companies $14 billion in 2017 alone. Unless you’re a leader of the shrinking dinosaur economy, what’s not to like about these numbers? As expressed by Rocky Mountain Institute’s energy efficiency guru, Amory Lovins, “Climate change is actually a lucrative business opportunity disguised as an environmental problem.” It is time for us to seize this opportunity.

Lest you think otherwise, my purpose in using the World War II analogy is not to romanticize war. War is hell. Nor is it lost on me that the Department of Defense is the single largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world. I use the analogy because it is the only event in our nation’s history that demonstrates our ability to organize a national emergency mobilization at lightning speed. I use it because our extraordinarily improbable success during World War II is proof positive that we can completely restructure our economy not in decades, but in years. But mobilizing to defend America and the human family from climate calamity is not a militaristic exercise. To the contrary, our offensive military budget will have to be  slashed to free up resources for a national defense operation of such massive scope and scale. The old story of militarism and imperialism (think wars for oil and other resources we covet that are owned by other nations) must yield to a hopeful new story of benevolence and cooperation. The answer is not more war. The answer is peace.

It might surprise you to learn that in 1953, General-turned-President Dwight D. Eisenhower championed such a “just and lasting peace.” In his first formal address to the American people after assuming the presidency, Eisenhower declared: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.” Eisenhower called on the governments of the world “to answer the question that stirs the hearts of all sane men: Is there no other way the world may live?” To reduce the post-World War II “burden of armaments now weighing upon the world,” President Eisenhower boldly proposed limiting “the sizes of the military and security forces of all nations” as well as the production of “materials to be devoted to military purposes.” In his Farewell Address to the nation, the former Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force famously warned against the rise of the military industrial complex. In 1963, less than six months before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy delivered an address of his own courageously calling for a global path to peace. Try to imagine a U.S. president speaking these words today: “What kind of a peace do I mean, and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war... I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.”

Have you ever wondered why Congress never fails to fund the military, yet when it comes to other urgent national needs like universal health care, they cry poverty? Why does the Pentagon have an annual defense budget of more than $800 billion, larger than the next nine nations combined? Why do we have more than 700 military bases around the world? Why are we doing so much nation building abroad when we have a nation to rebuild at home? And why are we sending our soldiers off to die in senseless resource wars in the first place? A 2019 Military Times survey found that 64 percent of U.S. veterans felt the Iraq War “was not worth fighting... For Afghanistan, 58 percent of veterans said that fight was not worthwhile.” What if we made some actual friends around the world instead of enemies by sharing our green technologies with others in need? View it an investment in our shared survival to help less industrialized nations leapfrog fossil fuels and move straight to renewables. What if instead of wasting hundreds of billions on upgrading our nuclear arsenal we led a diplomatic effort to achieve nuclear disarmament to make the world safer? Trillions spent on the war machine could instead be invested in expanding public education and other vital social services for the American people.

There is a reason why more than half of our discretionary spending is dedicated to the military–beyond the fact that defense contractors spend more than $100 million annually lobbying the federal government–and it is this: weapons makers are researching, developing, manufacturing, and servicing weapons systems in nearly every congressional district in America. Think about it. This is why congressional support for the bloated defense budget is nearly unanimous every single year: almost every member of Congress is protecting the defense-related jobs of their constituents. So let’s do this for a national climate mobilization. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act was a partial down payment on this strategy. Once we have members of Congress fighting just as hard to attract and retain the small businesses and factories needed to green our economy in every congressional district in America, political support for a climate emergency response will enjoy similar sacrosanct support on Capitol Hill. Weapons contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman can wait in line for a change while contracts are awarded to those doing the mission critical work of revving up the green industrial revolution in the USA.

Nor do I use the World War II analogy to suggest that everything the United States did during the war was right or just. Atrocities were committed during the Second World War, like the racist imprisoning of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry in internment camps. Like segregating the military ranks. Like seizing sovereign Native American lands for the war effort. Like turning Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust away from our shores. Respecting human rights, honoring treaty rights, and treating climate refugees justly and humanely are all foundational elements of a moral mobilization to restore a safe climate. A moral mobilization means social and economic justice for all, beginning with frontline and Indigenous communities that have for too long borne the brunt of the polluting, fossil fuel corporate economy.

It is not a coincidence that the percentage of Black Americans living in fenceline communities near petroleum refineries and chemical plants is 75% higher than for the U.S. population as a whole, with the percentage of Latinos 60% higher. As fate would have it, I would end my 2011 ride against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline at just such a fenceline community in Port Arthur, Texas, where standing in a playground I would bear witness to a petrochemical plant spewing out toxins 24/7 across such a fenceline. Is it any wonder that Black people in America are three times more likely to die from asthma than white people? As demonstrated by Hurricane Katrina, many people living in these economically vulnerable communities are also the most vulnerable to being displaced by climate-related disasters. Native American communities, many of which are poorer still (picture the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where poverty, unemployment, and suicide rates are off the charts), are even more vulnerable to being displaced by climate disasters due to their obvious inability to move. The U.S. Government Accounting Office warns that dozens of Alaska Native villages face “imminent threats” from climate-related flooding and erosion. Nor is it by chance that most of the nation’s abandoned uranium mines, and a quarter of America’s Superfund hazardous waste sites, are located on tribal lands. The Navajo Nation alone has endured generations of devastating health impacts from uranium mining. Vulnerable communities that have already disproportionately suffered the worst impacts from the fossil fuel/nuclear era need proportional support in making the life-affirming transition to an Earth-honoring energy era. This is just common sense. Its other name is justice.

Now that we are clear on what the wartime analogy is not, let’s dive a little deeper into what it is. The Second World War provides invaluable lessons for the all-hands-on-deck emergency mobilization we need to halt the march of global meltdown. Apart from Project Apollo, nothing gives me more faith that we can vanquish the climate beast than America’s World War II mobilization. It is mind-blowing what we were able to accomplish in less than four years. We stood up and made the “impossible” possible because then, like now, failure was not an option. We pride ourselves on being the nation where anything is possible. There is no country better positioned than the United States to lead such a heroic planetary rescue mission. Here are more lessons from WWII that can guide our efforts now.

President Roosevelt rallied America to win World War II with boldness. In his January 6, 1942 State of the Union address, less than a month after declaring war, Roosevelt told Congress that “the United States must build planes and tanks and guns and ships to the utmost limit of our national capacity.” He said: “We must raise our sights all along the production line. Let no man say it cannot be done. It must be done—and we have undertaken to do it…. Our task is hard—our task is unprecedented—and the time is short. We must strain every existing armament-producing facility to the utmost. We must convert every available plant and tool to war production. That goes all the way from the greatest plants to the smallest—from the huge automobile industry to the village machine shop... Our workers stand ready to work long hours; to turn out more in a day's work; to keep the wheels turning and the fires burning... They realize well that on the speed and efficiency of their work depend the lives of their sons and their brothers on the fighting fronts…  Speed will count. Lost ground can always be regained—lost time never. Speed will save lives; speed will save this Nation which is in peril; speed will save our freedom and our civilization—and slowness has never been an American characteristic.”

Our task is no less hard today, nor any less unprecedented, and time is similarly short. Speed is what we need. Picture every available production facility being strained to win the climate war, with speed as our creed. Imagine every available resource being deployed in a race to save precious lives. Speed is how we succeed.

In the fall of 1942, FDR embarked on a secret cross-country train tour (over fears for his safety, the press was ordered not to report on the president’s movements until the tour’s end) to inspect the home front mobilization firsthand. Over a span of two weeks, he traveled thousands of miles and visited dozens of camps, training stations, and war factories. I can picture future U.S. presidents embarking on similar national tours, only this time to inspect the Rust Belt turned Green Belt churning out eye-popping numbers of solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, heat pumps, and batteries.

Then there was the forthright maturity of FDR’s fireside chats, which Roosevelt delivered to keep Americans appraised on the war effort, and to keep spirits high. The concept of a president having such a brutally honest adult conversation with the American people today feels so foreign as to be almost unthinkable. Yet on February 23, 1942, FDR had this grown-up talk with America: “This generation of Americans has come to realize, with a present and personal realization, that there is something larger and more important than the life of any individual or of any individual group – something for which a man will sacrifice, and gladly sacrifice, not only his pleasures, not only his goods, not only his associations with those he loves, but his life itself. In time of crisis when the future is in the balance, we come to understand, with full recognition and devotion, what this nation is and what we owe to it.” Think about the gravity of what FDR was saying. We were being told by our president that when the greater whole is being threatened, there are things more important than your life or my life. He even used the “s” word, sacrifice, and the Greatest Generation bravely rallied to democracy’s defense. Today, like then, our future hangs in the balance. These words uttered by FDR then apply equally to the existential climate threat we face today: “The task that we Americans now face will test us to the uttermost. Never before have we been called upon for such a prodigious effort. Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.” Any president who cannot level with the American people in such a forthright and honest manner about the state of the climate emergency and what is collectively required of us to respond is a president who is failing to defend America.

In her bestselling book, No Ordinary Time, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin provides a gripping account of how “America’s productive genius” was deployed to win World War II. Her book contains a wealth of knowledge for how America might similarly mobilize today. Describing FDR’s rarefied leadership abilities, she writes: “No factor was more important to Roosevelt’s leadership than his confidence in himself and in the American people.” Then this: “The president had a remarkable capacity to transmit this cheerful strength to others, to allow, White House Counsel Sam Rosenman observed, ‘those who hear it to begin to feel it and take part in it, to rejoice in it—and to return it tenfold by their own confidence.’” Here is one more excerpt from this world-renowned historian’s extraordinary book, as there are vital lessons to be gleaned for our times: “Though the United States was miserably unprepared for war in the spring of 1940, Roosevelt never doubted that the American home front would eventually win the war, that the uncoerced energies of a free people could overcome the most efficient totalitarian regime. To his mind, there was no danger too great, no challenge too profound to yield to the combined efforts of the American people. He would provide the framework, the opportunity, and the inspiration, and the people would do the rest… Roosevelt’s success in mobilizing the nation to this extraordinary level of collective performance rested on his uncanny sensitivity to his followers, his ability to appraise public feeling and to lead the people one step at a time… Like any great artist, Roosevelt relied on his own intuition to fit the smallest details and the most disparate impressions into a coherent pattern… Above all, he possessed a magnificent sense of timing. He understood when to invoke the prestige of the presidency and when to hold it in reserve.” We need such gifted political artists today. We need the kind of leadership FDR embodied to win the climate war.

NOTE: The written form of WORLDFIRE is the authoritative version. Any inadvertent errors in transcribing the recordings are mine and mine alone.