WORLDFIRE - Chapter 18, Part I

Mobilizing to Rescue Civilization

“The United States is like a giant boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate.” Sir Winston Churchill

The hour is late, but climate ruin need not be our fate. There may yet be time to minimize the worst of the climate damage if we move swiftly and boldly. How fortunate that a historic precedent exists for what we are now being called to do: America’s fearless response to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War II. Just as every American citizen then had a role to play in that heroic national mobilization to save democratic civilization, so do we now need an all-hands-on-deck national climate mobilization to save civilization from the global carbon menace. Just as we then radically retooled our economy practically overnight to vanquish a madman bent on destroying democracy, so must we now transition our economy at wartime speed to combat the climate beast that is threatening to devour our young.

During the early years of World War II, America slumbered as Hitler’s armies stormed across Europe, bent on world domination. As European nations started to fall like dominoes, Hitler’s Nazi Party began engineering its monstrous campaign of mass murder, in the end executing 6 million Jews and other innocent men, women, and children Hitler deemed “unworthy of life.” It was not until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that America finally awoke to the danger at our door. Once stirred, however, nothing would stop us from achieving victory. Together with our allies around the world, it was the Greatest Generation–led by an extraordinarily gifted president and a willing United States Congress–that saved the world from fascism.

Today America again finds herself asleep as the climate beast rampages, with echoes of fascism ringing in the air. Only this adversary is far more cunning than any we have faced before. It is not bombs and bullets, but floods and fires that breach our defenses. It is not kamikaze fighters and dive-bombers, but monster hurricanes and surging seas that assault our shores. This adversary can strike anywhere, anytime, with overwhelming deadly force. Never before have we faced a more pernicious foe, yet our response so far has been one of passive appeasement. Civilization is under attack and we are feeding the beast that is attacking us. The only rational response to this deadly assault is a national and international emergency mobilization to restore a safe climate. Nothing short of a whole-of-government response at the speed and scale of World War II will give posterity a fighting chance to survive. Just as we did during WWII, America must rouse herself awake and rally the world. It is time to once again stand up and fight for our future.

I am profoundly grateful that my ancestors were able to see past their personal comforts and ambitions to defend our democratic way of life. If they hadn’t, where would we be as a people today? Growing up, I absorbed the essence of “waste not, want not” frugality by observing the daily doings of my grandparents from that war generation. They nobly rationed to support the war effort then. Our generation can conserve energy and curb our consumption to save civilization now. It was thanks to my father going to college on the GI Bill, to the countless sacrifices both of my parents made for me, and to my being born a privileged white male that I was given chances in life many people never get. It is now my turn to pay those advantages forward by doing for others. The time has come for current generations to serve.

An emergency climate mobilization will incur personal sacrifice, yes, but the largest economic transition since World War II will provide even more personal benefit by spurring an equitable economy that works for the 99% and that generates new technologies and new ways of relating with the Earth that will enrich all of our lives. It is easy to forget that the U.S. economy, spurred by billions of dollars in federal government investments, witnessed its greatest ever boom during World War II. The U.S. devoted nearly 40% of its economy to military outlays at the peak of the war, with a tax on excess corporate profits providing about one quarter of those revenues. I was surprised to learn through economist Richard Wolff that at the end of the war the government was receiving $1.50 from corporations for every $1 it took from U.S. taxpayers, yet by 2011, the treasury was receiving a paltry 25¢ from corporations for every $1 it took from taxpayers. That’s a steep 500% drop.

The federal government’s World War II investment in defending democracy invigorated America’s manufacturing base and virtually ended unemployment, which plummeted from more than 14% in 1940 to less than 2% in 1945. In a commentary called “The Way We Won,” presidential historian Doris Goodwin reminds us that over the course of the war, 17 million civilian jobs were created, wages grew by 50%, industrial activity increased by nearly 100%, and corporate profits doubled. This was also the first time women entered the workforce in large numbers, where it should be noted they often outperformed the men.

World War II was the last time the American people were infused with a sense of national purpose and unity. As any student of World War II history knows, the whole country was engaged in the war effort. Virtually every citizen–from those serving on the front lines to those serving on the home front–played a role in achieving victory. Millions of Americans were drafted into military service, while millions more volunteered. Other Americans produced armaments, purchased war bonds, grew Victory Gardens, and rationed gasoline. Many citizens took part in a nationwide aluminum scrap drive that generated a gung-ho response from a public eager to contribute. I can imagine Americans committing themselves to similar efforts today. Remarkably, conservative business leaders, liberal labor leaders, and government planners cooperatively joined forces to refocus America’s industrial might against the Axis Powers. Starting with practically no munitions industry at all, U.S. factories between 1940 and 1945 produced more than 100,000 tanks; more than 5,000 cargo ships; more than 2 million trucks; more than 20 million rifles and guns; nearly 300,000 warplanes; and nearly 90,000 warships; along with 44 billion rounds of ammunition–a staggering feat that proved crucial to winning the war. Keep in mind that many of these munitions were given away to our allies. The improbable success of our World War II mobilization provides the best model for what must now be done to save civilization from collapse. History shows us how a whole-of-society global rescue plan can lead us to victory even at the 11th hour.

The first person to popularize the wartime mobilization analogy as a solution to the climate crisis was futurist Lester Brown. In his brilliant 2003 blueprint, Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, Brown succinctly states that the goal of such a mobilization is “to build a new economy and to do it at wartime speed before we miss so many of nature’s deadlines.” We have obviously missed lots of nature’s deadlines since 2003. In Brown’s later book, World on the Edge, he shares what keeps him hopeful: “Whenever I begin to feel overwhelmed by the scale and urgency of the changes we need to make, I reread the economic history of U.S. involvement in World War II because it is such an inspiring study in rapid mobilization. Initially, the United States resisted involvement in the war and responded only after it was directly attacked at Pearl Harbor. But respond it did. After an all-out commitment, the U.S. engagement helped turn the tide of war, leading the Allied Forces to victory within three-and-a-half years… it did not take decades to restructure the U.S. industrial economy. It did not take years. It was done in a matter of months. If we could restructure the U.S. industrial economy in months, then we can restructure the world energy economy during this decade.” Yet most politicians talk about climate action (if they talk about it at all) in terms of decades. 2050 is their favorite go-to date. Had we taken decades to mobilize against the Axis Powers, there would be no America today. Political appeasement plans with timelines like 2050 cannot achieve victory. They only assure our defeat.

Can you think of any other national defense threat where politicians advocate waiting decades to respond? I can’t. We all know legislation pledging action decades from now is not serious. We also know why politicians do this. Many can’t see past their next election and don’t want to put their precious political careers in jeopardy. They don’t want to offend the special interests funding their campaigns or threaten the lucrative corporate gigs waiting in the wings for them after they leave office. The problem is less with the legislative aides on Capitol Hill than with the politicians they work for. Because dirty money has so rotted our body politic, too many in power are acting like children–only taller–with scant concern for the fate of real children. They do this because it is convenient, and because for some of the older ones at least, they figure they’ll no longer be around when the worst of the climate nightmares begin to haunt the rest of our daily lives. For too many politicians, job security and self-interest trump fighting for the future of their constituents who hired them in the first place. Too many of our so-called leaders are selfishly putting the human family at risk. It is incumbent upon the rest of us to model adult behavior by insisting that they put the interests of our children first.

Members of the United States Congress displayed such adult behavior on May 16, 1940 in how they responded to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s request to immediately “appropriate a large sum of money” for America’s vital defense. With Hitler on the march, President Roosevelt declared in a historic address to a joint session of Congress: “These are ominous days… Let us examine, without self-deception, the dangers we confront. Let us measure our strength and our defense without self-delusion. The clear fact is that the American people must recast their thinking about national protection.” Roosevelt warned: “We have had the lesson before us over and over again. Nations that were not ready and were unable to get ready found themselves overrun.” In response to the looming Nazi threat, the president called for a dramatic increase in our manufacturing capacity to “procure more equipment of all kinds, including motor transport and artillery, tanks, anti-aircraft guns, and full ammunition supplies.” Reminding Congress that “it had been planned to spread these requirements over the next two or three years,” he declared, “We should fill them at once.” Despite the audiaciousness of the goal, Roosevelt’s call “to turn out at least 50,000 planes a year” was met with wild applause in the House chamber. The other wildly popular applause line: “The Congress and the Chief Executive constitute a team where the defense of the land is concerned.”

That the presidential bully pulpit was used to such powerful effect by FDR to win WWII suggests it could be used by a president to combat climate complacency today. The parallels to the present are striking given how little green energy infrastructure the U.S. currently possesses. With planes and warships vastly more complicated to assemble than solar panels and wind turbines, it is easy to imagine even greater renewable energy production levels today. World War II showed us how seemingly impossible odds can be overcome. But first, we must cast aside self-deception and self-delusion. We must recast our thinking about national protection by acknowledging that we are not ready for the threat posed by climate breakdown. We are being overrun. We have been given this painful lesson over and over again.

No one has likened the World War II-era mobilization to what we must do to combat the climate crisis more stirringly than Bill McKibben. In a powerful piece called, “A World at War,” McKibben writes: “We’re under attack from climate change–and our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII.” Drawing analogies with the Second World War, he reminds us: “Defeating the Nazis required more than brave soldiers. It required building big factories, and building them really, really fast. In 1941, the world’s largest industrial plant under a single roof went up in six months near Ypsilanti, Michigan… Within months, it was churning out a B-24 Liberator bomber every hour. Bombers! Huge, complicated planes, endlessly more intricate than solar panels or turbine blades–containing 1,225,000 parts, 313,237 rivets. Nearby, in Warren, Michigan, the Army built a tank factory faster than they could build the power plant to run it–so they simply towed a steam locomotive into one end of the building to provide steam heat and electricity. That one factory produced more tanks than the Germans built in the entire course of the war... Pontiac made anti-aircraft guns; Oldsmobile churned out cannons; Studebaker built engines for Flying Fortresses; Nash-Kelvinator produced propellers for British de Havillands; Hudson Motors fabricated wings for Helldivers and P-38 fighters; Buick manufactured tank destroyers; Fisher Body built thousands of M4 Sherman tanks; Cadillac turned out more than 10,000 light tanks. And that was just Detroit–the same sort of industrial mobilization took place all across America… In the face of a common enemy, Americans worked together in a way they never had before.”

The seismic shift from making automobiles to making tanks did not just happen. It happened because the survival of democracy hinged on it happening. In his book, Plan B 2.0, Lester Brown reminds us that “Roosevelt and his colleagues realized that the largest concentration of industrial power in the world at that time was in the U.S. automobile industry.” In light of this, “Roosevelt met with automobile industry leaders and told them that the country would rely heavily on them to reach these arms production goals. Initially they wanted to continue making cars and simply add on the production of armaments. What they did not yet know was that the sale of private automobiles would soon be banned.”

Another who sees the need for a wartime mobilization is Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute, who in 2019 wrote this in defense of the Green New Deal: “The climate emergency is our third world war. Our lives and civilization as we know it are at stake, just as they were in the second world war. When the US was attacked during the second world war no one asked, ‘Can we afford to fight the war?’ It was an existential matter. We could not afford not to fight it. The same goes for the climate crisis.” The United States spent nearly $300 billion putting out the World War II fire. Today we have a worldfire that we cannot afford not to put out. Like then, cost should not be an issue, but for those who insist on making it one, let’s weigh the costs of passively watching our house burn down against the benefits of putting out the fire.

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