The biggest thing in "Hopenhagen" was a flimsy billboard
“How’s that hopey, changey stuff working out for you?”
These are the words of contempt Sarah Palin aimed at the Obama Administration two weeks ago, but she may as well have taken shot at the climate movement.
The Copenhagen negotiations were largely a flop. Climate legislation has stalled out in Congress. Red States and Fossil Fuel Corporations are suing the EPA to revoke their authority to regulate emissions.
In 2008, millions of Americans were inspired by the message of Hope: hope that government can change, hope that yes, we can change the direction of this country. Many of those people have now become disappointed, jaded, disengaged. They hoped for change and they didn’t get it. But as Mrs. Palin so eloquently reminded us, that hopey, changey stuff isn’t working so well right now.
Why isn’t it working?
You could make the argument that governing is more difficult than campaigning. You could make lament the obstructionist tactics of the far-right. You could point out that Palin was just trying to rile up the troops.
You could say all that, but you would be missing the deeper reason.
Hope is passive. Hope is what you have when you have exhausted all other options. As Derreck Jensen writes, “To hope for some result means you have given up any agency concerning it.”
By placing our Hope in Obama, in Congress, in the UN, we tacitly resign ourselves to the idea that the outcomes are out of our hands.
During the United Nations negotiations in Copenhagen, which the climate movement had been focusing on for years as the pivotal moment to make progress, the Hopenhagen campaign there inspired a fellow activist to jot down these thoughts:
“I have had a deep unease about “Hopenhagen” since before I left for the summit, but I didn’t know what exactly was bothering me until tonight. As I passed through the vacated Hopenhagen square, looking up at the billboards depicting grainy photos of healthy big-eyed children with “Hopenhagen” spelled out across their hearts, after days on end of being practically blinded by the saturation of bus stop ads, Coca Cola’s “bottle of Hope” ads, and glossy pamphlets blowing around on the ground, it dawned on me: Hope is all we have? Hoping is…begging! This is supposed to be the big moment. I came across the planet to make change myself, and this, this stupid, cheesy, hokey corporate campaign is the best humanity can muster in the face of annihilation?
I stood alone, tonight, in the empty square, and stared ahead, and saw that real human suffering, on a scale we have never seen, was on the way, was on the horizon, and nothing but an abandoned city square was in the way. The cold wind blew through my hair. I shivered. And despite myself, I cried.”
The climate will not suddenly stabilize by hoping.
Obama will not magically secure bold climate legislation because we hope for it.
The climate movement will not become powerful enough to overcome fossil interests by latching onto hope.
We must let go of the hope that we will win. Who knows if we will or not? But we will only win by taking action with our own hands, feet, bodies, and voices.
“And when you quit relying on hope, and instead begin to protect the people, things, and places you love, you become very dangerous indeed to those in power.” -Derreck Jensen
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