Boycotting our way to global warming solutions?

What is the role of nonviolent civil disobedience in provoking social change? This is one of the many questions that have been on my mind since I participated in Power Shift 2007: the first-ever national youth summit to confront global warming and the oncoming energy crisis. The Climate movement is to my generation as the Civil Rights movement was to my parents’ generation; there is no doubt in my mind that just as segregation and racism were the prominent social issues of their time, global warming and breaking America’s oil addiction will be, and already are becoming the forefront issues of our day. So, as I read Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. —who I admire and idolize for his courage and devotion to challenging the wrongs of society— for one of my classes, I couldn’t help but draw the parallels between his fight then, and ours, now. I wonder whether the role in which he placed nonviolent civil disobedience—the type of protest that shaped the budding Civil Rights movement and most of the anti-war movement of the 1960s—remains intact today as we face our own battle for the not civil, but survival rights of human kind.

In Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. explains the importance of nonviolent direct action in five main points. First, the role of nonviolent direct action is not to avoid negotiation, but when tradition efforts to negotiate have failed, “to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” Second, there are situations in which breaking the law is necessary: “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws… ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’” Consequently, the third point arises: in breaking unjust laws, participants in nonviolent direct action are often accused of creating tension, but in reality they “merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.” Fourth: “if repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence” but it is “wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends.” Therefore, lastly, the fifth point: since “oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever”, waiting around for change to happen is not an option; instead we must recognize “the urgency of the moment and [sense] the need for powerful ‘action’” and take it. (King Jr., Martin Luther. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." April 16, 1963. As cited by Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D. at the African Studies Center - University of Pennsylvania. http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html).

During the Civil Rights movement, these purposes could not have been any more justified: when lawmakers refused to listen to black leaders, the mobilization the masses of through nonviolent direct actions from the Montgomery Bus Boycotts to the March on Washington was key in drawing the attention of the public and finally the government to the cruciality of the issue of segregation. Segregation laws were obviously unjust, immoral, and against the values that our country was founded upon, that “all men were created equal.” Therefore breaking them in order to highlight the tension brewing—a tension so deeply rooted and close to the tipping point that violent action would have, and did, erupt without government action—was completely called for in forcing open negotiation and the creation of Civil Rights policy.

It seems to me that with the Climate movement, the role of nonviolent civil disobedience is far less defined than it was in the ‘60s. At Power Shift, I heard a man named Ted Glick speak fervently about the importance of nonviolent direct action to the Climate movement, despite his obvious frailty on the 60th day of a hunger strike: he is refusing to eat until congress passes global warming legislation. The current Congress, and certainly President George W. Bush, has failed to heed scientists’ warnings on warming and energy for years, and even now, as we face the tipping point on oil and global warming, is still failing to negotiate to produce the kind of strong legislation that is needed to ameliorate the climate crisis . As highlighted by increased media coverage on the issue, public tension is building around the global warming and energy; clearly, some sort of public action is needed to force to the table the kind of legislation that is needed.

But how can nonviolent civil disobedience play its role in this? Are hunger strikes really going to grab the attention of lawmakers? Unlike with segregation, it is hard to find the blatantly unjust laws to break in order to force negotiation on the creation of strong global warming and energy policy. Rosa Parks could defy Jim Crowe by sitting in the front of the bus. But driving a hybrid car or retrofitting your home with geothermal technology is not breaking any “dirty energy” laws. The Climate movement isn’t trying to change or abolish any laws, but rather, creates an entire “green” revolution through creation of new policy in multiple political arenas. Our “unjust laws” are the lack-there-of.

As a consequence, in order the draw attention of corporations and congress to the Climate issue, nonviolent direct action takes the form of incidents such as the dropping wheelbarrows of coal outside Citibank in Washington DC (forcing them to lock their doors and send their employees home for the day). These actions seem to impress to the general population to be public nuisances than public outcries for justice. Maybe this is what King meant by surfacing existing tension; engagers in nonviolent direct don’t have to break the laws which they wish to reform, but rather, must bring the tension to a head around issues—like global warming and energy—that need to be addressed.

Although the idea of bugging our way to social change irks me—I don’t see how by becoming a festering-environmental-sore on the backs of corporations and Congress will bring the Climate movement victory—it may be the only way to draw the attention of the media, which is the only way to capture the spirit of the public. Mobilizing the masses is the only way to, then, get Congress to pay attention. After all, as King so aptly noted, “oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.” Time is of essence. Though we may not feel it directly now, we, and all of humanity are the oppressed people by the powers of nature that will soon spiral out of our control. People don’t realize this because time is jumbled—we have to take action before we feel the affliction that global warming will bestow upon us, or we will remain oppressed forever. Is, as King says, nonviolent direct action is the way to accomplish the victory the Climate movement needs?