Recently, a Washington, D.C.-based chapter of Extinction Rebellion made headlines when its activists dumped a house-like structure in the Potomac River with a banner that read, “It’s do or die.” It was a political statement about the need to fight climate change made via littering, something that directly harms the environment.
Unless we take immediate action, we will face a global catastrophe. Many people are already losing their homes to extreme floods and hurricane, and this will only get worse if we don’t act now. The time for climate action is now. It’s do or die. #climatecrisis #doordie pic.twitter.com/FH3feGSf1C
— Extinction Rebellion Washington DC (@XRebelDC) September 27, 2021
This dramatic form of performative activism isn’t new. In recent years, many activists have purposefully ruined the environment just to make a political point. The New Yorker even recently published a podcast asking, “Should the climate movement embrace sabotage?”, causing a social media frenzy among people who considered ecoterrorism to be a form of progress.
This is directly at odds with the underlying concept that guides my work, and the work of many others, in the environmental movement: the long-standing saying from outdoor recreationists of “leave no trace.” It’s the idea that, as a human exploring our world, you should minimize the impact you have by conserving the areas you traverse.
Unfortunately, since humans first began roaming the Earth, we have had a major impact. The science is clear: According to the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2021 report, it is almost a certainty that human activities have warmed our planet and contributed to the climate issues we’re experiencing today. Climate change requires action, not destructive protests.
Polling shows 60% of young people are worried about climate change. Many of them feel hopeless about our future. And perhaps they have legitimate reasons to be; across the country, local communities are seeing sea levels rise, catastrophic flooding, record drought, and worsening natural disasters. It makes sense that they want to do something (anything, for that matter) to bring attention to the issue, but as leaders of the movement, it’s our job to direct their energy toward something productive.
Unfortunately, some have instead made reckless and performative climate activism the norm in the progressive environmental space. Some may claim their dramatics do very little damage, but the reality is they are turning off millions of people to their message who would otherwise be receptive.
However, it’s also worth noting there’s a lot to be optimistic about, particularly when it comes to America’s leadership on the issue. In 2020, the United States cut greenhouse gas emissions 21% — 4 percentage points more than the target President Barack Obama’s proposed 2009 climate bill would have required. That bill also would have required the U.S. to generate 20% of its electricity from renewables by 2020. We are now on track to exceed that this year.
To accomplish a cleaner, greener future, we need young people to be engaged. Every environmental group knows that, and they each employ their own tactics to try to connect young people with opportunities for climate action. Simply put, they have substantial influence, and with that comes great responsibility. The groups that choose to exploit climate anxiety to advance their agenda are not only doing damage to the environment they supposedly love, but also to the individuals who devote their time as activists.
The alternative to a divisive, sensational, and negative approach to environmental action is to unite people together and pave a positive way forward through solutions that we can all agree on.
One such area of mass agreement is natural climate solutions. More than 90% of people agree that planting trees as a way to fight climate change is something the U.S. should be pursuing more. And if done correctly, scientists estimate that these and other natural climate solutions can account for 37% of emissions reductions needed to meet our climate 2030 goals. But when media attention is focused on radical activism rather than these uniting initiatives, the future of our planet loses.
Our planet deserves an environmental movement that paints a positive picture of what our future could be and brings people into the fold rather than scaring them away. It deserves communities to be organized and empowered to improve their local environments. It deserves blue-collar and white-collar workers alike coming together around solutions we all can agree on.
Climate change is a serious issue that deserves serious people who want to solve it. The activists who litter our rivers and sabotage our environment are not worthy of a seat at the table.
Stephen Perkins is the vice president of grassroots strategy at the American Conservation Coalition.
