Climáximo is trying out something new – politically, strategically, organizationally, personally and emotionally. So in all these levels, we are taking major risks.
This reorientation and restructuring is the result of a long and deep reflection we did, not only internally but also with other organizations in the international progressive movements.
We received quite some reactions and feedback, most of which were expected outcomes of our strategy. We control only a small fraction of the long-term consequences of our strategy because other movement actors as well as the larger society are also constantly making their own choices. Aiming for a leap, taking risks means daring to win. It also means increased volatility and uncertainty. Entering the unknown, we have a bet, we have expectations, and we have hopes. We are curious and attentive.
The Diagnosis
In this note, we will not tell you that the climate crisis is giving us tighter and tighter deadlines for a socio-economic transformation that will amount for system change. This is explained elsewhere, and you probably already know it anyway.
We will tell you where we are coming from, what are we trying to solve, what is the movement level intervention, and how we are implementing it.
We will focus on five categories:
The neutrals: the part of the general public who hasn’t yet taken side on the climate crisis or on capitalism while simultaenously residing in them.
The sympathetic: the part of the general public who shares some of the analysis or values, perhaps talks in favor of them in their own circles, without active involvement in the movement
Protesters: the folks who show up in protests, demonstrations and marches called by the progressive movements
Climate groups: the people in the organizations working on the climate crisis – these may or may not have a justice perspective or an anti-capitalist analysis
Left groups: the people in the organizations in the left – these may or may not have the climate emergency in their agendas; they may be associations, informal groups, trade unions or political parties.
We consider ourselves as part of all these five categories in varying degrees. So our diagnosis is not about someone else, but about a larger we.1
| Diagnosis | Intervention | Tools | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Neutrals | frustration + apathy / disconnection (feeling trapped) | dramatization of the climate emergency as the current state of things | public disruption |
| The sympathetic | distancing / delegating | guilty vs. responsible | public disruption + talks |
| Protesters | despair / lack of vision | theory of change anchored in climate realism and honesty | The Disarmament Plan and the Peace Plan + discipline + integrity |
| Climate groups | lack of ambition (tacticism, “campaigning”) | The climate task is equivalent to system change | The Disarmament Plan and the Peace Plan + actions that disrupt destruction |
| Left groups | habits / conformism + centrism / cumplicity in neoliberalism | The climate deadlines are non-negotiable → Planning to win within climate deadlines | dramatization of climate emergency + organizational culture of risk-taking + actions that disrupt destruction |
The Neutrals
In the neutral part of the society, we identify frustration and apathy – a general sense of feeling trapped in the suffering and injustices – leading to disconnection.
Our intervention is dramatization of the climate emergency as the current state in which we live. We are asking the following question to ourselves and to everyone: what was it like to live in Germany in 1937? How was social consent generated? How would daily life look like? What are the mental frameworks people would use to justify the social peace and the generalized cumplicity culture? After all, currently, the governments and the corporations declared war against the people and the planet, killing and torturing not only some lefties and ethnic minorities but the majority of the world population through the climate collapse – gradually destroying everything we love and care for.
The tool we use for this dramatization looks very much like someone entering your house in the middle of the day shouting the house is on fire. Through public disruption, we foreshadow the ongoing civilizational collapse, with the invitation to stop, reprioritize and have a public debate. We ask: knowing what you know, what will you do?
The sympathetic
In the sympathetic part of the society, we identify an attitude of distancing and delegating. According to this attitude, the problem exists but someone else is supposed to solve it – maybe the companies, maybe the government, maybe the political parties or some other organizations, maybe even some other country (“what about China?”). Simultaneously, all of us know that they won’t solve it for us.
We say it as it is: the governments and the corporations declared war against the people and the planet. So our intervention is to make a clear distinction between the guilty and the responsibles. The governments and the corporations know what they are doing, and they brought us until here deliberately. Delegating our power to them is like petitioning a Ku Klux Klan officer to bring racial justice. We are all by ourselves. We are billions, and we are all by ourselves.
We make this distinction through public disruption actions as well as with the public talks. If we agree that the house is burning and if see the people with firefighter uniform are actually pouring gas on the fire under protection of police forces, then we cannot lose another second to join as many forces as possible among us to put a stop to it.
The protesters
Among protesters, we notice a general sense of despair fed by a lack of vision. This sometimes manifests itself as cynicism, sometimes as burnout.
The intervention needed is not just that we can in fact have a liveable planet but actually start building a theory of change anchored in climate realism and honesty.
We have three tools to make this intervention. First, the Disarmament Plan and the Peace Plan describe the exact logistics of the war that the governments and the corporations declared on the people and the planet. They are a result of a years-long movement learning process and they show what needs to happen for the state of war to stop and for a climate of peace to be instituted. Secondly, in our actions and our organization, we aim at integrity. We don’t use our words lightly, and we don’t avoid the horrifying reality nor the tough conversations it implies. Thirdly, we show discipline in all activities. We have our eyes on the ball: we have to stop this war and we have to stop it now; this is not a metaphor and we are serious in what we do.
The climate groups
In the climate movement, we see a general lack of ambition, trapped in tacticism and “campaigning”. The activists in the climate groups are aware that they don’t have strategies that could limit warming below 2ºC. They know it, and in fact everyone knows it. (This in turn is feeding cynicism in the protesters and apathy in the general public.)
We keep in check our own lack of ambition, by reminding ourselves that we failed so far. The emissions are still increasing geometrically. This is not acceptable. We cannot lie to ourselves or to the general public. The social, economic and political transformations necessary to maintain a liveable planet are tremendous. The climate task is equivalent to system change, so our strategies must be built accordingly.
To begin with, the Disarmament Plan and the Peace Plan demonstrate the size of the war machine that we have to dismantle. Then, the actions that disrupt destruction (private jets, bullshit flights, golf courses, fossil fuel companies, conferences led by the fossil fuel industry, etc.) are showcasing the actual to-do list for stopping the war.
The left
Within leftist groups, we identify two tendencies. (Once again, reminding that we notice these in ourselves too. In order not to confuse the subjects in the following statements, we will still refer to Climáximo as the “we”.)
Left groups have been repeating habits without checking their efficacy. Holding “the correct position” without a testable, refutable action plan to win that position is a form of conformism.
Additionally, without a winning strategy, the left has abandoned the position for a real alternative, which resulted in a void filled by the extreme-right. This puts the left in the same basket as the political centrism and thereby cumplices in neoliberalism, which in fact benefits the extreme-right narrative.
The intervention here is to create organizational cultures of breaking habits by acknowledging that we have failed so far. The climate deadlines are not negotiable. This is not to say other groups should necessarily become advocates of climate demands, they should however have their own plans to win their own struggles within climate deadlines (be them housing, gender justice, better living conditions, etc.).
To achive this intervention, we use a variety of practices. First of all, the dramatization is setting the tone for the state of emergency we should enter into as ordinary people as well as progressive organizations. The risk-taking (with the individual and organizational sacrifice we acknowledge as part it) is giving real content to the dramatization. Finally, the actions that disrupt the destruction are prefigurative elements of how to stop the state of war we currently live in.
So this is one way of explaining what we diagnosed in ourselves (as part of different categories), what interventions we identified to address them, and what tools and practices we use for that purpose.
When we do all of these, what is supposed to happen? How will these result in stopping the war?
The algorithm
A simplified way of explaining this is to tell a story of possibilities that open up, and new interactions and transformations that take place.
In this text, we will use the word “algorithm” for this story. Algorithm sounds like a linear and predetermined series of steps. We don’t think anything is linear nor predetermined. We use algorithm as a probable scenario that can be tested. At each step, everyone involved is making choices and decisions that affect the ourcomes. So we should be attentive and responsive to a changing environment.
You can think of it as the implementation rationale behind the diagnosis-intervention-tools section.
Step 1: Anchor and dramatize
This is both at the social and the movement levels. If the strategies of the existing movement are anchored poorly (not aiming at the necessary system change or not planning under the necessary deadlines), then the first step must include a new anchoring. If there is a false sense of peace in the society, then a necessary condition for change is to break it.
If you have seen a boat disanchoring, you know that it can be received as a violent act. Introducing a new anchor is a shift in the status quo – the status quo in our organizations and the personal frameworks each person has. Therefore the anchoring is accompanied by dramatization.
The governments and the corporations declared war against the people and the planet. This is not a metaphor. This is factual. So we all are operating in a state of war that we have to stop. This is the argument to win as the first step.
Step 2: Engagement and reconfiguration
The new anchor would be expected to have two outcomes.
We would expect general public engagement. We would see more public debate and a more visible polarization. Everyone would be challenged to take a side. Some oppositors would become more vocal (which should not be confused with alienating them, because they are oppositors to begin with). We would also see new moderate groups showing up in the movement. The degree in which we can influence this process is determined by our honesty, empathy, integrity and persistence.
We would also expect a reconfiguration in the movement. New radical groups might emerge. Some existing groups may shift towards the new anchor through a reorientation, others may just flip to the new framework. Some splits might happen within organizations, too.
A reconfiguration in the movement would not happen spontaneously. We acknowledge our agency in it, and we acknowledge our responsibility to make good proposals to the movement. This involves continued and intentional participation in networks, platforms and other collaborative spaces of the movement, where we hold a position of honesty, solidarity and transformation. We invite other groups to engage with the diagnoses and ask themselves if they also identify themselves in it, and we work closely with those who share the diagnoses. Also, we continue having meetings with various organizations and present the different interventions, to see if and how they would like to interact with them. This is not a complete task list (nor is the complete list of things we are doing for Step 2), it is just to state that we cannot shy away from our responsibility in making Step 2 happen and we have to be attentive to the context and our role and agency in it.
Step 3: A new movement ecology
The essential point in Step 2 is that we don’t expect Climáximo to stop the war by itself. We expect to provoke a social and movement-level transformation that would give rise to a movement that would win.
This new movement ecology would have ideological consolidation, establishing its vision and its task as a movement.
It would also set up ways of coordination among different groups. This coordination can take various forms, from joint actions and strategic alliances to more profound collaborations.
We would also expect some movement-level accountability structures, so as to create a transparent process of learning and change. This would be among groups as well as towards the general public.
At this point, we would also expect the emergence of a radical-flank of the movement.
Step 4: Victory in a complex reality
The winning (here used as a synonym to stopping the war) would be done by this movement. Various groups would invest resources in and build strategies for different opportunities and scenarios. In each such opportunity and scenario, they would aim at winning. Only some scenarios would come true and only some opportunities would arise, so the groups working on them would take the lead.
We don’t know how this step would actually look like, as no revolutionary change in history had a predictable, prescribed formula in advance.
The grand strategy of Climáximo is to do Step 1, contribute to Step 2, and participate in Step 3 with Step 4 on the horizon. So our grand strategy actually ends somewhere midway of Step 3. If we succeed and other groups and the people accept our proposal (all we are doing is proposals to the society, after all), we would have a completely new reality in which to operate. Then we would have to reflect again whether Climáximo is still relevant, if so then in which form, if not then whether we should transform ourselves again entirely.
This is the algorithm. It might not work. It might as well work. The point is that we are trying something new, and we can test its effectiveness.
We feel alive now. We are creating a working environment where we can be honest and daring – with ourselves, with each other and with the people we love and care for.
Step 0 for you is to join us. That might look like showing up in an activity of Climáximo, but it doesn’t have to be. Most of the times, it looks more like having difficult conversations with your comrades, exploring your emotions, your cultures and your analyses. The honesty with the present and the curiosity with the future is exactly how joining us looks like.
1 Therefore, this is not a Spectrum of Allies exercise. Although it might look similar, we are not drawing some movement map where we will locate where “others” are in relation to “us”. Instead, we are looking at social and movement ecosystems that we are inserted in.