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Does it include Bill McKibben, the elder states- Remember as well that there are degrees of 2
man of the climate movement who wrote his complicity. Without structural changes paid for
first book about climate change in 1989? How collectively, most of us have no alternative but to
about Greta Thunberg, the 15-year-old girl cur- use fossil fuels to some degree. As individuals,
rently sitting outside the Swedish Parliament on we must do the very best we can. But con-
a school strike demanding that her government strained choices are not akin to the unthinking
implement policies that actually end fossil-fuel complicity of the 10 percent who produce
production, distribution, and consumption? 50 percent of global emissions every year by tak-
Does it include the indigenous peoples who ing multiple long-haul flights for pleasure travel,
lived in harmony with their ecosystems for gen- heating their homes instead of putting on a Section 1 / Understanding and Analyzing Evidence
erations upon generations? Does it include our sweater, and driving swollen SUVs that they
children? replace every few years. Nor are constrained
Look, I understand that the we seems real. 5 choices akin to the deep and shameful complic-
The fossil-fuel economy, for the moment, pro- ity of the many in the print and television news
vides the structure for what people do on this media who refuse to mention climate change
planet. In its inclusions and exclusions, its laying even in the stories about climate change effects
out the conditions of possibility for human they’re already reporting.
action, it seems totalizing, especially from a Complicit people and institutions must be
middle-class American vantage point. But it’s called out and encouraged to change. And the
not totalizing. And it’s certainly not eternal. It fossil-fuel industry must be fought, and the gov-
requires active reproduction at every moment in ernments that support the fossil-fuel economy
time: through subsidies, through construction must be replaced. But none of us will be effec-
and repair of its infrastructure, through court tive in this if we think of climate change as
cases that uphold its laws, through protection of something we are doing. To think of climate
its “assets” by the military, through Instagram change as something that we are doing, instead
photos that pretend its benefits will bring you of something we are being prevented from
joy, and on and on. undoing, perpetuates the very ideology of the
Instead of thinking of climate change as fossil-fuel economy we’re trying to transform.
something we are doing, always remember that Climate change may well inspire a reckoning 10
there are millions, possibly billions, of people on for you about what it means to be human and
this planet who would rather preserve civiliza- what your morals are. Fine. But always remem-
tion than destroy it with climate change, who ber: This is a battle against the forces of destruc-
would rather have the fossil-fuel economy end tion to save something of this achingly beautiful,
than continue. Those people are not all mobi- utterly miraculous world for your children. The
lized, by any means, but they are there. Most fossil-fuel industry and the governments that
people are good. support it are literally colluding to stop you from
But remember, too, that there are others, creating a world that runs on safe energy. They
some of them running the world, who seem to are trying to maintain the fossil-fuel economy. As
be willing to destroy civilization and let millions for me, and for the millions of people who want
of people die in order that the fossil-fuel econ- to undo climate change, I say: We are against
omy continue now. We know who those people them, and we are going to fight for dear life.
are. We are not those people. 2018

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