The Nation - 07.10.2019

4 By the Numbers: Jordan

Valley; 8 Comix Nation:

Matt Bors; 11 Snapshot:

Rio Pardo

3 Strike for the Planet

Bill McKibben

4 Snowden Speaks

D.D. Guttenplan

4 Making the World

Safe for Brand Trump

Michael T. Klare

5 The Score

Mike Konczal

6 Q&A: Naomi Klein

COLUMNS

10 Subject to Debate

Exonerating

Aunt Lydia

Katha Pollitt

11 Deadline Poet

New Air Force

Anthem

Calvin Trillin

Features

12 Love at First Byte

Edward Snowden

The whistleblower reflects

on the potential and peril

of the early days of the

Internet. An exclusive

excerpt from his new

memoir, Permanent Record.

16 Climate Injustice

Hits Home

Daniel Judt

Trapped between

the effects of climate

change—and the

causes—a Senegalese

town fights for its life.

22 The Below 2 Degree

Road Map

Zoë Carpenter

The United States will

be a nonentity at this

fall’s UN climate summit.

But the 2020 election

is a chance to change

the game.

Books & the Arts

27 The Very Soul of

the Republic

Eric Foner

31 A Man’s World

Clio Chang

34 Either This World

or the Next

Peter E. Gordon

VOLUME 309, NUMBER 8,

OCTOBER 7, 2019

The digital version of this issue is

available to all subscribers

September 24 at TheNation.com

Cover illustration by Philip Burke.

Strike for the Planet

A

year ago, inspired by Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thun-

berg, young people around the world began climate

striking—walking out of school for a few hours on Fri-

days to demand action against the global warming that

darkens their future. In March, when 1.4 million kids around the world

walked out of school, they asked for adults to join

them next time. That next time is September 20 (in

a few countries, September 27), and it is shaping up

to be the biggest day of climate action in the planet’s

history. Everyone from the members of big trade

unions to over 1,200 workers at Amazon’s headquar-

ters, and from college students to senior citizens, will

be setting the day aside to rally in cities and towns

for faster action from the world’s governments and

industries. You can find out what’s happening in

your community at globalclimatestrike.net.

But it will be a success on the scale

we need only if lots of people who aren’t

the usual suspects join in. Many people,

of course, can’t do without a day’s pay

or work for bosses who would fire them

if they missed work. So it really matters

that those of us with the freedom to rally

do so. Since I published the first book

for a general audience on climate change

30 years ago this month, I’ve had lots of

time to think about the various ways to

move people to action. Let me offer a few:

§ Strike, because the people who did the least

to cause this crisis suffer first and worst. The peo-

ple losing their farms to desert and watching their

islands sink beneath the waves aren’t the ones who

burned the coal and gas and oil.

§ Strike, because coral reefs are so gloriously

beautiful and complex—and so vulnerable.

§ Strike, because we’ve already lost over half

the animals on the planet since 1970; the earth is a

lonelier place.

§ Strike, because our governments move with

such painful slowness, treating climate change as, at

worst, one problem on a long list.

§ Strike, because this could be a great

opportunity—and maybe the last opportunity—to

transform our society toward justice and toward joy.

Green New Deals have been proposed around the

world, and they are a way forward.

§ Strike, because forests now seem like fires

waiting to happen.

§ Strike, because young people have asked us

to. In a well-ordered society, when kids make a

reasonable request, their elders should say yes—in

this case with real pride and hope that the next gen-

erations are standing up for what matters.

§ Strike, because half the children in Delhi

have irreversible lung damage simply from breath-

ing the air.

§ Strike, because Exxon and the rest

knew all about global warming in the

1980s, then lied so they could keep cash-

ing in.

§ Strike, because what we do this

decade will matter for hundreds of thou-

sands of years.

Strike, because the temperature has

hit as high as 129 degrees Fahrenheit (or

54 degrees Celsius) in big cities in recent

summers. The human body can survive

that, but only for a few hours.

§ Strike, because the United Nations estimates

that unchecked climate change could create 1 bil-

lion refugees by 2050.

§ Strike, because the big banks continue to lend

hundreds of billions of dollars to the fossil fuel in-

dustry; people are literally trying to get rich off the

destruction of the planet.

§ Strike, because what animal fouls its own nest?

§ Strike, because indigenous people around the

world are trying to protect their rightful land from

the coal and oil companies—and in the process

protect all of us.

§ Strike, because science is real, because physics

exists, because chemistry matters.

§ Strike, so you can look your grandchild—or

anyone else’s—in the eye.

§ Strike, because the world we were given is still

so sweet. BILL MCKIBBEN FOR THE NATION

The Nation.

since 1865

UPFRONT

EDITORIAL