Chants ranging from a call to confront violence against Native women, free Palestine, and tackle the climate crisis rang out during January's MLK March in San Antonio, Texas. Increasingly, the line between historical interest areas such as civil rights, rights of Mother Earth, labor, and opposition to authoritarian regimes (foreign and domestic) are blurring. Image: Greg Harman
Editor’s Note: The following piece represents the views of our San Antonio Organizer and Deceleration writer, Greg Harman
We've expected global shocks like this. Warned of them. Seen evidence of their imminent arrival in ever-strengthening storms and extreme regional droughts. But it's COVID-19's lethality closing borders around the world, shutting down transportation, businesses, and schools that is now exposing the frailties of our political and social networks. While the climate justice community at large saw these vulnerabilities clearly, a knowledge animating many of our work in partner campaigns demanding things like mandatory paid sick time and health care for all, it wasn't pandemic that we all necessarily expected to test them first. At least it wasn't the simmering fire that had my attention.
The medical establishment, intelligence communities, and a variety of think tanks have been warning for years of a global pandemic on its way, unavoidable and requiring serious preparation. (We all know how that went over inside the Trump Administration.) But in the stable of potentially life-eradicating crises jockeying for preeminence: nuclear war, artificial intelligence, climate crisis, nanotech, ecological collapse, etc., pandemic also wasn't top of mind for the folks running the Doomsday Clock either. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists focused on nuclear war, climate chaos, and “corruption of the information ecosphere,” when they pushed the 2020 secondhand forward to 100 seconds to midnight.
In their refusal to respond to this coronavirus threat in proactive and assertive ways, our elected leaders have exposed their sustained rejection of equity and longstanding contributions to the brittleness of our social infrastructure. And we see its most brutal hand in recent conversations asserting—confronted by extreme medical alarm—that rescuing the economy takes priority over keeping people safe.
In San Antonio, I have been mulling for nearly two months how to frame an update on progress on the struggle for climate justice, in our effort to transition off of our final remaining coal plant, for instance. And there are important updates to offer.
Since putting climate action planning in motion way back in 2017, Mayor Ron Nirenberg has been largely distant if not absent from the cobbling together of an imperfect result. However, with passage of the plan (delayed twice, in part, the thinking surely went, to help get him squeak out a slim reelection victory) and a set goal of nearly 45 percent greenhouse gas pollution reduction by 2030, the Mayor finally kicked into gear. Declaring a climate emergency last year, donning our own “San Antonio Demands Climate Action Now” buttons, and even celebrating our city's course here “in the backyard of the Eagle Ford shale,” he has seized the mantle of a climate mayor and—we hope—all that entails.
Results have been apparent at City-owned CPS Energy, where he holds an ex officio station on the Board of Trustees. There are public comments at the start of every—now live streamed—board meeting; an assertion of his desire for every future generation purchase to be renewable; the current replacing of a planned 500 MW gas purchase with an open-ended request for proposals from the market, which could lead to a gas replacement. And now our first rate advisory committee is under construction—the idea that, be it COVID-19 or climate or, most likely, the mashup of the two and more besides, we must protect the most vulnerable from potential increases in power costs as we advance this agenda of rapid decarbonization of our economy.
In light of current panic buying, empty streets, and fears over inadequate medical supplies (and space) in the pandemic that has the world on its heels, the gains seem almost quaint. We see now what is required from a truly fearsome, immediate intruder putting our families—particularly, again, those already skating at the edge of health and economic stability—in danger. And we weigh what happens when a serious threat is taken seriously against our collective response to the (by comparison) “slowly” gathering truly existential climate catastrophe. We find here another great disparity.
In San Antonio, we can already sense summer—the other season here in South Texas, sandwiching our four months of fall in a reliably brutal grip—starting to awaken. In my conversations with my friends and allies, I hear many wondering how high the temperatures will go this year, after so much escalation and broken heat records. It is leading us to worry about the potential for colliding drought and fire and migrating populations even as a novel new virus smolders amongst us.
And so even as we talk about “social distancing” we long for connection and the sense of security that can provide. The challenge for the time being is how to create that connectedness. Of course, many have rushed online, to an expected overcrowding of the bandwidth. To create spaces for folks to gather, reflect, find courage (and, for those with a bit of excess, share some of their own), many are also organizing forums and group live streams.
This is where Deceleration went, a digital magazine begun by my wife and myself that is dedicated to uncovering the roots of our colliding global crises. We launched this developing series even as our attention is drawn to daily survival needs of the moment. I see the same expansion of mission at the historically hyper focused Texas Climate News. To build and sustain community, or a small corner of it, Deceleration are talking with folks in public health, urban growing, food distribution, and folks advocating for workers, immigrants, and the incarcerated, among many others.
Our mission, like that of the Sierra Club for whom I work, is informed by an understanding that the drive for a thriving biosphere, for justice and liberation, for human health and wellbeing, for equitable opportunities to live full and fruitful lives is mirrored by the powers of oppression seeking to undermine this vision—by corrupt systems of governance designed to pass upward and horde the world's wealth among the very few—in one critical way: It honors no boundaries. Nor will we. We will not “stay in our lane,” as the admonishment goes.
COVID-19 may not be a climate crisis, but it is intrinsically tied to our rapacious assault upon our planet. And it betrays the deep systemic failures punishing all of us, with those least able to withstand economic and social disruption suffering the quickest and the deepest. In that way, there is another perfect mirror for all manifestations of crisis. And so it is into those roots that we must burrow now to find and detangle the shared agreements that nourish us from the assumed dominance of all forms of authoritarianism keeping us from realizing a world of vast possibility and love. It's a joyful project that can't be overwhelmed by tragedy. Because we know what success looks like. It's one we achieve together in common care. Todos juntos.
Be safe. Be well. Do good.