Climate Insurgency: A Strategy for Survival

by Jeremy Brecher

Twenty-five years of human effort have failed even to slow climate change, let alone reverse it. Climate Insurgency lays out a strategy for protecting the earth's a global nonviolent constitutional insurgency. This short book starts with a brief history of official climate protection efforts "from above" and non-governmental ones "from below" that explains why climate protection has failed so far. Then, it proposes a global nonviolent insurgency for climate protection to overcome that failure. Historian and longtime activist Jeremy Brecher presents a public trust doctrine that can legitimate global climate insurgency in national and international law. He shows how to make national economies climate-safe and points the way toward justly distributing the global costs and benefits of climate protection. In addition, he lays out a new strategy to make governments and economies meet their obligations to protect the climate.

Genres: Nonfiction

170 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Soph Nova · Rating 3 out of 5]

This read like an extended whitepaper/advertisement to join 350.0rg - except it was a whitepaper formulated before the 2016 elections and 350's frantic electoral turn. Text below from the original conclusion is especially prescient:

'Such insurgent actions can be mutually supportive with other forms of action. They can stimulate those who choose to work within established channels like electoral politics and lobbying to recognize what is necessary for genuine climate protection, even while they fight for measures that go only a small way toward solving the problem. The insurgency can encourage those who are acting here and now in civil society to convert their own lives and communities to a climate-safe basis. These "inside" and "outside" forces can be linked by coordinating networks that make their efforts synergistic and focus their power on institutions that need to be changed.'

This is why we cannot take half-meausures and talk about an 'insurgency' that relies on the legal and extralegal frameworks set up in service of capital. This is why we must fight for a revolutionary horizon, nothing lest. Transitional demands laid here will get us part, maybe most of the way there - but our horizon MUST be one of socialism.

(also 350 didn't invent decentralized organizing, which the author doesn't explicitly claim, but one could easily make that assumption if this was their introduction to the climate movement. There are many other organizations that deserve just as many, if not more words in the history laid out here.)

[Rohit · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent overview of the history of global efforts around climate change mitigation, and the progressive activist movement around climate change, with some somewhat interesting ideas around what a global movement against climate change should look like. Good as an introductory text, but perhaps a little boring if you are already fairly knowledgeable about the climate justice movement and the overall state of climate change and mitigation efforts. This book probably would have been better if it was longer, so that it could elaborate more about theories of social change and social movements, or if it focused on a particular audience more.

[Amid · Rating 2 out of 5]

It offers a good overview of the climate movement and the sorts of actions taking place around the globe. But I can't understand why he insists on legal disobedience and nonviolence action.

[Ceren Özcan · Rating 5 out of 5]

İklim krizine karşı alınması gereken eylemleri anlatmadan önce şimdiye kadar yapılanları, başarıları ve başarısızlıkları değerlendiriyor. Daha sonra nasıl bir iklim direnişi sergilemeliyiz irdeliyor. Ben oldukça başarılı buldum. Fikir verici bir kitap.