Climate Movement is Not Ready for Primetime

Here’s one reason why, drily put by Matthew Yglesias:

I keep meaning to write something about the Tar Sands Action protests that had been going on by the White House and then I keep forgetting.

That’s pretty much been my excuse, too. The point being, it didn’t live up to the hype.

Yglesias goes on to explain why’s he not wowed by the civil disobedience element of the protest. (Others were more impressed, understandably so.) His headline reads:

Climate Civil Disobedience Has a Long Way to Go

That’s another way of saying, The Climate Movement Has a Long Way to Go.

Sorry, not to take anything away from the passion of the people involved, and I know that over 1200 were arrested during the recent two-week protest, but I honestly expected waves of climate concerned to descend on Washington D.C. (And BTW, where were the Gristies? Climate change is a signature theme for the bloggy green site. I had figured some of them would have shown up to cover it live, or maybe even get arrested.) I also thought that climate change was the issue of the day for today’s college students, so I kinda expected that there would be a small army of them camping out in front of the White House during the protest.

Oh, well. What will be interesting to see going forward is if McKibben and company can build on their modest achievement and turn the climate movement into something that has more bite than bark.

**For some larger context on the proposed pipeline that is the object of ire, see here (Bryan Walsh), here (Michael Levi), and here (Andy Revkin).