Climate defense is national defense. It’s an indisputable truth from which action implications follow. Most obviously, we must defend the climate because it’s in our interest to do so. As its climate deteriorates, our country becomes increasingly hard to inhabit and our lives correspondingly embittered by hardship. In the extreme case, when our climate will no longer support human life in North America, those still alive will be unable to inhabit this continent. So in defending the climate, we are literally fighting for our lives. Gay or straight, Republican or Democrat, Black, brown or white—everyone shares an interest in climate defense.
Surprisingly, our shared interest in survival is not enough to motivate Americans to come together around a serious defense of our climate. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Steven Koonin explained it this way: “The energy transition’s purported climate benefits are distant, vague and uncertain while the costs and disruption of rapid decarbonization are immediate and substantial.” Quite true, but it is also true that the costs of climate change fall unevenly upon the American population. As the climate deteriorates, some people’s welfare deteriorates faster than other people’s. If your house is destroyed by a tornado, you lose. If your farm fails because of drought, you lose. By ignoring climate defense for decades, our legislatures condemned some farms to fail and some houses to destruction that might otherwise have been saved. That policy of governmental inaction avoids sacrifices that would inconvenience those it does not benefit. To save your farm or your house, legislatures might raise taxes on gasoline, thus compelling your neighbors to drive less. But governments haven’t done that. Those houses and farms are sacrificed to spare inconvenience to their owners’ neighbors.
This is why climate defense cannot run on shared interest alone. Whether we are defending our country against a military aggressor or a deteriorating climate, any national defense imposes sacrifices that will only be accepted when citizens make an emotional commitment to the cause. Call that commitment by its old-fashioned name: patriotism.
When we defend our country against foreign invaders, some will sacrifice more than others. On Memorial Day, we honor those who sacrificed the most. Their example reminds us that it’s everyone’s patriotic duty to willingly sacrifice for our national defense. During World War II, legislatures rationed gasoline. Civilian vehicles were allowed three or four gallons of gas a week. There was also a 35-mph speed limit and an outright ban on non-essential driving. Despite the personal inconvenience, the war generation supported this policy out of patriotism, and so we won the war.
It’s no different with climate defense, which requires Americans to make an emotional commitment to our common interest: a sustainable future. To defend our climate, sacrifices will be required, and these sacrifices will affect some more than others. People whose livelihood depends on petroleum will suffer more inconvenience in the transition to renewable energy than will those who will just pay more for their groceries. The old will suffer less than the young. Childless adults have less at stake in a sustainable future than do parents of small children. The rich have less to fear than the poor. Arkansas will deteriorate more slowly than Florida. Arguments based only on personal interest won’t engage everyone, but a successful climate defense requires that everyone be on board. For this reason, climate defense must become a patriotic duty as well as a shared interest.
Unfortunately, many Americans still view climate change through the spectrum of personal interest. They do not yet understand that climate defense is a patriotic duty for which all must willingly sacrifice personal convenience, when and as necessary. Some will do more than others, but refusing to do one’s part is unpatriotic and shameful.
When advocating for climate defense, we have the right and even the obligation to ask others to make an emotional commitment to this cause. Please explain to someone who does not yet understand it why climate defense is a patriotic duty. That’s your patriotic duty.
Ivan Light is a retired professor of sociology from U.C.L.A. who resides in Inverness. He edits the bi-weekly Climate Defenders newsletter at https://ivanlight.substack.com.