The Climate Crisis: A Retrospective
In the end, if anyone is left to write a history of the climate crisis, I believe it will be something like this.
[Please see the website at WeAreSaners.org and consider signing up for the email list at WeAreSaners.org/join.]
DARREN
“I’m the enemy. I was the CEO of an oil company. A big one. I was good at my job, or I thought I was. Truthfully, I now realize that I was about average. I wasn’t noticeably better than the guy who preceded me, or the fella who came after me, who replaced me when I resigned.”
NARRATOR
The climate crisis, which came to a climax in the late 2020s, was a tense, confusing and ultimately surprising time. We were all used to giant events and dominant authorities. They came in an endless stream — the resurgence of fascism, the virus, the militias, and The Storm.
Everything seemed deadly and violent and unstoppable.
Each day was more bad news, more to worry about, more to fear. We expected it to never end. Or, more accurately, we came to expect it to end — soon and badly.
DARREN
“It’s hard for ordinary people to understand what it’s like. What people in powerful positions do, and why they do it. Most people don’t realize we lived in a different world from the one they lived in. I was responsible for a huge enterprise and my job was to make money for shareholders. I wasn’t out to destroy the world.”
NARRATOR
Of course, people knew about the damage to the climate. Every day, more people saw it, experienced it, directly and personally.
By the 2020s, few denied it was a problem or that human activity was responsible. We all recognized that fossil fuels were toxic to humans, to animals, to Nature Herself.
Yet we were always told that solutions were on the way. It was reported as if it was a fact: we were in a transition to clean, renewable energy. World leaders would meet regularly and announce targets, treaties, projects. But no progress was visible.
Leaders and media spoke and acted as if the crisis wasn’t the end of the world. As if they would, ultimately, handle it. Despite all this talk, every year CO2 emissions increased, and we’d see more and worse extreme weather events.
ANNA
“We looked around. We saw climate activists. They were brave, daring, passionate. But they were being lambasted.”
“While the fossil fuel companies were building new pipelines and raping Alaskan wilderness, nobody paid attention. People were focused on the crazy people blocking highways and tossing soup onto paintings.”
DARREN
“What people never saw was that many of us were catching hell from our own children. My kids — well, they were adults by that time, but still my kids — understood that my work directly threatened them. Worse still, my work threatened their kids, my grandchildren.”
NARRATOR
A group, a very small group of people — people who had little in common except an awareness of the crisis and a realization that something different needed to be done — decided to try something different.
They called themselves The Saners.
ERNIE
“My grandma used to tell me ‘you catch more bees with honey.’ Now, I wasn’t a pacifist or anything. In fact, I was hopping mad. I’d yell at the TV and my face would get red, and that vein in my neck would bulge when those morons on the tube and on the internet blathered nonsense about the climate.”
“At the same time, I came to understand that my anger wasn’t accomplishing anything. When I found out about The Saners, I joined. We were going to spread honey, and just maybe, save the world.”
DARREN
“The Saners? I was hardly aware they existed. They kept sending flowers and notes. I never saw them. My secretary kept the flowers on her desk and she may have read the notes. I later heard that she saved those notes, that she was haunted by them.”
ANNA
“Part of the plan was to be the good guys, but also to be unpredictable. This gets attention. This builds suspense. That was fun but it put a lot of pressure on us. How can you be creative and imaginative all the time? We tried to develop the right activity and execute it well at each stage. As you know, we did not always get it right. But we got it done good enough. That’s what history shows. I mean we are all here aren’t we? And if the Earth is a lot less human-friendly than it was, at least it’s not on a downward spiral anymore.”
DARREN
“It wasn’t just my kids. We were catching flack from our shareholders, too. The biggest problems were from institutional shareholders. Retirees and others were very, very worried about their grand kids. If they lost a few dollars of income, but their children had a better future — well, that’s literally what they were living for. I got used to these pressures, which were countered by the pressure to make the quarterly targets. I kept going, doing what I was doing, for quite a long time.”
NARRATOR
From invisible nobodies to a force to contend with, the rise of The Saners was as quick as it was strange. Nonetheless, in the early days they were only a cultural force, without any credible political or policy influence.
ERNIE
“We executed a series of actions, sometimes multiple ones simultaneously. Everything was planned. Everything had a purpose. We wanted to loosen the commitment of various people and groups to the institutions and policies and practices and ideas that were promoting and protecting oil, and gas, and coal. And we wanted to awaken our natural allies who were sympathetic but inactive to actually take action. It was our job to give those people something meaningful to do.”
“People would rather play than work — so we imbued our actions with songs and artwork and theatrics. We were always playful, maybe needling our opponents a bit, but never angry and certainly never violent.”
“We didn’t aim to shock the world. We aimed to charm it.”
DARREN
“The executive suite is a bubble. In a way, we weren’t part of the world. I worked with people focused on oil and profits and controlling events. But still, we had families and we lived on Earth and…well, we read the papers. And our way of thinking and acting was becoming unpopular. And passé.”
“We started having problems, but we couldn’t pinpoint what exactly was happening. We later learned that their were secret work slowdowns and even ‘mistakes’ that were made intentionally. Our own workers — well, some of them — were sabotaging us. They never compromised safety, but they really began to hurt our bottom line. That was one of the effects of The Saners. We don’t know if the group carried out an operation to make this happen, or if they merely inspired it. But however it happened, it would not have happened without them.”
ANNA
“We had a broad tent. That was intentional. We didn’t want to be associated with any specific political party or ideology or sponsor. We couldn’t afford to be ‘us’ vs. ‘them.’ We needed to ensure that there was only us. You could join with us now, or do it later, but there was nowhere else to go if you loved life and your children and the planet we live on.”
“We wanted people who would do things. So, we encouraged and enlisted activists who were on either side of every major issue. People who were terribly divided over nearly everything else were united in wanting a habitable planet and a viable future for our species.”
ERNIE
“What I remember most about it now was how it all felt. There was a vibe, and we all felt it, and it wasn’t in our imagination — it was real. That’s why our movement generated all those songs, and artwork and all kinds of creative expression. We knew who we were and what we wanted, and what we wanted was good for everyone. Our opponents were cynical and dismissive, and they thought we were powerless and foolish and naive. But how angry could they get at someone who’s sending them flowers?”
DARREN
“They were kind of charming. But it wasn’t all about The Saners’ movement. I was getting pushed and pulled simultaneously by various forces. The climate disasters got bigger and more frequent, just as scientists — including our own scientists — warned. That added intensity all around. Finally, even some members of our own board started sounding shaky about our expanded and ongoing drilling. The culture was changing and nobody was immune.”
ANNA
“One of the barriers to change, and one of the secrets, is that nobody wants to go first. It’s scary. It’s uncomfortable. If you speak out when others remain silent, if you go first, you are out there alone. You’re exposed and vulnerable. You’re afraid of being a laughingstock.”
“Maybe we were brave. Or maybe we were just more afraid of what we were seeing happening to our planet. Maybe we were more terrified of a future cut short. For whatever reason, some of us were ready to go first. The first actions were hard, but they got easier because more people joined, because it was easier to be second. And once our actions became common, nobody was afraid to stand up and be counted.”
DARREN
“One day I woke up and I felt like a robber baron from the 19th century. I was completely out of step with the world. Throughout the fossil fuel industry, people were walking off the job and being welcomed by, even lionized, by The Saners. People everywhere were speaking out, people who you would never expect to change. Even one of our board members publicly stated that we need to get out of the oil business. It was shocking to me. To everyone.”
“These changes weren’t just happening in America. They were happening on every continent. Maybe it shouldn’t have been surprising. Much of the world had been transformed by activists, by ordinary people learning that they had power even without formal authority. The Saners quickly became an international movement. As they themselves said, global problems require global solutions.”
ERNIE
“We usually operated in small groups, often as little as two or three people. We were widespread and thin. Everybody remembers the mass protests, from Buenos Aires to Beijing. But they forget that this only happened at the end. Those mass protests didn’t bring down the old ways. Those protests essentially announced that the old ways were over. That we were going to protect people, plants, animals and not profits.”
DARREN
“I’m proud that I quit, and that I spoke out and that I urged shareholders to use their power to close down the company, and for our people to go elsewhere and use their expertise to help in the worldwide emergency program. It was time to fix the damage.”
“Of course, I wish I’d acted sooner. The delays by me and by others made things worse. Even today, and for a long time in the future, we will continue to feel the consequences of our delay. But I understand where I was, and why it was so hard for me to see and to change. I have regrets, but I have some pride about how I handled things, too.”
ANNA
“Yes, we celebrated. We had succeeded and the worldwide emergency climate program was a reality. But that wasn’t the end. We protected that program, aided it, made sure that it wasn’t diverted, co-opted or crippled. We needed that program to actually work, to get results.”
“We know that, historically, other movements disbanded once victory seemed apparent. And that’s when all the gains were lost. WE weren’t going to do that. Maybe I’m prouder of that than anything else.”
NARRATOR
We are here, on a damaged Earth — but one still capable of supporting life, and doing it fairly well — although less well than before.
Our biosphere is permanently damaged but livable. What’s better, much better, is our way of living on this crippled Earth. We have better values and better ways. More life and less stuff. A smaller population, but a happier one.
Because we produce healthy food, medicine, shelter and not much else, we work less. And our work is actually meaningful and worthwhile. Best of all, people have less stress and more time. Time to walk and think and share and express themselves. Time to be together.
We have a new appreciation of our planet and each other. It’s common for people on every continent to stand together quietly in the early evening, and simply watch the sunset.
It’s a new world. A better world. It was always there, within our reach. We just needed to take it.
[Note: I think this could be a Saners film. If you are capable of making this into a short movie, please let me know in the comments.]
