Climate change is, in my opinion, the defining issue of our lifetimes. It looms over all else and everything comes back to it. I'm currently not engaged in any environmental work and it's really starting to bother me. How can I not be involved in the biggest issue of my lifetime!
However there aren't any socialist organizations in my area working on climate action. We're doing a lot of good work around Housing, Abortion, and LGBTQA+ currently. However I feel like those organizations are completely busy with those issues.
Would it be worthwhile to join a liberal environmental group? I have the time for more organizing if I want to prioritize it.
Depends what the liberals are doing about it tbh. If they’re doing good work then sure. You might even be able to radicalise some of em.
Good point. I was thinking about that as well.
I'll have to look into what exactly the groups in my area are doing and see if it's worth joining in.
Do you know of any mainstream groups that do decent work?
Can you let me know if you hear of any?
Also, here's a simple one that you can do with a couple of buddies: adopt a stream. I found an awesome guide to streamwalking that explains how to monitor a stream's health through observation. It's a small project compared to the systemic issues we face but somebody needs to do it.
No, they're worse than useless. They suck up activism and spit out 7-person letter writing campaigns.
If you have the option, join a socialist org and work on climate change there. Then it will be possible to coordinate multi-org campaigns where you bring a socialist bent but there will probably still be libs engaging in the action, libs from the orgs you're thinking about joining. But at least you get to guide the action in a less-liberal direction because there's like a 75% chance you'll be chair of ecosocialist whatever in your org within 3 months if you show up and do things. It's so much easier to get libs to do things if you're doing all the work from the left of them.
There's a small but significant chance that it will be thoroughly bought out at an ideological level by greenwashing :eco-porky: . I hope that's not the case, but if it is, your efforts may just become a marketing stunt for someone like :my-hero: .
Other comments are better then this one so...
The lib org, what are they doing and who are they doing it for? Answer those questions to help make your decision of whether you go join a socialist org that isn't centered around climate change BUT you take your own self education about climate issues and see in what ways things intersect between the two to offer adjustments to actions/policies OR go join the lib org for fits and shiggles.
the purpose of liberal environmental groups is to make their members feel better without threatening their own material privilege
Only if you want to be able to definitively answer "No." the next time someone asks if it's worthwhile to join a liberal environmental group.
