The Impossible Revolution - Stolen Future, Broken Present: The Human Significance of Climate Change - page 64

that it will not cease until its specific demands regarding climate change are
met —transform our political idiom, crack open our encrusted collective
discourse, and force a decision of some kind on climate change, whatever
it might be?
he answer, I think, is no. Activists have not atempted to organize a
protest on this basis, or even considered it, for several reasons. For one
thing, doing so does not respect the principle that political demands in
this country must be moderate, respectful, and measured—that even if
voices for change may not be heard at first, they will be listened to eventu-
ally. A massive crowd that demands change before it disbands implies that
the duly elected government is so neglectful of the collective interest that
it cannot be trusted to act on that interest in its own good time . hat crowd,
in short, would atempt to usurp the popular legitimacy of the govern-
ment itself. Such a tactic cuts deeply against the American grain; at least
over the past century, we have accepted the notion that a constitutionally
legitimate government is legitimate in other ways as well, that in the end
it will serve the common good. To suggest otherwise would come across
as the height of arrogance, for it would seem to atack democracy itself.
As a result, no one who believes in the urgency of action contemplates
a tough, uncompromising rally of this kind; we all in practice accept
the authority of this government, come what may—even if its policies
endorse market activities that are destroying the Earth.
But the consequences of that loyalty are stark. In effect, we put the
viability of our political system above the viability of the biosphere; our
political systems are more real to us than the Earth itself . In effect, we live in
a political, as well as an economic, bubble. If climate change increasingly
reveals that our policies do not make sense, we still accept the authority
of this government and continue to pursue a moderate kind of activism,
as if the biosphere can wait while our officials dither.
As a nation, then, we have two overpowering reasons why we have not
acted. First, we do not wish to burst the free-market bubble, our belief
that the Earth is here to sustain economic growth. Giving up this belief is
very difficult for a good portion of the American public. But even those
who give it up accept the habits of moderate protest because they do not
wish to burst the political bubble, the nearly unanimous belief that this
government will in time represent the best interests of us all. Even if the