Only Emergency Mobilization Can Protect Humanity Now

By Margaret Klein Salamon, PhD

Executive Director, Climate Emergency Fund

Our Theory of Change: Movements change the world.

Women’s rights. Civil rights. Overthrowing dictators. The abolition of slavery. History tells us that social movements fundamentally change what is possible. In the digital age, such movements can gain momentum quickly.

President Biden and the Democratic Party are moving in the right direction, but they are not going fast enough. By supercharging activism, we both push them, and governments around the world, towards greater ambition.

Movements break mass denial.

There is a mass psychological phenomenon happening called "the bystander effect" or "pluralistic ignorance." Humans evaluate risk socially, not rationally. We look to each other to see whether there is an emergency. When everyone around you is acting "normal," you assume there must not be an emergency.

Protest, direct action, disruptive tactics, non-violent civil disobedience — these events wake people up. They disrupt business as usual. Continued disruption by activists can pierce the bystander effect and produce the kind of thought and focused change we need.

 The movement needs philanthropic support.

“Often, there are only a select few funders who have seeded social movements before the movements have reached their zenith. These funders identified opportunities for mobilization early and backed leaders at risky moments. Because of their prescient judgement, they had a disproportionate impact on the development of key movements and saw their support yield historic change.” -- Paul Engler, 2018 Funding Social Movements

The climate emergency movement is shockingly underfunded. Climate only gets 2% of philanthropic dollars.1 The vast majority of that goes into technology, research, implementation, and policy development and advocacy. Only a tiny amount goes to the grassroots. And only a small amount of grassroot funding goes to the vanguard, the groups demanding the politically “impossible” with brave tactics and changing the narrative.

With a Democratic government for the first time in years, and COP 26 coming up in November, it is a critical time that the movement demonstrates strength, power, and numbers this year.

Movements always struggle with funding, and philanthropists willing to fund movements can have a huge impact.

It’s a climate emergency. We need to act like it.

“It’s worse, much worse, than you think.” -- David Wallace Wells

Warming is accelerating, as feedback loops — such as megafires — are beginning. Industries should have stopped burning fossil fuels and pursuing carbon intensive agriculture decades ago. We need to eliminate emissions as quickly as humanly possible and draw down excess carbon from the atmosphere.

There are layers of denial and euphemism in the climate conversation. Billions of dollars have been spent by the fossil fuel industry to mislead and minimize the emergency. Climate organizations themselves are often hesitant about telling the whole truth.

Humans have lots of psychological defenses that help us avoid painful realities. The truth is the earth is already dangerously hot. At just 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming, we are already seeing droughts leading to crop loss, mass migration, and state failure, mega-fires, and superstorms.2

We fund the vanguard of the climate movement.

Our grantees are making the public, and the government and media, reckon with the climate emergency. They demand ultra-ambitious policy solutions. They take part in protests, disruption, direct action, strikes, identifying and calling out the wrongdoers, and other activities that can help wake up and engage the public.

We operate in “Emergency Mode”.

During WWII, we transformed our entire economy and society in just a few years, from a consumer economy to a war economy. We need to treat this like the existential threat that it is and reach zero emissions as quickly as humanly possible.

Therefore, CEF operates in a state of emergency. We spend everything we have; we do not sit on funds — we get money out the door responsibly and quickly — again, because this is an emergency. We are nimble, turning around grants to activists quickly. We hit the ground running in July 2019 and have given out close to 50 grants.

Support the movement, through us.

We operate as a 501c3, which means we provide tax treatment that donors will not get from giving to organizations directly such as Extinction Rebellion. We provide protection for donors. We can give to both individuals and organizations, in the US and internationally, and we rigorously vet all grantees. We have a robust legal team and grant-making process in place. We take on the risk for donors so that they can give for maximum impact without risk.