Six Things Climate Campaigners Can do During COVID-19
Liz McDowell is the Director of Digital and Campaign Strategies at Stand.earth, where she spends her time building digital tools to grow community power and stop fossil fuel expansion. She was previously a Campaign Director at digital corporate campaigning organization SumOfUs.
As the world comes to a standstill to curb COVID-19, there’s a lot of confusion and changing information — and understandably so. We’re in untreaded waters, getting used to unfamiliar routines as we quickly learn new terms like “social distancing” and “self-isolation” and build up a repertoire of 20-second handwashing songs.
For those of us working on climate and environmental protection, it’s hard to know what the right thing is to do at this moment. Many of us are scrambling to adapt to these uncertain and quickly changing circumstances, our carefully laid-out organizational plans lying in tatters around us.
This is by no means exhaustive, but here are some ideas of how to move forward:
1. Educate, educate, educate
Right now, one of the best things any organization can do is share credible, factual information about COVID-19 and encourage people to practice social distancing to help slow the spread of the virus. (Speaking of which, here’s a super detailed explainer showing why early ‘social distancing’ intervention is so critical and here’s a “cattening the curve” graph for those who need something with more of a cute factor to convince the people around them.)
2. Throw your support to organizations on the frontlines
Now’s also the time to mobilize our resources to support community mutual aid groups and other frontline organizations fighting to protect vulnerable communities from this pandemic.
This crisis has laid bare just how interconnected we all are, and how truly our fate is bound up with each other. Service sector workers who can’t get paid time off will be forced to come to work sick, and people who can’t access proper testing and health care will unknowingly spread disease to those around them. We’re only as healthy as our healthcare systems and social safety nets, so let’s direct support to the groups fighting for health care, housing, universal basic income, rent relief and other progressive asks. Supporting these efforts will save lives.
3. Be vigilant against big oil bailouts
For environmental organizations in particular, we have a duty to make sure that while the world is (rightly) focused on slowing the spread of coronavirus, corporations and other decision-makers aren’t using this moment to drag their feet on climate action, push for massive government bailouts, or back away from their environmental commitments. In particular, we need to mobilize to make sure we’re bailing out workers, not billionaire oil and gas CEOs, and ensure that federal stimulus packages are climate-friendly.
4. Move your work online
This may feel obvious to say, but if you’re still requiring staff to come into work in person or planning activist rallies, you’re only furthering the spread of COVID-19.
As we gear up to spend more time at home, let’s make sure that social distancing doesn’t result in social isolation. For environmental organizations, this is a great moment to spend time with your staff, volunteers and broader community virtually, advocating for a climate-safe future and activating your online power while doing everything you can to keep communities healthy and safe over the coming weeks and months.
At Stand.earth, we told our community that while we’d be continuing to push for climate action and climate justice, we’d also be re-envisioning a lot of our tactics and shifting to entirely online spaces. Specifically, we’ll be experimenting with a shift from gathering in person at marches, rallies and actions to gathering in online spaces. Over the coming weeks, we’re planning to pilot online “ask me anything sessions” where people can get their campaign questions answered by staff and external speakers, explore the possibility of virtual lobbying meetings, and make space for deep online training and skills-building with community activists.
5. Recognize the hugeness of this moment
This is the really exciting part.
In this time of huge societal disruption, space is opening up for us to envision other ways of being with each other. Neighbourhood mutual-help groups have sprung up in every corner of the world, we’re interrupting our daily patterns of work, consumption and travel and, yes, we’re washing our hands a heck of a lot more often. All of these lessons (except that last one maybe, though it’s always good to wash your hands :p) are exactly the skills that we’ll need to tackle the climate crisis and build a world free from fossil fuels.
Now’s the time to think deeply about the world we want to rebuild when we all start to come out of self-isolation, and push for bigger, bolder change than we thought was possible before. In the absence of humans driving, flying, commuting and cruising, we’re already starting to see what the world looks like when we give space for the natural world to regenerate. To be clear, I don’t think of this as a ‘silver lining’, and I don’t want to minimize the devastation of what so many communities and countries are going through right now. But I do think it’s incredibly important to be intentional about what comes next, because something certainly will and it doesn’t have to be a return to status quo.
6. Bring a little hope, resolve and levity
And finally, it never hurts to share a little optimism, highlighting the real strength and resiliency to the human spirit that these unprecedented times have brought forward. This video of Wuhan residents cheering to each other from their balconies to “Stay strong” is a testament to it, as is this video of quarantined Italians singing to each other through their windows.
