The End of Small Thinking

Hurricanes, Climate, and Capitalism

Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash

Hurricane Milton began developing almost instantaneously after the flooding of Hurricane Helene had finally washed away, carrying with it whole towns and over 200 lives. People in North Carolina, swathes of Appalachia, and across the Southeast, including countless people who never expected a hurricane to devastate their communities so far inland, have not had a moment to breathe as they try to clear debris, find the missing, and feed and house their neighbors. Now, less than two short weeks later, Milton is about to crash into Florida’s western shore. After an astounding acceleration, where wind speeds jumped 90mph in just 24 hours, the storm will likely cascade across much of Florida as a massive category 5 hurricane.

Much of Florida is still reeling from Helene, and now over a million people have been told to evacuate. But an even greater number are at risk. As The Guardian details, “The mayor of Tampa, which is low-lying and has a population of 3.3 million, issued a stark warning to residents as Hurricane Milton dashed across the Gulf of Mexico:

‘If you choose to stay … you are going to die.’” 

There are just one, or two, problems here. As we saw in North Carolina, some bosses are telling people in Florida that they won’t be able to leave work until the hurricane makes landfall. And we know that’s far too late for people to evacuate; it doesn’t give people time to make it to safety. In North Carolina, the immediately infamous Impact Plastics didn’t let workers leave the plant until the last minute. Six workers died. The founder has since released a video saying that he gave workers a whole 45 minutes, and claiming that none died “on company property.” I will refrain from giving you my full thoughts on the man, as I want to keep publishing this newsletter, but suffice it to say not everyone is able to evacuate when climate disasters loom.

One refrain I’ve seen, in response to people being told by their bosses that they can’t leave, is something like “just get out of there, another job will come along but you only have one life.” And in some sense, that’s true. But we live in a world where missing a paycheck could mean ending up homeless in the wake of a hurricane. And what if they miss two, or three? What if that new job doesn’t magically come along? What if, in the wake of the hurricane, folks have gigantic bills they’re unable to pay? The reality is that our country’s safety net is severely lacking. People can’t count on being taken care of if they lose their jobs, and that’s by design. Desperately needing our jobs ties us to our employers. Without them, most of us wouldn’t have healthcare, housing, or any of our most basic needs met. That’s the stick held over our heads in this capitalist system, and it’s a powerful one.

Another group of people not only can’t afford to lose their jobs, they can’t afford to flee at all. Evacuations can cost several thousand dollars between hotels, gas, and missed wages. It’s been difficult to discuss this reality in the midst of inane right-wing discourse that says FEMA is killing people, barricading regions, and prioritizing immigrants over U.S. citizens. It’s important to dismantle these fascist narratives that use climate crises to scapegoat migrants and those trying to save lives, instead of confronting the reality of climate change, the fossil fuel industry, and capitalism. But it’s also important to not stop at combating far-right talking points. These twisted ideas proliferate in part because people lack an adequate framework for understanding what’s happening. Other factors, like anti-immigrant thinking, racism, and antisemitism factor in, but they grow on fertile ground because there’s not a robust understanding of the climate crisis in the minds of too many people.

Photo by USGS on Unsplash

There are plenty of reasons that the climate crisis is difficult to understand, difficult to process, or simply rejected by millions of people. The endless fossil fuel propaganda doesn’t help, and too few people are aware that Big Oil has known exactly how they’re hurting us for the past 50 years. The politicians they’ve paid off don’t help either, but I think there’s still more to it. Namely, small thinking in the form of “carbon footprints” and paper straws rings empty and hollow to most people. We see private jets and oil companies making hundreds of billions and are told that our choice to drive a Prius is really what matters. It’s not that those small choices don’t matter at all, it’s that they pale in comparison to scope of the problem and the systems at play. Oh, and the fossil fuel industry coined the “carbon footprint” idea. As Rebecca Solnit says, they came up with that term "to blame us for their greed."

And it is greed that’s led to this climate crisis, to this catastrophic flooding, to island nations steadily being lost to the sea, to wildfires covering much of North America in smoke. Most people don’t know the exactly details, but what they do have is a strong sense that things are wildly out of whack. This sense manifests in conspiratorial thinking, often, and one response is to play whack-a-mole, coming down on one outlandish idea in the hopes that somehow, someday you’ll have whacked the last mole. But it just doesn’t work that way. Conspiracy theories move too fast; what we need is an inoculated population.

A robust understanding of the world, and of the root causes of the growing chaos, can be a powerful armor against conspiracy. Because while conspiratorial thinking is, in many ways, small thinking that seeks to explain complex phenomena with simple answers – like replacing the systemic problem of the climate crisis with a hurricane machine – fact-checking itself is a small response. Simply throwing facts at a whirling dervish of misinformation is like throwing knives at a tank, your facts will bounce off as the progress of the lies goes uninhibited.

What we need, instead, is to change the entire landscape, the entire conversation. We need to speak to the profound, and true, feeling most people have that this country is on the wrong track and that dire straits lie ahead if we don’t change course. In the absence of a message to match this moment, more and more people are liable to be drawn into dishonest, illogical, and harmful ways of thinking. But there are arguments out there that are both true and profoundly compelling. The rage that people feel when they learn about how the fossil fuel industry has intentionally been hurting us, the rage people feel at knowing hundreds and billions in profits have been taken from us and handed to investors in Big Oil, is both legitimate and harness-able. But it takes clearly declaring this malicious industry an enemy. Waffling or supporting fracking while declaring that you take the climate crisis seriously won’t cut it.

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

We need a bold vision, because that’s what’s required to get people on board and because that’s what’s required to stave off this climate crisis and move towards a better future. There is no standing still on this moving train, and if you can’t tell from the past few months this train is moving fast. People feel that, they sense it profoundly. A refusal to legitimize their accurate perception that history is running at a rapid pace will be met with suspicion, and ultimately rejection. 

There are examples all around us of people grappling with the extent of the systemic problem we face, and working towards real solutions. I want to briefly bring you a few words from Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia. At the COP28 climate conference he gave a speech, and in it he called for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. His country’s economy relies significantly on the export of fossil fuels, so he first addressed that, saying:

After laying out the problem in terms that are both grim and yet compelling, he dives deeper, highlighting the role of the capitalist system in the fossil fuel crisis:

He ends on this note: “Between fossil capital and life – we unequivocally choose life.”

And now we are thinking big. Now we are talking both on the scale and in the manner we need to adopt if we are to avert disaster. Humanity has fantasized about existential threats, whether they come from aliens or the demons of hell or some other, unexpected cataclysm, for millennia. Now one is upon us. The greatest destruction of our species, of life on Earth, looms. But in the pit of despair there are people fighting for life, truly and without hyperbole. There are indigenous peoples striving to resuscitate ecosystems. There are climate protesters and land defenders putting their bodies on the line. And a growing political movement that spans the globe is fighting for real systemic change, fighting for life.

We know in our hearts that tweaks around the edges won’t do, and so do a whole lot of people who might be more easily misled. They feel this truth, and in the absence of a gripping, honest, transformative vision they fall to the malicious, rampant theories that proliferate across the internet and by word of mouth. Not everyone can be dragged up from the bottom of this well, but we have to try to save as many folks as we can on this journey, and powerful stories and ideas are among the best weapons we’ve got. Militant and mass organizing is and always will be a major piece of the puzzle, and the faithful need a rousing vision to accompany our work and motivate us to forge forward through the darkness just as much as the non-believers.

We all need to tell and hear a story of fighting for life. Because we are in a fight for life against those who don’t blink at seeing our homes washed away, our lives washed away. A million homes could be swallowed by the Earth, a million lives taken, and the fossil fuel titans would still conduct business as usual. Whole nations in the Pacific are being claimed by the rising seas, and fossil capital churns on. It is up to us to fight for life, to present a big and transformative vision, and to name what it is we fight against. Only then can we hope to bring the world into a future we can all inhabit.