By Lowell Bliss
Director, Eden Vigil Institute for Adaptive Leadership & the Environment
Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who took more campaign cash from the oil and gas industry than any other senator, and who became a millionaire from his family coal business, independently blew up the Democratic Party’s legislative plans to fight climate change. The swing Democratic vote in an evenly divided Senate, Mr. Manchin led his party through months of tortured negotiations that collapsed on Thursday night, a yearlong wild goose chase that produced nothing as the Earth warms to dangerous levels (New York Times, July 15, 2022).[1]
How could we be so naïve as to think that Manchin would have acted otherwise? But while we are at it: are we climate activists guilty of other naivetes: not only toward individuals, but in a failure to critique systems, in-a-vacuum postures, and loyalties and longings which abandoned us long ago?
Wisdom does not get much of a taxonomic treatment. I mean, it is compared to “knowledge,” as to its differences, but are there subsets of wisdom: categories or facets or shades of meaning? A verse like James 3:17 seems to suggest so. If there is “the wisdom that comes from heaven” is there, by implication, wisdom that comes from other places? And then for this wisdom to be “first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere,” suggests at least—count ‘em—eight approaches to parsing out wisdom.
Another approach is to come at wisdom from his opposite—which the Book of Proverbs seems to identify as “foolishness.” There are many categories of foolishness according to Proverbs. For example, the writer employs four different Hebrew words for “fool”: ‘ewil, kesil, nabal, and lets. The latter is most often translated “scoffer.” Therefore, is there an understanding of wisdom which could be understood as “non-scoffing”? (We’ll get back to this one.)
For the sake of our applying wisdom to how we relate to our four Climate Joes, I’m interested in the writer’s use of the Hebrew word pthiy, such as in a verse like Proverbs 19:7 where some translations render it as “the simple,” but others like NASB translate it as “the naïve”: “O naïve ones, understand prudence; And, O fools, understand wisdom.” Knowing what we know about poetic parallelism in Proverbs, we can hypothesize from 19:7 that naivete is a form of foolishness, and that prudence is a form of wisdom. And naivete is no cursory, easily excused form of foolishness. The writer rebukes it in Proverbs 1:22: “How long, you naïve ones, will you love simplistic thinking?” He prophesizes over the naïve’s end: “A prudent person sees evil and hides himself; But the naïve proceed, and pay the penalty” (Prov. 22:3, 27:12).
The naïve believes everything, But the sensible person considers his steps (Prov 14:15).
Judging again from poetic parallelism, it appears that prudence and sensibility are naivete’s English-language antonyms. Here are two definitions of the word “sensible,” both of which we so badly need in climate action: 1) “(of a statement or course of action) chosen in accordance with wisdom or prudence; likely to be of benefit; 2) (of an object) practical and functional rather than decorative.”[2]
Naivete and individual interpretations
I first tripped over Joe Manchin in 2008 when I was immersed in the topic of Mountain Top Removal coal mining in Appalachia. Wise people—MTR activists like Allen Johnson (of Christians for the Mountains) or Marie Gunnoe or Larry Gibson—warned me about the man who was their governor at the time, Joe Manchin. How naïve I was to think that Manchin would change his thinking simply by moving to DC and joining the Democratic Caucus of “the greatest deliberative body in the world.” Gunnoe said as recently as January of this year: “Joe Manchin will absolutely throw humanity under the coal train without blinking an eye. My friends and I have a joke about his kind: They’d mine their momma’s grave for a buck.”[3]
Naivete regarding systemic interpretations
But what about Joe Biden, the victor over the man who withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement and who gutted the EPA? I had another wise activist friend who posted a meme about Biden on Inauguration Day in 2021: “Enjoy the last moment you won’t be disappointed with President Biden.” (Is my friend a lets, a scoffer?)
We should definitely examine our naivete toward the individual, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., but in this case, we should also admit the naivete that we bring in failing to make systemic interpretations. The exercise of effective adaptive leadership requires what the Kansas Leadership Center calls “the interpretative mind shift.”[4] Normally, we prefer to interpret the data (in our case: interacting with Manchin, Biden, Stalin, and the Plumber) with technical interpretations (where problems can be fixed with experts and money), benign interpretations (where we optimistically “think the best” of people and institutions), and individual interpretations (where we fire scapegoats and hire “the right people next time”). The interpretative mind shift for something like climate change begins with a recognition that global warming can’t be “solved” (whatever that means) and certainly not by money and expertise. Climate change is an adaptive challenge, not a technical one. The second mind shift is from benign interpretations to conflictual ones. Sometimes people are incompetent or evil. Sometimes reality is harsh. Sometimes goals have been rendered unattainable. In other contexts, this is called “having a courageous conversation.” Finally, there is the mind shift from individual interpretations to systemic ones. Yes, sometimes the problem lies with the individual, but other times the problem lies with the system. Sometimes an entrenched system is so powerful that it is—hello!—naïve to think that any other outcome is possible regardless of the individual who is in power.
For example, let’s imagine that a “better” climate candidate than Joe Biden had won the general election in 2020 (Bernie Sanders? Gov. Jay Inslee?). Let’s sweeten our imagination by giving that “perfect” individual two more compliant individuals in his party’s Senate majority (like what Biden is pleading voters for in 2022). Let’s further imbue him, as part of his perfection as president, with the legislative strength and finesse that historian Doris Kearns Goodwin ascribes to an LBJ. This president could really get things done for the climate, right?
Perhaps, but will the system let him? Will the Supreme Court, who just decided West Virginia v. EPA, let him? Will the Senate filibuster let him? (Keep thinking about systems, not individuals like Clarence Thomas or Mitch McConnell.) Will our two-party, every two- and four-year electoral cycle let him? Will capitalism let him? Will the Citizens United v. FEC and the amount of money in SuperPACs and campaign funds let him? Will inflationary fears let him?
Consider the tough spot that Biden found himself in back in April of this year, before WV v. EPA, before Manchin. Gas prices were escalating due to the war in the Ukraine, due to pandemic effects, due to inflationary pressures, due to any number of unknown (unknowable?) influences. Pressure was on Biden to lower prices and to open up domestic drilling. “He’s in pickle,” said Samantha Gross, a climate and energy fellow at the Brookings Institute. “His arguments [about reducing reliance on oil and gas] have had to change because of the changing conditions, and the situation has gotten a lot harder for him politically. … The politics were always going to be hard for him, but the level of difficulty just went way up. It’s a tough hand to play.”[5] David Kieve, the president of the advocacy arm of the Environmental Defense Fund, was okay with playing that hand. “If some of the short-term steps they’re taking to alleviate the pain Americans are feeling at the pump and how they’re feeling squeezed are the price we have to pay to get 50 votes in the U.S. Senate for a transformative clean energy deal, I think it’s a price worth paying,” Kieve said in April.[6] Fast forward to July 2022: no 50 votes in the Senate, no transformative clean energy deal, three months closer to the midterm elections. If climate politics is a matter of playing difficult hands, then this was a bad bet, a lost kitty, a gambling debt—but quite possibly, one that could not have been won even if we had had a more skillful player, as Gross and Kieve seem to hope. It seems naïve to think so. Instead, the game itself feels rigged against effective climate action.
Naivete and in-a-vacuum interpretations
I was standing outside a meeting at COP25 in Madrid when I leaned over to a colleague of mine who is the communications director for a major faith-based climate NGO. I asked him, “When are you going to give up on the 1.5 degree target?” He replied, “When the IPCC tells us that it is no longer achievable.” I was momentarily bolstered by his answer in a sort of Churchillian way, and I’m always ready to give the climate scientists their due, but then I thought: well, what about the political scientists, or the social scientists, or even the theologians (theology being once called “the queen of the sciences”)? What are those scientists telling us about the achievability of the Paris climate targets? At what point does a statement like “It still works on paper” come across as naïve?
There is another way of naively thinking about climate action in-a-vacuum. Let Vladimir Putin be our stand-in for Joseph Stalin, “Uncle Joe”, our once-and-former ally against the Nazis, who became one of our biggest threats for a nuclear winter. Putin was there in Paris at COP21. He said at the time that Russia considers “it fundamentally important that the new climate agreement be based on the principles of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and be legally binding, and that both developed and developing economies participate in its implementation. We proceed from the premise that it should be comprehensive, effective and equitable. We support the long-term goal of the new agreement to limit the rise in global temperature by the end of the 21st century to two degrees Celsius.”[7] But historical hatreds, imperial longings, and that habitual habit of war just seems to get in the way. It is naïve to think that the Paris Agreement can operate in a vacuum outside of global politics. In fact, one of the worst moments of the UNFCCC intersessional meetings last month in Bonn was when the Russian [climate] envoy in his [climate] address accused the Kyiv government of spreading “war and terror” across the Donbas and Ukraine. Some delegates walked out.[8] It’s naïve to think that substantive work can get done when missiles are flying.
Naivete regarding our loyalties and longings
The plumber? Yes, you remember: Joe the Plumber, the icon introduced to us by the McCain-Palin presidential campaign in 2008. His real name is Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher from the Middle America Rust Belt. He normally votes Republican. He used to appear on Hannity; quite vocal about taxes, guns, and immigrants; includes God in the dedication of his autobiography.[9] Let him stand in for all the Average Joes that we have working so hard to mobilize.
In 2017, after the big Climate March following Trump’s first 100 days in office, my colleagues invited me to stay on in Washington for two days of lobbying on Capitol Hill. I demurred: “I’ve come to the conclusion that it is naïve to think that citizen lobbying has any effect on my congressional delegation.” They knew where I was from at the time (Kansas, First Congressional District) and so politely excused me. Nonetheless, I turned around and invited them to stay two extra days in DC, on top of their lobbying plans, so that we could conduct a consultation together, attempting to understand where the creation care/climate movement was now that Donald Trump was the US president.
I set up four topics for discussion including one that I characterized as a thought experiment: “What would it look like if we ‘gave up’ on the Republican Party and white American evangelical Christians in our climate strategies, mobilization, and messaging? What would it look like to pursue our climate goals without putting our eggs in their baskets?” I reassured everyone that this was just a thought experiment; it was a “what if?” for a couple hours; it was just an imaginative exercise, that’s all. But the more I talked, the more the “deer in the headlights” look began to show up on the consultants’ faces. In the end, our group could not find it in themselves to engage my thought experiment. I get it. Some of them had the word “evangelical” in their organization name. Others were too heavily invested, including by donors, in hoping to mobilize Republicans.
I know Joe the Plumbers. I grew up with them. I am related to them. I was in their church. They sacrificially donated to me when I was a religious professional. I love them. Perhaps it is naïve to continue to think that Joe the Plumber can be mobilized for climate action more than what his population already is. That’s an individual interpretation, but also a systemic one, and a multivariant one.
If naivete is a dangerous form of foolishness, what is the opposite category of wisdom?
Be prudent. Be sensible. Choose the “practical and functional” action over the merely “decorative.” Choose the action that is “likely to be of benefit.” That’s why the Kansas Leadership Center teaches the Interpretative Mind Shift—not that we might posture ourselves as cleverer-than-thou—but so that we might move from interpretations to interventions (actions) which have a stronger likelihood than other actions of being of benefit.
The danger of challenging the naivetes of the climate movement is that you will get labelled a scoffer, a lets. Have I just scoffed at the good, well-meaning, self-sacrificial, and ultimately triumphant efforts (“if we just persevere’) of the Paris Agreement, the UNFCCC, the Biden administration, American democracy, free market enterprise, or the millions of climate activists out there? While I had my dictionary open, I consulted a thesaurus and found the following antonyms of “scoffer”: believer, optimist, Christian, Jew, devotee, disciple.[10] Yikes! To be a scoffer is to be excommunicated.
Eminent climatologist Michael Mann uses a different word than “scoffer.” He might accuse me of being a “doomist.” I’ll take up that charge in future articles. I fear that Dr. Mann may be cutting us off from a crucial source of wisdom.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/climate/manchin-climate-change-democrats.html
[2] “Sensible,” Google Dictionary: Oxford Languages
[3] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/joe-manchin-big-coal-west-virginia-1280922/
[4] Chris Green and Julia Fabris McBride, Teaching Leadership, Wichita, KS: KLC Press, 2015, 206.
[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/20/biden-climate-gas-prices/
[6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/20/biden-climate-gas-prices/
[7] https://unfccc.int/files/meetings/paris_nov_2015/application/pdf/cop21cmp11_leaders_event_russia.pdf (Google Translate)
[8] https://www.carbonbrief.org/bonn-climate-talks-key-outcomes-from-the-june-2022-un-climate-conference/
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_the_Plumber
[10] https://thesaurus.plus/antonyms/scoffer