Defending and Driving the Climate Movement by Redefining Freedom

This is the accepted manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Liberty and the Ecological Crisis: Freedom on a Finite Planet.

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Climate change as an issue of economic and cultural transformation

Climate change is mainly understood by the public and by activists as an energy problem that can be solved through a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewables. What is less appreciated is that climate change is also an economic problem requiring a simultaneous transformation of the present economy. If we assume that currently non-existent negative emissions technologies do not come into being (Fuss et al., 2014), then in order to hold warming below 2°C—the limit most consistently identified in international climate discussions—rich nations must reduce emissions at rates above 10% per year, a feat that has never been achieved (Anderson, 2015). For context, emissions reductions greater than 1% per year have historically occurred in situations of economic upheaval or recession (Stern, 2007).

To overcome the apparent link between economic turmoil and serious climate action we can look to the discipline of ecological economics, which outlines the policies and institutional changes that could transform the current profit-driven economy into a non-growing, steady state economy (SSE) that has as its goal the meeting of basic human needs within ecological limits. Presently, if fossil-fueled consumption levels do not remain high enough, then economic growth reverses into recession. This outcome would likely make rapid emissions reductions socially and politically untenable. Establishing a SSE would eliminate the unstable grow-or-contract nature of the current economy and could allow for a swift transition to renewables while avoiding economic breakdown.

Because climate change is an economic problem requiring an economic transformation, it is also a cultural problem requiring a cultural transformation. The current economy allows individuals to consume as much as they can afford, and consumption plays an outsized role in our understanding of freedom. A SSE preserves vital natural systems by establishing limits to consumption, a fact that elites who own and manage the economy will seek to exploit. Why? Growth is treated as the best (and only) way to improve the economic situation of working-class citizens—a substitute for equality—and every step towards a SSE would spotlight the need to redistribute wealth. A non-growing economy requires clearly defined limits to economic inequality and calls into question the very existence of profit-maximizing institutions and the exorbitant private fortunes that exist today. To combat this threat to their financial interests and dominant social position, elites will vigorously oppose this transition. A key strategy will be attempts to generate public opposition by arguing that to limit consumption is to undermine an essential freedom. Establishing a SSE will thus only be possible if a new cultural understanding of freedom gains legitimacy over the consumerist definition, and climate activists must lead that campaign.

“The contest for legitimacy is a public battle for the supremacy of particular frames that underpin the legitimacy of specific norms and of the organizations and institutions that promulgate them,” writes Julie Ayling (2017, p. 362-363). Activists fight this battle by shifting discourse and the public’s understanding of core cultural ideas. Though industry possesses significant economic and political advantages, activist groups “typically do enjoy considerable ‘discursive’ and ‘symbolic’ power, meaning battles over ideas and legitimacy tend to be less one-sided,” observes Fergus Green (2018, p. 109). By generating a society-wide discussion aimed at redefining the concept of freedom, climate activists can protect their movement. A SSE embodies certain principles: the importance of limits, the equality of human beings, the ethic of sufficiency, and others. By asserting a new understanding of freedom that features these ideas, activists will undercut elites’ attempts to delegitimize the movement through appeals to the consumerist definition of freedom. This redefinition process can also drive the movement towards a SSE. The promise of freedom has historically been a central motivation of social movements, and by asserting a new, inspiring vision of eco-democratic freedom—and the climate movement as a vehicle for that vision—activists gain a potentially significant source of engagement.

The next section reviews the early history of corporate elites’ crusade to define freedom as consumption. Educating the public about this history is an essential part of redefining freedom, as it delegitimizes the corporate definition and shows that consumerist lifestyles had to be forced upon the public. The following section outlines an ecological and democratic understanding of freedom by sampling the views of prominent classical liberals and ecological thinkers. The final sections examine the reasons why activists must launch a mass-communication campaign to assert the eco-democratic definition over the consumerist definition.

Consumption as freedom: Business shapes culture in its preferred image

When one considers the world-leading consumption levels of US citizens, it is easy to imagine that daily life in the US was always defined by consumption. But prior to the start of the 20^th century, thrift had been a classic feature of American culture (Ewen, 1976). This trait became a major problem for business with the development of mass production, which for the first time led to a significant surplus of consumer goods beyond what citizens required to meet their basic needs. Business leaders feared a permanent crisis of overproduction, with social historian Stuart Ewen noting that consumerism “emerged in the 1920s not as a smooth progression from earlier and less ‘developed’ patterns of consumption, but rather as an aggressive device of corporate survival” (1976, p. 54). Business thus became preoccupied with the challenge of turning the American cultural ethic of sufficiency into one of constant consumption.

However, “underconsumption” was not the only crisis facing corporate elites. Around 1900, mass media that could bring news and other information to communities across the US were just getting established (Ewen, 2003).  This far-reaching press was informing the public about the increasing control of social conditions by large corporations and the violence unleashed against workers attempting to organize and improve their conditions (Ewen, 2003). An increasingly politically powerful public was forming solidly anticorporate sentiments. Business had tried to impose industrial discipline on American workers through horrific violence for decades, but began to shift towards organized propaganda, harnessing the new channels of communication to reestablish its social legitimacy. The creation of a consumer culture, it was thought, could address both problems.

The power of propaganda was demonstrated by President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information during World War I, which successfully transformed a pacifist population into one clamoring for war (Ewen, 2003). Edward Bernays, a member of the Committee and later the recognized “father of the public relations industry,” brought the tested techniques of manipulation to the private sector. He observed that “mass production is profitable only if its rhythm can be maintained—that is, if it can continue to sell its product in steady or increasing quantity . . . today supply must actively seek to create its corresponding demand . . . [and] cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda . . . to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable” (Bernays & Miller, 2005, p. 84). Both public relations and advertising would develop into their own sectors of business in the 1920s.

Control would be gained by associating individual liberty with the purchase of goods (and the corporations producing them) in the public mind. In 1924, retail magnate Edward Filene observed that “modern workmen have learned their habits of consumption and their habits of spending (thrift) in the school of fatigue, in a time when high prices and relatively low wages have made it necessary to spend all the energies of the body and mind in providing food, clothing and shelter. We have no right to be overcritical of the way they spend a new freedom or a new prosperity until they have had as long a training in the school of freedom” (as cited in Ewen, 1976, p. 29-30).

An expanding corporate propaganda machine would provide that training. “During the 1920s,” Ewen observes, “advertising grew to the dimensions of a major industry” (1976, p. 32). Between 1900 and 1930, national advertising revenues grew from $200 million to $2.6 billion, a thirteen-fold increase (p. 62). Growing investment produced great successes, with business increasingly associating itself with liberty. Historian Kerryn Higgs (2016) notes how marketing publication “Advertising Age credited the National Chamber of Commerce with divorcing the word ‘big’ from the word ‘business’ in the public mind” (p. 177). “Private enterprise” was replaced by “free enterprise,” and Henry Link of the polling firm Psychological Corporation later promoted “a transfer in emphasis from free enterprise to the freedom of all individuals under free enterprise; from capitalism to a much broader concept: Americanism.” Link recognized that unlike “free enterprise,” “Americanism” possessed a “terrific emotional impact” (p. 179).

The reach of this propaganda machine was exemplified by the massive campaign launched by the National Association of Manufacturers in the 1930s to define the “American Way of Life.” It replicated the WWI model, establishing local Committees on Public Information composed of influential community leaders throughout the country. These agents “funneled articles, features, and films to newspapers, radio stations, and movie theaters,” sent speakers to “every local group of any sort,” and “distributed pamphlets and weekly bulletins to schools, clubs, and libraries” (Higgs, 2016, p. 175). Particular care was taken to target the young:

“Aware that the adult population was cynical about the corporate claim to ‘service,’ they aimed specifically at schools, where Young America, their weekly children’s magazine that portrayed capitalism as dedicated to looking after them and their communities, was sent to thousands of teachers, who used them in classroom assignments. You and Industry, a series of booklets written in simple language, linked individual prosperity to unregulated industry, and was distributed to public libraries everywhere. One million booklets were distributed every two weeks by the US Chamber of Commerce, which, along with the giant industrial corporations, was also involved in the campaign” (Higgs, 2016, p. 175).

The corporate elites driving the expansion of a consumer culture were joined by economists calling for a “new economic gospel of consumption” (Higgs, 2016, p. 71) and political leaders offering enthusiastic support. Higgs (2016) notes that “President Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes welcomed the demonstration ‘on a grand scale [of] the expansibility of human wants and desires,’ hailed an ‘almost insatiable appetite for goods and services,’ and envisaged ‘a boundless field before us … new wants that make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied’” (p. 72). This collective effort would eventually culminate in the society that the American people (and those of other wealthy countries) know today, in which individuals see themselves as consumers rather than citizens.

An ecological and democratic understanding of freedom

A brief sampling of the history of corporate culture gives us a sense of the effort that business has put into shaping the public’s understanding of freedom in its preferred image. Before we explore why activists need to stimulate a societal rethink of freedom, we must reflect upon the concept that will replace the corporate definition.

When we recognize that addressing climate change requires us to create a fundamentally different economy, we must reckon with the fact that ordinary people have little say over the structure of the economy and thus over their own fate. Elites will not willingly make these changes. In order to transform the economic system, the public must gain control of it—in this way, economic democracy is vital to achieving a sustainable society. An understanding of liberty in the age of climate crisis must therefore foreground the freedom of the public to shape the economy.

A new definition of freedom must also highlight the importance of limits. One can find strong support for limits within classical liberal thought, which today is often claimed by wealthy industrialists as a moral foundation for unimpeded, self-interested action. However, two of freedom’s greatest theorists, Wilhelm von Humboldt and John Stuart Mill, recognized that limits could rightly be placed on individual liberty. Even in asserting freedom’s importance for human development, Humboldt always recognized that it exists within justifiable limits. Not only must our sphere of action preserve the equal rights of others, but restrictions on our action are warranted when “freedom would destroy the very conditions without which not only freedom but even existence itself would be inconceivable” (Humboldt & Burrow, 1993, p. 144-145). In Mill’s view, a SSE represented an important step in human advancement: “It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on” (1909, p. 751). These perspectives remind us that limits are not only necessary to preserve freedom and even existence, but can also act as a catalyst towards forms of progress more aligned with human flourishing.

Contemporary perspectives further inform our understanding of ecological freedom. Though some academics seem to take the market-centered, acquisitive definition of freedom shaped by corporations as the definition (Dibley, 2012), others remind us that such ideas can be defined differently and in ways that are more descriptive of reality. Consider Peter Brown, who recognizes that “we are required to re-examine, and ultimately to redefine the emancipation project. The narratives from which we currently take our bearings are simply not true to our circumstances” (2012 p. 7). Brown calls for the recognition of human equality to temper our understanding of freedom. “We must see that how we live is often unavoidably harmful to others. There are no actions that affect us alone. . . In a world of limits, liberty may be legitimately exercised only if one is using only his/her fair share of low entropy sources and sinks. . . All persons in all cultures and all generations have equal moral claims to flourishing, constrained and enhanced by the claims of other species for their place in the sun. We are not the chosen species, or the chosen people. This, if you like, is the new emancipation” (2012, p. 14).

The corporate messages flowing through society have conjured a myth of individualism at the heart of conceptions of liberty, which ignores the fact that society is only possible through the care we provide and work we do for one another. Bruce Jennings (2015) argues that our understanding of freedom must be informed by the relationships we have with others and with the natural world. Freedom should be recognized as a social practice arising from the bonds of interdependence that we share. This view elevates each person to the status of subject rather than object, and does not privilege the individual over the community—rather, balance is sought between the flourishing of each. It entails a recognition that we are only free to the extent that others are, too. Power relationships should be examined and the ability to make decisions should be distributed to all affected by them. These guiding principles suggest that “the message of planetary boundaries and the end of the liberal era of cheap fossil carbon is not the bad news of lost liberty but the promise of a newfound freedom—a more humanly fulfilling kind of liberty” (p. 307).

Jason Lambacher (2009) believes that activists have avoided discussions of freedom because many citizens in wealthy nations have been free to “live in ways that appear to ignore ecological limits as if they were not there. In fact, this is a vital issue – our dominant political concepts, such as freedom, have not yet become ecological” (p. 32). Our ways of life, and every layer of society, must be transformed around the reality of limits. Figuring out how to live sustainably will of course be an ongoing process, part of learning how to be free on a finite planet. “What is important is not the validity of a single approach to environmental sustainability,” he writes, “but rather that people feel inspired by the challenge of freely creating an ecologically responsible culture” (p. 41).

An ecologically compatible freedom will foreground democracy, both political and economic. It will acknowledge that liberty—and life—cannot exist without limits. It will be shaped by our recognition of interdependence and human equality. It will balance the interests of both individual and community. It will be broader than the simple consumption of goods, a vision encompassing the many parts of human nature left behind by the current society. Activists must assert and continue to develop this eco-democratic definition of freedom, both to protect and to drive the movement towards a SSE.

Redefine freedom to protect the movement

It is clear that as activists recognize the need to establish a SSE and begin to vocalize their demands, business will leverage the vast communications system it has built and the cultural cues it has implanted to make this transformation appear catastrophic. To protect the climate movement, citizens must learn how the consumerist definition of freedom has been carefully constructed as a pillar of a culture that serves corporate interests—the result of a century of corporate PR and advertising campaigns rather than a signifier of the inherent acquisitiveness of human nature. By educating the public about this history and exposing the narrowness of the consumerist definition as compared to the eco-democratic definition, which better supports human flourishing, activists delegitimize “consumerist freedom” and undercut corporate messages that utilize it. The following subsections illustrate why redefining freedom is an essential defensive strategy by exploring the nature of the counterattack activists will have to withstand.

The Corporate Culture Machine

Stuart Ewen (1976) notes that it would take a few decades, but the post-World War II period finally realized elites’ vision of the mass-consumption society. Advertising and public relations deserve a lot of credit for these developments. “The new society was one which distributed culture on a mass scale,” Ewen writes. “This triumph over the locality of people’s lives as a source of nurturement and information is, perhaps, the monumental achievement of twentieth-century capitalism: centralization of the social order” (p. 206-207).

Activists must recognize the extent to which corporate elites control society’s information systems and thus have the means to dominate social narratives. A primary consideration is that major media institutions are themselves corporations whose advertising clients are also corporate entities, and all share an interest in burying or delegitimizing challenges to the profit-driven economy. Sociologists highlight additional contours of the modern propaganda machine by exploring climate science denial networks. Wealthy family foundations now funnel untraceable “dark money” to various cultural and political causes, obscuring the support provided by specific individuals and organizations (Brulle, 2014). Corporate think tanks have also proliferated, set up to constantly generate ideas and literature that can be passed off as independent research or science (Dunlap & McCright, 2011). Front groups and astroturf campaigns further obscure reality, suggesting independent or even grassroots movement support for corporate positions. An online rightwing echo-chamber regularly amplifies baseless or conspiratorial stories through social media networks until they reach mass media channels (Dunlap & McCright, 2015). These are some of the narrative-shaping realities with which activists must contend.

The Public’s Vulnerability

Another component of the threat facing the climate movement is the public’s vulnerability to manipulation through claims of “curtailed consumerist freedom.” Developing an ecological consciousness within a consumer society presents significant challenges (Hamilton, 2010; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2004). Clive Hamilton (2010) warns that “Consumption behaviour and the sense of personal identity are now so closely related that a challenge to someone’s consumption behaviour may be a challenge to their sense of self” (p. 574). This identity-linked dependence on consumption can be exploited by corporate elites and mobilized against the transition to a sustainable society. In Hamilton’s view, consumer identity can only change with a massive environmental calamity or a widespread loss of confidence in consumer life, thus the task of achieving sustainability is primarily cultural, not scientific or technological.

In a review of climate change communications research, Susanne Moser (2016) highlights specific psychological defenses identified by researchers that can be triggered through different frames. Most relevant here is the defense that arises against identity change, a resistance to changing how we see ourselves through “avoidance, denial, helplessness, reinforcement of existing identity, or attack on others” (p. 355). The triggering frames are those that have already been used by business in shaping a corporate culture, including proclamations that “The American way of life is not up for debate” or “The threat to mobilize around is what ‘they’ propose as solutions to climate change; Fostering anti-science and anti-government sentiments; Emphasis on freedom from government, individual freedom, [and] free market economics” (p. 355).

Appeals to Freedom, Then and Now

These threats are not hypothetical, as business has repeatedly exploited issue frames appealing to freedom. Grace Nosek (2018) highlights how the tobacco industry used this framing decades ago to protect against regulation. An industry messaging memo recommended the mantra “Freedom of choice is an American birthright. Infringement on this right is an injustice” (p. 758-759). This argument successfully defended these businesses in the first waves of legal challenge, until the anti-tobacco movement finally reframed smoking as a systemic public health issue.

We can see explicit freedom frames already used by business in climate change litigation. When a coalition of state attorneys general recently sued fossil fuel companies for documents about whether they lied to the public and shareholders about the risks of climate change, Exxon countersued and used a freedom frame, asserting that “The allegations repeated today are an attempt to limit free speech” (Nosek, 2018, p. 767). Noteworthy also was the amplification of the corporate message through the vast communications system discussed earlier. Exxon was painted as the freedom-defending victim through two opinion pieces in the Washington Post and dozens of stories from the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and the Heritage Foundation. The counterattack also included denunciations from other state attorneys general and threats of a counter-investigation by corporate politicians.

This is War

Because the SSE has not yet become an explicit goal of mainstream climate activism, we have not yet seen the most vicious expressions of corporate self-defense. Ron Arnold, longtime vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE), makes the nature of his work very clear. “Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement…. We’re dead serious—we’re going to destroy them. . . People in industry, I’m going to do my best for you. Environmentalists, I’m coming to get you…. We’re out to kill the fuckers. . . We [CDFE] created a sector of public opinion that didn’t used to exist. No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along” (as cited in Higgs, 2016, p. 234). Some who defend corporate power openly treat any attempts to regulate industry as war. Activists must prepare for the unprecedented cultural onslaught that will be waged when corporations are faced with an existential threat.

Summary

Groomed to be consumers, US citizens place disproportionate emphasis on the things they buy to attempt to shape their identity. Left unquestioned, this fact can be turned against the movement towards a SSE. But, Clive Hamilton (2010) reminds us, “identities that can be forged from the products provided by the market are not to any great degree the creations of those who adopt them, but are manufactured by marketers or popular culture” (p. 573). Aside from constraining authentic human development, this process causes a host of social ills. “The inability of consumerism to allow true realisation of human potential manifests itself, to an ever-increasing degree, in restless dissatisfaction, chronic stress and private despair, feelings that give rise to a rash of psychological disorders—including anxiety, depression and substance abuse—and a range of compensatory behaviours including many forms of self-medication” (Hamilton, 2010, p. 572). Activists must illuminate these outcomes of a society defined by consumerism.

As freedom is invoked in discussions of social issues, the effect is to legitimize or delegitimize a particular point of view or policy. As activists expose the narrowness of unlimited consumption as freedom, and the way it obscures the public’s inability to participate in shaping the economy itself, the credibility of both the current hierarchical economic system and its defenders is undermined. It becomes harder to attack the movement to establish a SSE as this shift takes place. When citizens hear the defenders of corporate power speak about freedom and still take them seriously rather than thinking immediately of the domination they actually represent, activists have not yet done enough to clarify reality.

Redefine freedom to drive the movement

The eco-democratic definition of freedom is not only part of the cultural foundation for a SSE, which is crucial to humanity’s survival, but also points towards a more humanly fulfilling society. This definition gains legitimacy as activists highlight these merits and vocally assert the concept in public discussions. By helping the public to see the climate movement as a vehicle for this kind of freedom—including, in particular, the fundamental freedom of ordinary citizens to reshape the economy to avoid ecological collapse—activists can fuel the movement.

Discourse researchers follow the ways that climate change is discussed and observe the impacts on citizen engagement with the issue. Of particular interest are depoliticizing discourses that encourage apathy. “Depoliticization refers to the deletion of alternatives and of democratic debate about alternatives regarding climate change from public spheres,” notes Anabela Carvalho (2018, p. 6). “In spite of climate change’s massive impacts on citizens around the world, it has been transformed into a seemingly consensual techno-managerial matter where citizens have no say. Those depoliticization processes have crucial implications for public engagement” (p. 6). How we talk about climate change determines how we understand it, and whether and how we take action. These discourses tend to be unexamined and exert an unseen marginalizing influence.

Carvalho, van Wessel, and Maeseele (2017) describe several types of marginalizing discourses. Scientization suggests that climate change is a problem of technology whose solution must be led by technical experts. Economization envisions climate change as a problem of economic calculation that can be solved entirely through market-based mechanisms, with economists at the helm. Moralization frames the issue as humanity versus CO2 and treats the solution as a matter of individual responsibility, as if personal consumption choices can solve systemic problems.

By vocally championing the eco-democratic definition of freedom and establishing the climate movement as a fight for collective self-determination within ecological limits, activists can politicize climate change and maximize mobilization through various mechanisms: issue tangibility, engaging values, movement legitimacy, and participant identity-formation.

Issue Tangibility

Dale Jamieson (2017) writes about the connection between the British anti-slavery movement and current attempts to address climate change. He highlights how the distance between the colonies where slavery was practiced and Britain’s mainland made the issue just as distant and abstract in the minds of the public. Abolitionists realized that in order to generate a movement against slavery, they would have to make the issue visible. After parliament rejected abolition, activists started the “blood sugar” campaign—using pamphlets, speeches, and formal organizations to inform citizens about the amount of flesh they were consuming as they ate slave-produced sugar. As a result, 300,000 people boycotted Britain’s largest import; Abolition followed.

Jamieson (2017) observes that “For people to support moral change in a world in which there is a rupture in space, time, or scale between a cause and a harm, they must somehow be reconnected in people’s consciousness” (p. 181). However, “carbon’s assault on what it is to be a person seems less deep, direct, visceral and even true than slavery’s assault on our shared notions of humanity” (p. 181). Highlighting climate change as a freedom issue may make it more tangible, exposing the link between this global problem and citizens’ everyday experience of lacking control over their economic conditions. As the public associates the climate crisis with inadequate wages, crushing debt, and overwork—economic oppression stemming from an economy that serves elites rather than the people—the connection may be visceral enough to drive action. Achieving economic democracy would not only allow citizens to create a SSE but also address these social ills, a connection activists must emphasize.

Engaging Values

Literature on climate change engagement often focuses on the connection to human values, and advocating for eco-democratic freedom may attract new movement participants for whom freedom is a highly cherished value. Corner, Markowitz, and Pidgeon (2014) note that divides on climate change are more a representation of the values at stake than disputes about science, and that if the self-transcending values typically associated with activist engagement can be joined with more traditionally self-interested values, the combination could hold promise for generating action: “The challenge for climate change communicators seeking to make the most effective use of research on human values is to identify ways of bridging between the diverse values that any given group of individuals holds and the values that are congruent with a more sustainable society,” including “Coupling, for example, values around security or freedom with self-transcending values like concern for the welfare of others” (p. 417).

A sustainable economy will only be brought about through public control. By highlighting the freedom dimension of climate activism, activists add the promise of liberty to the range of values that inspire people to join the movement. In terms of audience, the point here is not to try to convince skeptics and “conservatives” that they should support climate action, though that could result, but to attract those already inclined to act by vocally championing a new vision of freedom.

Movement Legitimacy

As the climate movement’s goal of advancing a new vision of freedom becomes well-known, it stands to gain broader cultural legitimacy that can also encourage participation. Julie Ayling (2017) writes that “legitimacy is an intangible but crucial resource that assists an organization to exercise authority in numerous ways” (p. 351), and the battle for legitimacy “plays a significant role in progress on climate change mitigation” (p. 366).

This is evident in the effects of the fossil fuel divestment movement, which aims to delegitimize investments in coal, oil, and gas by pointing out the need to halt carbon emissions and the industry’s political efforts to block that outcome. Ultimately, activists’ goal is to remove the fossil fuel industry’s social license to exist. “For the divestment movement,” Ayling (2017) observes, “legitimacy strengthens its case for fundamental economic change and enables it to mobilize its supporters, garner public support, and fund its activities” (p. 355). Since it began in 2012, the movement has spread to over one thousand institutions and divestment activists have transformed discussions around climate change: asserting it as a present emergency, spotlighting the culpability of the fossil fuel industry, and undermining the legitimacy of both the industry and investing in it. Ayling finds that “there are signs that the movement is making progress in building its own legitimacy and in damaging the industry’s” (p. 350). Noam Bergman (2018) notes how divestment activists have generated politicized understandings of the climate issue, which have led to increased engagement: “The most prominent impact has been the discourse shift, a clear cultural impact, which in turn has precipitated mobilisation, political and financial impacts” (p. 12).

The same can be true for climate activists aiming to redefine freedom. By asserting the legitimacy of eco-democratic freedom and establishing the movement as a vehicle for this vision of freedom, activists can legitimize their movement—encouraging participation—while also exposing the illegitimacy of an economy that is run by elites, driving towards ecological collapse, premised on limitless consumption, and forced to manufacture consent for consumerist lifestyles. As the movement gains greater social acceptance, the effect will be greater mobilization.

Participant Identity-Formation

Carvalho et al. (2017) cite an extensive US survey (Roser-Renouf, Maibach, Leiserowitz, & Zhao, 2014) which “showed that ‘identity’ was the largest barrier to engagement with climate change politics, with a third of respondents saying they were not ‘activists.’ The survey also showed that most people have low expectations for the efficacy of their political actions: they do not believe that they can alter the course of climate policies and hence do not even try” (p. 127).

Here we see a clear indication of the connection between identity and participation in political action, suggesting that cultivating an activist identity among the public could boost engagement. Also present is a sense of fatalism. By framing the climate movement as a fight for freedom—requiring no special qualifications to participate—and informing the public that freedoms have historically been won by social movements composed of ordinary people, such self-defeating beliefs can be combatted. And by helping prospective participants see themselves as freedom fighters, activists can encourage the development of activist identities that drive engagement and commitment. These strategies also align with observations by Moser (2016) that identity-based resistance to change can be overcome through “inspiration,” “appeal to deeply held values,” the illustration of “new social/cultural norms,” and “stories of positive transformation” (p. 355-356).

As activists more fully develop their identity through their efforts against climate change, the movement becomes more resilient and autonomous and more compelling to those searching for an authentic self. Climate activists must be aware of the fact that, at its best, their work creates a new identity within people, and they ought to be as conscious and encouraging of that process as possible.

Summary

This section can be summed up by an activist from Toronto’s climate movement, who observed that “success will be based on how much we can inspire people to engage, and how much it will feel like… feel for people as though we were creating a space to be free” (Del Rio, 2017, p. 59). The fight for freedom has often been a central motivation of social movements. The energy behind the cause of self-determination has often led individuals to risk their lives. It lends itself to something larger than oneself, something so valuable that it can lead to the most selfless commitment, even as it allows for perhaps the most authentic expression of the self. Within mainstream climate change activism, discussions about the meaning of freedom and about the movement as a vehicle for expanding liberty have been uncommon thus far. Activists have yet to harness the force that is unlocked when establishing climate change as an issue of freedom.

Conclusion: Illuminating our choices

How can activists stimulate a society-wide reconsideration of freedom? First, activists’ analysis must incorporate the necessity of a SSE in addressing climate change, which reveals the need for a cultural transformation that replaces consumerist freedom with an ecological and democratic definition. Then, campaigns dedicated to this transformation should be launched. Developing activist-controlled education and communication networks to be in constant touch with the public also seems essential to drive this cultural change and counteract the corporate culture machine. Academics writing about ecological freedom could make their work accessible to movements by hosting public discussions. All of this should be a part of larger efforts to create a participatory, democratic culture in which being intellectually and politically active is the norm, thus laying the groundwork for public control of the economy.

The nature of choice is often limiting (consider Hensher, 2019, in this collection). Defining the course of one’s life, for example, means foreclosing multiple possible paths in order to follow the ones we choose. Right now we are exchanging many paths and cherished things, many freedoms, in order to pursue limitless consumption. But this is no conscious choice. In fact, it is a choice made for us by those in power, who have put immense effort into preventing us from seeing what options we have. Only when we become conscious of the tradeoffs we are making will freedom of choice be anything more than an illusion. The task of activists is to make our choices clear—to help the public see that it need not walk the path to ruin. When the people recognize that they have alternatives, that the choices available are ultimately constrained only by our ongoing acceptance of elites’ hierarchical and consumerist worldview and the boundaries they’ve established, then a transformation may be possible. We must choose to create an economy that does not force us to remain on the consumption treadmill, one that allows for the rapid emissions reductions needed to maintain a livable climate. It is this conscious choice that will see humanity define itself, a choice that many did not know they had, now perhaps the most important one we’ll ever make.

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