Leading the Public Into Emergency Mode

Introducing the Climate Emergency Movement

Breakthrough: a Climate Emergency Movement now exists!

Emergency Mode: Optimal Functioning in an Existential (or Moral) Crisis

Long Emergencies

Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one…your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.

In all other activities, flow is the hallmark of high performance, but in situations where the slightest error could be fatal, then perfection is the only choice — and flow is the only guarantee of perfection. Thus, flow is the only way to survive in the fluid, life-threatening conditions of big waves, big rivers, and big-mountains… Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. Or, as Danny Way (professional skateboarder) explains: “It’s either find the zone or suffer the consequences — there’s no other choice available.”

The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times…The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

Groups in Emergency Mode

The United States in Emergency Mode: WWII

Moving Towards Emergency Mobilization

Factors That Prevent Emergency Mode

Very often an emergency is not obviously an emergency…in times of such uncertainty, the natural tendency is to look around at the actions of others for clues. We can learn, from the way the other witnesses are reacting, whether the event is or is not an emergency. What is easy to forget, though, is that everybody else observing the event is likely to be looking for social evidence, too.

Rise of the Climate Emergency Movement

Successful Social Movements Utilize and Spread Emergency Mode

Why isn’t every gay man in this city so scared shitless that he is screaming for action? Does every gay man in New York want to die?… I am sick of closeted gay doctors who won’t come out to help us…. I am sick of closeted gays. It’s 1983 already, guys, when are you going to come out? … As more and more of my friends die, I have less and less sympathy for men who are afraid their mommies will find out or afraid their bosses will find out or afraid their fellow doctors or professional associates will find out. Unless we can generate, visibly, numbers, masses, we are going to die.

Implications for the Climate Movement: Lead the Public into Emergency Mode

State of The Climate Emergency Movement Ecosystem: May, 2019

At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories. But their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag. And on climate change, we have to acknowledge we have failed. All political movements in their present form have done so, and the media has failed to create broad public awareness…Adults keep saying, “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.

I often talk to people who say, ‘No, we have to be hopeful and to inspire each other, and we can’t tell [people] too many negative things’ . . . But, no — we have to tell it like it is. Because if there are no positive things to tell, then what should we do, should we spread false hope? We can’t do that, we have to tell the truth.

Join the Movement to Protect Humanity and All Life

Next Steps

About the Author

Overcoming False Narratives

Further Reading

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Clinical psychologist, founder and director of The Climate Mobilization

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