How the largest environmental groups can get large numbers of people into the streets before it is too late. 

There has been important and relevant research on how to create successful social change at national levels by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University. Although this research is not definitive of certain success and the global warming emergency has some differences from the other movements Chenoweth studied, it still offers helpful direction to guide us in reaching our politicians and getting the global warming extinction emergency fixed.

This research has discovered, among other things, that nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts or violent campaigns. Specifically, Chenoweth's studies found that those engaging a threshold level of 3.5% of the total population on a single focused issue in the same protest had a 50% chance of producing the desired change. Chenoweth looked at hundreds of campaigns over the last century. 

Chenoweth's study primarily considered attempts to bring about regime change. A movement was deemed to be successful if it fully achieved its goals both within a year of peak engagement and as a direct result of its activities. A regime change resulting from foreign military intervention would not be considered a success. If the campaign involved bombings, kidnappings, the destruction of infrastructure, or any other physical harm to people or property, it was considered violent.

About half of the time, despite being twice as successful as violent conflicts, peaceful resistance still failed. As Chenoweth and her colleague, Stephan pointed out in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict sometimes this failure occurred because a change movement never really gained enough support or momentum to "erode the power base of the adversary and maintain resilience in the face of repression." 

Regarding the "3.5% rule", Chenoweth points out that while 3.5% of the total population is a small minority, such a level of active participation probably also means many more people tacitly agree with the cause. Chenoweth also argued that nonviolent campaigns are more likely to succeed because they can recruit many more participants from a much broader demographic. This larger demographic then can cause severe disruption that paralyzes normal urban life and the functioning of society. In other words, the success of nonviolent protests was partly the result of strength in numbers.

Other researchers researching the factors that may lead to a movement's success or failures such as Bramsen and Chandler emphasize the importance of unity among demonstrators. For example, Bramsen points to the failed uprising in Bahrain in 2011. The Bahrain campaign initially engaged many protestors but quickly split into competing factions.

Bramsen forwards that the resulting loss of group cohesion ultimately prevented the movement from gaining enough momentum to bring about the desired changes. In the US, one only has to recall the Occupy Movement that eventually fell apart because it also tried to combine too many separate social movements and goals into its protests.

The influence of Chenoweth's new research can be seen in the success of the recent global Extinction Rebellion protests recently popularised by the involvement of the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg,  Fridays for the Future and Sunrise Movement as well as other youth movements leaving school on a regular basis to protest our global warming extinction emergency. (The founders of these groups say they have been directly inspired by her findings.) 

Chenoweth says groups like Extinction Rebellion are up against a lot of inertia, but she thinks that they have an incredibly thoughtful and strategic core. They seem to have all the right instincts about how to develop and teach through a nonviolent resistance campaign."

Challenge One: How do we get Chenowith's minimal 3.5% protest option to happen successfully around the world

We need to get the world's environmental groups to work together! The world's environmental groups MUST work together to get more than the rock bottom minimum of 3.5% of the national and global population protesting at the same time on a simple, clear, and accurate message. This getting 3.5% is a tall order for numerous reasons.

Here is why. Most of the world's environmental groups:

1. do not see global warming as the central or even the most destructive disruptor and driver for the worsening of most of today's environmental issues. They do not understand the complexities of the multifaceted climate system and its hundreds of tipping points. They also do not understand the many complex adaptive system characteristics of the global warming extinction emergency.

Climate science is not their area of specialty. Consequently, these organizations have not fully connected the coming extreme global warming consequences to the near-impossibility of achieving their future environmental goals. They somehow still believe they can continue with their specific eco-mission goals without focusing most of their resources on solving the rapidly accelerating global warming extinction emergency.

2. have failed to educate their members that only strict new global fossil fuel reduction laws that comply with the REAL 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets strictly enforced by all of our governments will have any realistic hope of saving us before it is too late.

3. have also failed to have the courage to tell their members that at this late stage of our global fossil fuel reduction failure, there will be no saving the world or national economies if we want to save humanity. The honest and needed 2025 global fossil fuel reductions will be extremely costly and painful, requiring great public and national sacrifice and suffering. The fossil fuel lobbyist demand that all needed global fossil fuel reductions must pay for themselves and not hurt the local, national, and global economies is, at this late extinction facing stage, a ludicrous delusion. At worst, this idea that all global fossil fuel reductions must not hurt their respective economies is a demand and delusion that is both counter-productive to humanity's survival and toxic to having a post-global warming future worth living.

4. have failed to have the courage to admit that the grossly inadequate current global warming remedial strategies and the current global fossil fuel reduction tactics are not working fast enough to save us and the biosphere from horrendous suffering and death. If we continue as we are now and our governments do not enforce the necessary fossil fuel reductions, our current remedial strategies will be far too little far too late. We will not just be dealing with an ongoing and unavoidable mass extinction event; we also will eventually be facing total extinction.

If we keep going as we are now, we will eventually be facing total extinction by way of the runaway greenhouse effect or runaway global warming. (When we say mass extinction as opposed to total extinction, we mean that over the next 30-50 years we will not be able to avoid as much as 70-90% of humanity will perish from starvation, the cumulative consequences of global warming, and by crossing the four most dangerous extinction-evoking global warming tipping points described on this page.

5. have not come out publically and told their members that it is far too late for individual actions by themselves. Individual actions alone will not reduce global fossil fuel use enough to save us from constant global warming consequence horrors and mass or eventual total extinction.

6. have allowed themselves to become overly-directed by modern marketing principles where issues are dummied down. Today's biggest environmental groups are repeatedly told by their marketing departments not to give their members too much bad or fearful news, or they will leave and stop donating. Modern marketing principles applied to environmental groups have got many of them treating their members like easily frightened children and not adults capable of dealing with or managing bad news. 

Today's biggest environmental groups seem tom have forgotten that telling people a painful and difficult truth is not an act of scaring them. It is an act of informing them of reality, so as adults, they can make better choices from their remaining options. 

7. they are afraid to fully cooperate with other environmental groups because of the fear of the loss of staff, donors, or members who might become more attracted to another organization's mission or personalities.

8. They have not dealt with or acknowledged society's fear of change causing a huge amount of the social inertia about doing what must be done to resolve this extinction emergency. (How to do this will be discussed further below.)

Other key reasons for the biggest environmental groups lack of cooperation and ineffective action on the biggest disruptor in the 21st century is because the world's environmental groups:

a. have bought into the highly politicized and wealthy nation biased gross underestimations of how much we need to reduce our global fossil fuel use and what is necessary to save us from global warming catastrophe, 

b. have bought into the gross underestimates of global warming consequences and timetables,

c. have bought into the desperate hope that a knight in shining armor on a white horse will gallop in to save us in the form of an uber-optimism and a blind faith that new technologies (yet to be proved or at the needed scale,) will come into being around 2050 and they will save us at the last minute. And maybe most importantly they,

d. have failed to develop a simple, accurate global warming message of sufficient urgency and clarity. This simple urgent message failure is critical because having the correct and right message will inspire the people of the world to quickly mobilize more than 3.5 % of our global and national population to protest in the streets.

Scenario Two: Global warming consequences need to get much worse before our politicians and governments will get it and act. 

Societies and nations are a lot like individuals. Most individuals will only change their lives and behaviors when the pain of going forward is less than the pain that they are currently experiencing. It is often referred to as the point where an individual reaches "rock bottom" and finally becomes willing to make the necessary and challenging life changes.

It is highly probable that because nations and societies are like individuals, they too will not heed the global warming extinction emergency warnings until the pain of experiencing repeated ever-worsening global warming consequences is more than the fear of change and the pain of our current global fossil fuel reduction changes. Our governments will not enact and enforce the laws necessary to achieve the life-critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets until our governments:

1. call the global warming extinction emergency what it is, and

2. at least, 3.5% of the national and world's population is out in the streets demanding change, or

3. experience global warming consequences that cost between 1/2 to one trillion dollars per single incident, and a shockingly massive number of individuals (100,000 or more) are killed or made homeless in the same event. 

We have already had global warming-related storms in the US like Hurricane Sandy that cost of 300 billion dollars in damages, and we are having wildfires and flooding year after year coming close to that amount. However, this pain level is still not enough to offset the tremendous economic, political and social pain as well as the fear of change of making all of the necessary 2025 global fossil fuel reductions we need to make to keep the future safe.

The good news of Scenario Two is that the rapidly worsening reality of the global warming extinction emergency will soon become one of humanity's biggest allies. The financial and personal pain of both cumulative and ever-escalating global warming consequences will continue to steadily increase (by trend) in severity, frequency, and scale. They will keep rising until society, and the nations of the world are so depleted, beaten down, and shell-shocked by the continuous global warming consequences that they can no longer bear the ever-increasing pain and losses as things continue to worsen. At this "rock bottom" point, our politicians and governments will finally become willing to make the real and honest changes.

The bad news of Scenario Two is that unless the cumulative global warming consequences (like the 2020 massive wildfires in Australia.) do not increase quickly enough to the single incident 1/2 to 1 trillion dollar level with 100,000 people or more dying or homeless, we still will not pay sufficient attention to our extinction emergency to enact the government-enforced actions need to reduce global fossil fuel use in time. Our governments will not act in time to save us from a mass extinction nightmare of our own making. (Click here to see a comprehensive multistep overview of all that we have to do to make the necessary 2025 global fossil fuel reductions in time.)

Without a doubt, Scenario Two will happen will continue to develop and unfold all by itself. The only questions that remain in Scenario Two are:

1. How long will it take us to get to 1/2 - 1 trillion dollar global warming single instance disasters with 100,000 or more killed or made homeless, and

2. Will even those levels of massive loss and destruction be enough to get the world's politicians and governments into action on global warming before it is too late!

The bad news: Every legitimate global warming solution strategy is going to cause lots of pain and financial loss!

The question is, are we willing to endure a natural and appropriate transitional pain and financial loss for the lives and comfort of our children and future generations? Will our leaders educate us and invite us to be brave and make the necessary sacrifices. Will they inspire us to have the courage to do what is right, but painful?

There are already many environmental and global warming leaders who will speak the necessary truths. We now need to move them to the foreground!

In quick summary

1. Scenario One and Scenario Two will develop concurrently. Which one reaches a tipping point first is anyone's call. The real challenge is Scenario One or Two reaching fruition before it is too late to avoid total extinction.

2. Scenario One is also based on the principle that when one is in an emergency, one bypasses the typical structures designed to handle the emergency, and one directly intervenes and handles the emergency themselves. Our politicians were supposed to be protecting us but have failed. Therefore, we have to bypass their inaction by going to the streets in such numbers demanding action that our politicians must act for fear of losing their jobs.

3. Resistance or denial is what you add to reality to make it hurt more and last longer! That is what we will be doing with the global warming extinction reality if we continue to resist or deny its truth or, we fail to acknowledge we must come as close as we can to meet the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. These 2025 targets are our last credible chance to prevent crossing the four key extinction-evoking global warming tipping points to prevent human genocide and animal biocide.

4. In the future, if we survive, when the world looks back at the global warming extinction emergency, those who continued to burn fossil fuels indiscriminately or did not cooperate to resolve this emergency while we still had time left will surely be considered guilty of crimes against humanity and genocide. This is because millions then billions will die in the following decades soon after we cross the four post-2025 extinction-evoking global warming tipping points and experience the cumulative effects of all global warming consequences. 

5. If the environmental movement and the world's key global warming activists are unable to call the global warming extinction emergency what it really is, there is very little hope that the world and our political leaders will hear our message in time to save us from the ultimate catastrophe.

If you took the time to read this document and review its supporting links and notes, you now have an honest view of the challenge that now lies before us in:

1. what will it REALLY take for the politicians and governments of the world to finally act in an effective way to fix the global warming extinction emergency, and 

2. how difficult it be to reach our politicians and get them to make all of the needed government-driven changes in the little time that we have left.

In spite of all of the challenges and difficulties, what other options do we have? We either work together, or we die together in the mutually assured destruction (MAD) of the accelerating global warming extinction emergency!

If we continue to fail to resolve the global warming extinction emergency, the last chance "blessing" of the COVID-19 global pandemic is that it may still save us from global warming extinction despite ourselves. Here's how.

If our governments and our environmental groups continue to allow the global warming extinction emergency to unfold, Mother Nature may save us despite ourselves. Here is how that can happen.

COVID-19 has already produced a world recession that itself will not go away until all of us are vaccinated (in about 12-18 months from now but only after a vaccine is found.) Many economists are already predicting a severe COVID-19 caused global recession that will last up to 5 years. Other economists are predicting that our COVID-19 recession could quickly turn into a worldwide economic depression lasting 5-10 years. 

This recession or depression is a disguised "blessing" because, in either the case, global fossil fuel use will drop radically. The resultant reduction in global fossil fuel use can then provide us what may be the only realistic way we will ever get close enough to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. 

Many years ago, a professor of atmospheric science, Tim Garret, did the needed global fossil fuel reduction math. He predicted that the only way we would save humanity from global warming extinction was either that we "voluntarily" reduced our global fossil fuel use to the required levels or, the world's economy would have to go into a steep recession or depression.

Professor Garret believed that neither we as individuals nor the governments would never voluntarily reduce global fossil fuel usage to the required amounts. This failure to act is significant because it would in fact, create a severe global recession or depression. This inability to act rationally concerning recognizing the threat and managing it meant that according to his calculations and his take on human nature, there was no hope for humanity.

But, now Mother Nature, through the "blessing" of COVID-19, is doing what we would not do and may not ever do (even after the horrific lessons and catharsis of the COVID pandemic.) So, here is some good global warming news for our shared futures. If if we fail to adequately reduce global warming proactively in time, and if the steep COVID global economic recession or depression continues for five more years, there is a good chance we will either hit or come very close to meeting our last chance 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. 

To read about this professor Garret's fascinating global fossil fuel reduction, recession, and depression calculations and research, click here.

What can you do to distribute this critical article and help get the needed number of global protesters into the streets? 

Every one of the world's environmental organizations and each one of us is responsible for acting with urgency in this extinction emergency. You are also accountable, especially if you know or have a positive influence on politicians or you know the key managers or directors of any environmental group or, you know, any movie, sport, or music celebrities. If you know anyone in any of these categories, get this article to them as fast as possible and, where possible, connect them to the big environmental groups coordinating the next big protest.

If you do not know someone in any of the previous categories, you are still responsible to get this document to all of your friends. Post it to newsgroups and contact everyone else you can to ensure we get a large portion of your area, nation, and the world's population into the streets protesting the global warming extinction emergency.

Never forget that the 3.5% level of protests only gives us a 50% chance of getting our politicians to enact the necessary 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and laws to save us from total extinction. We need to raise that protest participation level to 5-7-10 % or even higher to improve our 50/50 chance of saving the world. A 50% chance of saving humanity and our civilization is ridiculous and an unacceptable risk, threat, and uncertainty when the stakes are everyone and everything on Earth as well as all future generations.

Please embrace your responsibilities to inform others and connect the people who can make a difference:

1. Spread the word and send this article to the key directors and managers of every environmental group you know.

2. Please contact every celebrity you know and get them this article!

Don't worry if these organizations or individuals get multiple articles or other personal contacts from many different people. It will only call the extra needed attention to the urgency, importance, and necessity that their involvement requires for the future survival success of humanity as well as the success and survival of all animals and biological life on Earth.

Other than the environmental groups, unfortunately, generation Z and the Millenials are probably most responsible for getting this done. This burden of responsibility is not because they are ones or the generations who have created this extinction emergency, but because they are the ones who will suffer the most and die far too soon because of it.

Here is what the Job One for Humanity nonprofit organization (the author of this article) is willing to do 

We are a small nonprofit climate research analysis organization with few staff and volunteers. Still, we are eager to use our mail lists (about 20,000) to help promote these protests once other nonprofit environmental organizations far larger than ourselves set a date, update their global warming reality-aligned messages for these protests, and set up the communication and coordination structures needed to have the protests be peaceful, global and successful.

We also have allies with mail lists that could potentially add another 100,000 to 400,000 email contacts to the effort for promoting these protests. Job One for Humanity will do everything within its power and resources to help make these last chance protests successful before it is too late. 

Last thoughts

You, your family, and children, as well as your businesses and nations, will endure ever-growing financial losses and suffer ever-escalating calamities as global warming consequences accelerate as they most certainly will. Millions then billions will starve and die in an already unfolding mass extinction event.

What most people fail to realize is that the worst global warming consequences will not increase slowly or gradually as they have done over the last 35 years while we ignored the warning of what was coming. As we cross more and more global warming tipping points, the worst global warming consequences will increase faster and faster, growing exponentially over time. (In the graph below, the red line is an example of linear growth and the green line an example of exponential growth.)

The exponential growth of global warming consequences after crossing these four most crucial tipping points after 2025 means that few people or governments will be able to stay up with the escalating consequences if we do not come close to hitting the future-critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. 

The only question remaining of true importance is, how long will it be before our big environmental organizations collaborate with each other to make the needed new minimum of getting at least 3.5% of the population protesting at the same time to get our politicians to act to save us from extinction? 

If either Scenario One or Scenario Two does not happen in time because our politicians did not enact and enforce the laws needed to get very close to the 2025 targets, the global warming mass extinction war is lost. At that point, the only remaining battle will only be to prevent total extinction because mass extinction will be assured.

If you are still wavering in deciding what to do, please see where we are now on the Climate Change and Global Warming Doomsday Clock! 

Your Personal global warming extinction emergency "Plan B" and other ideas 

If we fail to achieve either Scenario One or Scenario Two in time or come as close as possible to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, there is no guarantee that we'll be successful in preventing total extinction. Therefore if failure to meet the 2025 targets is a possibility to you, it is time also to start thinking about or preparing your personal global warming Plan B.

Even though our fossil fuel reductions must be government-driven and government-enforced to save us in time from mass or total extinction, every reduction, no matter how small, still has value. In every situation, despite all the obstacles, the only way we save any part of a liveable future for even a tiny part of humanity is to radically and immediately cut fossil fuel use. These fossil fuel use reductions will slow down adding more carbon to the atmosphere enough so that we have more time to prepare, migrate, and adapt as well as possible. Every reduction in our personal, business, or governmental fossil fuel use means that more people will live longer, or more people will suffer less.

We are in deep trouble! If the world's environmental groups do not cooperate to get 3.5 % - 10% of the world's population into the streets protesting on the same day, there is only a small hope left to prevent mass extinction from happening. This means that there will be no surviving mass or total extinction without mass and total cooperation.

If the world's environmental groups do not work together to save us in time and the world does not come together to tell its politicians to act now, we may discover that mass, and total extinction is the Earth's natural evolutionary and final solution for the destruction that its human virus is causing to the balance of wellbeing of all Earth's species. If we do not act now, the Earth's average global temperature will keep rising until it burns off the offending virus (us.) This is much like a fever in humans kills off our dangerous germs.

There is a Scenario 3, but it may not be as effective as the two scenarios listed above. Click here as find Scenario 3 on this long page.

Relevant supporting links:

The correct 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets necessary to meet to prevent mass extinction.

The unthinkable four key extinction-evoking global warming tipping points that will occur soon after 2025 if we miss reaching the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.

Why geoengineering and carbon capture technologies will not save us in time.

The gross underestimating of current global warming consequences and their timetables by governments and IPCC discussed here,

Why climate change as a term confuses, muddles, dissipates focus, and sucks urgency out of the real and escalating dangers of the escalating global warming extinction emergency. 

What are ALL of the things our governments must do to save us in time from global warming extinction?

What are the most difficult challenges for meeting the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets?

To understand more on how the fear of change and cultural trauma affect the current social inertia surrounding making changes needed to resolve the global warming extinction emergency, click here for a new study.

Is it time to start preparing your personal global warming extinction emergency Plan B?

Why philanthropy must do more to support accurate global warming education link https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Philanthropy-Must-Stop/247761

An expanded summary of Chenoweth's 3.5% fruitful change movement research article is here.  

Click here for a possible anthem or anthem ideas for the worldwide protests.

Key human system inertia factors relevant to making global warming solutions more challenging to achieve have been described at the bottom of this page and also on this page and in the book Climageddon.)

A description of the various climate system momentums pushing temperatures ever higher has been described in numerous studies as well as in the recently published book Climageddon.

Key Notes: 

Note # 1. We are releasing this article under our policy of respectful disruption described here. It has and will be sent to the management and boards of environmental groups worldwide. Should those groups ignore this effort at updating their positions and education on global warming we will have no hesitation of implementing the second more public phase of respectful disruption also described here. 

Note # 2. It is shameful that the new youth movements mentioned above in this article are leading protests and building awareness of the real global warming extinction emergency. This extinction threat awareness should have been the job of our most prominent environmental organizations!

Note # 3. Society's fear of change is also a major cause of the social inertia concerning doing what must be done to resolve this extinction emergency. The following is how Part Three of the Job one for Humanity plan handles this issue:

We must create adequate national and international new job transition training and recovery subsidies and funding that would assist all individuals, businesses, and nations that will suffer significant financial losses or closures because of the rapidly falling use of fossil fuels. For example, carbon Fee and Dividend revenues will help compensate and assist developing nations in stopping using fossil fuels. It will also help developing nations leapfrog over the building or expanding any current fossil fuel energy generation systems directly into building or expanding green energy generation systems like solar or wind power. 

We cannot forget to financially both compensate and subsidize and actively assist all of those individuals, businesses, and nations who will be harmed financially in this rapid transition away from fossil fuels. This support would naturally also include providing new job training in positions for the new green economy or positions in other industries.

This step is critical to the success of all global fossil fuel reduction procedures, especially when the needed 2025 reductions are so severe. It is the unsurfaced fear of change and how it will harm the current status quo, which is a major source of the inertia that has prevented humanity from effectively managing the global warming extinction emergency over the last 35 years.

If we do not handle this fear of change by assuring those whose jobs, livelihoods or assets are threatened we will assist them in this transition and help minimize any losses, it is highly unlikely we will be successful making the required 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. (Please see the following research article on cultural trauma, social inertia and climate change for a deeper understanding of the critical early importance of implementing this fear of change management and compensation step.) 

This document was prepared by the Job One for Humanity research team. Job One for Humanity is a non-profit organization dedicated to analyzing all relevant global warming research and then formulating successful strategies to remedy the current global warming extinction emergency.  

This article was published as part of our organization's respectful disruption policies.