Moms and dads: It's time to get angry about climate change

This summer we're watching Russia burn and hearing new evidence that ocean life is dying on a massive scale, says Bill McKibben in the L.A. Times. That's what global warming looks like. At the same time, Congress has failed — yet again — to take even minimal steps to deal with the problem. "I'm a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday school teacher. I'm not quick to anger. But the time has come to get mad, and then to get busy." With climate change now threatening the planet's future, it's time for a new mindset:

If we're going to get [anything] done, we're going to need a movement. For 20 years, environmentalists have operated on the notion that we'd get action if we simply had scientists explain to politicians and chief executives that our current ways are unsustainable. That turns out, quite conclusively, not to work.

We need to be able to explain to them that continuing in their current ways will end something they actually care about: their careers. And because we'll never have the cash to compete with Exxon, we better work in the currencies we can muster: bodies, spirit, passion.

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We're not going to get the Senate to act next week, or maybe even next year. It took a decade after the Montgomery bus boycott to get the Voting Rights Act. But if there hadn't been a movement, then the Voting Rights Act would have passed in — never. We may need to get arrested. We definitely will need disciplined, nonviolent but very real anger. ... If we want a world that works, we're going to have to raise our voices.

Read the entire article at the L.A. Times.