Earth Day Activists Wanted to Disrupt the Fossil Fuel Industry. The Pandemic Is Doing it For Them

Nineteen-seventy was a simpler time. (February was a simpler time too, but for a moment let鈥檚 think outside the pandemic bubble.)

Simpler because our environmental troubles could be easily seen. The air above our cities was filthy, and the water in our lakes and streams was gross. There was nothing subtle about it. In New York City, the environmental lawyer Albert Butzel a permanently yellow horizon: 鈥淚 not only saw the pollution, I wiped it off my windowsills.鈥� Or consider the testimony of a city medical examiner: 鈥淭he person who spent his life in the Adirondacks has nice pink lungs. The city dweller鈥檚 are black as coal.鈥� You鈥檝e likely heard of Cleveland鈥檚 Cuyahoga River , but here鈥檚 how New York鈥檚 Gov. Nelson Rockefeller the Hudson south of Albany: 鈥渙ne great septic tank that has been rendered nearly useless for water supply, for swimming, or to support the rich fish life that once abounded there.鈥� Everything that people say about the air and water in China and India right now was said of America鈥檚 cities then.

No wonder people mobilized: 20 million Americans took to the streets for the in 1970鈥�10 percent of America鈥檚 population at the time, perhaps the single greatest day of political protest in the country鈥檚 history. And it worked. Worked politically because Congress quickly passed the and the , and scientifically because those laws had the desired effect. In essence, they stuck enough filters on smokestacks, car exhausts, and factory effluent pipes that, before long, the air and water were unmistakably cleaner. The nascent Environmental Protection Agency commissioned a that showed just how filthy things were. Even for those of us who were alive then, it鈥檚 hard to imagine that we tolerated this.

But we should believe it, because now we face even greater challenges that we鈥檙e doing next to nothing about. And one reason is you can鈥檛 see them.

The carbon dioxide molecule is invisible; at today鈥檚 levels, you can鈥檛 see it or smell it, and it doesn鈥檛 do anything to you. Carbon with one oxygen molecule? That鈥檚 what kills you in a closed garage if you leave the car running. But two oxygen molecules? All that does is trap heat in the atmosphere. Melt ice caps. Raise seas. Change weather patterns. But slowly enough that most of the time, we don鈥檛 quite see it.

The divestment campaign that, over a decade, has enlisted $14 trillion in endowments and portfolios in the climate fight has a new head of steam.

And it鈥檚 a more complex moment for another reason. You can filter carbon monoxide easily. It鈥檚 a trace gas, a tiny percentage of what comes from a power plant. But carbon dioxide is the exact opposite. It鈥檚 most of what comes pouring out when you burn coal or gas or oil. There鈥檚 no catalytic converter for CO2, which means you have to take down the fossil fuel industry.

That in turn means you have to take on not just the oil companies but also the banks, asset managers, and insurance companies that invest in them (and , in the wake of the current economic crash). You have to take on, that is, the heart of global capital.

And so we are. , a coalition of environmental and climate justice groups running from the small and specialized to the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, formed this past fall to try to tackle the biggest money on earth. Banks such as Chase鈥攖he planet鈥檚 largest by market capitalization鈥攚hich has funneled a to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris Agreement of 2015. Insurers such as , still insuring tar sands projects even as pipeline builders endanger Native communities by trying to build the Keystone XL .

This campaign sounds quixotic, but it seemed to be getting traction until the coronavirus pandemic hit. In January, BlackRock that it was going to put climate at the heart of its investment analyses. Liberty Mutual, under similar pressure from activists, began to from coal. And Chase鈥攚ell, Earth Day would have seen activists engaging in civil disobedience in several thousand bank lobbies across America, sort of like the that helped launch the campaign (and sent me, among others, off in handcuffs). But we called that off; there鈥檚 no way we were going to risk carrying the microbe into jails, where the people already locked inside have little chance of social distancing.

Still, the pandemic may be causing as much trouble for the fossil fuel industry as our campaign hoped to. With the demand for oil cratering, it鈥檚 clear that these companies have no future. The divestment campaign that, over a decade, has enlisted $14 trillion in endowments and portfolios in the climate fight has a new head of steam.

Our job鈥攁 more complex one than faced our Earth Day predecessors 50 years ago鈥攊s to force the spring. We need to speed the transition to the solar panels and wind turbines that engineers have worked so mightily to improve and are now the cheapest way to generate power. The only thing standing in the way is the political power of the fossil fuel companies, on clear display as does everything in his power to preserve their dominance. That鈥檚 hard to overcome. Hard but simple. Just as in 1970, it demands unrelenting pressure from citizens. That pressure is coming. Indigenous nations, front-line communities, faith groups, climate scientists, and savvy investors are joining together, and their voices are getting louder. Seven million of us were in the streets this . That鈥檚 not 20 million, but it鈥檚 on the way.

We can鈥檛 be on the streets right now. So we鈥檒l do what we can on the boulevards of the internet. Join us for , three days of digital activism beginning April 22. We鈥檙e in a race, and we鈥檙e gaining fast.

This story originally appeared in and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, the founder of 350.org, and the winner of the 2014 Right Livelihood Award. He is a YES! contributing editor.