With the impacts of climate change increasing and scientists warning that the global response is too slow, 60 prominent political figures and celebrities have created World War Zero to mobilize the planet’s citizens.
“When America was attacked in World War II we set aside our differences, united and mobilized to face down our common enemy,” former Secretary of State John Kerry said recently in announcing the effort. “We are launching World War Zero to bring that spirit of unity, common purpose, and urgency back to the world today to fight the great threat of our time.”
WWZ aims to offer a unifying story that can anchor other efforts, focused on the economic benefits of climate action and the national-security and public-health risks of climate change.
The bipartisan coalition will push for immediate policy changes. The goal is to hold more than 10 million “climate conversations” in the coming year with Americans across the political spectrum. In January, Kerry and other coalition members will hold town meetings across the country. Members will head to 2020 battleground states, to military bases where climate discussions are rare, and to economically depressed areas that WWZ leaders say could benefit from clean-energy jobs.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor of California, is another WWZ leader. He pointed out that his state’s economy is growing at a healthy clip despite having some of the nation’s most ambitious environmental laws. “It just shows you the power that we have by going green and the kind of jobs we created,” Schwarzenegger said on NBC’s “Meet the Press’’ with Chuck Todd. “And I think that’s what we want to do: We want the whole United States to go in that direction, the whole world to go in that direction.”
Kerry said while individual members might promote specific climate policy proposals, like a tax on carbon dioxide pollution, or the Green New Deal, the coalition is not aimed at promoting any particular plan.
“We are bringing together unlikely allies who may not agree on everything, but who have enlisted in this effort to do everything they can to mobilize people to tackle climate change on every front.”
Katie Eder, founder of The Future Coalition, a network for youth-led organizations that helped organize climate strikes around the country in September, supports the Green New Deal and is a WWZ member. She told The New York Times’ Lisa Friedman that people who care about climate change need to look past their differences. “While I may be disagreeing with some of the things that other folks involved in World War Zero believe, that doesn’t mean we can’t work together,” she said. “Collaboration is our key to survival.”
Other coalition members, some of whom are from overseas, include former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter; retired military officers such as General Stanley McChrystal and Brigadier General Stephen Cheney; Cindy McCain; former Ohio Governor John Kasich; and celebrities Emma Watson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ted Danson, and Sting.
Despite the enormity of the climate challenge, Kerry saw reason for encouragement. “Something extraordinary is happening in America,” he told Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic. “States have passed renewable-portfolio laws, so you’ve got [37] states that are locked in already to moving towards Paris, no matter what the president does. You also have the mayor of every major city in America signed on to the mayor’s commitment to try to live by the Paris Agreement. So you have this dichotomy in America, where the president of the United States has said I’m out, but, frankly, the majority of the American people are still saying, We’re in.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a similar point last week. She and 14 other members of the House and Senate traveled to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Madrid. “Congress’s commitment to take action on the climate crisis is iron-clad,” she said. “By coming here we want to say to everyone, ‘We’re still in. The United States is still in.’”
“It is doable,” Kerry told Meyer, “but you don’t see a very specific set of proposals for how you do it. For instance, bringing the auto manufacturers into the White House and sitting them down and saying: ‘Okay, we’ve got to move this faster. I want to know what the hurdles are. I want to know how we take them out of your way. I want to know what kind of incentives we’re going to need for people to be able to afford to buy the electric car.’ Then you’ve got to bring the utility people in.”
Schwarzenegger rejected the Trump administration’s argument that China must do more to curb emissions before the United States acts. He told The Times’ Friedman: “I always say to myself, what is happening here? America never ever in its history has said, ‘Let some other country do something first.’ We should lead.”