I’ve been seeing a great number of friends and colleagues sharing this New York Magazine article, When Will Climate Change Make the Earth Too Hot For Humans? In essence, the article is a searing case for why humanity is screwed — for how things are worse than they seem or what we seem capable of reckoning with. It’s stirred up quite a response, with reflection pieces springing up from Vox to the Atlantic to as usual words of wisdom from Rebecca Solnit.

The crux of the debate seems to me: Do we have a duty — as scientists, journalists, and movement leaders to clearly point out the abyss we are heading towards? Are these anguishing truths necessary on their own — perhaps to inspire action at the scale of the loss and potential loss— or is there a tipping point where too much truth can create a certain paralysis?

I think it’s a worthy debate. We’ve been having it at peaks and troughs at least since I got involved in the climate movement in 2009 — I still remember this interview with Terry Tempest Williams and Tim DeChristopher from 2012 where Tim talks about watching a presentation of a lead author of the IPCC report where Tim asks, “So, what am I missing? It seems like you guys are saying there’s no way we can make it.” And the author Terry Root replied: “You’re not missing anything.”

I think it’s worth continuing the debate— but I also think climate timelines get a lot of attention compared to movement timelines. People get it. A 1 trillion-ton iceberg just broke off Antarctica. Other bad things will follow.

To me, the key question is: Do we know what we need to do in the next 3–5 years and beyond, and do we know how we’re going to build the power power to get it done? (because good ideas without people power tend to get beaten to a pulp by Big Oil). If we want people to wrestle with the truth, we need to present honest plans that get us through to the other side — even if that other side is a damaged, scarred world. These timelines sit well together: one shows an unraveling--something we cannot ignore, one shows us the potential if not for hope, then for a certain kind of redemption.

Yet while our prophecies of doom stretch well in the distance, our movements exist often so much in the now — we can guesstimate the date for when Miami will go under but not so much when we’ll take back Congress. Most of us who are involved with this work know we’re beyond tactic-by-tactic reactionary organizing or awareness raising without courage-raising, or just supporting an elevated class of advocates — we know we’re ready for big movement plans that marry issues together, that get at the roots, and ask for things that are hard. I believe most regular people are hungry for these plans and timelines too. Despair and apathy and denial all seem to speak to a lack of faith that we can heal, that we can change, that we can persevere. Why believe in the crisis, or why believe in possibility, unless you know there’s a way out?

This isn’t “dime store social psychology” — it may be the biggest thing we’ve learned from the last decade of doing this work. Fear of the end of the world is in the news everyday — this isn’t news. If the latest climate nightmare science alone inspired people to action, we’d be well on our way to slowing the rise of the oceans and tempering the floods, fires, and the heat — so much heat.

The debate about spreading the truth of climate timelines seems moot to me unless we are ready and prepared to spread movement timelines as well — about how we can all of us build the political and community power to get us out of this mess. Spreading truth without real hope (hope that is laid out as a long term but flexible plan that needs everybody giving their all to change the balance of power), is like waking Neo up in the Matrix, just to send him back, no red/blue pill choice ever proffered. It’s moot and it seems to me a dereliction of duty of movement ambassadors. It’s not just an act of spreading despair, but one that may border on cruelty.

Do not get me wrong: I do not condone silence. I advocate for loud public strategies — with timelines that don’t just show when Miami goes under, but when we take back Congress, when we tie up the fracking tubes, when we bring some relief and return justice to poisoned and often economically ruined communities, when we unleash a Climate Emergency Corps, when we spread solar panels on everyone of your neighbor’s houses, powered by co-ops that support healthcare access and job re-training programs. Hope is something you can see on a horizon, on a timeline — it’s a faith we need to make shimmer with clarity, promise and a sense of redemption.

Without presenting sound strategies and their accompanying timelines: we run the risk of recruiting more martyrs: beautiful people who walk the country to raise awareness only to be hit by SUVs on one extreme: but not far from it: activists who dive in with all they’ve got, and hit the wall of burn out within a few years. It’s easier to plug in and to stay in if you know where we’re going, if you know where your actions lead next, if you can spot the neon milestones of collective gumption in the distance.

For what it’s worth, I do see hope. I do see more of these timelines coming online.

I see these bold and public strategies being carved in the US by groups like Sunrise Movement, Lead Locally, Brand New Congress, AllofUs, and others (and we’re trying our all at Global Zero and in WV with Rise Up WV). I see it by young people and the young at heart who are putting together statewide and national efforts that show not just how far we need to go, but how we get there, all together.

TL;DR, #YestoClimateTimelines #YestoMovementTimelines