Abolishing Fossil Fuels: Lessons from Movements that Won

Climate destruction is a problem of political power. We have the resources for a green transition, but how can we neutralize the influence of Exxon and Shell? Abolishing Fossil Fuelsargues that the climate movement has started to turn the tide againstfossil fuels, just too gradually. The movement's partial victories showus how the industry can be further undermined and eventually abolished.Activists have been most successful when they've targeted the industry'senablers: the banks, insurers, and big investors that finance itsoperations, the companies and universities that purchase fossil fuels,and the regulators and judges who make life-and-death rulings aboutpipelines, power plants, and drilling sites. This approach hasjeopardized investor confidence in fossil fuels, leading the industry tolash out in increasingly desperate ways. The fossil fuel industry'sfinancial and legal enablers are also its Achilles heel. The mostpowerful movements in US history succeeded in similar ways. The bookalso includes an in-depth analysis of four classic victories: theabolition of slavery, battles for workers' rights in the 1930s, Blackfreedom struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, and the fight for clean air.Those movements inflicted costs on economic elites through strikes,boycotts, and other mass disruption. They forced some sectors of theruling class to confront others, which paved the way for victory.Electing and pressuring politicians was rarely the movements' primaryfocus. Rather, gains in the electoral and legislative realms wereusually the byproducts of great upsurges in the fields, factories, andstreets. Those historic movements show that it's very possible todefeat capitalist sectors that may seem invulnerable. They also show ushow it can be done. They offer lessons for building a multiracial,working-class climate movement that can win a global green transitionthat's both rapid and equitable.…