Opinion | Climate Change Is Not World War

Second, as opposed to World War II, when national mobilization meant a flood of government money that truly did lift all boats, the transformations required to address climate change would have real economic losers. Many major players in industry, tech, energy, and government have little incentive to go along with climate mobilization, since it would undermine their profit and power.

Third, mobilization during World War II was a national mobilization against foreign enemies, while what’s required today is a global mobilization against an international economic system: carbon-fueled capitalism. It took President Franklin D. Roosevelt years of political groundwork and a foreign attack to get the United States into World War II. What kind of work over how many years would it take to unify and mobilize the entire industrialized world — against itself?

The demand for a World War II-scale mobilization to fight climate change faces other problems as well. While many supporters voice the need for revolutionary change to face the existential challenge climate change poses, the fact is that climate change is just one of several progressive concerns. Democrats show a profound lack of unity on whether climate change should come before economic justice, racial justice, revitalizing American democracy, labor rights, immigration reform, health care and gun control.

Campaign promises that we can fix everything at once are sheer pabulum; real legislation requires real priorities, compromises, and sacrifices. In seeking support from Southern Democrats for his efforts to mobilize for war, for example, Roosevelt left Jim Crow segregation untouched, even while his administration was drafting black men into the military. What similar compromises would modern-day Democrats be willing to make?

Finally, national climate mobilization would have cascading unforeseen consequences, perhaps even contradicting its original goals, just like America’s total mobilization during World War II. Looking at the myriad ways that World War II changed America, for better and worse, suggests that it’s difficult to know in advance the ramifications of such a sweeping agenda.

Nevertheless, total mobilization may be our only hope. Ecological collapse is happening all around us. We may be nearing or have already crossed the line where it becomes unstoppable. Piecemeal, consensus-driven, incrementalist solutions are tantamount to global suicide. According to a summary paper last year from leading scientists on global climate trajectories, the changes needed to stabilize the earth’s climate “require a fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions.”

Such a program would be another order of magnitude larger and more complex than America’s military mobilization during World War II. The problem of climate change is bigger than the New Deal. It’s bigger than the Great Depression. It’s bigger than war. The problem of climate change is the problem of how and whether human beings can live together sustainably on this planet.