VICTORY PLAN BY EZRA SILK Director of Policy & Strategy; Co-Founder, The Climate Mobilization August 2016: Initial Publication March 2019: Initial Revision by Kaela Bamberger CONTENTS Foreword by Paul Gilding 4 Preface by Margaret Klein Salamon 8 Learning from Our Last Battle for Survival: World War II Home Front Mobilization Overview 10 Climate Mobilization Objectives for Victory 14 FRONT ONE Restore a Safe & Stable Climate Targets, Definitions & Context 23 Kick-Start the Mobilization 29 Mobilize the Fed 32 Establish New Federal Government Agencies 33 Fair Shares Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rationing 38 Energy & Electricity: Phase Out Fossil Fuels and Rapid Rollout of Renewable Energy 41 Transport Mobilization: Mass Electrification and Shift toward Rail & Public Transit 50 Transform the Food System: Shift Toward Plant-Based Diets, Perennialize Grains, Embrace Agroecology & Carbon Farming 63 Overhaul the Built Environment 70 Full Employment & WWII-style Tax Fairness 72 Mobilize the Department of Defense to Fight Climate Change & Ecological Overshoot 75 Launch an Emergency Global Forest Management Effort 77 Research Program on Near-Term Cooling Approaches 81 Drawdown Research & Development Program 83 FRONT TWO Reverse Ecological Overshoot Half-Earth Conservation Preservation & Restoration Project to Halt the 6th Mass Extinction 87 Restore the Oceans 94 APPENDICES Appendix A: Works Cited 97 Appendix B: Background on “Solar Radiation Management” 98 Remaining Sections (to be Drafted) 102 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I greatly appreciate the valuable feedback on this first draft I received from Margaret Klein Salamon, George Woodwell, Richard Heinberg, Anya Grenier, Michael Hoexter, David Kai- ser, Raychel Santo, Emily Nink, Adam Sacks, Sailesh Rao, Marie Venner, Joe Uehlein, Jeremy Brecher, David Spratt, Tom Weis, and Paul Gilding. For inspiring many of the ideas in this paper, special thanks to Michael Hoexter, Philip Sutton, Raychel Santo, Emily Nink, Richard Gilbert, Anthony Perl, Stan Cox, George Wood- well, Richard Heinberg, Laurence Delina, David Fridley, Andy Kunz, Stephen Mulkey, E.O. Wilson, Adrian Whitehead, Joe Uehlein, Jeremy Brecher, John Wiseman, Paul Gilding, David Spratt, and Margaret Klein Salamon. Thank you to everyone who has financially supported the Climate Mobilization Project and allowed me to eat and pay rent as I’ve researched and written this paper. Thanks to Andrew Lentini for designing the Victory Plan first draft. Huge thanks to Russell Greene, Tom Weis (and another person whose name I can’t dis- close) for your miraculous intervention in this year’s Democratic Party platform drafting process and for your friendship. Thank you Philip Sutton for your friendship and for teaching me everything about climate science, WWII, sustainability, and climate policy. Thank you Paul Gilding for your support and your incredible leadership. Thank you to my great friends Ryan Brill and Ashik Siddique for hearing me out and hav- ing my back through Wesleyan, Occupy, and now, the climate emergency. Nicole Harris – thank you for taking TCM’s organizing to the next level this year. Thank you Margaret Klein Salamon for masterfully leading TCM, making this project possible in the first place, helping me make a bunch of really tough calls, being a great friend, and forcing me to hit my deadlines on this paper. Mom, Dad, Abe & Isaac — I love you. Thank for your love and support as I’ve come to grips with the climate emergency and charted a new direction in my life. I am nothing with- out you. And thank you to all of the Mobilizers across the country and the world for your hard work and courage. You all give me so much hope. 3 FOREWORD By Paul Gilding or many years, a small number of scientists, scholars and activists have called for a WWII-scale mobilization to save civilization from climate ca- tastrophe — an all-out effort far beyond anything proposed in today’s polite debates. This year, the idea has started to build serious momentum, with new advocates like Bill McKibben and Bernie Sanders and the adoption by the Democratic Party in the U.S. of the call for an emergency climate mobilization. FAs mobilization starts to break into the mainstream, it is imperative that we discuss the specifics of this effort. In 2009, I co-authored, with Professor Jorgen Randers, the “One Degree War Plan” — a global and less comprehensive overview of the concept described herein. The One Degree War Plan showed we can realistically slash global greenhouse gas emissions to net zero in 20 years and then restore a safe climate through a carbon dioxide drawdown effort. While it’s very positive that people are now signing on to the concept, it is critical that such a response be based on what the science demands. The hard truth is the climate has deteriorated significantly since 2009 and this appears to be now accelerating. There is no time left for multi-decade transition scenarios. At this late hour targets based around 2050, or calls for only zero emissions (without drawdown and cooling), are clearly not sufficient. They risk an unthinkable defeat by putting off the very concrete steps we need today. That is why I am so pleased that The Climate Mobilization has written this Victory Plan. It tangibly demonstrates how the U.S. could eliminate net greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, contribute to a global effort to restore a safe climate and reverse ecological over- shoot through a massive WWII-scale mobilization. It’s important to understand what this means. WWII-scale climate mobilization is not just “a big effort.” It is not a major project or a key policy initiative like the Apollo Pro- gram or even the New Deal. It is a comprehensive, economy-wide approach that, if done correctly, represents the only realistic way we can overcome the climate emergency. The mobilization called for in the “Victory Plan” is powerful and sweeping enough to provide effective protection in the face of civilization-threatening climate disruption. It is firmly based in the most advanced climate science, and offers an extensive overview of the poli- 4 cies necessary to be implemented in every sector. It may not have every measure right and it will further evolve as society researches and develops the plan, but it provides a clear and practical sense of what such an approach would really look and feel like. It shows us how we can win the war to save civilization. When I published the “One Degree War Plan” in 2009, the very notion of action on this scale and in this style was dismissed. It was considered an interesting — almost enter- taining — thought experiment. In the years since, people are slowly coming around to the idea. Whether motivated by the European refugee crisis, extreme weather events, global temperature records being smashed or just the mounting total weight of the evidence, they are coming to accept that not only is such a response necessary, it is also now con- ceivable. Nevertheless, while you’re reading this plan many thoughts will occur to you, as your mind tries to reconcile the huge gap between what you read is needed and today’s reality. You will consider how “unrealistic” it is, how you “can’t imagine” political leaders acting in this way or how the incumbent business community “will never accept” this level of eco- nomic transformation. Before that process begins, I’d like to establish one idea very clearly in your thinking: A mobilization on this scale is the only rational response to the level of economic, secu- rity and social risks posed by climate change. Anyone who looks at the evidence objective- ly would conclude that — and historians will look back and wonder why it took us so long to accept it. So be clear — a mobilization on this scale is simply inevitable, with the only question being when we get started. Hard to imagine? Yes, it is. But before you go there, you have to imagine the alternative. Without this response, we will see a descent through cascading climate change induced crises with military conflict, accelerating costs, massive refugee flows, nations collapsing and global food crises as the world spirals down into economic and social collapse. This would inevitably require heavy government intervention and quite probably authoritarian rule to manage. With that prospect unfolding, do you really think we will stand by and do nothing but observe and talk about the difficulty of acting? Now that is “unrealistic” and that I really “can’t imagine.” As people come to accept this is the binary choice we face, we are getting closer to mobilization each day. I’ve seen the climate change response evolve steadily since the late 1980’s — first from the vantage point of Executive Director of Greenpeace International and since then travelling the world as an author and speaker, alongside my work with the leaders of large global corporations on their strategic approach to sustainability. The response has never evolved faster than in the past few years. Two recent developments illustrate the growing momentum: In late July, the Democratic Party voted overwhelmingly to adopt mobilization language in its official platform. The platform declares a “global climate emergency,” and commits to “a national mobilization, and to leading a global effort to mobilize nations to address 5 this threat on a scale not seen since World War II.” This is an important moment — not because this guarantees that the next Democratic President will launch such a mobiliza- tion — but because it brings the idea into the mainstream debate and creates a foundation for future advocacy of the approach. Then Bill McKibben, the leading voice of the American climate movement, published a full-throated call for WWII-scale climate mobilization, in which he states: “We’re under attack from climate change—and our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII.” With the concept gaining acceptance, many ask, what will be the trigger for action? Some believe we must wait for a “Climate Pearl Harbour” moment to initiate a WWII- scale mobilization.