Too Big to Solve?

After the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in March 1979, a strong movement formed against nuclear power. Nuclear power had been pitched after the 1953 Atoms for Peace speech as “energy too cheap to meter.” Suddenly, the price was too high to meter.

I then attended a rally where a speaker noted that no one was doing comparable organizing against nuclear weapons. The speaker explained the likely reason: The problem seemed too big to solve.

It was relatively easy to organize to block construction of new nuclear power plants. But the entire system of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence seemed vastly more complex and unsolvable.

Even though it was a far bigger threat, nuclear weapons got much less activist attention. At about the same time, MIT graduate student Randall Forsberg was working on an idea that just might transform the nuclear weapons threat into one that might gain traction with activists. 

She drafted a four page “Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race” that was published in April 1980 in its final form. It became the basis of the Nuclear Freeze movement.

That same decade, British Labour Party politician Denis Healey popularized a 1911 expression called “The Law of Holes”: “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” He was promoting the idea of the Nuclear Freeze: Even if we don’t know how to achieve nuclear disarmament, let’s stop making things worse. Let’s stop making new nuclear weapons.

In the U.S., a Nuclear Freeze bill was introduced by Democrat Ted Kennedy and Republican Mark Hatfield. They published a book: Freeze! How You Can Help Prevent Nuclear War.

The effort had widespread support across the political spectrum. The Freeze resolution passed the House 278 to 149. Local governments had also passed similar Freeze resolutions.

Reagan, of course, strongly opposed any such talk of a nuclear freeze. Until he totally reversed his position. He had said that a Freeze gave the Soviets an advantage. But then he said that a Freeze did not go far enough! He initiated the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to actually reduce nuclear weapons for the first time. He could see which way the political winds were blowing and he wanted to be on the favorable side.

The genius of the Freeze movement was to take a problem that was too big to solve and find a piece that could be solved. Could something similar happen for the Climate Crisis?

There are similarities and differences. A nuclear explosion is a sudden disaster that can be visualized. In fact, we have film of the effects of the U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.

We have no way to visualize the effects of the Climate Crisis in the same way. It is a slow building problem that has limited effects. Until it becomes a global disaster on a scale that is beyond imagination. And then it is too late.

But there is another difference that favors solving the Climate Crisis: In the case of ending the nuclear arms race, a tenuous peace between the superpowers depended on the balance of nuclear threats. It was not clear how to reduce that threat without risking ending that peace.

But solving the Climate Crisis is a win-win with no actual downside. It costs a lot of money up front to invest in sustainable transportation and sustainable energy. But those are positive outcomes that we need anyway.

Could we apply the Law of Holes to the Climate Crisis? A Fossil Fuel Freeze? The answer is yes, and there is in fact a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. The idea is simple: Freeze Fossil Fuel Expansion. Fund the Transition.

The First Conference on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels just took place in April to promote this effort. The setting was Marta, Colombia, which is a major coal port. A visible symbol of the challenge and the success of the effort.

A “Coalition of the Willing” from 57 nations formed from the conference to develop concrete, national roadmaps for transitioning away from oil, gas, and coal. And toward a sustainable future.

Much work remains to be done. But a Fossil Fuel Freeze is a good start.