Episode 115: May Boeve, 350.org
Today's guest is May Boeve, Executive Director & Co-Founder of 350.org.
350.org is an international climate change campaign that was founded by a group of university friends, along with author, Bill McKibben, who wrote one of the first books on global warming for the general public. May has been active in the climate movement since her days at Middlebury College, and that includes co-founding and leading the "Step It Up 2007” campaign, which brought together communities from 1,400 places for a national day of climate action. It also includes getting handcuffed and arrested in front of the White House while protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline. Through it all, May has maintained her commitment to fighting for what's right. And in 2015, Time Magazine recognized her as a "Next Generation Leader."
I was looking forward to this episode because activism is so important for the climate movement, and it's a topic that I haven't covered enough yet here on the pod. It's also a topic that's going through a bunch of change. People say that climate in many ways has been like a rich white people's problem. And until we tackle the issues of environmental and social justice, we're not really going to address climate change as well. Moreover, without addressing issues of racial and social equality, we're not going to be able to ensure that there's a "just transition." We have a great discussion in this episode about May's roots in activism and in fighting to combat global warming, where that came from, how it came about, and how her thinking on these topics has evolved over the past decade. We also talk about the current state of affairs in the climate movement and in the world, where we need to go, and what are some of the things that can be most impactful for helping us get there.
Enjoy the show!
You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 (me), @mcjpod (podcast) or @mcjcollective (company). You can reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
In today's episode, we cover:
What is 350.org and its mission?
May’s early experience in activism at Middlebury College.
How the climate crisis and the movement to address has changed over the past decade.
The intersectionality of climate change with other social ills.
The silver-lining of the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of global attention on a singular problem.
How 350.org’s focus has centered on divestment from fossil fuel companies.
The role of 350.org, its team and its volunteers play in its activism.
Why the climate risk to financial markets represents an opportunity to advance the goals of a “just transition.”
How clean energy can be a solution to “energy poverty.”
Why the transition of the fossil fuel industry to clean energy is not enough to reverse the damage the industry inflicts on the world.
Divestment in fossil fuel companies vs. engagement.
Why the fossil fuel industry is a dishonest broker and unreliable partner in addressing climate change.
Solutions that excite and give May hope.
How the focus of 350 has been influenced by the recent tension and movement for racial justice.
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
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Hello everyone. This is Jason Jacobs and welcome to My Climate Journey. This show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and try to figure out how people like you can help.
Today's guest is May Boeve, the Executive Director of 350.org, which is an international climate change campaign that was founded by a group of university friends, along with author, Bill McKibben, who wrote one of the first books on global warming for the general public. May has been active in the climate movement since her days at Middlebury College. And that includes co-founding and leading "Step It Up" 2007 campaign, which brought together communities from 1400 places for a national day of climate action. It also includes getting handcuffed and arrested in front of the White House while protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline. Through it all, May has maintained her commitment to fighting for what's right.
And in 2015, Time Magazine recognized her as a "Next Generation Leader." I was looking forward to this episode because activism is so important for the climate movement and it's a topic that I haven't covered enough yet here on the pod. It's also a topic that's going through a bunch of change. People say that climate in many ways has been like a rich white people's problem.
And until we tackle the issues of environmental and social justice, we're not really going to address climate change as well. And we're certainly not going to address making sure that there's a "just transition." We have a great discussion in this episode about May's roots in activism and in fighting to combat global warming, where that came from, how it came about, how her thinking on these topics have evolved from when she started until today. We also talk about the current state of affairs in the climate movement and in the world, where we need to go, what some of the things are that can be most impactful for helping us get there. And also the role of activism in bringing that transition about.
May Boeve, welcome to the show.
May Boeve: Thanks for having me.
Jason Jacobs: Well, thank you for coming. And I am excited for this one. We've had quite a diversity of guests on the show, but we haven't completely not covered it, but we're pretty light on the activism side and you guys are certainly not light on the activism side.
And so I thought this would be a fascinating discussion and you're also a NESCACer.
May Boeve: That's true.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah, I am as well. I went to Wesleyan.
May Boeve: I love Wesleyan. Great activist tradition at that school.
Jason Jacobs: That's true. There's even a movie about its activism, PCU.
May Boeve: Oh yes. I have heard of that.
Jason Jacobs: Wasn't necessarily... yeah, it was more of like poking fun at it, but why don't we take things from the top? So what is 350?
May Boeve: 350 is a international climate campaigning organization. 350, the number, stands for the safe-level of carbon in the atmosphere, measured in parts per million. But before I lose you right there in the technical side of the climate crisis, the real reason we call ourselves 350 is we started 10 years ago as a global organization. And we wanted to have a meaningful symbol about the climate crisis that could be understood in any language, anywhere in the world. So that's why we call ourselves that. And we work on the clean energy transition broadly speaking, but we also really exist to try to solve the problem of how are people engaged to fight the climate crisis and not despair. But understand that there is a role we all can play and having agency over this enormous, scary thing.
Jason Jacobs: Got it. And so does that mean from a focus standpoint that you are trying to mobilize the masses?
May Boeve: Yes, absolutely. That's regularly what we do. And for folks listening who may be familiar with us, that's probably why.
So last year, 2019, there was a massive wave of protests about the climate crisis, bigger than we've ever seen. And we were very involved in one piece of that, which was the climate strikes in September, which were inspired by youth climate activists. But through that over 10 million people were mobilizing with us in some fashion.
So we really believe that a problem as big as climate change requires a massive social movement to address it. And so we're trying to figure out what is it going to take to continue to have that movement grow and crest and build power and strength.
Jason Jacobs: Now is 350 the only post-college job that you've ever had?
May Boeve: Yes, the day I graduated.
Jason Jacobs: I actually knew the answer to that. That was a loaded question. But I also know from doing some prep for this discussion that you were an activist even before you worked at this activists organization. So how, and when, and why did that come about?
May Boeve: When I was in college at the NESCAC school, Middlebury, in Vermont..
Jason Jacobs: Wonderful place.
May Boeve: Wonderful place and well known for environmental activism, actually. And that's a large reason why I went there. I remember, my freshman year, watching on TV as the decision to go to war with Afghanistan was made and thinking that there was going to be a massive student uprising against the war just like I had read about and heard about from my parents. And I associated being a student with activism of all kinds and movements of all kinds.
And that really did not materialize, at least not at my campus. And the thing that got people mobilized more than that for my generation was the climate crisis. And so for me, learning about how climate change is in fact, or can be understood as a result of a lot of systems that don't work. It really connects across issues in this beautiful way.
And so I thought as someone who wanted to be part of a movement fighting the climate crisis was the most powerful way that I could do that. And so I joined up with other students and we did a lot of organizing on our campus and we eventually decided let's keep doing this once we graduate and essentially let's see what happens.
And I had no idea that June 23rd, 2020, this was what my life was going to be like.
Jason Jacobs: So when you first got into climate activism, how did you think about the problem at that time and how was that the same, or, and how is that different than how you think about it today?
May Boeve: It's changed a tremendous amount. In 10 years, it's a little bit of a microcosm of how the movement has changed, but I think it's evident even in what I was just saying about the name of our organization.
I think when I first learned about the climate crisis, it was definitely what I just said about its interconnectedness with other things I cared about like human health and poverty and development and all of these things, but also the sheer scientific urgency that the way I came to understand it, at the beginning, if we don't do a certain set of things in a very short amount of time, everything is at stake about the world that we live in and the world that we love.
And if we don't tackle this, everything else is in jeopardy. And I absolutely believe that the scientific urgency has only gotten greater as the time has gone on. And I think the biggest change for me has been an understanding that, for a lot of people, there are other things they care about that feel just as urgent as the climate crisis.
And so for me, it was a giant wake up call about getting involved in something bigger than myself, but for people who are today losing family members to deportation or to police violence or to a global pandemic, those issues scream at them in a particular way. And I think trying to understand climate in a much wider context of social movements has been the biggest change that I've experienced.
And I think it's been one of the biggest changes that will ultimately result in the climate movement, being more connected to other movements and ultimately more successful.
Jason Jacobs: I'm having a similar wake up call about that. I've been working on this a whole lot less long than you have. But when I came in, I guess, a little over a year and a half ago now, given that my whole career has been in startups, I came in with an innovation bias.
And then I discovered along the way that innovation alone couldn't get there and the importance of policy, but then along the way, I had heard from different people that you really couldn't decouple climate and carbon from things like environmental and social justice, for example. And of course that was brought up as kind of one of the cornerstones of the Green New Deal.
And I had kind of grown up in this world where focus is paramount and you should pick one thing and do it well. And so I looked at carbon and thought, well, isn't that big enough? But I've been feeling more recently, like you have looking at some of the different crises that we're dealing with simultaneously, and realizing that they really are a lot more interrelated than meets the eye.
And that maybe if we envisioned a future state, that was better not just in one of these factors, but across these vectors, then each of these factors that seems like it's not going to budge would actually progress a lot more easily, given that the rest of these vectors were coming along with it in parallel.
That's my current thing, but that's been a work in progress from, I mean, even different than say several months ago. And who knows where it will be several months from now, since I'm continuing to learn new things and get exposed to new perspectives every day.
May Boeve: Yeah. We really are living through this unprecedented moment that just keeps expanding. And I think, in the early the days of when the pandemic was starting to hit this country and the scope of it was becoming apparent, one of the things we kept getting asked this question, okay, but how does this relate to climate change? And there's a lot of ways to answer that question, but the first answer we had was think about the incredible shifts that are taking place.
That previously would have seemed impossible in terms of the mobilization of money, the individual behavior shifts that are taking place and the level of focus of basically the planet on one thing at the same time. And I can't remember anything that's been anything like that, that accounts for a lot of the hope that I'm feeling.
And I completely agree with how you described it, that I think a lot of people around the world, broadly speaking, understand that something is not working about the way the incentives are structured in the economy and you can put whatever label on it you want. But I think the crisis has really laid bare just how vulnerable we have built our society and we can do better.
And I think if COVID were happening under the backdrop of a different set of heads of state who cared about people and weren't corrupt it would really be a different situation. But, you have this incredible contrast of an awakened public, a completely backwards set of leaders. No wonder there's massive uprisings and no wonder there's this thirst for change and new visions for how the world can be better.
So I find this time incredibly hopeful and particularly how many people seem to be connecting dots that were previously harder to see.
Jason Jacobs: I agree. And I mean, I'd love to pull on that thread further, but maybe before we do, it'd be good to just kind of take a few minutes and catch me and listeners up about your work and the 350 piece.
So we can then come back around to have more of a societal discussion with that context under our belt. Does that sound good for you?
May Boeve: Sure. And they're very connected, because as I was saying at the beginning, part of why we exist is to try to grow the movement. And so when the entire context of the world changes, we have to change with it.
And that's true for everybody. But if our whole reason for being is accelerating the clean energy "just transition" and engaging people, that's the kind of work that has to be particularly attuned to the moment. So broadly speaking, the main themes of the work we do are all of that I was saying about engagement.
So mass mobilization, protest organizing, local volunteer groups. And then in terms of what that is often channeled towards. What we like to call it is accelerating the end of the fossil fuel era. So, not just the idea that we wind down our reliance on coal, for example, but we really, as a society, shift away from the notion that we're going to power our entire economy on dead dinosaur bones. But that whole notion just begins to lose the traction that it now has. And we could debate whether in fact that's already happening, because of how cheap solar now is because of all the technological innovations that have happened. But the main leverage we think movements have is by following the money. And by figuring out where are the places where there are still a massive incentives to invest in fossil fuels and to stick with an extractive economy and how can we change those incentives? And so some of the biggest campaigns have been around divestment from endowments that have fossil fuel holdings.
And so we've been very involved in the fossil fuel divestment movement. There was just a huge win last week with the Catholic church, making a massive announcement around divestment. That's one commitment out of about a thousand institutions that have secured over $14 trillion of managed assets that have pledged some kind of divestment.
Now we're increasingly looking at what is the role of financing more broadly. So, banks that are lending to new fossil fuel projects, insurers that continue to lend to fossil fuel projects. And in the context of COVID, whether public money will be spent in such a way to restart the economy that helps us get off of addiction to fossil fuels or not.
And so we're doing a lot of work around the upcoming G20 finance ministers meeting in July to really make that case. So we believe that it is crucial to accelerate the pace of change. And one of the best ways to do that is to focus on the financial sector. And over the years, we've done a lot of work on individual fossil fuels projects.
And we continue to do that. But as has often been said, we're not going to fight the climate crisis one coal plant at a time, there has to be a systemic way of tackling these fights. That's what we're trying to do with this focus on finance and particularly tying it into this moment when trillions have been mobilized, many trillions more will be, and that presents an enormous opportunity to jumpstart the just transition.
Jason Jacobs: And when you identify a project that you think is worthy to pursue, what is the role that 350 plays in that initiative? And then out of the overall role that you play, what is the role that the actual 350 core team plays and what is the role that the volunteer network place? And if there's any other stakeholders that I didn't mention, it'd be good to talk about those as well.
May Boeve: So in the context of any of the fights that I mentioned, whether it's targeting Chase Bank for being the biggest lender to fossil fuels or the Lamu coal plant in Kenya, there's always a pretty significant network of groups that are fighting this together. And one of the beautiful things about the climate movement is it's really big.
And so there are groups that do really effective research. There are groups that do communications strategy. There are groups that have relationships with policymakers who can do more inside lobbying. We tend to bring what we call the outside game to a lot of those fights. And so, you know, if there's going to be a meeting, that's going to decide on the permitting and the sighting of a fracking.
Well, we would be working to be involved in the actions surrounding that event and getting a lot of positive coverage in the media that the public doesn't want this project to go forward. It depends on what part of the world we're talking about because we have teams working in about 50 countries and that includes a combination of staff and volunteers.
And so the nature of the the climate fight in the Philippines looks really different than the fight in Fiji. And so we often play slightly different roles depending on the context, but the focus really is on movement building, mobilizing, organizing those kinds of things in any given context. And we like to think of ourselves as a movement organization.
So the boundaries between our partners ourselves, our local groups are often fairly porous, but over time it's more important to us that the local grassroots resistance be as strong as possible because that is what's going to ultimately see these wins through. And so anything we can do to spur that on is what we hope to be able to do.
The purpose of being a global organization is that we can project and, in fact, be much stronger than the sum of our parts and the fossil fuel industry is also organized globally. And so, if they get the sense that anywhere in the world, if they're going to try to build a new fossil fuel project, there's going to be resistance that's what we want. And that's the result of the entire climate movement working together.
Jason Jacobs: And so, I mean, you mentioned that some organizations are focused on policy side and some are more focused on business and some are more focused on grassroots and organizing. So when you have a target, let's say there's a new coal plant being built or you want CalPERS to divest or whatever the case may be, are these formal collaborations with other organizations or is it more informal and complementary?
May Boeve: I think it's more informal and complementary and it's often more...a lot of them are ad hoc. CalPERS is a great example.
There's a set of groups that have been working together to divest CalPERS for many, many years and organizations come in and out of that. And we face setbacks and some groups have to move on to other priorities. So I think that's the network nature of, I think, how the movement tends to work.
Jason Jacobs: And when you talk about divesting, for example, or you talk about a world with no more fossil fuel burning.
When I look back, I think that energy abundance, for example, has done a lot of good. And it so happens that it has been abusing the planet that we rely on to sustain life for us and other life forms. But that aside, there's actually in many ways, it's been a real blessing and improves quality of life in many different ways.
So, I guess, looking backwards, do you agree with that statement. And also, I guess, as a kind of a followup in conjunction, there's still a billion plus people that don't have access to basic electricity. So then how looking forward do you think about the question of say energy poverty and fossil fuel when figuring out how, and in what order the energy transitions, should proceed?
May Boeve: I mean, going in reverse order, I think the question around energy poverty is going to be one of the most dominant questions moving forward for all the work happening on climate. And I think the hope is that particularly in countries in the global South who are still trying to access electricity for the first time that the first access to electricity comes from the clean grid and there's a lot of work being done on this from the UN wonderful organizations like sustainable energy for all that specifically focuses on this and they seem to be some of the most hopeful people I know who are fighting climate change because they're seeing the cost of solar panels fall. They're seeing massive uptake in a lot of very rural areas that are getting connected to the grid for the first time. They're seeing the benefits of that in, for example, women's education; they're connecting the dots between poverty alleviation, fighting climate change, health, women's empowerment. So it's, I think a very powerful piece of work that's happening.
And from what I hear from those groups, from what we hear from our partners, working in those parts of the world, and frankly, parts of the developed world that don't have electricity, certainly the case. There's a pretty loud demand for clean energy. And so, some of this comes up in the context of work we do around the Belt and Road Initiative in China and this massive infrastructure bill that's happening right now that is largely coal power.
And there is increasing pressure coming from parts of Latin America, Asia, and Africa saying, hang on a second we don't want another way of essentially colonized energy when we can have these energy sources coming from our own communities. So I think it's a critical part of the fight. I think it's probably doesn't get as much attention as it needs to, but I think that's where a lot of, when we talk about engagement in this fight, that's one of the most engaging things that people are doing.
And to your point about the abundance, that's come from the way energy has been done for as long as we know it. It's absolutely true. I think when fossil fuels were first being widely deployed scientists didn't really know about climate change to put it crassly. And I think communities who live next to mines probably had a sense that maybe it wasn't a good idea, but not necessarily for climate reasons.
More for health reasons. I mean, we're living through this transition as we speak and it's not going to happen overnight, but I think one of the biggest changes in these 10 years has been the availability of cheap, clean energy. It is absolutely a game changer for all the things we care about.
Jason Jacobs: What is the goal of divestment?
May Boeve: I'll answer it two ways. Our goal is to win a moral argument that if it's wrong to cause climate change; it's wrong to profit from causing climate change. And so people and crucially investors have to pick a side and it was inspired by the anti-apartheid divestment movement in South Africa, where countries all over the world decided if apartheid is wrong, what can we do about it?
Okay, we won't do business with these companies in South Africa. It's a very similar template and the second answer is one, a lot of our partners who work on divestment would say, which is that there's a carbon bubble and, eventually, there will be a price on carbon, and there will be massive amounts of stranded assets from all of these investments that currently rest in fossil fuels.
And it makes economic sense to get out of it while you can. And that accounts for why there's been so much money moved out of investment in say coal, but not nearly the same as it relates to oil and gas. Although, "asterisk" look what's happening to oil prices during the pandemic. It's two sides of a coin.
The reason the moral argument matters to us is we believe that's where a more lasting change will come from. And that's what we believe builds movements.
Jason Jacobs: And is it that we need to get out of burning fossil fuels or that the fossil fuel companies need to die?
May Boeve: That's one of the trickiest questions because there are other problems with say ExxonMobil than just its product. Its lobbying influence, its role in propping up dictatorships around the world. Lots of other problems with Exxon. Our primary purpose is the acceleration off of the fossil fuel energy source. But if we could snap our fingers and, say tomorrow, the economy has gone a hundred percent clean brought to you by the big oil majors of today who retrofitted.
I don't think that would accomplish all the rest of our goals, all those other vectors we talked about earlier today.
Jason Jacobs: So if I'm hearing right, you think that those would be better achieved if the fossil fuel companies didn't exist?
May Boeve: I don't think it's as simple as that. I'll talk about it in the context of an example, which is what BP has done year after year, where more than 10 years ago, they did this massive rebrand "beyond petroleum" and tried to recast themselves as a clean energy company.
And they dedicated, I think, 2% of the business to that, but a lot more of their communications budget. And a few years later, totally dropped it. And then Deep Water Horizon happened in the Gulf and BP was on the hook. And so if it's just a matter of what's fashionable, that is not going to result in a lasting commitment to the policy changes we ultimately need.
And I think that this is why the article that launched the divestment movement in many ways, Bill McKibben's article in Rolling Stone about the climate math, he was making an argument that the fossil fuel industry is not like other industries, in fact, because it's very product-- the whole reason that it exists-- is causing the climate crisis.
It's not a matter of a tweak in the way they do business or one change in the supply chain. It's everything about their reason for existing. That presents a different type of problem. That's why it's tricky to answer the question, what exactly becomes these industries that know more about energy infrastructure than anybody else. That's for sure. But, they are so deeply embedded in the system that we have now, that it's hard to imagine them being the architects of envisioning a system that we need for the future to say nothing of the fact that there are terrifically successful, clean energy companies who are trying to bring about the energy revolution themselves.
Jason Jacobs: I've had some representatives from some large institutional investors say that one, it's not realistic to think that divesting will actually kill the oil majors, and then two, actually, if they retain ownership and exert control that they can actually get more done in terms of pushing them in the right direction than they can if they wash their hands and leave it for someone else to deal with. How do you respond to that?
May Boeve: There I would just say look at the impact. And I think for shareholder investment, shareholder action, when it comes to big oil, just not a lot to show for it. And there's a lot of studies that have been done about this. "As You Sew" is a great group that has helped track this. There is, however, a role for shareholder activism in decarbonizing the rest of the economy. There's a whole bunch of work that could be done on say plastics or clothing or any number of other industries that need to change the way they do business to address climate change.
Their shareholders should be taking stand and some of them are, but again, this gets back to the oil industry as a rogue industry issue that those efforts to reform them from within just are not bearing fruit. And I think time could be better spent elsewhere.
Jason Jacobs: Other guests on the show have told me that because of both the depth of their pockets and the depths of their knowledge and expertise that we need their help in the transition. And while we shouldn't necessarily just trust that "carrot" alone will be enough to get them to move, there should be a "stick" component as well from the government. That to write them off completely actually shoots ourselves in the foot in terms of where we need to go.
So how would you respond to that one?
May Boeve: Writing off who completely?
Jason Jacobs: The oil majors.
May Boeve: Transition is obviously going to be very complicated. The oil majors aren't going anywhere anytime soon, but they have not demonstrated in the past few decades the kind of behavior one would expect of an honest broker. So they're funding the climate denial think tanks. They are actively funding efforts to try to silence public debate. They're pouring money into lobbying so that it's a very tilted argument legislatively. So if they were acting in good faith, maybe they'd have an argument. And it's shocking that one oil major has not seen some competitive advantage in breaking from the pack and trying to actually be a good faith actor in the climate debate.
But they really seem to be committed to standing strong as a pack. You know, if you look at the terrific history of ExxonMobil that was written by the head of the Columbia Journalism School, if you look at the research from Oil Change International, you look at the journalist Antonio Yuhas , who's documented their work for years, there's just very little evidence to suggest that they're going to play a helpful role. And the sooner we can neutralize the impact that they're having on the public debate the quicker we can move on to the solutions we all care about.
Jason Jacobs: When you think about the solutions that we all care about. I mean, you mentioned renewables, is it that renewables exclusively, or are there other solutions that you think should be in consideration?
May Boeve: I mean, you name it. I love the research from the Project Drawdown team. That's really documented what type of solution, what impact will it have, where is it going to be most successful? This is one of the areas where I think we have some of the best data, some of the best ideas. Thankfully, a lot of those ideas are being put forward in the context of recovery from COVID.
So I think that's a great place to look. I think the Solutions Project is a terrific organization that specifically investing in women of color led solar startups all over the U.S. There's groups that are spanning the whole spectrum who are advocating for solutions. And in terms of the kind of work that we do about mobilizing the public, some people are really motivated by the solutions and that is what it gets them out there and gets them involved in the fight.
And other people are more motivated by fighting a big enemy. And other people are motivated by the need to transform themselves and change their own behavior. And we need all of that in the mix. And I think we've gotten to a point as a movement, where there is really complementary strategy being tackled across all of those three areas.
Jason Jacobs: I think what I'm hearing from you, though, is that the solution is not where you guys are spending most of your time, that you're spending most of your time fighting the big enemy, being the fossil fuel company.
May Boeve: Yeah, but I do think it's a bit of a false choice because I think we can't effectively fight a battle if we don't know what our vision is for success on the other side of it.
But I think it's a question of expertise. Like no one is going to ask my advice about how to transition a city to a micro grid. I don't know how to do that, but I can help the community figure out how to organize to advocate for that. So it's much more about, as you said, the kind of activities that we're trying to do, but often the story that motivates people to join a fight is what's going to be better if they do it.
Jason Jacobs: But, I mean where it gets murky is for example, if an advanced nuclear plant is getting built, for example, or the role of natural gas and the transition as an example, or direct air capture, carbon removal, as an example, or geoengineering as an example, they might not be your areas of focus, but actually what types of solutions we choose to invest in on the other side, also dictates who the best players are to bring them about. And that might also dictate if and how and in what way we need some of the existing players on the other side versus leaning harder into a new type of company.
May Boeve: Exactly. It's not straightforward. And it's not a clear path in terms of which solutions you choose. Is again very dependent on where you live and the city that you're in. I guess what I mean about sophistication and the movement and finding a lot of relief in that is that I think there's just a level of expertise about how to think about solutions in any given context, whether it's transportation, food and farming, energy, you name it.
And there are people who have studied the pros and cons and people who can present to the public, what those pros and cons are to be able to make informed choices. And I think that's why, if there is a moment of breakthrough, like the one we're living through, there's an infrastructure that's built that makes it possible to imagine we could come out of this crisis in better shape than we did before.
Jason Jacobs: Where does 350 get its guidance and decision making from, as it relates to determining what the optimal solution makeup is, which then determines what types of projects to get in the way of versus support.
May Boeve: We've changed this a lot over the years. I think initially we were very mum about most options beyond like a very broad, clean energy is good sort of view. And I think now we have more people and more partners outside the organization who we can get advice from about, for example, if we're broadly working on targeting the financial sector now, what are the alternatives that we're putting in front of people who are making those arguments.
And there are lots of organizations that do that. And that's a lot of where we get our guidance from our allies. We don't have a big research shop and we rely on the facts fact that other organizations mostly do research and willingly share it with the rest of the movement to try to do their best work with it.
So our partnership with oil change international is a great example. They actively study, among other things, the lobbying influence of particular fossil fuel companies with different politicians. That informs the choices we make about which elected officials we're working with. So that's one example where that plays out.
Jason Jacobs: Got it. And then as it relates to some of the things we started out talking about how your perspective and my perspective for that matter have been broadening from just a climate and carbon perspective to more of a holistic view of some of the other thorny and important societal problems that we're facing.
How has that manifested, if at all, in the type of work or the ways in which you go about doing the work that you do at 350?
May Boeve: I think here it's important to point out where we started, which was as a group of kids who all went to a NESCAC school and wanted to organize one day of action. And that was our entire plan.
We weren't intending to become an organization, and yet we got a lot of support and a lot of funding and grew really quickly. By virtue of that background and our white privilege, our access to people with a lot of money. And so, as I often like to think about it, if the same group of kids had a great idea and were all African-American, would they have gotten the same kind of trust to just like try out their crazy project? Have this money thrown at them and not really know what they were doing and have people work with them anyway? Maybe. But it's less easy to imagine that happening. And over the course of realizing how that played out in our success, it was a very hard reality to accept and to grapple with and think about what that meant for the future of our work.
We were also doing a lot of partnership with indigenous peoples in the fight against the Keystone XL Pipeline. And those relationships becoming even more aware of the differences were working across and the doors that were open to us relative to our partners. So that prompted a process to really rethink what our values were and who we wanted to be in partnership with.
And that resulted in, a few years ago, deciding that was really important to us that we explicitly connect climate justice and racial justice and actively become a multiracial organization. And that more than anything was why after the murder of George Floyd. We repositioned most of our work in the U.S. to be backing the demands of the movement for black lives.
And there wasn't an intense discussion about, well, what does this moment mean for us? It was very clear what that moment meant and what we needed to do. And it's been a major transformation for me personally, from what I said at the beginning of kind of grappling with our origins, trying to change our values, change who we are and make different kinds of decisions.
And then as a result, hopefully show up differently and better for allies in moments like this. When there is the movement of our time is happening before our eyes. And we studied the Civil Rights Movement in college as a way of thinking about what could a climate movement be like, and then you live through its contemporary manifestation and you're not there for it.
It doesn't make any sense and it's not right. So that's been a bit about how I've been thinking about what's happening right now. And just also contrasting last September when there were all these incredible climate strikes that were led by young people. The press coverage for that was overwhelmingly positive.
And no questioning kind of the motives or the tactics or the goals. It was all like 'look at these young people aren't they great.' And that was not the same reception that was granted the first wave of protest from young black people a few weeks ago on this country. And so just, there's all these indicators of how these systems play out and how the climate movement in our part of it has been treated differently and seen differently. And I do think that that's beginning to shift.
Jason Jacobs: So one question I have is that, I mean, clearly at least it's my belief that racial equality and supporting Black Lives Matter and becoming more aware of an unwindingly systemic oppression that is an inequality that's embedded into pretty much every facet of our society is the right thing to do. But, as it relates to coming back to the carbon problem specifically, do you also believe that tackling social injustice will help us accelerate our clean energy transition? And if so, what is it that leads you to that conclusion and how does that manifest?
May Boeve: Yes, I do. And I think primarily if you leave aside that it's the right thing to do, which I believe that it is. I'll tell a quick story, which is that very early on in the fight against the Keystone pipeline. I remember a meeting at the White House with Obama administration officials, meeting with the heads of the environmental groups who were part of the coalition. I think it was an exclusively white room of the environmentalist, not of the Obama administration people.
And they basically said, unless you come back here and demonstrate that you actually have a meaningful multi-racial portion of the electorate. We don't have anything to talk about. You represent such a fringe part of this country. Why should we believe that your interests are the interests of the broader public?
And there were many examples like that. I really thank the people in that room for being so explicit about it, but I think we have seen how determined our political opposition is to separate us across difference, separate labor movement from the environmentalist, separate across racial lines, certainly separate men and women.
And so the more we can demonstrate that we are unified and represent the vast majority of the voting public. And we care about an agenda that is about a planet we can all live in and dignity for everyone who lives on it, and that these things are interconnected, that begins to point to the winning coalition that we haven't had, or maybe we've had glimpses of it in previous generations, but certainly not in my lifetime.
Jason Jacobs: And you mentioned that to get some of the science expertise, for example, as it relates to solutions, you partner with organizations like oil change or others that are out doing that research. What are some of the organizations that stand out to you in a similar capacity as it relates to the social and racial justice work?
May Boeve: It's not really an organization, but certainly the movement for black lives and particularly the policy platform that they've put out a few years ago, which we signed onto was very pivotal in shaping how we were thinking about what we could do. We do a lot of work with a coalition of groups on the issue of climate reparations, thinking about all the money that's going to be taken to tackle climate change.
How does it get to the people who need the resources the best? So there's a whole lot of groups that we're part of through that. We've done a lot of work with organizations like the Working Families Party, People's Action, a lot of labor groups like Labor Network for Sustainability, Jobs with Justice.
Those have been some key allies in really shifting our thinking, sometimes pushing us. Here I would mention the Climate Justice Alliance, which is the coalition of locally-based climate justice organizations, largely people of color-led. They've been making this link long before I've ever said anything about it and have been instrumental in pushing the whole community in this area.
Those are some of them, but there's a lot more. And I've also been really impressed, kinda more on the political side with this Biden-Sanders coalition that was put together. That's really trying to bring together pieces of the progressive movement to work together, to have the best possible climate agenda heading into 2020.
There really is a lot of strong collaboration happening right now. And I think it's, again, part of why I'm feeling really hopeful.
Jason Jacobs: One thing I wrestle with, that I'd be curious to get your take on, is just when you look at the polarized political landscape, but you also look at how our history of when there's not bipartisan support for legislation at getting unwound, when a different administration comes in, and if you look at climate for example, there are some areas of commonality as it relates to new infrastructure and jobs and things like that but some of the more progressive messaging, let's say around full mobilization and Green New Deal and things like that. I worry it can be alienating. They can be inspiring to one set of people. And there's another set of people that maybe let's say are conservatives who hate Trump. And that that type of messaging can be alienating for them. So how do you think about kind of the aspiration and inspiration versus the durable, bipartisan support, if that's even the right kind of vector or slider to evaluate across; maybe, it's not.
May Boeve: It's one of the really interesting things that seems to be happening as we speak, because people talk about the Overton window.
Like what constitutes acceptable public opinion. And it's really moving very quickly before our eyes on some pretty critical issues about particularly race and racism in this country. And we can't understand the question of bipartisanship without understanding that because so much of how the Republican party has characterized itself, when it comes to climate denial, really mirrors how they characterize themselves when it comes to white supremacy and racism. And so there's very little incentive to reach across party lines, if that's what's standing in the way, cause we can't compromise that aspect of our values. But there are even encouraging signs there. There is seems to be some kind of wake up call from moderates and the prized undecided voters who may move faster than we think. And I actually think Joe Biden is a great example of someone who's himself demonstrating how you can move with the political winds. And so the kinds of things that he's saying I wouldn't have predicted that he would say six months ago, but he's trying position himself towards the center of the conversation. And what he's saying, demonstrates just how far the center has moved. So that's what we try to pay attention to is kind of violating, organizing 101, which is meeting people where they are.
We don't do that when it comes to Republicans. We look at where the conversation has moved and where they are in relation to that, just because it's not so much the problem of polarization; instead, if you look at how far to the right, the Republican party has positioned itself relative to how far to the left the democratic party has positioned itself, it's a Grand Canyon-size chasm. We think it's more important to be paying attention to how the conversation moves.
Jason Jacobs: And if you could wave your magic wand and make one change to best accelerate the clean energy transition, what would it be and how would that get brought up?
May Boeve: I think it would be around making it no longer possible for new money to be invested in expanded fossil fuel infrastructure around the world.
If that was as seen as off limits as I don't know investing in a company that's not profitable, for example, if it was a sacrosanct principle, I think we've seen massive changes and I was very heartened to see divestment featured in the last few episodes of "Billions" season four. So something is busting into the mainstream.
Jason Jacobs: My last question is just if you had the same mission that you have today, but we're not doing the work that you're doing now, what else would you be doing to help bring that mission about?
May Boeve: I think it would be something around faith-based organizing or something at the intersection of women's leadership and personal transformation and climate.
I just see so much potential there. And so many of the people who really inspire me are doing that kind of work.
Jason Jacobs: And I said last question, but now my real last question, which is just for anyone listening, who's trying to figure out their lane in the climate fight. What advice do you have for them?
May Boeve: I think that's exactly the right question to be asking, because I think it's like the Belt and Road, there are many lanes and we don't all have to be in the same one.
And I think, you know, if you were in technology, think about what your company can be doing to align itself with these values and think about how you can do what you're already passionate about and put climate change on as a lens about how you seek the work that you do. We don't have to drop everything that we do to fight this. We have to fight this in everything that we do.
Jason Jacobs: Great. Well, is there anything I didn't ask you that I should have, or any parting words for our listeners?
May Boeve: I think just really taking in the fact that we are living through an unprecedented shift in the way things work and we'll look back in a year and 10 years, and this may have been the turning point.
And so everything that everybody is trying to do for the greater good is really matters right now. Maybe more than it ever has.
Jason Jacobs: Well, I agree, May. I learned so much from this discussion and thanks so much for your important work and thank you for coming on the show.
May Boeve: It's really nice to talk to you. Thanks.
Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at MyClimateJourney.co. That is ".co" not ".com". Someday we'll get the ".com," but right now ".co". You can also find me on Twitter @jjacobs22, where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. And before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend or, or leaving a review on iTunes. The lawyers made me say that, thank you.
