Climate Emergency Fund
What it does: The Climate Emergency Fund (CEF) was founded in July 2019 with the goal of regranting money to groups engaged in climate protest — and fast. Its founders believe that street protest is crucially important to climate politics and neglected in environmental philanthropy. This year alone, CEF has given over $1.35 million in grants to 33 groups and projects it has vetted. Grantees include Extinction Rebellion, an activist movement that uses nonviolent civil disobedience — like filling the streets and blocking intersections — to demand that governments do more on climate. (Disclosure: Muizz donated to Extinction Rebellion DC in 2021.)
CEF was the lead institutional funder of the Climate Emergency Declaration campaign, which led to over 2,000 national and local governments declaring a climate emergency. More recently, CEF funded the Hunger Strikers for Climate Justice, whose participants fasted in front of the White House this fall to demand the Biden administration pass certain climate measures.
Why you should consider donating: Social change is not an exact science, and the challenges in measuring a social movement’s effectiveness are well-documented. While it would be helpful to have more concrete data on the impact of CEF’s grantees, it may also be shortsighted to ignore movement-building for that reason.
Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, told Vox that building the climate movement is crucial because, although we’ve already got some good mitigation solutions, we’re not deploying them fast enough. “That’s the ongoing power of the fossil fuel industry at work. The only way to break that power and change the politics of climate is to build a countervailing power,” he said. “Our job — and it’s the key job — is to change the zeitgeist, people’s sense of what’s normal and natural and obvious. If we do that, all else will follow.”
If you’re skeptical that street protest can make a difference, consider Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth’s research. She’s found that if you want to achieve systemic social change, you need to mobilize 3.5 percent of the population, a finding that helped inspire Extinction Rebellion.
You can donate to the Climate Emergency Fund here. —SS
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