Abstract
Divest! follows the 2012 “Do the Math” bus tour around the United States, documenting climate activist Bill McKibben as he works to mobilize supporters to organize campaigns promoting institutional divestment from fossil fuel companies. He is joined on the tour by several key figures in the climate movement, including Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything, and Josh Fox, director and producer of the documentary Gasland. Other big names in environmental activism and political advocacy also make appearances: Sandra Steingraber, Terry Tempest Williams, Reverend Lenox Yearwood, Winona LaDuke, and Desmond Tutu. The goal of the tour is to spark a movement, not only to educate audiences, and the film captures this same energy.
McKibben’s message for the tour is centered on three numbers: 2, 565, and 2,795. On stages in cities around the country, he explains that scientists agree that average global temperature rise must be limited to 2° Celsius and that we can only add 565 gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere to keep temperature rise below this limit. He then highlights what he claims is the “scariest” number, the 2,795 gigatons of carbon that fossil fuel companies already have in their reserves, a full five times the amount allowable to stay below 2°. Cut between clips of McKibben and others speaking on stage, Naomi Klein explains in an interview that analysts have described this as a “bubble” similar to the housing bubble contributing to the 2008 recession, in that 80 percent of fossil fuel assets seem to be worthless. But this is not true, she says. Fossil fuel companies are addicted to profits and will burn the fuel regardless of the consequences, ending with the statement, “This isn’t a bubble unless we make it a bubble.”
While the film is centered on the clips of McKibben’s talk reproduced on stages around the country, interspersed are photos and videos of climate actions, interviews with speakers on the tour, media clips of the devastation from Hurricane Sandy, and shots of wind turbines spinning in the sunset. As the tour goes on, viewers see the toll the tour is taking on McKibben due to limited sleep on a bumpy bus. Yet the tour bus also becomes a site for comradery between the team. Josh Fox strums his banjo, and everyone laughs as McKibben is interviewed by This American Life’s Ira Glass, and diverse American landscapes roll by outside the windows. Even during the talks, the film jumps to photos and video clips to visually illustrate references being made by the speakers. One example is when photos of Rachel Carson and clips of her book Silent Spring coming off the presses are shown while Sandra Steingraber is describing Carson’s important legacy. In this dynamic style, the filmmakers tell the story of the tour while also showing the history and activism of which the tour is a part, bringing viewers in so that they too feel connected to the movement.
As someone who was active in the climate movement during the time period covered in the film and present at some of the actions featured, I felt a warm sense of familiarity and optimism watching it. The names of the key actors speaking on stage line my bookshelves, and the language of the movement, including the chants and signs of protestors, is one in which I have become fluent. It is therefore easy to watch this film as an activist, see familiar faces, and become inspired with the audiences on the bus tour as McKibben calls for an offensive front against fossil fuel industries. That said, this is not primarily an informational documentary, and so viewers with little knowledge of climate change, environmental issues and activism, and the movement itself may not be able to appreciate the full range of what the film covers. Although there are references to a range of issues connected to climate change and the numbers that McKibben highlights, such as fracking, mountaintop removal, the Keystone XL pipeline, and tar sands, they are not fully explained, assuming a certain level of viewer knowledge (for more detailed explanations of these issues, see Fox 2010; Klein 2014; Lewis 2015; McKibben 2010, 2014; Steingraber 2010; Tompkins 2009). Having some experience with the issues is helpful, but viewers of all backgrounds will understand the core message of the documentary: that fossil fuels companies are destroying the planet and must be stopped.
For undergraduate sociology classes, Divest! is a good companion piece to critical work in environmental sociology or social movement studies. It raises the question of how one might begin to address a global problem that is deeply rooted in the norms and practices of production and energy use upon which almost all Americans rely. Paired with, for example, John Bellamy Foster’s Marxist approach to understanding environmental devastation (Foster 2010), J. Timmons Roberts’s work on injustice and climate change (Roberts and Parks 2007), David Pellow’s writings on global environmental inequality and justice (Pellow 2007, 2017), or Jill Harrison’s scholarship on environmental justice movements and toxics (Harrison 2014, 2015), as well as the written works of the activists featured in the film, Divest! can bring a real face to an environmental movement focused on justice and confronting climate change. Readings on performance, social protest strategies, movement framing, and scholarship that engages the racialized and gendered history of the environmental movement in the United States, such as Dorceta Taylor’s (2016) The Rise of the American Conservation Movement, could also be accompanied by this documentary in a sociology course (see e.g., Benford and Snow 2000; Čapek 1993; Juris 2008; Reed 2005).
In addition to serving as an entertaining visual companion in undergraduate classes, graduate classes may also benefit from using Divest! as a document for analysis through the lens of theory—such as on debates between Marxist environmental sociologists and ecological modernization theorists or social movement theory. In particular, it offers an opportunity for students of all levels to productively analyze and critique the style and goals of the climate movement, as portrayed in the documentary. As a class activity, students can calculate their own carbon footprints prior to coming to class, using tools available from World Wildlife Fund or The Nature Conservancy. Though the results of such footprint calculations should be approached with skepticism, they offer the opportunity to spur discussion about individual versus collective action to reduce the use of fossil fuels as well as the social factors driving fossil fuel consumption. Additionally, students can investigate their own institutions’ investments in fossil fuels and connections to industries that contribute to climate change. If relevant, they can then gather information about divestment efforts on their own campuses. The film’s connection to the university context through the goals of the movement it portrays offers an important opportunity to make the content relatable and close to home.
Finally, Divest! serves as an inspiration and reminder to sociologists to engage actively in the social issues about which we do our research. We should not only analyze social movements and critique the capitalist modes of production that drive environmental destruction, social devastation of the already marginalized, and climate change. We must also ensure that our own institutions and representatives are moving toward a world that actively works against these injustices. As McKibben aptly notes in the documentary, “This is what tenure was made for.”
As the documentary draws to a close, it is easy to be swept up in the energy of what is shown on the screen. Shots of Keystone XL protestors move to surround the White House. Hundreds of thousands of people with brightly colored banners line the streets of New York and cities all over the world for the 2014 People’s Climate March. Flashing words note which institutions, mostly universities but many other institutions as well, have divested from fossil fuels. The film ends with a building sense of the movement growing, steadily making progress, and fighting for a better world. The featured refrain, “We can do better than this,” seems truer than ever.