As global warming has surged this year, so too has America’s ambition for heroic climate action. Politicians, economists, and activists have been looking to America’s astonishing mobilization for World War II as a model for victory in the twenty-first century’s great climate emergency.
This spring, Senator Bernie Sanders called for a World War II-scale climate mobilization at the CNN presidential debate at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In July, the Democratic Party included in its campaign platform a climate plank that read, in part, “We are committed to a national mobilization, and to leading a global effort to mobilize nations to address this threat on a scale not seen since World War II.”