In the early 2000s, seeds of resistance were beginning to coalesce against the dominant, neoliberal response to climate change, which the climate justice movement knew was a guise to protect business as usual and would never solve the global crisis. In October 2004, a seminal meeting of about 20 environmental activists in Durban, South Africa produced the Durban Declaration on Carbon Trading. This groundbreaking statement, coming in the wake of an international framework for trading carbon emissions being established by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, called out carbon trading as a false solution that would delay the phase out of fossil fuels and further entrench social inequalities.
The next year, Carbon Trade Watch expanded on the arguments in the Durban Declaration with a briefing addressing the deceitfulness of market-based solutions to climate change, aptly titled Hoodwinked in the Hothouse. This document, a critical assessment of carbon trading and its roots in free-market international trade laws, was in part a response to the rise of carbon pricing mechanisms as a primary method of addressing the climate crisis, including through the Kyoto Protocol. However, its sharp analysis has also proved prophetic with the two decades that have followed where neoliberal solutions to the climate crisis have continued to become further entrenched and reveal themselves as false promises.
Seeing an opportunity to further critique the ever-expanding range of these false solutions, Rising Tide North America gained permission to use the title for a short booklet outlining in simple terms a host of techno-fixes and market-based mechanisms being proposed to address the climate crisis, from so-called “clean coal” to the recently introduced carbon offsetting scheme REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). The zine was released in 2009 in the lead up to the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen (COP15). The following year, an expanded Second Edition was released in collaboration with Carbon Trade Watch, with additional contributions from Indigenous Environmental Network, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, and a number of other allied environmental justice and climate action organizations and activists. During the mobilization around COP15 and in years since, the first and second editions of Hoodwinked played a major role in raising awareness across climate movements around the world – both helping frontline organizers in their fights against destructive energy proposals and shifting policy positions of large non-governmental organizations.
Nearly a decade later, in spite of rising awareness and resistance within the climate justice movement, polluting industries were continuing in their efforts to dupe the public into believing they were cleaning up their act. Deceptive new terms like “nature-based solutions,” “net-zero emissions,” and “carbon capture” were increasingly infiltrating corporate, government, and civil society climate discourse, hiding the dangerousness and ineffectiveness of these so-called solutions. The 2015 Paris Agreement, though hailed by the international community as a breakthrough moment for cooperative efforts to address the climate crisis, had in actuality opened the door for a host of corporate technology scams and carbon pricing mechanisms to be used by countries in meeting their commitments. Meanwhile, despite an explosion of inspiring activism by youth and climate action groups on issues like fossil fuel divestment and a Green New Deal, the mainstream climate movement behind such efforts still largely lacked a critical analysis of the array of false solutions being advanced by corporations to protect their business model from the rising wave of climate consciousness.
It was within this context that forest protection, climate justice, and Indigenous leaders from across North America gathered in October 2019 in the Shawnee National Forest of Southern Illinois for the North American Forest and Climate Movement Convergence. Co-organized by Indigenous Environmental Network, Global Justice Ecology Project, and Shawnee Forest Defense, the Convergence was billed as “Not a conference! A call to action!” and was structured around Strategic Action Sessions, with the goal of coming away with concrete actions and strategies to address the root causes of climate change, forest destruction, and environmental injustice. It was during discussions at the Convergence around the proliferating threat of climate false solutions and greenwash capitalism schemes that the idea for a third edition of Hoodwinked came up. In addition, several future Hoodwinked collaborators were present at the Convergence who would later get involved with the project because of the meaningful connections and inspiration they had gained at this event.
Work began on the third edition of Hoodwinked in the summer of 2020 during the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many activists were forced to turn to online means of organizing. This started with several calls among an ad hoc group of allied organizations and individuals across North America, to establish the goals of this new edition and what should be included in it. In that collaborative space a creative spark was ignited, and over the next several months Hoodwinked Third Edition was written (by many of the leading minds in the movement against false solutions), edited, illustrated, and designed into the visually-stunning pop-ed toolbox you see today. The publication was released ahead of Earth Day in April 2021.
Although no concrete plans had been made for the coalition to stay together after publication, it quickly became clear after Hoodwinked was released that the work had really just begun. This was no ordinary report or briefing that had been crafted, but a political education tool that was both engaging and immensely informative; and climate and environmental justice groups were immediately finding it useful in their education and advocacy work. Thus, the work of mass distribution began. Boxes of Hoodwinked were shipped to grassroots and frontline groups across North America and beyond, copies were distributed at major climate events such as COP26 in Glasgow (where the likes of Prince Charles and US Climate Envoy John Kerry were also gifted copies), and the book was made available for order online for the price of shipping. The book was also soon translated into four additional languages and an audiobook version was produced, with each chapter read by movement leaders.
Inevitably, the work also expanded beyond simple distribution of the multiple versions of Hoodwinked. In the years since publication, we have hosted several webinars and Instagram Live conversations on issues related to climate justice and false solutions, initiated a false solutions public curriculum project in collaboration with the Environmental Policy & Sustainability Management Program (EPSM) at The New School, and have co-organized an ongoing series of roundtable discussions with transnational movement allies focused on collective strategies for opposing land-based false solutions. We have also focused on developing our digital presence, with our website and social media becoming hubs for accessible education and news on false solutions versus real solutions rooted in climate justice. In addition to continued distribution of Hoodwinked copies at events and to grassroots groups around the world, Hoodwinked has now become a multi-faceted project focused on education and movement building to oppose false solutions, engaging a multilingual global audience.
Hoodwinked Instagram Live conversations hosted in 2023
The once loose, ad hoc coalition that came together to produce the third edition of Hoodwinked has since expanded and solidified into a closely-aligned group of organizations and independent activists known as The Hoodwinked Collaborative. These organizations and individuals represent the collaborators who have been most involved in Hoodwinked work, and some of the leading actors in the movement against climate false solutions today. In addition, Hoodwinked now has a small but dedicated team of part-time staff who coordinate the Collaborative and carry out our day-to-day operations and communications. Since the beginning of work on the Third Edition, Hoodwinked has operated using horizontal, consensus-based decision making, with no designated individuals having more power or authority than others. This often plays out fluidly with decisions being made by whoever shows up within a given space and lack of objection from others, however, more formal proposal processes may be used, for example when making decisions on allocating large amounts of funds. In true collaborative spirit, we have staunchly sought to maintain this model, even as Hoodwinked has grown and developed.
The future of Hoodwinked will be determined by the needs of the climate justice movement and the energy brought to the table by those interested in fighting false solutions. So far, our no-compromise approach to addressing the climate crisis, wrapped up in accessible education and organizing tools, has proved effective in moving the needle within the mainstream climate movement towards a more radical, system-change-oriented positionality. Already, we have seen that more and more climate groups in recent years have been using the term “false solutions” and calling out greenwashing scams that once may have gone unquestioned by an unwitting public looking for any kind of “solution” in an age of climate anxiety and grief. Until true climate justice is achieved, this growing movement will refuse to be hoodwinked and continue resisting false solutions to climate change.
