Insider climate activism – slowing down or speeding up to decarbonize?

This chapter discusses climate activism in relation to speed, to explore two emerging polarized forms of “insider activism”, conceptualised as movements pursued in professional contexts. Both movements respond to the expressed “climate emergency”, the first by propagating for a Fast movement and the second for a Slow movement. By first presenting a spectrum of velocities that have emerged in response to the climate emergency, this chapter replays these temporal responses in two fictional polarizations of insider climate activism. The first illustration portrays employee activism within a CO2 polluting corporation, to investigate how Fast movements can develop within business. The second illustration, in contrast, portrays insider activism performed by public officials who work for a regional office, to explore how Slow movements can prosper within public organizations. This method produces a polarization, facilitating a reflective comparison of how activism pursued at work can take different transformative paces, sometimes successfully aligning with other organisational rhythms and professional practices. While very diverse activist movements, slow as well as fast, could prosper within both the private and public sectors, these two polarized fictional examples provide insights into the largely unexplored desynchronized velocities that exist in climate activism.