WEBVTT - Expanding The Movement with Bill McKibben 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:03.120 I think probably we can convince them to slow this down, 0:00:03.560 --> 0:00:04.920 but it's going to take a lot of work, and 0:00:04.960 --> 0:00:07.720 that wouldn't surprise me to be back in jail again 0:00:08.119 --> 0:00:10.600 in the course of the winter, trying to slow it 0:00:10.640 --> 0:00:14.440 down with Fucked. 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:22.320 Hi, I'm Chris Turney and you're listening to I'm Fucking 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:25.400 the Future, the podcast where we try to figure out 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:29.440 how to fix the environmental dumpster fire we're in. That 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:34.800 may sound pessimistic, but I promise it's not unfucking the future. 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:38.360 It's all about the incredible people making a big difference 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:42.080 and about how we can make a difference too. Let's 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:42.479 dig in. 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:46.440 We're fucking the future. 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:52.239 If you're walking around Burlington, Vermont back in twenty fifteen, 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:55.880 you may have seen the unusual sight a middle aged 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:59.920 dude in a baseball cap, calmly getting arrested at agasting. 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:04.000 As the officer cuffs him, a small group of people 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:05.480 start cheering. 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:10.000 Ex You. 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:15.440 These activists had come to protest ex On Mobile, a 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:19.800 big oil and gas company, and their leader that middle 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:24.680 aged dude getting arrested. He's our guest today, Bill mckibbon's 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:28.040 been fighting for the climate and sometimes getting arrested for 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:32.720 it for almost forty years. Bill actually wrote the first 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:36.520 book on the climate crisis for mainstream audiences. It's called 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:39.840 The End of Nature. I was published in nineteen eighty nine, 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:43.199 and as a teenager, I read this book front to back, 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:46.240 and I've got to say it really was life changing 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:49.040 to me. It's part of why I decided to study 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:54.200 environmental science. And he's written twenty more books since. Not 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:57.440 to mention, he started three fifty dollars or one of 0:01:57.440 --> 0:02:01.160 the most effective climate action groups out there. So safe 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:03.680 to say, I'm stoked to have Bill on the show. 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:06.640 He's been of this for longer than many of us. 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:09.120 So I wanted to ask him about the state of 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:12.920 a climate movement today, how far we've come, what we 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:15.760 still need to do, and how we can get even 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:19.520 more people involved. I also wanted to talk to him 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:24.040 about his latest initiative, Third Act, which is successfully getting 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:27.639 some very unlikely climate activists to take to the streets. 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:31.920 So how did this mild mannered writer become such a 0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:35.280 threat to a fossil fuel industry? As he tells it, 0:02:35.880 --> 0:02:37.520 it all started back in the eighties. 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:41.960 I was a young writer at the New Yorker magazine 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:44.720 in New York and I did a long story about 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:47.360 where everything in my apartment came from. I followed all 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:50.480 the wires and pipes back to there. I was in 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:54.320 the Brazilian jungle, looking at oil wells, in the Arctic, 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:59.040 looking at hydroelectric dams, and on and I And I 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:01.560 think by the time I was done that long piece, 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:04.960 I had a sharper sense than I had before of 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:08.680 the physicality of the world, if you want to call 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.000 it that. I lived in Manhattan, which seems like a 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:15.600 place that could just mint money and ideas out of nothing, 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:20.080 but it turned out it was exquisitely dependent on the 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:25.760 continued operation of the planet's physical systems for its survival. 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:29.440 And I think actually that set me up to read 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:36.200 the early emerging science on climate change and understand some 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:40.000 of its implications that really, this was the biggest thing 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:42.360 that had ever happened and was ever going to happen, 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:44.960 by far, the biggest thing that humans had ever done. 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:49.360 And I think that really was laying a little bit 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:50.960 at the base of all that. 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:55.920 Now, we've talked to a lot of people in this 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:59.600 show who grew up in rural places and win inspired 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:03.080 by the beauty around them. They came into this fight 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:06.920 to protect the natural wonders in their backyards. But Bill, 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:09.520 Bill grew up in the suburbs, which. 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:14.520 Are a kind of machine for hiding the operations of 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:17.440 the natural world from you. Everything is named for what 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:20.520 used to be there but isn't anymore, you know, Fox 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:24.800 Run Acres or something, and I had sort of no 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:27.720 idea much what I was missing. I'm glad that I 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:30.120 grew up in the suburbs because I think that I 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:34.760 have a deep understanding of the center of gravity of 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:38.359 American life, which is the suburb and has been since 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:39.919 my time. 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:42.200 And it's already an established thing. But you actually saw 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:45.600 this incredible change post war and have a suburbs became 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:47.640 such a big part of American. 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:52.680 Life, American life, and then the model sadly spread around 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:53.360 the world. 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:56.520 I mean, what the fuck did the suburbs do to Bill? 0:04:57.360 --> 0:05:01.479 They can't really be all that bad, right, What the 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:08.839 fuck are you talking about? Suburban sprawl has had major 0:05:08.960 --> 0:05:13.479 consequences on the environment. Simply put, hundreds of millions of 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:17.080 people living in single family homes means lots of concrete 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:20.680 getting poured, loss of land being cleared, and a huge 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:24.080 demand for energy there's a certain lifestyle that comes along 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:27.960 with living in the suburbs. A green lawn, a large house, 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:31.640 two cars, and maybe even a pool. In the suburbs, 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:35.520 life is bigger. Plus, you're not living above your grocery 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:38.320 store and just a few blocks from your kid's school anymore. 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:41.640 The suburbs have made a fifteen, twenty or thirty minute 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:48.080 drive totally normal. For result is I fuckalowed more emissions. Historically, 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:52.000 carbon emissions from suburban homes are four times more than 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:55.479 those of homes in cities. And yet in the US, 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:59.440 Australia and much of a world, we've accepted the suburbs 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:03.320 as a way of life, and since of inception we've 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:05.599 never really made an effort to change fact. 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:12.239 The car centric bedroom community became was the American ideal 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:16.120 and became in too many places the world's ideal, with 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:20.200 grievous environmental consequences. I mean, you have all those big 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:23.119 houses you have to heat and cool and drive between them, 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:29.680 but also with grievous social consequences. Perhaps more importantly, the 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:33.440 average American has half as many close friends as the 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:36.760 average American of the nineteen fifties. And it's because we live, 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:41.520 because we devoted all our resources to building bigger houses 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:44.800 farther apart from each other, and people just naturally ran 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:47.920 into each other a lot less the course of a day. 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:52.120 Bill's twenty twenty two memoir The Flag, the Cross, and 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:56.840 the Station Wagon describes how the suburbs not only super 0:06:56.920 --> 0:07:00.880 charged of emissions, but also they super charged our wealth, 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:05.280 inequality in individualism, and how all of this, taken together, 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:09.440 has reduced our ability to actually get together and solve 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:12.880 a climate crisis. So that's what the fuck we're talking about. 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:20.600 What the fuck are talking about? So anyway, Bill grew 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:23.480 up in the suburbs, and it wasn't until he was 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:26.040 a young writer of The New Yorker but he began 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:29.440 to reckon with the environmental impact of that. And then 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:34.360 on June twenty third, nineteen eighty eight, something monumental happened. 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:37.600 The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:38.559 our climate now. 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:42.800 Jim Hanson, then the director of NASA's Institute for Space 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:47.040 Studies in Manhattan, spoke to Congress about an emerging threat, 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:53.240 global warming. His testimony was headline news around the world. 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:56.920 Most people had never heard of such a thing, and 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:00.520 certainly not from a senior leader at NASA. People, did 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:03.000 you any rational thing? They freaked out. 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:06.320 I mean, Time magazine, in the wake of that testimony, 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:08.720 made instead of choosing a Man of the Year, as 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:11.360 they had for fifty years, they chose the planet of 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:16.000 the year. George H. W. Bush, then Republican President of 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:19.360 the United States, was shaken enough that he said, we 0:08:20.200 --> 0:08:24.800 will attack the Greenhouse effect with the white House effect. Everybody, 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:28.000 as one would expect, was sort of lining up to 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:30.480 try to deal with this problem, because why wouldn't you 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:34.239 You've just been given a crucial warning by the world scientists. 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:38.880 Of course, all this urgency and unity was way too 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:39.559 good to lost. 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:43.920 We now know from all kinds of great investigative reporting 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:48.120 that within a year or so of Hanson's testimony, the 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:52.680 fossil fuel industry had circled the wagons. They'd hired the 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:55.920 people who used to work for the tobacco industry, and 0:08:55.960 --> 0:09:05.480 they'd gone to work sowing doubt, denial, disinformation with billions 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:07.640 of dollars and decades of effort. 0:09:08.240 --> 0:09:11.320 We all know that's the case, but just how much 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:20.760 effort they put into this is genuinely shocking. We've all 0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:24.720 seen the ads. How can today's resources fuel our shared tomorrow. 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:28.640 The world needs ways to reduce carbon emissions, especially for 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:29.480 heavy industry. 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:32.839 We are working on solutions in our own operations, like 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:35.920 carbon capture and clean energy from hydrogen. 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:40.800 Those cheery inspirational ads about why petrol companies can fix 0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:45.960 a problem they created our complete garbage. It's amazing. I 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:50.119 think anyone believes this nonsense. But sadly it seems to work. 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:54.320 Let's start from the beginning. Though it is nineteen eighty eight. 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:59.880 Jim Hanson's just presented his testimony to Congress, the world 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:04.959 looking at him going otoh, wear in real trouble. Let's 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:08.720 do something about it. A big oil starts to get worried. 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:12.920 The people are catching on. Something's got to change. So 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:16.560 Big Old gets together with some other manufacturing industries and 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:20.599 they create a group called the Global Climate Coalition. The 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:25.480 greatest success effectively lobbying the US to not sign the 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:29.920 Kyoto Protocol, which would have reduced global pollution by an 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:30.760 awful lot. 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:35.000 I mean, remember, in nineteen ninety two the world gathered 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:38.880 in Rio de Janeiro for a big conference on all 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:43.160 of this, and everybody was there, and it seemed like 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:45.600 people were going to go to work, but they didn't. 0:10:46.280 --> 0:10:50.320 You know, the first effort was this Kyoto protocol that 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:54.679 was you know, still born really because of the US 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:57.240 refusal to ratify it. 0:10:57.240 --> 0:11:00.920 It's a huge win for big al doesn't stop there. 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:06.760 Christian Downey and Robert Braule, two researchers who look at 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:11.400 trade organization funding, found that from two thousand and eight 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:16.560 to twenty eighteen, oil and gas companies outspent all other 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:21.160 sectors on public outreach and campaign contributions. And those cute 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:25.640 little ads, well, big oil spent are whopping one billion 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:30.600 dollars just on ads over ten years. So yeah, there's 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:36.600 a shit ton of money going into their efforts. 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:44.080 The fossil fuel industry has relentlessly refused to give up 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:47.680 its business model. They want to keep burning coal and 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:50.840 gas and oil, and so they've looked for any way 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:53.280 to keep doing that, and the most effective way they've 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:57.240 had is to muscle our political system to gain our 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:01.959 political system. Eventually they'll lose. I mean, we now live 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:04.520 on an earth where the cheapest way to produce power 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:06.439 is to point a sheet of glass at the sun 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:11.800 that eventually that will triumph, but eventually doesn't do us 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:12.280 much good. 0:12:12.440 --> 0:12:15.040 I mean, they'reknew in the late nineteen seventies this is real. 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:16.800 In fact, there's some of the best scientists working on 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:20.560 that actually, and their projections and forecasts of the future 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:26.160 were really, really good and frighteningly accurate. There's been decades 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:31.040 of disinformation and misinformation that's come from this, from these 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:34.240 fossil fuel companies. I mean, Jim's made the points as well, 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:36.720 and I couldn't agree more. I mean, gosh, I've basically 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:40.000 been working in this field since Jim testified, and it's 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:44.600 amazing to see how he's consistently been ahead of the 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:48.920 community and repeatedly so. I mean, I find them incredibly inspirational. 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:51.520 He's also, let me just dad, he's also been ahead 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:54.319 in his willingness to be outspoken about it. I've had 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:56.800 to call him half a dozen times and say, will 0:12:56.800 --> 0:12:59.960 you come get arrested with us here, which looked at 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.560 one way, is insane. It's so stupid to take the 0:13:03.559 --> 0:13:06.560 most important climate scientists in the world away from his 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:09.920 computer screen and have him go sit in jail for 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:12.840 a couple of days. But it was actually super important 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:16.079 in building support for actually doing something about any of. 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:19.679 This, and in all his work bill has one goal. 0:13:20.760 --> 0:13:23.840 We have to stop setting things on far and instead 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:26.800 stop pointing sheets of glass up at the sun. 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:31.679 Combustion has been a big part of human life for 0:13:31.720 --> 0:13:35.520 something like seven hundred thousand years. Darwin said language and 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:39.360 fire were the two things that distinguished our species, and 0:13:39.400 --> 0:13:43.160 mostly it's been good. We learned to cook food, and 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:45.360 that gave us the big brain. We could move north 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:48.640 and south away from the equator because we could warm 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:54.160 ourselves up. I think the anthropologists even consider that some 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:57.680 of the social bonds in our species come from sitting 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:01.559 around the campfire every night for eon. Kind of proto 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:04.440 zoom I like that. And then we made it to 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:08.640 the industrial revolution and learned to control the combustion of 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:11.760 coal and gas and oil, and that give us modernity. 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:15.360 But we're at the moment when the costs are suddenly 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:19.400 outweighing the benefits. The biggest of those costs is obviously 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:23.160 the existential climate crisis. So that's the biggest risk, but 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:26.840 it's not the only one from combustion. Nine million people 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:30.040 a year die on this planet, about one death in 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:34.280 five from breathing the byproducts of fossil fuel combustion. That's 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:35.040 a lot of people. 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:39.240 That is a heartbreaking number of people who die eachy 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:43.520 from fossil fuel pollution. That's about a population of London. 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:47.400 And as we've discovered and been re reminded in the 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:50.600 last couple of years, if you depend on a resource 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:53.800 it's only available in a few places, the people who 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:56.520 control those places end up with way too much power. 0:14:57.040 --> 0:14:59.520 Countries that sits on huge all of us as are 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:03.560 able to punched way above our wait politically, Saudi Arabia, 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:09.160 the UAE, Guitar, Russia, Venezuela, the US. You get a point. 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:12.800 But the good news is we can see our way 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:14.040 out of this mess. 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:18.560 It's our great good fortune that it's precisely at this 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:25.239 moment when this trouble is mounting so fast, that scientists 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:29.240 and engineers have figured out how to use the power 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:32.040 of the sun. We can capture its rays directly on 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:35.360 photo voltaic panels, and we can take advantage of the 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:39.320 fact that it differentially heats the earth, producing the breeze 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:43.200 that turns those turbines. And now we have batteries to 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:46.840 store that when the sun goes down or the wind drops, 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:52.240 and in essence, you know, we can now take full 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:54.680 advantage of the fact that the Good Lord was kind 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:58.480 enough to hang a large ball of burning gas ninety 0:15:58.520 --> 0:16:01.200 three million miles up in the sky. What we have 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:06.840 is cheap soilar, cheap wind, increasingly cheaper batteries. It's not free. 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:10.920 There's environmental damage that comes from the mining and so on, 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:13.440 and they can be done in inhumane ways, and we 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:16.200 should do everything we can to prevent that. But the 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:20.320 damage is orders of magnitude smaller than the damage we're 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:22.600 doing now. If you want one way to just sort 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:25.560 of keep that in your mind, statistic that helps for 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:30.080 me is that forty percent of all ship traffic on 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:33.600 planet Earth is just carrying coal and oil and gas 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:36.160 back and forth around the planet to get burned. 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:41.600 We have to change that. One of the ways out 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:45.480 of this mess is actually buried in the Inflation Reduction Act, 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:49.800 which is sending hundreds of billions of dollars into clean 0:16:49.920 --> 0:16:53.840 energy right now. It's the biggest investment in the US 0:16:53.960 --> 0:16:57.760 government has ever made to reduce carbon pollution. But Bill says, 0:16:58.080 --> 0:16:59.760 we've got to spend this money quickly. 0:17:00.240 --> 0:17:02.120 You know, I know the people at the White House 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:04.439 and the Department of Energy who are trying to shovel 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:06.440 that money out the door as fast as they can, 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:09.280 in part because there's a real fear that Donald Trump 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:13.760 will be re elected, which point it'll all come to 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:22.119 a halt. The hardest part is getting communities. We're now 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:24.200 at the point where the rubber really meets the road. 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:27.240 There are one hundred and forty million homes and apartment 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:30.560 buildings and apartments in the US, and each one of 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:33.520 them has to be changed in certain ways, you know. 0:17:33.600 --> 0:17:36.520 And there's money now to allow that to happen. But 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:43.280 that's still an extraordinarily complex logistical problem, you know. So 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:46.360 right now there's a lot of work in listing mayors 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:50.280 and city councils and governors and things in this work 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:53.640 as it spreads out from the center. So that's half 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:56.440 of what the US has to do. The other half 0:17:56.520 --> 0:18:00.879 is it has to not just worry about its own commissions. 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:05.680 It has to stop exporting vast quantities of fossil fuel elsewhere. 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:10.080 We will, as someone once said, hang together, or we 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:16.240 will hang separately. I mean, look, humans are socially evolved primate. 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:19.399 It wasn't that many generations ago that we were sitting 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:21.960 on the floor of the savannah picking lice out of 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:26.440 each other's fur. You know, and that is us at 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:30.919 its best, our responsiveness to people around us. This is 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:35.640 what climate change is testing. Now. If we do things right, 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:38.399 we'll be making a transition to a world that doesn't 0:18:38.480 --> 0:18:41.600 set things on fire anymore, and as a result, the 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:45.200 world itself will be less on fire, meaning that. 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:49.040 Is a future where we only rely renewable energy, where 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:51.439 fossil fuels are a thing of a past. 0:18:55.960 --> 0:19:05.160 We're fucking the future. We're fucking the future. 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:11.520 But Bill has been parts of a climate movement for 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:14.480 decades and he still has hope. But we can turn 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:17.439 this around, but we have to get everyone activates on 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:20.360 these issues as quickly as humanly possible. 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:23.600 I've had the privilege of being there pretty much the 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:28.040 whole time as we've built this climate movement. I founded 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:31.399 the first what turned into the first global grassroots climate 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:36.000 change campaign three point fifty dot org with seven undergraduates 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:38.880 at the college where I teach, and within a year 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:44.440 we'd organized fifty two hundred simultaneous demonstrations in one hundred 0:19:44.480 --> 0:19:48.879 and eighty one countries. We launched this fossil fuel divestment campaign, 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:52.879 and within a decade we've convinced endowments and portfolio is 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:56.639 worth about forty trillion dollars to divest from fossil fuel. 0:19:57.080 --> 0:20:00.720 So the good news is we're going in the rights 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:05.200 and we can thank longtime activists Light Bill for aggravating 0:20:05.240 --> 0:20:09.240 the status quo and getting us to where we are today. 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:12.040 We sort of kick these things off, but then everybody 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:14.640 just took it and ran with it. We think three 0:20:14.640 --> 0:20:17.879 point fifty dot org has organized or been associated with 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:22.360 twenty thousand demonstrations in every country on Earth except North Korea. 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:25.600 But you obviously can't organize all those. It's just people 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:28.359 picking up the ball and running with it everywhere. I 0:20:28.359 --> 0:20:32.000 think probably this is the biggest movement in human history, 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:35.200 which is good because it's by far the biggest problem 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:40.200 in human history. And it really has been an extraordinary 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:42.960 honor just to get to watch it grow and grow 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:46.800 and grow. Whether we've grown it big enough to take 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:49.479 on the you know, to make the change we need 0:20:49.520 --> 0:20:51.800 in the time we have as an open question. We 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:54.800 clearly need more people. I'm spending my time now a 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:58.040 lot of it organizing old people like me in this group. 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:02.000 Third Act Bill, to fight a problem that seems pretty 0:21:02.040 --> 0:21:05.080 easy to solve. We need more people to give a 0:21:05.119 --> 0:21:07.080 shit about what's happening to our planet. 0:21:08.400 --> 0:21:12.600 The most effective climate activist of all time was obviously 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:18.160 gret At Tunberg and her movement that she inaugurated, really 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:21.800 the school strike movement, and things came like a bulk 0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:25.720 from the blue and it was increasing with incredible speed 0:21:25.800 --> 0:21:29.960 and power through twenty nineteen. In that September of that year, 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:32.320 there were ten million kids on on school strike. 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:36.720 My name is Grieta Tembari, and I'm inviting you to 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:37.920 be a part of the solution. 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:41.600 When young people go to the streets, they get attention, 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:46.480 and rightfully so. Ten million young people standing up to 0:21:46.520 --> 0:21:50.760 their governments in action on the climate crisis is big news. 0:21:52.240 --> 0:21:55.760 But it shouldn't have to be this way. Their kids 0:21:56.160 --> 0:22:00.600 and they didn't create this crisis. My generation have its 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:01.680 generation date. 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:04.560 Young people have done most of the leading on this fight. 0:22:04.680 --> 0:22:06.760 As I said, I started three point fifty dot org 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:12.879 with seven undergraduates with extraordinary success. You know, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, 0:22:12.920 --> 0:22:17.560 Princeton University, California, University of Michigan, all divested now from 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:22.119 fossil fuel. Those young people, when they graduated went on 0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:24.840 to form the Sunrise movement that brought us the Green 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:28.359 New Deal and hence the Inflation Reduction Act. And around 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:31.560 the world, as we've said, you know, Greta and her 0:22:32.080 --> 0:22:35.120 the ten thousand other Gretas around the world had ten 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:38.560 million followers, and they've done an unbelievable job. I mean, 0:22:38.600 --> 0:22:41.679 what a pleasure it was to get to write my 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:46.880 friend Greta in June a letter of congratulation on graduating 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:50.960 from high school. Think about that for a minute, you know, 0:22:51.480 --> 0:22:55.280 but I did hear one too many people my age say, oh, 0:22:55.320 --> 0:22:58.160 it's up to the next generation to solve this problem, 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:03.760 which seems noble but also highly impractical. For all their 0:23:03.840 --> 0:23:09.199 energy and intelligence and idealism, young people lack the structural 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:13.320 power to make by themselves change on the scale we 0:23:13.400 --> 0:23:15.760 need in the time that we have. We don't have 0:23:15.800 --> 0:23:18.080 the time for them to grow up and become senators 0:23:18.080 --> 0:23:20.959 and CEOs and whatever that takes a while. In a 0:23:21.040 --> 0:23:24.880 while is what we don't possess. So if you look 0:23:24.920 --> 0:23:27.720 around for who does have structural power, it's people with 0:23:27.800 --> 0:23:28.640 hairlines like. 0:23:28.640 --> 0:23:32.000 Mine, which is why Bill started faird Act. 0:23:32.760 --> 0:23:36.040 We punch above our weight politically because we all vote. 0:23:36.080 --> 0:23:39.200 There's no known way to stop old people from voting. 0:23:40.400 --> 0:23:42.240 We ended up with most of the money. We've got 0:23:42.240 --> 0:23:45.800 about seventy percent of the country's financial assets. So if 0:23:45.840 --> 0:23:48.359 you wanted to push around Washington or Wall Street or 0:23:48.359 --> 0:23:52.160 your state capital, having some older people would be helpful. 0:23:53.000 --> 0:23:57.359 The theoretical objection to this from political scientists and things 0:23:57.520 --> 0:24:00.960 was that people become more conservative, as so there's no 0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:03.320 point trying to organize them. I don't know if that 0:24:03.359 --> 0:24:05.280 was true once, but it doesn't need to be true 0:24:05.359 --> 0:24:08.639 now because if you're in your sixties or seventies or eighties, now, 0:24:09.359 --> 0:24:11.640 it means that in your first Act, you were around 0:24:11.680 --> 0:24:15.920 for this moment of great epic social, cultural, political transformation, 0:24:16.520 --> 0:24:18.960 when we had the first Earth Day and the birth 0:24:19.000 --> 0:24:22.159 of the modern environmental movement, when in my country the 0:24:22.200 --> 0:24:25.639 civil rights movement was at its apex on and on, 0:24:26.480 --> 0:24:30.040 and so now people are Perhaps the Second Act was 0:24:30.080 --> 0:24:33.639 a little more involved in consumerism than citizenship, but that's 0:24:34.280 --> 0:24:39.160 water under the bridge, and now people are organizing like crazy. 0:24:39.320 --> 0:24:42.360 We've just been a kind of pell Mell sprint these 0:24:42.440 --> 0:24:46.840 last two years, and people are great at registering voters 0:24:46.880 --> 0:24:51.240 and lobbying legislatures, on and on, but they're also willing 0:24:51.280 --> 0:24:56.240 to take direct action. We had Third Act coordinated demonstrations. 0:24:56.320 --> 0:25:00.359 One hundred demonstrations in one hundred cities in March against 0:25:00.359 --> 0:25:03.919 the four big banks Chase City, Wells, Fargo, Bank of 0:25:03.960 --> 0:25:07.520