Speaker 1: Hadrilled listeners. It's been a rough couple of weeks. I
Speaker 1: hope everyone is staying safe out there. I'm bringing you
Speaker 1: today an interview that I actually did a few months
Speaker 1: ago with Naomi Klein, the author of Shock Doctrine. I
Speaker 1: had some technical difficulties, but the files and then time
Speaker 1: got away from me, so it's coming a little bit
Speaker 1: later than I expected it to, but it actually completely
Speaker 1: fits with the time that we're in right now. We're
Speaker 1: seeing the Shock Doctrine play out in the government and
Speaker 1: the fossil fuel industry's response to both the coronavirus pandemic
Speaker 1: and the protests, and Naomi will talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what exactly that means and how it reminds her
Speaker 1: of what happened in the aftermath of Katrina. We also
Speaker 1: got into how all of that plays into her thoughts
Speaker 1: on the Green New Dia and in general on the
Speaker 1: climate movement and what needs to be done to move
Speaker 1: it forward. I hope you enjoy our conversation that's coming
Speaker 1: up in just a minute after a message from this
Speaker 1: episode's sponsor, I'm Amy Westervelt and this is Drilled Hei. Naomi,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for being here. Really appreciated. I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to talk to you. So I wanted to start
Speaker 1: with maybe getting a little bit of your kind of
Speaker 1: origin story when it comes to climate. How did you
Speaker 1: find your way to the climate crisis.
Speaker 2: So I'm not somebody who has been writing about the
Speaker 2: climate crisis for my entire career. I began, certainly for
Speaker 2: the first more than decade, focusing on economic injustices human
Speaker 2: rights abuses. When I wrote my first book, No Logo,
Speaker 2: which came out twenty years ago, I was tracking the
Speaker 2: rise of the globalization of labor and this kind of
Speaker 2: newish way of producing the products that fill our lives,
Speaker 2: which used to be sort of focused in a factory
Speaker 2: where the whole production process would take place, and often
Speaker 2: that factory would be relatively close to where the products
Speaker 2: were consumed. We started to see this rage for outsourcing
Speaker 2: in the nineteen nineties where our products were being made
Speaker 2: now through a web of global contractors and subcontractors. And
Speaker 2: so while I was focused on the effects on workers
Speaker 2: and driving down of labor standards, I was certainly aware
Speaker 2: that it was also an incredibly high carbon to produce
Speaker 2: our goods and to live our lives. But it wasn't
Speaker 2: my focus. And the turning point for me was really
Speaker 2: when I was in New Orleans in the aftermath of
Speaker 2: Hurricane Katrina. I wasn't there out of a concern for
Speaker 2: climate change, to be perfectly frank with you, I was
Speaker 2: there because I was working on The Shock Doctrine, which
Speaker 2: is a book about a phenomenon that I called disaster capitalism,
Speaker 2: where in the aftermath of these you know, shocking events
Speaker 2: like wars, economic crises, and increasingly natural disasters, there is
Speaker 2: a kind of corporate feeding frenzy. And that was certainly
Speaker 2: the case in New Orleans after Katrina. So I went
Speaker 2: there because Halliburton was there, and Blackwater was there, and
Speaker 2: Bechtol was there, and the charter school movement was there,
Speaker 2: and all of these private real estate developers were there,
Speaker 2: and it was just like this insane, freeding frenzy. Before
Speaker 2: the water had even you know, drained from the streets,
Speaker 2: there was this talk of how they were going to
Speaker 2: turn New Orleans into this laboratory for a privatized, you know,
Speaker 2: frankly racially cleansed city, and so that's what I was
Speaker 2: focusing on. But when I was there, I definitely had
Speaker 2: this feeling that I was looking at our collective future.
Speaker 2: If we stay on the road we're on, that we
Speaker 2: would be facing a future with more of these kinds
Speaker 2: of climate shocks intersecting with a weak and neglected public sphere,
Speaker 2: overlaid with systems of wide supremacy, and then disaster capitalists
Speaker 2: swooping in with plans to make it all more unequal.
Speaker 2: And that was the moment where I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I can't keep deferring this issue and telling myself that,
Speaker 2: you know, the environmentalists are handling it. This is an
Speaker 2: economic rights issue, it's a racial justice issue, it's a
Speaker 2: human rights crisis, and we all need to be involved.
Speaker 1: I feel like that leads into a lot of the
Speaker 1: discussion around the Green New Deal. I'm curious to hear
Speaker 1: your take on how the Green New Deal has been
Speaker 1: discussed in the media so far, and I'm really curious
Speaker 1: to hear what you think about specific policies that can
Speaker 1: be brought forth in the Green New Deal framework.
Speaker 2: Sure. I mean, first of all, I think it's important
Speaker 2: to understand that that pretty much anything can be brought
Speaker 2: forward in a Green New Deal framework because it isn't
Speaker 2: it isn't simply a climate policy it's a framework for
Speaker 2: the next economy that we're going to have, right, It's
Speaker 2: an umbrella that pretty much every issue has to fit within.
Speaker 2: And so you know, it starts with the science and
Speaker 2: the sort of fateful IPCC report that came out in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, the one point five report that said we
Speaker 2: need to cut global emissions in half in twelve years
Speaker 2: now eleven, and that in order to do so it
Speaker 2: would require transformation of pretty much every aspect of society.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's their words, right, So if we need
Speaker 2: to transform housing, building, construction, transportation, energy, agri culture, and
Speaker 2: on and on and on, why wouldn't we, at the
Speaker 2: same time as we transform it to get it to
Speaker 2: zero emissions, transform it to make it a hell of
Speaker 2: a lot fairer on every front. Because the climate crisis
Speaker 2: isn't the only crisis that we face. We face multiple,
Speaker 2: overlapping and intersecting crisis. So that's the way I see,
Speaker 2: you know, the Green New Deal, and I think we
Speaker 2: should think about it as expansively as possible and not
Speaker 2: be afraid of that, because if you're talking about new
Speaker 2: ways to live, you shouldn't be afraid to be making connections.
Speaker 2: Most of my critiques of the Green New Deal, and
Speaker 2: I have my own have to do with things that
Speaker 2: are left out as opposed to the way it's so
Speaker 2: often discussed in the in the you know, you asked
Speaker 2: about media coverage, you know, I'd say that it's been really,
Speaker 2: really bad in the sense that we have right wing media.
Speaker 2: You know, we have the sort of Fox and the
Speaker 2: echo chamber around it just lying about it, but lying
Speaker 2: about it a lot like talking about it all the time,
Speaker 2: right and completely misrepresenting it shamelessly right and just scaring
Speaker 2: their viewers and listeners and readers, depending on the media outlet,
Speaker 2: about how it is all going to be about loss, right,
Speaker 2: It is all about people taking things away from you
Speaker 2: and making your life crappy. And the reason why they
Speaker 2: do that is because this has been a very successful
Speaker 2: way to defeat climate policies in the past, and they
Speaker 2: know that. Actually, over the past couple of decades, many
Speaker 2: of the ways that states and national governments did try
Speaker 2: to tackle the climate crisis within a very sort of
Speaker 2: free market neoliberal framework did actually increase the burdens on
Speaker 2: working people. You had renewable energy plans that didn't make
Speaker 2: sure that low income consumers didn't face increases in their
Speaker 2: electricity bills. In France, you had, you know, Emmanuel McCall
Speaker 2: introducing a fuel tax at the same time as he's
Speaker 2: handing out tax breaks for millionaires and corporations, at the
Speaker 2: same time as he's attacking trade unions, at the same
Speaker 2: time as he's imposing austerity policies, all of which is
Speaker 2: making life for workers harder. And then and then he says, oh,
Speaker 2: and the way to solve climate change is just for
Speaker 2: you all to pay more for gas. And so this message,
Speaker 2: you know that that Fox is pounding away on, you know,
Speaker 2: responding to climate change is going to make your lives harder,
Speaker 2: has been a really successful strategy all around the world
Speaker 2: in order to beat back neoliberal climate policies. They don't
Speaker 2: talk about all the jobs that's that are going to
Speaker 2: be created. They don't talk about the protections for union
Speaker 2: jobs and and and the guarantees that workers will maintain
Speaker 2: their salary levels. They just talk about all the things
Speaker 2: you're going to lose. And the problem is that if
Speaker 2: you turn on CNN or NBC, you aren't getting a
Speaker 2: corrective to that. You mainly aren't hearing about the Green
Speaker 2: New Deal at all. And the main way that it's
Speaker 2: been covered in like sort of serious you know, liberal
Speaker 2: print media has been to sort of soberly claim in
Speaker 2: our bed after our beed that it's not pragmatic, it's
Speaker 2: not realistic, because you know, it attaches all of these
Speaker 2: things that are unrelated, like healthcare and childcare and a
Speaker 2: job's guarantee without making any effort to figure out how
Speaker 2: they might be connected, right, And so yeah, it's been
Speaker 2: a big fail because you've got that, you've got the lies,
Speaker 2: which we shouldn't be surprised by and which we will
Speaker 2: continue to see, and you don't have real similarly kind
Speaker 2: of high profile attempts to debunk those lies.
Speaker 1: I know, it's so interesting to hear so called liberal
Speaker 1: media talking about how you can't solve all the social
Speaker 1: problems and also just not understanding the fact that climate
Speaker 1: really does intersect with all these other justice issues and.
Speaker 2: Being very explicit about it, right, like we can't afford
Speaker 2: to deal with justice now. And it hasn't just been
Speaker 2: The New York Times. Michael Mann wrote that in Nature,
Speaker 2: it's interesting that there's being so explicit about like you're
Speaker 2: weighing us down by making this about justice. We don't
Speaker 2: have time, and I mean there's a couple of things
Speaker 2: about it. Like I mean, first of all, if that's true,
Speaker 2: give us an example of a narrow carbon based approach
Speaker 2: to the climate crisis that has worked at the speed
Speaker 2: and scale that we need, right because what we're actually
Speaker 2: seeing is when you introduce only these market based approaches
Speaker 2: like a carbon tax or cap and trade, they often
Speaker 2: spark a popular backlash and you lose the policies. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's what happened in France that Colin was forced to
Speaker 2: repeal his inadequate gas tax in the face of this
Speaker 2: huge popular backlash. I'm Canadian. I'm living in the States
Speaker 2: now now, but in Ontario we had a liberal government
Speaker 2: that introduced carbon policies that were widely perceived to have
Speaker 2: increased the price of energy. And there are big debates
Speaker 2: about whether that's true and why that is, and if
Speaker 2: it's really about the renewables push, or whether it's about
Speaker 2: various boondoggles that they got themselves in Meshtin. But the
Speaker 2: point is is that it was perceived to be just
Speaker 2: increasing the cost of living. And now we have a
Speaker 2: right wing populist government whose very first act in office
Speaker 2: was to repeal it, right. So you know, you have
Speaker 2: a lot of people posing as you know, very very
Speaker 2: serious people who know how to get things done, but
Speaker 2: if you look at the track record, it doesn't get
Speaker 2: the job done. Whereas linking climate policies with actually much
Speaker 2: more popular policies like medicare for all and job creation
Speaker 2: and you know, protecting labor rights that hasn't been tried,
Speaker 2: you know, and it's certainly worth a try because it
Speaker 2: might actually work.
Speaker 1: I know, I don't understand why people think that the
Speaker 1: same approach that we've been trying for thirty years, an
Speaker 1: approach that hasn't worked, is going to be the thing
Speaker 1: that solves this problem.
Speaker 2: You know. It also kind of feels like the folks
Speaker 2: who are making these arguments need to spend a little
Speaker 2: bit more time on the ground in disaster zones because
Speaker 2: you know, as a journalist like I come to this
Speaker 2: from just being in the places, right, and there's just
Speaker 2: no way to just say with a straight face, like
Speaker 2: what does healthcare have to do with climate? You know,
Speaker 2: unless you have never been in a disaster zone, you know,
Speaker 2: every and you know, I admit, you know, I run
Speaker 2: to the fire. That's what I do as a journalist.
Speaker 2: And you know, whether it's New Orleans, you know, whether
Speaker 2: after Katrina, whether it's New York after Sandy, whether it
Speaker 2: is Puerto Rico after Maria. In all of these cases,
Speaker 2: what you see is a total breakdown of the healthcare sector. Right.
Speaker 2: We know what killed people post Maria, and it wasn't
Speaker 2: falling debris. It was and this is what all the
Speaker 2: research shows, right, it was the people who couldn't plug
Speaker 2: in their oxygen machines and their dialysis machines. And that
Speaker 2: you know that the intersecting system collapse of the electricity
Speaker 2: system and the healthcare system, right that had both been
Speaker 2: systematically underfunded, partially privatized, and just left in such a
Speaker 2: state of decay that when the winds blew, the whole
Speaker 2: thing collapsed. And then of course you have all these
Speaker 2: interests that don't want to get them back up and running.
Speaker 2: You know, Vcus, the only hospital in Vicus, is still
Speaker 2: closed two years after Maria. So people are still dying
Speaker 2: because of it. And this is why it just I
Speaker 2: just find it maddening that we that we would not
Speaker 2: see the connections. We had an event just at Rutgers
Speaker 2: where I teach called care workers, climate work.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you about that because I saw
Speaker 1: the announcement for it, and I was really excited to
Speaker 1: see it because I've written for a long time about
Speaker 1: both gender and climate, which a lot of times people
Speaker 1: don't understand how the those things intersect in a really
Speaker 1: basic way. But then I would often have editors kind
Speaker 1: of ask, you know, what does care work have to
Speaker 1: do with climate staff? And it was really enjoying, so
Speaker 1: happy to see this event.
Speaker 2: It's so annoying because these you know, nurses, home care workers, teachers,
Speaker 2: become first responders in the midst of disasters, right, you know,
Speaker 2: whether it's driving their students on school buses through wildfires
Speaker 2: in Alberta or California, or whether it's homecare workers who
Speaker 2: have died in fires with their patients who they refuse
Speaker 2: to abandon. I mean, there's so many examples of this.
Speaker 2: But it's also low carbon work. It doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 2: take a lot of carbon to just take care of
Speaker 2: each other. These are sectors where we can expand and
Speaker 2: this is this is a really important response to the
Speaker 2: Fox News talking point of it's all going to be pain,
Speaker 2: it's all going to be suffering, right, Like, let's identify
Speaker 2: the parts of our economy that we can have abundance in, right,
Speaker 2: and where we can make sure that these jobs which
Speaker 2: have been systematically devalued because it's women's work, because it's
Speaker 2: work overwhelmingly done by immigrant women, how about if we
Speaker 2: make them good jobs, right. And so that was just
Speaker 2: a really fruitful discussion among teachers and nurses and home
Speaker 2: care workers and disability rights advocates, and it was abundantly
Speaker 2: clear that, of course they are, they're already on the
Speaker 2: front lines of the climate crisis. You know what, We've
Speaker 2: got schools that in this country that are having to
Speaker 2: send kids home because they're so hot and they're failing.
Speaker 2: Infrastructure can't cope with the heat. There's no air circulation,
Speaker 2: they're ac either doesn't work, you know, or doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: And in some of the schools in communities of color,
Speaker 2: there's lead in the water, so you know, you've got
Speaker 2: students who are choosing between dehydration and getting poisoned from
Speaker 2: drinking from the water fountain. Right, And this, of course,
Speaker 2: schools should be at the center, you know, of the
Speaker 2: Green New Deal. And at the end of the panel,
Speaker 2: I just asked, you know, the everybody, I said you know,
Speaker 2: it seems so clear that this is connected. Why do
Speaker 2: you think you haven't been included in so many of
Speaker 2: the discussions around the Green New Deal, And several of
Speaker 2: the speakers said this was the first time anyone asked
Speaker 2: them to reflect on it or to share ideas, and
Speaker 2: they all have ideas about how to green their various sectors. Wow.
Speaker 2: And Emily Comer, who's one of the speakers, she and
Speaker 2: she's you know, kind of a legend because she led
Speaker 2: the West Virginia teacher strikee you know, in red state
Speaker 2: West Virginia coal country, right, connected the dots between the
Speaker 2: fact that the oil and gas sector, you know, they
Speaker 2: don't pay their taxes, to the fact that their schools
Speaker 2: were falling apart, and said pay your taxes. You know.
Speaker 2: Emily said, you know, we're left out because it's women's work.
Speaker 2: And you know, they also pointed out that the original
Speaker 2: New Deal excluded domestic workers because it was overwhelmingly black
Speaker 2: women doing that work and we just can't do this again.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Yes, I'm curious, just as someone who's watched corporations
Speaker 1: kind of behave worse and worse over the years, what
Speaker 1: you think needs to be done with the fossil fuel
Speaker 1: industry in order to implement some of the ideas around
Speaker 1: the Green New Deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know and your listeners know
Speaker 2: that we have a really big problem with the fact
Speaker 2: that their business model is incompatible with any definition of
Speaker 2: an organized civilization because they will lead us straight to
Speaker 2: four to six degrees of warming, and they're quite open
Speaker 2: about that. They that they see a future of business
Speaker 2: as usual for themselves and even increased demands. They are
Speaker 2: laughing at non binding targets set at the United Nations.
Speaker 2: They think they can get around it. And the reason
Speaker 2: they think they can get around it is because of
Speaker 2: all the money they have. This is a very very
Speaker 2: profitable business model that requires constant expansion of the fossil
Speaker 2: fuel frontier in order to not go into crisis. They have,
Speaker 2: you know, what's called the reserve replacement ratio that to
Speaker 2: worry about, which is telling their investors that they have
Speaker 2: more in reserve than they have in production, or at
Speaker 2: least as much. And given that, what we know is
Speaker 2: that if we are to have any hope of keeping
Speaker 2: warming below one point five degrees celsius, we need a
Speaker 2: managed decline of existing production. We just have a fundamental
Speaker 2: incompatibility of what these businesses need to not go into
Speaker 2: crisis and what we as a species need to not
Speaker 2: spiral into crisis. It's not resolvable. And that's why the
Speaker 2: strategy of to create a crisis, a market crisis for
Speaker 2: these companies has has been very important. And that's what
Speaker 2: the fossil fuel devestment movement has been about. But it's like,
Speaker 2: to me, the fossil field investment movement has never been
Speaker 2: about an idea that we were going to actually kind
Speaker 2: of bankrupt them just by getting people to pull their funds.
Speaker 2: And you know, I've said this to students over the
Speaker 2: years when I go to campuses and meet a wonderful
Speaker 2: group of divestment, you know, a great fossil fueld divestment
Speaker 2: group who's been at it for you know, four years,
Speaker 2: and their university won't just won't listen to them and
Speaker 2: is completely intransigent. And there's many cases like Harvard, and
Speaker 2: I mean, there's lots of cases where it's been really tough, right,
Speaker 2: And what I always say to them is you, yeah,
Speaker 2: we want your university to divest. Like it is good
Speaker 2: when that happens, and it's great that the UC system
Speaker 2: just just just announced finally after seven years, that they're
Speaker 2: going to divest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a huge win.
Speaker 2: But you know what I say to them is every
Speaker 2: time you go out there and make the argument that
Speaker 2: this is a rogue business, that you're basically turning them
Speaker 2: into a kind of a pariah the way tobacco companies were.
Speaker 2: You are helping to create the political space that we
Speaker 2: need to tax them, increase their royalties, and if they
Speaker 2: really resist us, nationalize them. Because making that argument for
Speaker 2: why there is a fundamental incompatibility between our health and theirs, right,
Speaker 2: the more you create that political space. And I think
Speaker 2: it's because so many young people have been out making
Speaker 2: that argument that they've also been able to pivot to
Speaker 2: the demand that politicians not take their money right, and
Speaker 2: many many of the people who are doing that now
Speaker 2: through the Sunrise movement started in the Fossil Fueld divestment movement.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a lot of folks who's who as
Speaker 2: university activists. Varshy Precaucious one of them, at Will Lawrence
Speaker 2: is another of them. You know, these are some of
Speaker 2: the co founders of Sunrise. They started in the Fossil
Speaker 2: fueld divestment movement, and now they're focusing on getting politicians
Speaker 2: not to take their money. And that's really significant because
Speaker 2: if we can get politicians to divest, it's going to
Speaker 2: be a lot more likely that they are willing to
Speaker 2: propose the policies that we actually need instead of you know,
Speaker 2: fake solutions that that are doing things like presenting natural
Speaker 2: gases a bridge fuel. The other side of it is
Speaker 2: like fossil fuel companies and all of their excess cash
Speaker 2: from their from their illegitimate business model. They've always had
Speaker 2: the carrot and the stick, right, Like the carrot is
Speaker 2: we will fund your campaign and help you directly if
Speaker 2: you give us the policies that we want, right, and
Speaker 2: the stick is if you don't, we will take out
Speaker 2: all of these attack ads and destroy you and fund
Speaker 2: your opponent. Right. And so the getting Democrats to divest
Speaker 2: and getting Democratic politicians to divest deals with the carrot, right,
Speaker 2: But it doesn't deal with the stick, because they can
Speaker 2: still Even if you get politicians not to take their
Speaker 2: money and they start being willing to entertain real climate
Speaker 2: policies like a Green New Deal and bands on fracking
Speaker 2: and so on, they're still going to be afraid that
Speaker 2: these companies can spend unlimited funds buying TV ads attacking them.
Speaker 2: And that's where Amy, your work's been so important, right,
Speaker 2: because we need to really, really really talk about media
Speaker 2: divesting because you know, in the same way that we
Speaker 2: don't turn it on CNN and see ads for Marlbros,
Speaker 2: why should we turn on CNN and see ads for Exxon?
Speaker 2: And if we can cut off these two streams, because
Speaker 2: we have in fact turned this into a pariah industry,
Speaker 2: you know, the streams going directly to politicians and the
Speaker 2: streams that allow them to buy the attack ads, I
Speaker 2: actually think we buy ourselves some significant policy oxygen.
Speaker 1: Right, Thank you. We've been working on that a lot,
Speaker 1: this idea of pushing media to take some responsibility here
Speaker 1: for what we might be enabling, especially outlets that go
Speaker 1: the extra step and actually make oil companies ads for them.
Speaker 1: The thing I think people need to remember is that
Speaker 1: these companies are not advertising a product. It's not the
Speaker 1: same as other types of advertising. They're advertising ideas.
Speaker 2: You know. And this first started driving me nuts around
Speaker 2: the Keystone Fight, where we would have a hell of
Speaker 2: a time getting on MSNBC, you know, for two minutes
Speaker 2: to explain why we were opposed to the pipeline, and
Speaker 2: when you would manage to do it, you know, and
Speaker 2: it would just be so we get we got so
Speaker 2: little airtime to make the case against Keystone, but then
Speaker 2: it would just always be followed by much longer you know,
Speaker 2: ex on ahead. Well, mostly they're advertising the opposite of
Speaker 2: their product, right, Like they're advertising like wind turbines and
Speaker 2: solar powers that are like point so solar powers that
Speaker 2: are point three percent of their businesses.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean if and if you look at
Speaker 2: this what's happening at the state level where when you know,
Speaker 2: whenever there's a resolution or you know, some kind of
Speaker 2: referendum on a local climate policy, the amount of money
Speaker 2: that is being spent to defeat these measures and the
Speaker 2: plans are getting better, Like Washington State's latest attempt at
Speaker 2: carbon pricing was you know, that should have won, and
Speaker 2: the only reason it didn't win was because of this
Speaker 2: gusher of money. Yeah, and it's like we may not
Speaker 2: be able to keep these companies from being rich, but
Speaker 2: we you know, I think we can keep them from
Speaker 2: having access to the airwaves and destroying democracy in this way,
Speaker 2: you know, and then maybe we can have a fair fight.
Speaker 1: Okay, The last thing I want to get your take
Speaker 1: on is just how the climate movement has evolved in
Speaker 1: recent years from your perspective and where you think it
Speaker 1: needs to go next. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's no doubt that there's some good indicators.
Speaker 2: You know, seven million people worldwide participating in the Global
Speaker 2: Climate strikes over a period of eight days. And I
Speaker 2: think what's really significant about that is not just that
Speaker 2: it's like the largest climate mobilization that we've ever seen,
Speaker 2: but how quickly it came together. You know, you had
Speaker 2: the People's Climate March in twenty fourteen, which was amazing,
Speaker 2: and it was four hundred thousand people, but that was
Speaker 2: like a year in the making, you know, and it
Speaker 2: was a lot. It was many, many millions of dollars
Speaker 2: from different groups and you know, bus loads of people,
Speaker 2: and it was it was just huge effort, right, And
Speaker 2: these strikes were huge efforts too, but really only got
Speaker 2: moving in August, right, And like in Montreal there were
Speaker 2: six hundred thousand people, which is two hundred thousand more
Speaker 2: than at the People's Climate March. And I think that
Speaker 2: what that speaks to is you're just tapping into a
Speaker 2: zeitgeys like everybody in the city wants to come, you know,
Speaker 2: so as opposed to like we need to like move
Speaker 2: our troops, you know, and we're seeing it in the
Speaker 2: polling as you know, right that it's that this sense
Speaker 2: of urgency is way way different than it was even
Speaker 2: two years ago, when people, you know, even Democrats who
Speaker 2: said they cared about climate change would rank it at
Speaker 2: the bottom of their list of priorities, and now you know,
Speaker 2: it's up there with health care and jobs. I still
Speaker 2: think it's completely ridiculous to ask people to rank their
Speaker 2: issues like that, and that we should be thinking about anything.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we have to figure out how we can
Speaker 2: you know, merge these issues because we shouldn't have to
Speaker 2: rank and choose. But still, you know, that, unfortunately, is
Speaker 2: what it takes to get the attention of politicians, because
Speaker 2: you know, when you say you care about an issue
Speaker 2: but rank it nineteenth or twentieth on a list, then
Speaker 2: what that tells your elected representatives is, well, I can
Speaker 2: I can throw this one under the bus and not
Speaker 2: pay a political price, And that's what they did, and
Speaker 2: then that's what they've consistently done. So I think that
Speaker 2: is why we have these much bolder plans on the table.
Speaker 2: An incredible mobilization from groups like Sunrise building all on
Speaker 2: you know, the intellectual and grassroots group, grassroots work of
Speaker 2: a network of environmental justice organizations who have been putting
Speaker 2: these ideas out there and putting them into practice in
Speaker 2: their communities, and the Climate Justice Alliance deserves a huge
Speaker 2: amount of credit. In my book, I talk about how
Speaker 2: many of these ideas really come from the global South,
Speaker 2: from places like Ecuador and Bolivia and Nigeria where you've
Speaker 2: had really really dirty drilling and massive environmental disasters, and
Speaker 2: you have you know, movements, many of them led by
Speaker 2: indigenous people who have been talking about the notion of
Speaker 2: ecological debt, of climate debt, and how you know. I
Speaker 2: quote Anaholica Navarro in a speech she made exactly ten
Speaker 2: years ago at the UN calling for a Marshall Plan
Speaker 2: for planet Earth and mobilizing funds on a scale never
Speaker 2: seen before, or to help countries like hers leap frog
Speaker 2: to clean energy leave their forests intact. So, you know,
Speaker 2: when I think about where we are, amy like I
Speaker 2: have mixed emotions. I feel like if a helica had
Speaker 2: been listened to ten years ago, maybe maybe Brazil's forests
Speaker 2: wouldn't be on fire right now, and maybe they'd have
Speaker 2: more of a chance of protecting their glaciers, you know,
Speaker 2: on which you know, millions of people depend for fresh water.
Speaker 2: We have lost so much and we're not going to
Speaker 2: get it back, and we are on such a tight deadline.
Speaker 2: So we need to just move. We need like a
Speaker 2: kind of a scale of change that is, you know,
Speaker 2: a term I first heard from Leanne Simpson, who's an
Speaker 2: amazing on a shnabe writer thinker in Canada, and she
Speaker 2: talks about punctuated transformation, right that things need to shift
Speaker 2: very quickly, and it needs to be a paradigm shift.
Speaker 2: And so when I think about how we get there,
Speaker 2: it's I think we can't think about this as something
Speaker 2: that is about the climate movement. I think the climate
Speaker 2: movement is part of this, but I think it has
Speaker 2: to be about really engaging people who are outside of
Speaker 2: any definition of what the climate movement is now, but
Speaker 2: who have shown that they are able to organize large
Speaker 2: numbers of people and mobilize large numbers of people. You know,
Speaker 2: the migrant rights movement should be central to this debate,
Speaker 2: and the reason they are not is not because people
Speaker 2: doing that organizing don't understand that they're also on the
Speaker 2: front lines of the climate crisis. Of course they know, right,
Speaker 2: It's because they are in a NonStop state of emergency
Speaker 2: dealing with family separation and human rights atrocities on the border.
Speaker 2: And so we have to I think we really need
Speaker 2: to focus on how do we just really rethink this.
Speaker 2: And this is why you know, we had that on
Speaker 2: care work right and thinking about how do we tap
Speaker 2: into this wave of teacher mobilizations. You know, it's like
Speaker 2: I said, when we had this panel, a lot of
Speaker 2: folks were saying, this is the first time anyone's asked
Speaker 2: us about the Green New Deal. You know, it's so
Speaker 2: crazy and like and so it just can't it can't
Speaker 2: just be the climate movement. We have to look who's
Speaker 2: who's kicking ass out there. Teachers are, you know, nurses are,
Speaker 2: Migrant rights organizers are, and and on and on and on,
Speaker 2: the Poor People's Campaign is. And it's like, how do
Speaker 2: we turn all of these streams into like a rushing
Speaker 2: river that is going in the same direction and is
Speaker 2: really about transforming the economy. Because I don't think we
Speaker 2: have time to think about how do we just build
Speaker 2: out the climate movement. I think it's about how do
Speaker 2: we get all of these streams together. And I think
Speaker 2: we have to be honest about the fact that part
Speaker 2: of the reason that this hasn't happened is because a
Speaker 2: lot of the ways that folks get funding it encourages
Speaker 2: us to stay in our sort of issue silo and
Speaker 2: in our little narrow lane, and we don't have a
Speaker 2: lot of infrastructure, like movement infrastructure that creates spaces for
Speaker 2: people to kind of get to face to face and
Speaker 2: do that sort of hard work of getting on the
Speaker 2: same page and dealing with you know, difficult history and
Speaker 2: past mistakes. We spend a lot of time online, less
Speaker 2: and less of it face to face. So this is
Speaker 2: I think the work, and you know, I don't feel
Speaker 2: sanguine about it. I feel like, gosh, we have a
Speaker 2: hell of a lot to do and not a lot
Speaker 2: of time. What I feel hopeful about is that I
Speaker 2: feel like the appetite for transformational change is greater than
Speaker 2: at any point in my lifetime. I think there's a
Speaker 2: widespread understanding that, you know, we shouldn't be afraid of
Speaker 2: deep change because this sort of safe centrism is what
Speaker 2: has produced the kind of radicalism of Trump. So especially
Speaker 2: with younger folks, you know, I really see a difference,
Speaker 2: Like when I speak to people to audiences, like the
Speaker 2: younger folks in the audience are like really up for it.
Speaker 2: They're not afraid of the connections. They want an intersectional movement.
Speaker 2: They love making the connections. The more the better. And
Speaker 2: it's sort of you know my generation and older who
Speaker 2: are just like, really are you making this harder?
Speaker 1: You know, right?
Speaker 2: Right? You would think that building a broader movement is
Speaker 2: generally something movements want. And if that's not the case,
Speaker 2: like what is going on kind of ideologically, and what's
Speaker 2: the subtext of that, Like what are you afraid of?
Speaker 2: Who are you afraid of? And you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of it, like I think some of it is like
Speaker 2: kind of the legacy of McCarthyism, red baiting, Like you know,
Speaker 2: this country has been through various wars on the left right,
Speaker 2: and that's part of what put people into their sort
Speaker 2: of issue silos right where it's like, you know, no,
Speaker 2: we don't want we don't want to change society. We
Speaker 2: just want to change this one thing, right, Like we
Speaker 2: want this one group to have you know, better acts
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. And there's sort of a fear
Speaker 2: when you start talking about systems and like a shift
Speaker 2: in actually the operating system that's governing society. And there's
Speaker 2: a history to that fear that I think maybe needs
Speaker 2: to be made visible and legible before we actually will
Speaker 2: be willing to build the kind of movement that we need.
Speaker 1: That's great. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it, and it was great. It was
Speaker 1: just great talking to you.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for doing this and for all your work.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's it for this time, Thanks for listening. I
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