- I'm excited for this conversation today
with award-winning journalist, columnist,
and New York Times best-selling author,
Naomi Klein, who's here today
to talk about her new book, "On Fire: The (Burning) Case
for a Green New Deal."
I read your book, I really enjoyed it.
It was both deep and intense
but then also uplifting at the same time.
This book consists of essays
that you've written back since 2010.
Why make the book now?
I have been writing for a long time,
as you see in the book,
about the need for
Also an approach to the crisis
of economic inequality, of racial and gender exclusion,
that is really about if we need to change
the building blocks of our society
to get off fossil fuels,
which we know we need to do,
then why wouldn't we seize that opportunity
to redress a lot of things
that are not working in our current economy.
For too long, I think the approaches
have tended to make people feel
like it's all gonna be about giving things up.
So people have really been fearful
of taking this crisis seriously.
Now more and more people aren't denying the reality
that we understand that this is happening now.
All the polls show it.
There's a lot of urgency
and there are different approaches.
And so a Green New Deal is an approach that says
climate change isn't the only crisis we face.
We face a crisis of inequality
and so let's multitask.
- And how do you suppose that we achieve that
and get that momentum
to really create that level of systematic change?
I think it's significant
that the Green New Deal takes its name
in part from the original New Deal,
from FDR's New Deal, introduced in the 1930s,
which is an example of a time
when the US economy, the US society,
changed very, very rapidly over a decade.
And that decade is important
because what climate scientists have told us
is that we need to fundamentally change our economy
to get off fossil fuels,
in a big way, in a decade.
So in the original New Deal,
you had everything from introducing unemployment insurance
to breaking up the banks,
to planting 2.3 billion trees,
to all of these infrastructure relief programs,
electrifying rural America.
It shows us actually that
So not like a piecemeal,
like we're just gonna deal with pollution
but this kind of multitasking, big picture shift.
- And do you think the main avenue
through which people should get this going is through,
is it protesting?
Is it voting?
- All of that and I think that that's another lesson
from the original New Deal.
The New Deal has lessons for us, both good and bad,
because there were a lot of people who were excluded
from the benefits of the New Deal.
Many African American workers,
agricultural workers, domestic workers
were excluded from unemployment, Social Security,
a lot of the labor protections.
Women were excluded in lots of ways.
So we need to make sure that we center justice
and I think that the way
in which Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
and Senator Ed Markey
drafted the original resolution,
talking about the importance of centering.
The people who are most excluded,
have the worst deal in the current economy,
need to be part of designing this from day one,
because if we don't center that,
if we don't prioritize that,
then we have every reason to believe
that we will repeat the mistakes of the past.
But the other thing we learned from the original New Deal
is that, yeah, it takes people running for office,
it takes people in office who want to be pushed,
and it takes people pushing from the outside.
- I think we're seeing it with the student led protest.
We're getting that momentum building up that grassroots,
and I wanna talk about a specific essay of yours,
"Stop Trying to Save the World All by Yourself."
- Sure.
- And the reason why I bring it up
is because I host a series, "One Small Step"
and so we're trying to empower people,
take that one small step.
It might learning how to compost,
donating your clothes or whatever.
- [Naomi] Yeah.
- And you argue that those steps aren't enough.
And you shouldn't be hung up on being the best,
like that type of environmental activist, I guess.
So what do you think the steps
that people should take in your lens,
because at the same time,
you are asking people to protest
and go out in the streets, or vote, et cetera?
- Yeah, so I think the big take home is
Our main source of power in a capitalist economy
is what we buy or choose not to buy,
or how we consume, what our lifestyle is.
And look, I think we should do the things
that are necessary to lower our personal carbon emissions.
We're talking about a crisis that is global.
We are talking about getting to 100% renewable energy
and 100% renewable economy in just over a decade.
That's why we need to think big.
That's why we need to look at these moments in history,
where it was possible
for people to achieve that level of change.
That's why I think even though the original New Deal
is a flawed historical analogy
because there were huge errors that were made
and big exclusions.
What I encounter most
when I talk to people about climate change
is not a denial of the science
but a feeling like, "We'll never do it.
"We're too selfish.
"We're too individualistic."
And people have absorbed that message so much
that now there's a kind of a feeling of inevitability,
of like, Oh, the apocalypse is coming.
I may as well just either enjoy myself on the way down
or hoard things or whatever it is.
And so I think it is so important
for us to take inspiration
from those examples in history
that show actually we are capable
of being so much stronger when we organize.
And if we think about why it is
that you and I are sitting here
talking about the Green New Deal,
it is because a group of activists in the Sunrise Movement,
young people occupied the office of Nancy Pelosi
after the mid-term elections.
And they brought this demand
that was inspired by grassroots activists
in the environmental justice movement
for many, many, many years
who have been calling for a response to the climate crisis.
And they were met by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
who visited the occupation of the office
and other members of the,
what's sometimes called The Squad.
And so you had that pincer.
Right? - Right.
- And lo and behold,
it's changed the debate in less than a year.
This is now the climate policy
that we're talking about in this country,
that the majority of the candidates
vying to lead the Democratic party
have said that they support
and that shows the power of activism.
So this is not to say don't compost
but don't mistake that
for the scale of change that is necessary.
- In the book,
you say we mistake capitalism with human nature
and I was reading that and I'm like,
Wow, that's so true.
Because that's the messaging that we're told
but we can organize and we can,
obviously we've seen political change
happening in the last year.
And you know, some of these essays are 10 years old
and I think it's really interesting
to see what was the focus.
Do you think that we are kind of coming to a place
where we're gonna see
a lot of this stuff actually come to fruition and--
- Yeah, absolutely, I mean this is the other reason
why I organized the essays in order
because that shows a couple of things, right?
It shows that the climate crisis is moving, right?
So in the 10 years that I've been writing about this crisis,
we've lost the Great Barrier Reef.
We have lost much of the Arctic's summer ice,
summer sea ice.
We're losing the Amazon as we speak.
So this isn't a crisis that just stays still
as we talk and fail to act.
It moves, it gets worse.
If we wanna understand why we fail to act,
we have to look at the fact
that this crisis landed on our laps
at the height of the Reaganomics and Thatcherism.
We were deregulating the market,
we were privatizing almost every aspect of our economy.
It was this celebration of hyperindividualism.
So, of course, we didn't do what was necessary because
It demands that we actually take some control
of the kind economy that we want.
With your generation, as opposed to mine,
their entire adulthood
has been in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
And there's an understanding that this economic system
that has produced the climate crisis
is producing so many other crises.
Housing crises, job precarity,
the gig economy, all of this.
Tech companies that really do not have
our best interest at heart.
People of that generation are not afraid of change,
are not afraid of talking about systemic change
because they understand the benefits.
And this is why I think
that those small things that you talk about
are worth talking about as well,
because I think so much of the messaging
the counter-messaging that you get
from the right on this is,
"Oh, your life is gonna be terrible if you do these things."
And I think what you know
is that when we do a lot of these things,
if we're privileged enough to live in cities
that allow us to bike and that have public transit
and we don't live in a food desert.
And we have to understand that these are privileges.
If we do do that,
we actually realize that we're healthier, we're happier.
Life doesn't end. - It's enriching.
It's very enriching. - It's enriching.
Right. - It really is.
- And so that I think gives us
a deeper sort of body knowledge,
when people come and say, "Oh, it's the end of the world.
"People just wanna send you back to the Dark Ages."
I think people will be more confident in going,
"No, actually
especially if we invest in making sure
that everybody has access to nature,
everybody has access to the arts,
everybody has access to public transit.
This isn't something
that is just for wealthy people living in cities.
- In your book, you go into some of the fears
we might wanna have about the right,
like climate barbarism,
and also just like this idea of shutting down the borders
and using the climate as an excuse for that.
How do we even counteract that in the public narrative?
- In the book, I talk about three fires.
The climate fires, the fires of the climate movement,
which is like rising to face this challenge,
like the climate strikers and the Sunrise Movement.
But there is this other fire which is,
in the book, I call it the fires of hate
or the fires of fascism
where we are seeing responses to ecological breakdown
and also to economic breakdown,
and feelings of precarity and insecurity.
And figures like Trump, but not just Trump,
like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil,
Duterte in the Philippines.
The rise of these strong men figures
who play on those feelings of insecurity.
To say look, we're just gonna protect our own,
we're gonna lock down our borders.
This really, really explicit,
very dangerous world view being articulated of just,
"Well, is it so bad if there's fewer people on Earth?
"And maybe this is some sort of cleansing.
"Maybe this is God's work."
And we've also seen two mass shooters
in the past eight months. - Yeah.
- One in Christchurch, New Zealand
and one in El Paso, Texas,
and this was part of why they were targeting
people they perceived as immigrants.
If we stay on the business as usual road,
if we just pretend nothing's happening,
if we're just la-la-la, let's just keep shopping
and I don't wanna deal with this,
that takes us to a very radical place.
It takes us to a very radical place physically,
in terms of what happens to our planet
but it also takes us to a very radical place politically.
So if we don't wanna go to that road,
and I really think most of us
don't wanna go end up in that place,
then we have to change a whole lot
about how our economy and society works.
We have to embrace a change that we actually design.
That doesn't just happen because we were willing to change.
- Where do we go from here?
What are the steps that we can take?
- [Naomi] Yeah. Yeah.
- I mean, obviously 2020 is a big issue.
We don't want an administration,
another four years, not believe in climate.
What can our audience do?
- This is gonna be a fight
because there's a lot of money on the line.
And so we need somebody who is up for that fight.
The other thing we need to do
is we need to build that outside power,
at the same time.
And this is not about saying,
if your movement isn't climate, just drop it,
and focus on climate.
If you're a migrant justice activist,
of course you know that climate
is one of the drivers of migration.
And if you're a Black Lives Matter activist,
of course,
the mentality that treats black people
as if they're disposable
in the streets of this country,
is the same mentality that is allowing countries
where a majority of black people live
to suffer the most under the climate crisis.
It is the same mentality.
So we all, I think,
just need to do a better job of connecting the dots
because the dots are there to be connected.
So it isn't about drop everything, join this.
- That makes so much sense.
Well, thank you so much for being here today.
This was a wonderful conversation.
I personally learned so much.
And if you haven't already, check out her book,
"On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal."
Thank you. - Thank you so much.