>>Becky Anderson: Vivienne, thanks for coming in.
You have been exhaustive in your campaigning to tackle climate change.
It is a big ask.
I know you are not frightened of saying it as you believe.
So believe me, Vivienne may be provocative this evening.
That's also okay.
You have recently donated a million pounds, for example, to a charity devoted to saving
the rain forest.
Why?
And just how urgent do you believe climate change is?
Talk to the audience rather than me.
>>Vivienne Westwood: Every question that has been asked today, every point of view that's
been offered to today can only give some sort of partial idea of anything because we have
one prime problem, and that is climate change.
And if we would only see every one of our problems stemming from this problem, we would
have a different attitude to every one of our problems.
And we would eventually have a different and better world.
And if we don't do that, then I do believe that we're an endangered species.
Now then, as to why we have this blanket is something I'm not prepared to discuss.
But I would -- because there isn't time.
But apart from that, I would give an example.
The cause of climate change is the crazy financial system we have.
The world has run out of resources.
It has been run for cheap labor.
It would be awfully good if a poor lady in -- somewhere in the north of England who was
really driven mad by the fact that nobody in her family had a job and everybody was
sort of desperate, if she could only understand that she's part of the formula, you need those
people out of work in order that people can make a profit in this world because everything
is done on paper, but now computers.
Anyway, so the proof of what I'm saying is that we have a financial crisis.
So I repeat, we have a financial crisis because we are running out of cheap resources.
And the symptom of climate change is the financial problem.
People always talk about it as if it is the cause, and climate change has never been mentioned.
It is the first time it has been mentioned today.
And so nobody's dealing with the problem, least of all politicians, because they are
clicked in, they're linked to the system.
They cling to it.
So, therefore, whatever they're doing is totally ineffective.
I would like to give an example of the kind of difference that would be in the world if
we would only see things differently.
>>Becky Anderson: Go ahead.
>>Vivienne Westwood: Yeah.
You want to interrupt me, I know.
>>Becky Anderson: I will in a moment.
>>Vivienne Westwood: In Clapham, where I live, just down the street from there, there are
some houses.
And one man who lives there, there is an electrician.
And he used to come and fix the electricity in my shop years and years ago, in 1970.
They are being evicted.
They have been threatened with eviction.
And that is because at one time the houses were first occupied by squatters in the '70s.
Since then, they have gotten a cooperative.
They have made the houses really lovely.
The street is great.
It has got flowers everywhere.
And there are lots more people like that around.
And so the council wants now to sell their houses.
They've tried repeatedly to have some kind of contract where they pay rent or whatever,
and the finances are balanced.
But the council now decided that they want to sell the property.
That's like selling seed corn.
What about next year?
These people are on the housing list -- >>Becky Anderson: You are talking about --
>>Vivienne Westwood: If you had an attitude about climate change, you would not be doing
that.
You wouldn't be trying to fix the short-term computer and ignore the long-term one.
You wouldn't be doing that.
>>Becky Anderson: You make very good points.
>>Vivienne Westwood: Based on human values.
>>Becky Anderson: That's what I wanted to come to because you've called yourself a freedom
fighter rather than an environmental activist in the past.
And as a freedom fighter, I will remind you just in case you didn't get the message from
Vivienne, your target has is oftentimes been the financial structure of our system.
How would, to your mind then, a more values-based society work?
>>Vivienne Westwood: Before I answer that --
>>Becky Anderson: Whew.
[ Laughter ] >>Vivienne Westwood: I'm going to say this,
I called myself a freedom fighter because I believe we are dangerously short of culture.
I think everything is connected, human rights, the fact that we have been trained not to
be consumers and nobody even knows what culture is.
Culture is consumerism to everybody when you actual analyze it.
And I'm saying that every art lover is a freedom fighter for a better world because people
are stopping and thinking.
And what's more, if you are an art lover, you are investing something.
You are investing your personal time in it.
It gives you a fantastic anchor in life.
You are not consuming.
It is not consumption.
And I'm just -- that's one way in which I used it, that every time anybody makes a stand,
sticks to the tradition, doesn't believe all the dogma that's been going on for the last
200 years.
The 20th century was a mistake.
It was total crap.
>>Becky Anderson: Well, in the session -- [ Laughter ]
>>Becky Anderson: And I say: You'll get it as it is.
In the session before ours that you were listening to, we heard about a youthquake, a youthquake
rather than an earthquake, happening in the world.
The phenomenon of people power.
I saw that one of you here in the audience tweeted, "The power of people is now challenging
the people in power," which I think you'd buy into.
This has to be positive, given your pessimism about what has gone before, doesn't it?
This sense now that people power is making a difference?
>>Vivienne Westwood: I have terrific love and affection and respect for those kids who
were doing the occupy movement.
One of them said to Noam Chomsky, "Should we be working towards revolution blessing?"
And Noam Chomsky said, "Hold on."
And what Noam Chomsky was getting at is: Make your moves when people are ready for it.
It's my job to try to raise awareness for this.
It's very, very difficult because you can tell people all kinds of facts -- that once
we go past two degrees, you can't stop it, all this stuff -- they're not interested.
So, yes, it would be really great but I think there are terrible, as they call it, downsides
to those things now.
Let me just give you an example from the culture.
Like somebody said, you know, "Well, you must really love the Internet."
I don't type.
I don't have a mobile phone.
I've got a blog.
I write it in longhand and give it to my assistant.
I never have time to look at it.
And anyway, they said, "You're a reader and you must really be so pleased that you can
get these books that are out of print," ta-dah, ta-dah, ta-dah, and I said, "The Internet
can't read the book for me."
You know?
So I don't know.
These young people, I think they're very much caught adrift.
The great thing about young people is that they're idealistic.
They don't have experience.
And so I think it's absolutely great that they want to fight for things.
>>Becky Anderson: So if we went beyond ourselves -- with two minutes just left to chat, this
is a session called "Beyond Ourselves."
It is about looking to the next generation.
It's got to be said that climate change, whilst an incredibly important issue, and passionate
so far as you are concerned, things go and out of fashion.
So what is your message to a future generation about climate change specifically?
>>Vivienne Westwood: Well, I just have to say that the reason I put my money to the
Cool Earth project is because one thing for sure, where do we start?
What can one person do?
I had some money, and therefore I used this money.
And the first thing I thought we had to do was to save the rainforest.
Are we aware that pollution from shipping causes 50% of ice melt?
There's all kinds of things that people could do, but you can only do one thing at a time.
I thought the best thing was to try to do something about stopping the de-logging in
the rainforests.
So there's a charity called Cool Earth which has calculated that it would cost -- of course
it might not stay at exactly this, but only 114 million pounds -- dollars -- pounds, I
think it is, to save all three major forests because they're working from a bottom-up thing
and working with indigenous people.
And the great thing that gives me hope of any kind is that there are thousands and -- of
millions -- really, loads of people, NGOs, charities, individuals, trying to do things.
We need to link them up.
The last people who are going to do anything is government.
My idea was to tap into this rainforest project because it's practical and we can just keep
it moving so that it doesn't flounder -- >>Becky Anderson: Stagnate.
>>Vivienne Westwood: -- and it keeps on going.
But the idea of -- my next idea was get models involved, ask them for money, make them aspirational
people -- >>Becky Anderson: (indiscernible).
>>Vivienne Westwood: -- yeah, who is a mate of mine, and she gave me some money.
>>Becky Anderson: Did she?
(indiscernible).
>>Vivienne Westwood: Yes.
And -- >>Becky Anderson: 30 seconds.
[ Laughter ] >>Vivienne Westwood: And then try to get -- try
to get government to join in to what are practical schemes.
The World Bank phoned me up because they had been sitting on 7 1/2 billion pounds for climate
change and they haven't done anything with it because they're still negotiating how to
spend it, after about six or seven years.
You know, so I don't know, there's just so much to be done.
And the idea that business can carry on -- the man that was an optimist that spoke earlier
this morning saying, you know, how there's less poverty now, and all these things, don't
you realize this might be the case but we have reached a pitch where it cannot continue.
>>Becky Anderson: And with that, we're going to wrap it up.
[ Applause ]