Making Climate Change Strategies More Than a Pipe Dream!

Naomi Klien Interview with Video and text.

Is the climate crisis going to lead to more hate? Activist and journalist @NaomiAKlein spoke to us about how governments across the world need to step up on climate change. pic.twitter.com/F3GNU0TVdL

— AJ+ (@ajplus) January 10, 2020

[Transcription of Interview below]

One of the biggest problems with Trump is that everybody looks good compared to him. You know if Trudeau is what a climate champion looks like in 2020, we're in big trouble.

Trudeau says, "I'm a climate champion! This is the most important issue in the world! --but we're going to buy ourselves a $3 billion or $4 billion pipeline to bring one of the highest carbon forms of oil in the world."

Why wouldn't they invest that money in solar and wind? And that [policy blindness] is what climate change does. We are seeing that in Australia.

I have absolutely no doubt that the right-wing government of Scott Morrison is going to use that in order to further harden their already brutal, anti-immigrant, xenophobic, racist policies.

And we're seeing strong-men figures, like Modi, Duarte and Trump using the same kind of us vs. them ideology in order to justify creating these hierarchies of humanity within their countries and on their borders. You're going to be vulnerable to somebody coming along and saying, "Here's the solution; Here's who you should blame. It's that immigrant over there. It's anybody but you. And I'm going to take care of you. And I'm going to take care of people like us."

All that kind of messaging is effective when people are frightened; when people are losing homes, and don't know what the future looks like.

What it's going to take is a Green New Deal. I think it's incredibly important that there be a democratically articulated plan for how to respond to this crisis that puts social justice, economic justice, racial justice, gender justice at the center. and we can't wait for politicians to do that for us.

I think if the U.S. were to dramatically raise the bar, if there were an administration that clearly understood the scale of the crisis, [and] that said we are going to make this a civilizational mission. We are going to show we can create millions of good unionized jobs in the process --if there was a government like that in the United States it would force the European Union to dramatically up its game. It would take the excuses away from India and China. it would be a true catalyst. And it would empower social movements in every country in the world who are already demanding that their governments take action in the face of this crisis. It would be an absolute game changer.