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Why are you publishing this book now?
I always feel that the way we talk about climate change is too compartmentalized, too isolated from the other crises we face. The links that unite this book to the crisis of growing white supremacy, to the different forms of nationalism, to the fact that so many people are forced to leave their country of origin and to the war that unfolds before our attention are a particularly strong theme of the book. . These are cross-connected and interconnected crises and the solutions must therefore be equally.
The book brings together essays from the last decade, have you changed your mind about something?
When I look back, I do not think I have focused enough on the challenge that climate change poses on the left. It's more obvious how the climate crisis is challenging a dominant right-wing world view and the cult of serious centrism that never wants to do anything big, always trying to divide the difference. But it is also a challenge for a vision of the left-wing world that is essentially interested only in the redistribution of loot from exactivism [the process of extracting natural resources from the earth] and not counting on the limits of endless consumption.
What's stopping the left from doing that?
In the North American context, it is the biggest taboo to admit that there will be limits. You see that, as Fox News has attacked the Green New Deal – they come after your hamburgers! It goes to the heart of the American dream: each generation receives more than the last, there is always a new frontier to expand, the whole idea of colonizing colonial nations like ours. When someone arrives and says, in fact, there are limits, we have hard decisions to make, we have to find a way to handle what's left, we have to share them equitably – that's a psychic attack. And if the answer [on the left] was to avoid, and say no, no, we do not come to take away your things, there will be all kinds of benefits. And there are benefits: we will have more livable cities, we will have less polluted air, we will spend less time in traffic jams, we can conceive of lives happier and richer in many ways. But we will have to contract on the side of endless and disposable consumption.
Are you talking about the Green New Deal?
I feel great excitement and a sense of relief when we finally discuss solutions to the crisis we are facing. We are not talking about a small carbon tax or a cap and trade system as a quick fix. We are talking about transforming our economy. Whatever the case may be, this system is lacking in the majority of people. That's why we find ourselves in this period of profound political destabilization – which gives us strengths and brexits, as well as all these strong men – so why not understand how to change everything from bottom to top and do it so to solve all these other crises at the same time? We are all likely to miss the target, but every fraction of warming that we are able to retain is a victory and every policy we are able to win that makes our societies more humane, the more we will overcome the inevitable shocks and storms to come without falling into barbarism. Because what really terrifies me is what we see at our borders in Europe, North America and Australia – I do not think it's a coincidence that the colonial states that settled there and the countries that are at the origin of this colonialism are in the foreground. We are witnessing the beginning of the era of climatic barbarism. We saw it in Christchurch, we saw it in El Paso, where violent supremacist violence and vicious anti-immigrant racism come together.
This is one of the scariest sections of your book: I think it's a link that many people have not made.
This pattern has been clear for a while. White supremacy came not only because people thought they were thinking of ideas that would kill many people, but also because it was useful to protect barbaric but extremely profitable actions. The era of scientific racism begins next to the transatlantic slave trade, that is the reason for this brutality. If we want to respond to climate change by fortifying our borders, it is obvious that the theories that would justify it, that create these hierarchies of humanity, will come back. There have been signs of this for years, but it's getting harder and harder to deny because some killers are shouting from the rooftops.
One of the criticisms you hear about the movement for the environment is that it is dominated by whites.. How do you approach this?
When you have a movement that overwhelmingly represents the most favored sector of society, the approach will be much more fearful of change, because people who have a lot to lose tend to be more fearful of change, so those who have a lot to gain will tend to fight harder for it. This is the big advantage of a climate change approach linking this issue with the so-called "bread and butter": how are we going to get better paid jobs, affordable housing, a way for people to get a job? to take care of their family? Over the years, I have had many interviews with environmentalists who seemed very convinced that to associate the fight against climate change with the fight against poverty or racial justice would make the fight more difficult. We must come out of this crisis "my crisis is more serious than yours: we save the planet first, then we fight against poverty, racism and violence against women". It does not work. It alienates the people who would fight the most for change. This debate has changed dramatically in the United States because of the leadership of the climate justice movement and because it is the women of color in Congress who defend the Green New Deal. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib are from communities that have achieved such a brutal agreement under years of neoliberalism and for a longer time, and who are determined to truly represent the interests of these communities. They do not fear profound change because their communities desperately need it.
In the book, you write: "The hard truth is that the answer to the question" What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change? "Is: nothing." Do you still believe that?
When it comes to carbon, the individual decisions we make are not going to add to the kind of scale of change we need. And I think the fact that for so many people it's so much more comfortable talking about personal consumption than talking about systemic change, is a product of neoliberalism, which has taught us to think of ourselves first and foremost as consumers. For me, it is the advantage of evoking these historical analogies, such as the New Deal or the Marshall Plan, that brings us back to mind when we were able to envision a change of this magnitude. Because we have been trained to think very small. It is extremely significant that Greta Thunberg has turned her life into a living emergency.
Yes, she set sail for the UN climate summit in New York on a zero carbon yacht …
Exactly. But that's not what Greta does as an individual. It's about what Greta spreads in her choices as an activist, and I absolutely respect her. I think it's beautiful. She uses the power she has to make it known that it is an emergency and tries to make politicians treat it as an emergency. I do not think anyone is exempt from looking at their own decisions and behaviors, but I think it's possible to overestimate individual choices. I've made a choice – and that's true since I wrote No logoand I started to receive these questions "What should I buy, where should I shop, what are the ethical clothes? My answer is always that I'm not a lifestyle advisor, I'm not a shopping guru, and I'm making those decisions in my own life, but I'm under no illusions that these decisions are going to make the difference.
Some people choose to go on a birth strike. What do you think of that?
I am pleased that these discussions are entering the public domain instead of being stealthy questions that we are afraid to talk about. It's very isolating for people. It was definitely for me. One of the reasons I waited as long as I tried to get pregnant, and I was telling this to my partner all the time – what, do you want that a warrior? Mad Max water fights with his friends to get food and water? It was not until I was part of the climate justice movement and I could see a way forward that I could even imagine having a child. But I will never tell anyone how to answer this very intimate question. As a feminist who knows the brutal history of forced sterilization and how women's bodies become a battlefield when policymakers decide to try to control the population, I think the idea that there is Regulatory solutions not having children is catastrophic ahistorical. We must fight together against our climatic sorrow and our climate fears, whatever decision we decide to make, but the discussion we need to have is how to build a world so that these children can lead a prosperous and devoid of life. carbon. ?
During the summer, you encouraged people to read Richard Powers' novel, L & # 39; outside. Whyou?
This is extremely important to me and I am happy that so many people have written to me since then. What Powers writes about trees: trees live in communities, communicate, plan and react together, and we are completely mistaken in their conceptualization. It's the same conversation we have about whether we will solve this problem as individuals or whether we are going to save the collective body. It is also rare, in a good fiction, to value activism, treat it with real respect, failures and everything, to recognize the heroism of people who put their bodies in danger. I thought Powers had acted in a really extraordinary way.
What do you think about what Extinction Rebellion has achieved?
One of the things they have done so well is to get us out of this classic campaign model in which we have been for a long time, where you tell someone something scary, you ask him to click on something to do something, you ignore any phase where we have to cry together, feel together and deal with what we have just seen. Because what I hear often from people is, okay, maybe in the 1930s or 1940s, people could organize neighborhood by neighborhood or workplace by workplace, but we do not can not. We think we have been so degraded that we can not. The only thing that will change this belief is to become face to face in the community, to experience on our screens, with each other, on the street and in the wild, to win things and to feel that power.
You talk about stamina in the book. How are you continuing? Do you feel full of hope?
I have complicated feelings about the issue of hope. Not a day passes without me having a moment of panic, of pure terror, of total conviction that we are condemned, then I get away from it. I am renewed by this new generation so determined, so powerful. I am inspired by the desire to do electoral politics, because my generation, when we were in our twenties or thirties, had so many suspicions of dirtying us with electoral politics that we lost a lot of opportunities. What gives me the most hope right now is that we finally have the vision of what we want rather than the first draft. It's the first time that this has happened in my life. And also, I decided to have children. I have a seven year old child who is completely obsessed and in love with the natural world. When I think of him, after a full summer, we talked about the role of salmon in forest feeding where he was born in BC and how they relate to tree and soil health, bears and orcas and this beautiful ecosystem, and I think it would be to have to tell him that there is no more salmon, it kills me. So that motivates me. And kill me.
• Naomi Klein will be in conversation with Katharine Viner at a Guardian Live event on October 15th.
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