Transcripts For LINKTV Democracy Now 20240714

September 20. Amy is millions of students plan to walk out friday in a Global Climate strike, we spend the hour with naomi klein, author of the new book on fire the case for a Green New Deal. Growing climatehe crisis and once the globe is fafacing the beginning of climae barbarism. We sometimes talk about how governments are not responding, particularly like the Trump Administration. But the truth is we are seeing a response to ththe climate crisi. We are seeing climate adaptation, and it is taking the form of borders, the form of rising white supremacy, natitionalism of all kinds thats actually using fears of resource scarcity to fuel this agenda. Amy today, naomi klein for the hour. All that and more, coming up. Welcome to democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. Iran has rejected possible talks with thehe United States as tensions between the two countries continue to mount following weekend drone attacks on major Oil Facilities in saudi arabia. This is suprememe leader ayatolh ali khamenei. If the u. S. Took back its word, the repepent and return to the e agreement they breacached, they became a membmber countryr, the jpcoa. Iran republic o of. Amy the joint conference of plan of action is mostst commony known as the iran nuclear deal. The Trump Administration has blamed iran for the attack, which was claimed by Houthi Rebels in yemen, though trump had also suggested he might meet with irans president Hassan Rouhani at the United Nations general assembly. Trump then went on to attack the media for quoting him, calling it fake news. On monday, trump said the u. S. Was locked and loaded, but waiting to hear from the saudis. The saudi government has stopped short of outright blaming iran for the attack, though they say iranian weapons were used. Israelis are casting ballots today in the countrys second parliamentary election this year. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the vote after he failed to build a Coalition Government following aprils election. Netanyahu has vowed to annex nearly one third of the occupied west bank if he wins todays election. He is currently facing possiblbe indictments over multiple corruption cases. Netanyahu and his farright likud party are facing off against exmilitary chief benny gantz and his blue and white party. If both parties fail again to win a majority, they may end up forming a unity government. In afghanistan, a bomb exploded today near a Campaign Rally for president ashraf ghani in the countrys northern parwan province. Ghani was reported safe some were killed. Afghanistan is gearing up for elections later this month. In more news from afghanistan, nato reported an American Military member was killed monday, the 17th so far this year. This comes after Afghan Government officials reported 85 taliban fighters, including two senior officials, were killed sunday in attacks by u. S. Backed afghan forces. The taliban, however, says only seven fighters were killed. Earlier this month, President Trump abruptly called d off a meeting with warring parties in afghanistan and d said peace tas were dead. America, massive blackokout monday leftft milliof people without power for hours in nicaragua, honduras, as well as parts of el salvador and guatemala. The blackout was reportedly caused by a failure in the regions electrical grid, which is located in honduras. In nicaragua, Internet Services and water distribution was also affected by the power outage raising Major Concerns for the countrys hospitals and other health services. In italy, two highranking coastguard officials have been indicted on multiple charges of manslaughter and negligence for the deaths of more than 260 migrants, including 60 children, in the Mediterranean Sea in 2013. The coast guard officials reportedly received emergency calls from the migrant ship as it slowly sank, but delayed alerting italian and maltese authoritities for hours. The Northern Hemisphere had its hottest summer on record since 1880 this year, according to the National Oceanic and atmospheric administration. The past five summers have been the hemispheres five hottest as Global Temperatures skyrocket due to climate changnge. The United Auto Workers nationwide strike enters its second day today. Its the first such strike in the Auto Industry in 12 years, affecting over 51 gm facilities across nine states. Uaw representatives met for further talks with gm monday but have so far failed to come to an agreement. Workers demands include fair wages, affordable healthcare, job security, and profit sharing. A number of democratic 2020 president ial candidates have come out in support of the strike, including senators Bernie Sanders and amy klobuchar, south bend indiana mayor pete buttigieg, and former san antonio mayor and hud secretary Julian Castro who noted in a tweet that gms Ceo Mary Barra made nearly 22 million last year, which amounts to 281 times the median gm worker. Varshini prakash, executive director of the sunrise movement, also threw her support behind the strike, tweeting all workers deserve a right to fair wages, guaranteed healthcare, job security and basic dignity. Manhattan District Attorney cyrus vance has subpoenaed President Trumps Accounting Firm mazars usa for eight years of trumps personal and Corporate Tax returns. New york city prosecutors are investigating hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 president ial campaign and whether the reimbursements made to michael cohen, trumps former lawyer and fixer, were illegally accounted for as a legal expense. Trump has refused to release his tax records, claiming for years he is under audit. House democrats have attempted to obtain his tax returns via subpoena from the Treasury Department and irs, but have so far been unsuccessful. House intelligence chair adam schiff has accused the acting director of National Intelligence of refusing to turn over a whistleblower complaint to protect an unnamed, highranking official. Schiff subpoenaed joseph maguire, thehe acting head of National Intelligence, who has refused to hand over the complaint. Schiff says maguire consulted the Justice Department about the the whistleblower complaint before deciding to withhold it. Schiff wrote in a letter accompanying the subpoena the committee can only conclude, based on this remarkable confluence of factors, that the serious misconduct at issue involves the president of the United States and or other senior white house or administration officials. House democrats are investigating transportation secretary elaine chao for possible ethics violations, and whether she used her office to benefit herself and her family. The House Oversight committee is probing whether chao took any action to benefit foremost group a shipping Company Owned by her fathers ancestors increase its influence and two status with the chinese government, sitting for interviews with Chinese Media outlets where she appeared to represent both the u. S. Government and foremost group. China has reportedly provided hundreds of millions of lowinterest loans to the company. In june, reports emerged secretary chao was using her office to bolster projects benefiting her husband, Senate Majority leader mitch mcconnell, in his home state of kentucky. A federal judge in florida has refused to undo a 2008 plea deal that granted immunity to serial sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein and his coconspirators, despite a ruling that prosecutors violated the crime victims rights act by failing to consult with epsteins accusers. The decision means epsteins accusers will not see compensation or be granted access to fbi records related to the epstein investigation. It also means epsteins alleged coconspirators will retain their immunityty. Epstein died of an apparent suicide inin his manhattan jail cell last month while awaiting trial. Ththe u. S. A attorney general hs vowed to purursue epstes collaborators. A new Study Reveals that the first sexual e experieience fore out of every 16 women and girls in the u. S. Is rape. Almost half of those surveyed said they were physically forced into the act and over half said they were verbrbally pressureded into sex against their will. The average age of the assaults is 15. In the following years, the affected women had poorer mental and Reproductive Health outcomes, including more unwanted pregnancies and abortions. The working Families Party has endorsed senator Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 democratic primary. Senator warren knows how to kick wall street kleptocrats where it hurts, and shes got some truly visionary plans to make this country work for the many, said maurice mitchell, the working Families Partys National Director in a statement. The endorsement provoked a backlash among some supporters of Bernie Sanders, which the group endorsed in 2016. On monday, warren released her plan to end corruption in politics. The sweeping plan includes a lifetime ban on lobbying for senior government officials and imposing strict conflictofinterest laws on the president. Warren gave a speech to a crown of supporters in new york city monday night. Our democracy is paralyzed. And why . Because g giant corporations hae bought off our government. Americans are killed by floods and fires in a rapidly warming planet. Why . Because huge fossil fuel ourorations have bought off government. Amy senator warren delivered the speech near the site of the 1911 triangle shirtwaist factory fire in new york city, which killed 146 garment workers, mostly womenen and girls, and spurred an organizized campaigno improve working conditions. And in entertainment news, satururday night live has fird newly y announced cast memember shshane gillis after clips emerd of the comedian making racistt and homomophobic comments. In nowdeleted clips from gilliss popodcast, he refers to chchinese people with h ethnic s and mimicscs a fake chinesee accent. He also attacked 2020 democratic president ial candidate andrew yang. The comments are from last year. Andrew yang responded to the news on twitter, writing it can be extraordinarily hurtful to feel like you are somehow not part of the only country you have ever known. I have certainly felt that the churning sense of alienation, anger, and marginalization. N. Andrew yang has since said gillisis reached out and the two would be speaking soon. This comeses as snl, w whichas this comes as snl, which has come under fire for years for its lack of diversity, has also hired its first ever chineseamerican cast member, bowen yang. He is openly gay and has been writing for the show since 2018, small h handful of cast members of asian descent to ever appear on the show. And those are some of the headlines. This is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. Juan and im juan gonzalez. Welcome to all of our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. Millions of students are expected to walk out of class on friday in a Global Climate strike. Here in new york, School Authorities have announced students will be allowed to miss classes without facing any penalties in order to participate in the strike. With 1. 1 million students, new york city has the Largest School system in the county. In the country. The Student Climate strike is taking place three days before the United Nations Climate Action summit. Amy well, today we spent the rest of the hour with naomi klein, who is just out with a new book. It is called on fire the case for a Green New Deal. Naomi klein is Senior Correspondent at the intercept and the inaugural Gloria Steinem chair of media, culture and feminist studies at Rutgers University. In a moment, she will join us here in our studio. But first, we turn to a new video of yuma klein that was reased by tercept on monda its titled hatin a raw . Pres trump i do think we have bigger problems than Plastic Straws. Even a busted clock is right twice a day. Techie teachers that nobody wants. What is Trump Campaign selling . An attitude in the form of recyclable Plastic Straws. The president of thehe United States is a terririble businessman, but it is time to admit for once he is a certifiable hit on his hands. 200,000 in sales. Of these bits of plastic probably advertised on his Campaign Website as nine inches long and modeled in the mouth of an adorable young girl show no signs of slowing down. The marketing approach is not exactly mysterious. Liberal people straws do not work. The past few president for his part many,trump we had pizza,a, many french fries. Seems generally confused. Pres. Trump a little straw. What about the plates, the wrappers, and Everything Else that are much bigger . I think theres much more the trump stracan tells. If youquint, it is kin of port. Aong skinnone. These erpriceditsf prelalafill actlly tell us a whole li about why our planet is on fire. The amazon is burning. Brazils president encouraged deforestation of the amazon. A and why in cocountry afterr countrtry it is the arsonists wo are in charge. Pres. Trump we have ended the war on american energy, and we have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal. They might even tell us something about how we can put out the flames. Bear with me. I spent the las15 years trying to figure out why smany of us are not acti likee o h houses on fe when it clearly is. And i have loed at alof the theories our ains are not wir for distant threats. Opoppinglilimate change is too expensive. The Technology Just is not there yet. Politicians only think shortterm. You have heard all of the theoriesbubut i ink k its acally t t trump straw that does the best job of elalainin th. What we are witnessing is a temper tantrum againstst the mee suggestion that there are limits to what we can consume, to what we can extract from nature, into the garbage we canump back into it. T. It is no surprise the backla is stronge in places like the u. S. And brazi just think ohow theyere founded. Europe was hitting up against natures limits. They overfished the rivers, failed the great forests, hunted the game. They stumbled upon the socalled new world and thought they had hit the jackpot. They saw in the americas a kind of supersized europe that wouou never run out of fish, trees, gold, fur, or any ofof tha bountyty. England, new france, spain, new w and sturdy am. New amsterdam. There were not very imaginative. The products of forest, minds, and field. The point is, the very premise the official story of our country is the story of inlets nature. Wilderness to be devoure witht t limi. And the Indigenous Peoplehoho stood in theay who had very different ideas about land and nature . They had to be removed at all costs. And so now when in ecological crisis comes along and says, whoa, we filled our oceans with plastic come our skies with heat trapping gases, and we actually have to live within limits. It is not just hard for the people most invested in these stories. It is seen as an existential attack. They want to take your pickup truck. They want to rebuild your home. They want to take away your hamburgers. It is how a papaper straw can become a a threat to an entirery of life. The ultimate trigger sculpture has everything the democrats hate fake, Plastic Straws and light bulbs. Look come it is easy to dismiss this as the infantile world of Trump Supporters who just cannot wrap their heads arouound the Climate Crisis. At the truth is, a lot of liberals are trapped in a pretty similar ideology. One that can imagine anything except limits to growth and consumption. Which might be why some of them feel an overwhelming need to publicly express their fealty to cheeseburgers. I am from indiana and i love cheeseburgers. I love cheeseburgers. Im hopeful we are going to be able to do this in no way, especiallyhehen im m prident, at we cacontntin to have hambmbgers andheese. Warsin a y, the sr ofr a port into th mindset as well. So many environmtatal reonseses ve j jus been minor tweaks to an economy bed on endless consumptn. N. Take your electric car to the drivethrough for an impossible burger and a coke with a paper straw. Look, of course it is better than the alternative. But it is nowhere close to the depth of change required if we hope to actually pull our planet back from the brink. Rerericting Plastic Straws is eat, but we also need a ban on those gngnifictlyy larger lindrical suckin things. And electric cars . Theyre nice if you can afford them, but what we need is free, zero emission Public Transit with energyefficient nonmarket housing and health care steps away. But those policies would mean tossing out the market friendly centrist religion of the past halfcentury and massively investing in the public sphere to create millions of good union jobs. Words, a Green New Deal. Because we are limited by the laws of nature,y what our planet canndnd cant t tak but when it comes to o the laws ththat we m make, the rulules governining our economomy and or ciety, there can be noimit tohat we a willingo do to save ouruture. We need w ways o thinkg beyond truian temp tantrum or the dangerous and criminal is him of the supposedly serious center. Because our house is on fire and straws arent going toutut it. It isime to gra[bleepy our hose. Amy yilein speing in a new vid from the intercept. When we come back, she will join us to talk about her new book on fire the case for a Green New Deal. Stay with us. [music break] amy one way or another by blondie. This is democracy now , im Amy Goodman Juan gonzalez. Juan as millions of students plan to walk out friday in a Global Climate strike, we spend the rest of the hour with naomi klein. She is out with a new book today titled on fire the case for a Green New Deal. Amy a book reviewer in the New York Times wrote in the paper today if i were a rich man, i would buy 245 million copies of, klein s on fire and hand them to every eligible voter in the country. Naomi klein, congratulations on this day, the publication date of your book. Fire theed on burning case for a Green New Deal. Term hrow wound that around that term whether they are for it or guests to judge oregon state. What is a Green New Deal and what is the crisisis we are facing . It is great to be here with you. It is true the Green New Deal has become something of a bumper iscker slogan and misrepresented on fox more than it is accurately represented in the socalled liberal media. Theres a lot of confusion about what this means but i think fundamentally it is a transformational approach to the Climate Crisis. That is on the scale of the crisis itself that says the actions we take have to be guided by scicience and scientis are telling us we need to cut emissions globally in half and a mere 11 years. But it is not a single carbonbased policy like, and trade. It is really about transforming the economy and making it fair. Battlingattling poverty, racism, battling all forms of inequality and exclusion at the same time as we radically lower our admissions. We do know if we are going to lower our emissions in time, it is going to take transformations of how we live in cities, how we move ourselves around, how we grow our food,d, where we get or energy from. Essentially the Green New Deal is saying if we are going to do all that, why wouldnt we tackle all of these systemic economic and social crises at the same time . Ofause we live in a time multiple overlapping crises. Juan one of the things you point out, first of all, the critics are calling the Green New Deal the insanely ambitious and prohibitively expensive to the American Economy and to other nations as well. But you point out that in the past, there have been instances when the United States government has marshaled enormous forces and money to deal with problems you talk about the original new deal under fdr in the Marshall Plan after world war ii. Both of which were attempts by some would say light and capitalists to deal with the fact the countries after world war ii in the u. S. Were headed toward potential revolution and had to respond to the popular movements by making radical investments and change. Tatalk about that further. Ive been writing about the Climate Crisis for more than a decade and really trying to understand why it is that despspite all of the scientific warnings, despite the fact that it is expensive to do the crisis but we know not just expensive, but just the devastating human cost and action carry. Why have we talked and talked our governments have been talking for more than 30 years lowering emissions while global emissions have gone up 40 . One of the reasons is this crisis landed on our laps as a species at the worst possible moment in human evolution, that a collective crisis of this nature could have landed on our laps, which is the late 1980s, the high point of the sort of whenmarket zealotry right the berlin wall is collapsing, history is being declared when Margaret Thatcher is saying there is no such thing as society. This is a huge problem because here we are being told that we cant do anything collectively. We have to scale back our collective action. We have to cut existing government programs. We have to privatize everything. We are facing a crisis that requires unprecedented collective action, investment, and yet we are handing the tools over to private forprofit companies, whether it is water or electricity or transportation. I think the real value of really calling it a Green New Deal and harkening back to an earlier age reminds as it is possible to deal with collective crises. There is so much fatalism and doom saying right now that it is making these appeals to human nature. Jonathan france is the highest profile, most recent example. But we hear this argument all the time. Humans cant do something on this scale. Humans are incapable of doing anything but just sort of satisfying our most immediate interests. So people hear this and here this is all we are. So they feel hopeless. I think the what is important about reminding ourselves, ok, and the face of the Great Depression and in the face of the deepest economic crisis this country is ever faced, there was a huge collective action. Whether it was the civilian conservation corps, planting 2. 3 billion trees, setting up hundreds of camps across the ,ountry, tackling soil erosion 800 new state parks, whether it is hundreds of thousands of new works of art during the original new deal, or as you said, the Marshall Plan which reminds us of another time of collective action. As you said, it wasnt just governments handing down these programs out of the goodness of their hearts, it was the push and pull of social strife, strikes, militant actions, rising socialism. And this came to be seen n as a compromise. We need to remember this history because it reminds us that this thing called human nature that gets evoked telling us we are doomed is not fixed. Humans are many things. We have been different in the past and we can be different again. Amy naomi klein, used the term climate barbarism. Explain. I use that term to describe the fact that we often talk about governments like the Trump Administration as governments that are committed to Climate Change denial. I dont think they deny the reality of Climate Change. He has altered his golf courses because of rising sea levels. Think theyre going to be all right. They think wealthier countries are going to be all right. These governments are adapting to Climate Change. They may not be adapting the way the United Nations would like them to buy cutting emissions, by building seawalls, whatever it is they are building border walls. They are adapting through this unleashing of white supremacist ideology and creating the intellectual rationale for allowing millions of people to die. That is what, by climate barbarism. We are already seeing many thousands of people being allowed to die in the mediterranean. We are seeing people left in migrant detention facilities that are a lot like concentration camps, whether it is offshore camps set up by the australian government, whether it is the European Union sending people to the libyan camps, and now the trumpet Administration Setting up its own camps. I think this should be understood as a Climate Change adaptation. This is how they are proposing to deal with a world in which millions of people are being forced from their homeland. We already know just yesterday from the internal displacement monitoring center, 7 Million People in the First Six Months of 2019 have been forced to move because of ,loods, droughthts, disasters many of them linked to the Climate Crisis. Juan speaking of some of these disasters, one of the particularly powerful essays in this book, and it should be clear this is a collection of essays a collection of essays you have written over about 10 years on the issue of climate. It is titled the season of smoke. Youre talking about youre going back to your familys homeplace in British Columbia for your regular summer vacation. In 2017. You were stunned by the changes that were occurring all around you as a result of all of the wildfires that were engulfing the western parts of the United States and canada. If you could talk further about that. That essay is an attempt to sort of capture i guess the relentlessness some of the ways in which the Climate Crisis plays out. Disasters these acute come these recordbreaking storms that capture our attention. As well they should. But i think part of the reason why we are seeing a shift in polling around the Climate Crisis and we are seeing a shift in the United States. Not only are more people understanding that, yes, it is real, yes, humans are causing it, but people are ranking concern for Climate Change as their number one or number two concern. There is a real sense of urgency. I think the biggest reason is simply so many peoples lives are touched by it. By storms, by flood, by drought. But smoke impacts huge numbers of people. Even if you arent right by the wildfire and having to evacuate, for the past several summers in the Pacific Northwest the when i write about was 2017 but it was also true of 2018 the entire region was just in list engulfed in smoke for over a month. You had this impacts on respiratory health and just since a profound andes, which is what i was trying to capture in that essay of general, the sun and the moon looking so very strange come these little red orange dots in the sky. Of course, the inequalities that always accompanied this. Migrant fruit pickers, for instance, cross the border in washington state, were having to pick fruit in these horrific conditions. And theyre not good to begin with, right . As workers collapsed on the job, they were just sent home like defective goods. So part of what im exploring and that essay is what the u. N. Is calling climate apartheid, where he had this extreme inequality of impacts. Cit we are the last ones to polls, but talk about some of these new polls that are coming out around the Climate Crisis. Whether we are talking about in this week called covering climate now that many of us are involved with, collaborating on, media organizations around the world, cbs came out with a new poll. And in Scientific American on children and what they believe. Scientific a poll, american i think was reporting on a study in nature Climate Change about the impacts that young people are having on their parents belief and Climate Change. I think this growing sense of urgency that you see really clearly in many of the puls including most recently the cbs poll, or people are defining Climate Change more more as a crisis. That is very different. When i was doing this research a few years ago, it was Climate Change would reliably be listed last. Not people who are denying Climate Change. They say i care about Climate Change, but you ask them to rank it in it would be 19th or 20th among other issues of concern. That has shifted. I think partly it is because of lived experience. Partly it is the clarity of the scientific messagin there we getting from theg ipcc. Transformrs left to virtually every aspect of society. That is a quote from their summary. And also i think so many young people are really living with climate grief, climate terror, and they arere turning to their parents and saying, you have to do something about this. And it has become c clear that yoyoung people, particularly yog girls, are changing the views of their parents. Amy and that is where the Scientific American article begins, was about children, particularly girls come having an effect on conservative fathers, which is so interesting. We want to turn right now till young woman, to a girl, to Greta Thunberg. On monday night, Amnesty International presented its 2019 of conscience award to the 16yearold swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg in their fight is for future movement. This is greta speaking last night. Right now i think there is an awakening going on, even though it is slow, the pace is picking up and the debate is shifting. G. This is thanks to a lot of different reasons, but it is a lot because of countless activists, especially young activists. Activism works. [applause] so what im telling you to do because no one is too small to make a difference. I am urging all of you to take part in the Global Climate strike on september 20 and 27th. [applause] and just one last thing. See you on the streets. [applause] amy Greta Thunberg receiving the Amnesty International award from the head of Amnesty International kumi naidodoo. Chance to bed the on stage with Greta Thunberg at the ethical cultural society. Almost 1000 people packed into see the two of you have this intergenerational conversation. Talk about her significance. She is here in new york and will be participating in the Global Climate strike on friday. She is i love seeing her and her moral clarity, so forceful. I think she is a prophetic voice who has brought the existential urgency of the crisis to the heart of power. She isnt the first person to do that. You have covered other young voices on democracy now in the past, particularly from the global south. I think about kathy from the Marshall Islands speaking at the United Nations in new york, holding her nine month old baby reading a poem to her. Talks a few years ago come as typhoon haya isn sitting a mans family. The moments that burst through the bureaucratic language that we kind of shipped ourselves from the reality of the stakes, the extraordinary stakeses of or moment in history. Theyre are 70 ways in which we use language to protect ourselves and i think people tasked with talking about Climate Change, the official u. N. Conferences are good at making it seem less urgent that it is. I dont think they mean to, but careers and bureaucracy managed to do that, so there have been these voices before who have pierced through from the global south. And personally, it is mainly been democracy now who covers them and very few other media organizations. Greta has broken through and she is such an amazing voice for her generation. And it is a very different voice, in part because she talks about what makes her different and her understanding of this crisis, having to do with neuro diversity. She has a different way of seeing the world. Amy i want to go to the question you asked her. Why dont you set it up or is as you spoke from your own personal experience as well. Well, i was just asking her about the terminus since of responsibility she must feel. In very short order, she has become the most prominent, seems, voice on the Climate Crisis or one of them. But she is also, from what i can tell, the most prominent voice of somebody who self describes as being on the autism spectrum. And she talks a lot about that. She has made a choice early on. I wanted to get her reflections on that. Amy you spoke personally of your own experience. Were going to start with your question and then go into the answer. Cooks i want to ask about this other responsibility that t you have taken on, which has to o do with being very y public from te beginning about being on the autism spectrum. It was in your twitter bio, climate activist with aspergers. Otherat leads to a whole level of responsibility because youre probably also the most prominent person in the world right now who self identifies im sorry, is big on the autism specectrum. That is really, really important to people who identify [applause] and i can speak about that personally because i have a sevenyearold son with special needs. You are his hero. I really did not think about was inublic because it my profile and biography on social media. I did not think about it. It was just, why should i not be public about that . Why should that be something not to be public about . Was a sort of noticed it big thing. Not many people work public about their diagnosis. But i just think it is so because still many see a diagnosis to be something negative, and it doesnt have to be. You inse, it can limit many ways. It has limited me a lot. But you can also convert that into something good, something positive. That is what i have done and what i think we e should encoure more people to do. Amy that is the 16yearold swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. Naomi . Yeah, as ive gotten to know greta a little bit and thought about her impact, i am really struck by the way she talks she talks about it as a kind of superpower, that she has s amazing ability to focus which is true for many people on the spectrum. There are many people on the spectrum who are in the sciences, amazing classical musicians. As greta says, not everybody has there are a lot of struggles. There are a lot of challenges. So it is not to romanticize it. But one of the things that is really interesting is that therapists talk about how kids on the spectrum dont do something which most kids do, which is called mirroring. Most kids if you play a game of simon says, they get it right away. You move, i move. We mirror. That is something humans do. We are constantly mirroring each other, looking to each other for social cues for how to act. That is how we build relationships and cohesive communities. A lot of kids on the spectrum do not have that impulse. They just do their own thing, which is why they get bullied because they are following their own path. What is interesting to me as it relates to the Climate Crisis is that i think the fact we do mirror each other has become a huge problem because we live in a culture, in an economy that on the one hand is telling us we are in the middle of this existential emergency we see footage of Arctic Sea Ice loss and we hear about an insect apocalypse, we hear vermillion species facing extinction than the next minute, we will go shopping or watch makeup tutorial on youtube. Politicians talking about pretty much everything except for this, as greta has had. If youre impulse is to mirror, youre getting conflicting messages. Is this a crisis or not . Im hearing it is a crisis but everywhere i look im getting the opposite message. Everything is fine. Keep the system going. I think what is so interesting about greta and she is not the only one on the spectrum playing a leadership role in this movement, but it is because they lack the impulse to look other people to tell them the. Ight way to feel about this i dont know a kid in the world who doesnt have their First Response to the Climate Crisis being, oh, my god, why isnt everyone acting on this . The problem is then that the next wave of messages they get is the message of, be reassured when we should not be reassured. I think that is part of why i think that is part of why greta is playing this prophetic role because she is trusting her first instinct and not mirroring society. Amy we are talking to naomi klein. She has a new book out today called on fire the case for a Green New Deal. Back with naomi in a minute. [music c break] amy rising by lhasa de sela. This is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman with juan gonzalez. Is naomi for the hour klein the renonowned author, the awardwinning jouournalist, the seSenior Correspondent at the intercept inaugural gloria , steinem chair of media, culture anand feminist studies t Rutgers University. Her new book on fire the case , for a Green New Deal. And she is a professor at Rutgers University where juan is a professor as well. Faculty meeting. Juan we meet up at faculty meetings every once in a while. You have a section in your introduction called the specter of ecofascism. Between whatlink has to be called a movement these days of right wing extremists involved in mass killings all around the world who actually ape each other and idolize each other. You begin with the christchurch killer, but also his references to what happened in oslo in 2011, the massacres there. The charleston, south carolina, church massacre, the quebec city mosque attack and the tree of life in pittsburgh. Talk about this whole relationship between White Supremacists in this kind of terrorism, the battle over the Climate Crisis. I write about the christchurch killer in part ,ecause that horrific attack which took the lives of more than 50 people, happen on march 15. And that day is signinificant fr many reasons. One of them is that was the day of the first global youth climate strike. That is s the day 1. 6 million young people around the world walked out of class and took this stand for International Solidarity with children all around the world. A movement that is in no way nationalist. That is calling for justice at the center of our response to the Climate Crisis. In christchurch, the student strike, the rally after the student strike was disrupted and the e students were e told to disperse because there was a live shooting just a few blocks away at the mosque. And that was the killing that i referred to earlier. One of the things that was really different about that attack and he did take inspiration from all of these thisnt mass murderers killer identified as an ecofascist. He wrote that in his manifesto. He talked about how immigrants were destroying europe, destroying the christian world and so on. Focus ineen a l lot of recent years about how do we change the minds of the climate deniers . Scarierthe only y thing than a farright racistt movemet that denies the reality of Climate Change is the farright racist movement that doesnt deny the reality of Climate Change, that actually says it is happening, theyre going to be many millions of people on the move, and we are going to use this a born ideology that ranks the relative value of human life, that puts White Christians at the top of the hierarchy, that animal icesi and otherzes everyone else as the justification for allowing those people to die. That is the significance of what hahappened in new zealand becaue i think it was the first time one of these attackers self identified as ecofascist. Not the first time that Climate Change has been evoked by one of these killers. It was evoked by the norway norwegian killer who talked about how climate that was one of the things he was upset about. He saw it as a conspiracy to redistribute the wealth of europe and north america to the global south because they understand of Climate Changes real, it does require a redistribution of resources. This is fundamentally at the heart of where we are right now. We are at a crossroads where it is not about who denies it anymore. I think within a few years, Climate Change denial is going to disappear. In the face of this crisis, are left,ng to horde what is lock out everybody else, see theseesurgence in ideologies that never went away and are would just gonna take care of our own, as they say, or are we going to recognize that our fates are interconnected . Are we going to completely reimagine borders and share what is left . This is at the heart of the tremendous responsibility at the moment. Juan following up on that, your response to the way President Trump and the republicans are now honing in on socialism and agree new deal as the new red scare they belelieve will lead them to victory next november . It will lead them to victory because they believe they will be able to define it. Fox news is talking about the Green New Deal way more than any of the other networks. Liberal liberals like the New York Times most of the oped columns are attacking it. So the reason why trump believes this is a Great Campaign strategy, that it is the new build a wall, is because t thy are able to lie about it nonstop. Right now they are setting t t terms by saying, it is all about depriving you of your whatever your hamburgers come as we saw the video, and attack on your way of life and so on. But in fact, there is new polling from data for progress unionhows if you ask members, unionized workers whether they support the Green New Deal, the vast majority of them do s support it. Amy yet t the sunririse movement supportingg the uaw, supporting the workers. It is not a Winning Strategy for trump it is only waiting for trump if the democrats run away from the Green New Deal, allow them to define it, dont have a story about how this is going to actually create huge numbers of good jobs anand a fairer society, and better services. That is the story amy which takes u us to the president ial candidates. Lets s go to Bernie Sanders defending the Green New Deal. Thatonomists have told us cost of inaction, inaction on Climate Change will cost some 69 trillion throughout the globe. The scientists have told us the cost of inaction on Climate Change will put the entire planet and life as we know it on earth in serious jeopardy. Because what we have been told is that if we do nothing, the effefects of Climate Change will lead to over 250,000 deaths every single year across the globe from factors including how nutrition, heat stress, malaria, and other diseases. And that is a very conservative number. Amy and this is senator Elizabeth Warren being question during last weeks debate on abc. Should American Foreign policy be based around Climate Change . Yes. We need to work on every front on Climate Change. It is the threat to every living thing on this planet, and were running out of time. Every time the scientists go back they say we have less and less time than we thought we had. But that means we have got to use all of the tools. One of the tools we need to use our our regulatory tools. I have proposed following governor inslee that we by 2028 cut all Carbon Emissions from new buildings, by 2030 Carbon Emissions from cars, and by 2035 all Carbon Emissions from manufacture of electricity. That alone, those three, will cut our emissions here in the United States by 70 . We can do this. We also need to help around the world to clean, but understand this one more time. Why doesnt it happen . As long g as washington is payig more attention to money than it is to our future, we cant make the changes we need to make. We have to attack the corruption had on so that we can save our planet. Amy that is senator Elizabeth Warren. Overall, naomi klein, if you can talk about the issue of the democratic president ial candidates attacking the issue of Climate Crisis come the big battle within the dnc, but tom perez prevailing, at least for the moment, saying there can be no single debate that just is focused on the Climate Crisis. And finally, weigh in on the voices that so often have not been included around the global south and Indigenous People in this country who have really led the Climate Change movement when you look at things, for example, confrontations like the standoffish standing rock. Absolutely. Made iision that the d c think was a terrible decision not to have a climate debate, and it really shows i think i failure to understand this is not a single issue. Rejected ita was was, well, we cant do climate. It is not fair to the other issues, right . The whole point of a Green New Deal, which supposedly the whole majority of the candidates support, is Climate Change is not an issue. It is an infrastructure for all of these other issues to fit inside. We are all inside the climate, whatever issue it is that we are focused on it is within the context of a habitable planet that we need to protect. Amy we have 30 seconds. What is exciting about a Green New Deal, it does not put these issues against each other. It is a holistic vision for the next economy that is about how we radically cut emissions while solving many different crises of inequality at the same time. Differentf the candidates, maybe we can talk about it a bit more indepth but i think theres a real difference in terms of which candidates have serious plans for how, just response to Climate Change in a global context. We cant talk about Climate Response just within the United States or tell ourselves, oh, the u. S. Is going to lead by example. It is too late for that. The u. S. Owes a climate that to the rest of the world, particularly the global south. There has to be a transfer of resources that allows countries that are on the front lines of this crisis to leapfrog over fossil fuels. Amy we have to do part two and will