Partner manager at politics and prose. I just want to thank all of you for coming tonight. Love to see such a full house. I could not be more excited to introduce three powerhouse women that will speak tonight. We will have them come up in just a few minutes but first i want to show a short video. It was produced by two of our speakers tonight and it is narrated at the incomparable alexandria ocasiocortez. His very schematic to what we will be talking about tonight and its a really great introduction to our event. Well play that and then well come back together. I took the poetry and from new york to d. C. Always brings me back to when i first started. In 2019 i was a freshman in the most Diverse Congress in history up to that point. As a critical time. Ill never forget the children in our community. It would i was so inspired to meet this new class of politicians navigating the halls of power. Its often said you cant be what you cant see and for the first time they saw themselves. I think there was something similar with the Green New Deal. We knew that we could save the planet and we had all the technology to do it the people were scared. They said it was too big, too fast, not practical. I think thats because they couldnt picture it yet. Anyways im getting ahead of myself. Lets start with how we got here. 1977 new yorker Senior Scientist named james black gave a presentation about how burning fossil fuel could eventually lead to Global Temperatures are rising three or four degrees fahrenheit. They gathered more data about Global Warming. Guess who is doing all this research . Exxonmobil the oil and gas company. Exxon knew this whole time as did our politicians. 10 years later james hansen nasas top Climate Science told congress he was 99 certain that Global Warming was happening and caused by humans. That was 1988 the year before i was even born. Did they listen to the science including their own . That they change Business Models back to renewables . Know, the opposite. They knew when they double down. They and others spent millions setting up a network of lobby think tanks to create doubt in denial about Climate Change produced an effort designed to detract from the science they have been doing and it worked. Politicians went to bat for fossil fuels and these massive corporations kept mining drilling and fracking like there was no tomorrow. America became the biggest producer and consumer of oil in the world. Fossil fuels come in hundreds of billions while the public pays the lions share to clean up their disasters. The generation of time we will never get back. Entire species will never get back natural run wonders gone forever. In 2017 Hurricane Maria destroy the place where my family is from. It took Many American lives is 9 11 and the next year when i was elected to congress the worlds leading climate scientist declared another emergency. They told us we had 12 years left to cut our missions in emissions in half were hundreds of millions would be likely to face food and water shortages poverty. 12 years to change everything. We set ourselves and we lived and worked, everything. The only way to do it was to transform our economy which we already knew was broken. The vast majority of wealth was going to just a small handful of people and most folks were falling further and further behind. There was a true turning point. Lots of people gave up. They said we were doomed but some of us remembered we had been in peril before as the nation. The great depression, world war ii. We knew from our history how to pull together to overcome impossible odds and at the very least we owed it to our children to try. The way it began with democrats to back the house in 2018 in the senate and the white house in 2020 and watched the decade of the Green New Deal a flurry of legislation that kicked off on social and ecological transformation to save the planet. It was the kind of swing for the fence ambition we needed. Finally we were entertaining solutions on the scale of the crises we face without leaving anyone behind. That included medicare for all the most popular social program in american history. We also introduced the federal jobs guaranteed public options including dignified living wages for work. The biggest problem in those early years was a labor shortage were building a National Smart grid retrofitting every building in america like this one all across the country. We need more workers. A group of kids from my neighborhood were in the middle of it all especially this one girl iliana. Her first job out of college was with americorps climate restoring wetlands and by use and coastal louisiana. Most of her friends included some oil workers in transition. They took apart old pipelines and got to work with the same salary and benefits. Of course when it came to healing the land we had huge gaps in our knowledge. Let lee indigenous communities offered generational expertise to help guide the way. The iliana trader hand as his solar plant engineer for a while but eventually made her career raising the next generation as part of the universal childcare initiative. As it turns out caring for others works and we started paying real money to folks like teachers and home health aides. Those were years of massive change and not all of it was good. Hurricane sheldon hit Southern California parts of miami when underwater for the last time but as we battled the floods and fires we knew how we were to have started acting when we did. We didnt just change the infrastructure. We changed how we did things. We became a society that was not only modern and wealthy but dignified inhumane. By committing to universal rights with health care and meaningful work for all they stopped being so scared of the future. They stopped being scared of each other and we found our shared purpose. Iliana heard the call to end in 2028 she ran for office in the first cycle of public way funded election campaigns and now she occupies the seat that i once held. It couldnt be more proud of her, true child of the Green New Deal. When i came back to my first term in congress writing that oldschool amtrak all of this was still ahead of us in the first big steps just closing her eyes and imagining it. We can be whatever we have the courage to see. [applause] like i said i think that is perfect introduction to what we are going to be talking about tonight. So first naomi klein is a social activist filmmaker and bestselling author known for political analysis and criticism of corporate globalization and capitalism. On a threeyear appointment for december 2018 she is the Gloria Steinem chair of feminist studies at rutgers university. Senior correspondent to intercept and of course the author of the book that we are here for tonights the burning case for a Green New Deal sub on fire the burning case for a Green New Deal. [applause] [applause] naomi klein will be in conversation with betsy reed editorinchief of the intercept an awardwinning organization dedicated to holding the powerful accountable for her fearless journalism shes the former executive editor of the nation where she led the magazines awardwinning investigative coverage in his epic edited several books including going rogue, required reading. And last but certainly not least jane fonda who will be joining the latter part of the conversation. Fond as an actress extraordinaire author political activists and various accolades including two Academy Awards seven Golden Globe Awards in the afi Achievement Award among many others. In addition. [applause] in addition to issues of civil rights phone has been a staunch opponent of oil and their adverse effects on the planet. Please help me welcome to the stage iv betsy reed and naomi klein. [applause] welcome. Its wonderful to be here with you in this beautiful space. I can imagine a better more important moment to be having this conversation and i can imagine a better person to be talking with than my old friend and colleague naomi klein who i worked with for many years at the nation before the intercept and it has this fantastic new book out naomi klein on fire the burning case for a Green New Deal. I have a video which naomi conceived along with the artist molly crabapple. We needed dose of hope in a dark time. Her book on fire i just want to congratulate her because its a fantastic achievement and it was reviewed today in the New York Times. The reviewer wrote probably the dream sends an author would want in the review if i were a rich man i would buy 245 million copies of naomi kleins on fire and hand deliver them to every eligible voter in america. [applause] [applause] naomi id like to start by asking you to set the scene for us because it really does feel like a momentous time to be living through where i think we all feel common if you were here you feel like theres a responsibility to this moment. You have an understanding of the Climate Science and the politics can you tell us how you feel at this moment . First of all im just delighted to be here, to be back here and to be launching yet another book in d. C. With the wonderful help of politics and prose. Its becoming a tradition and i enjoy it so much. Thank you all for coming. Betsy thank you for being here and jane its such an honor to be with you here, charlie a legend among us. Its interesting the book came out yesterday so im still in that rusty stage of talking about it. I always murmured the first book ive published 20 years ago, no logo. The book came out in france and i went to france and i was interviewed by a journalist there and she said you know sometimes when the authors get to france their ideas are like chewing gum that lost all of its flavor. [laughter] and it is true when you talk about a look at does become like old chewing gum thats lost all of its flavor. For me i amended very different phase. This is the second time ive talked about the book so its full flavor and im still feeling my way around. The truth is the question about how are you feeling and what is this moment is complicated and it really does depend on the hour if not the second of the day. There are moments of incredible inspiration and excitement like credit thunberg testifying on capitol hill and submitting her testimony. The 2018 icy pp report telling us we have 12 years now 11 and then read it and then act. [applause] or going to a meeting as they did in hour ago and hearing people who are planning on shutting down d. C. On monday with the Climate Emergency. [applause] at the launch of the book yesterday in new york with the executive director of the amazing movement, you are here tonight and feeling all of the energy in building this Incredible NationalYouth Movement that is so clear about what we cannot have in terms of continuing down this road that is already so catastrophic. I guess, and also being so clear on what we want instead and championing a vision of the future which i think is absolutely critical and i think we have made mistakes in the past movement of being afraid to put forward our guests and the vision of what we want instead. So beautiful to be able to be on this tour to see the fearlessness around getting out of our issue silos. I think for a long time a lot of us i guess bought the idea that there was a scarcity. You have to stick in your lame and youve got to have homes that are modest enough that you can claim easy victory. I think we are finally realizing that we are stronger together and that we are stronger when we have the courage to come together and find our common vision for the kind of society we want to live in instead of this one that is betting peoples futures on so many fronts. We are all inside the climate but the truth is that this generation is seeing their lives by political leaders who dont attack them from guns in schools, dont protect in any way immigrant youth from being wrenched from their families, dont protect black youth from police, dont protect them from White Supremacists and misogynist and transphobic sand on and on when they go on line. So its really a moment where i think people are realizing that the system is failing on multiple fronts and because of that are less afraid of the kind of Chain Reaction we need. What im trying to write about Climate Change and started linking it with what their Economic System i got a lot of pushback from friends in the Climate Movement who said you know you are just making things harder. We cant make it sound so hard. Why are you weighing down climate with all of these other issues . There was this feeling, right . It was just so backward because the truth is that people who are going to fight for the future we need up against really powerful forces and this is a powerful powerful force whether its the fossil fuel companies are the banks that financed them or the politicians who are financed. We need a movement of people who have a lot to win and who have a lot that gained from change in who arent afraid of change. Where are we going to build that kind of movement when we are willing to make alliances with folks who are on the frontlines of all of these crises . Thats where he i feel the hope that such an ache shift honestly. Its a huge shift. A willingness to have that the clarity, the understanding that we need change at a systemic level, and excitement about having transformations that are on the scale of the crisis that we face. Not a fear of that and excitement about it not because its better than climate apocalypse in the future but because its better than tuesday , and because its better than the president. That is a really really big change. But if we are talking about the climate clock is really frightening whats happening. Anybody who says they feel all the time is flying. Thats not a rational reaction to the moment that we are living. This was the hottest summer on record. We have never had losing huge swaths of amazon. We have lost much of the Great Barrier leave Great Barrier reef. These are the major features of our planet the ark day, the amazon, the great terrier reef and we are as my friend Bill Mckibben says losing them. This is not a crisis that is often the future. It is a crisis that is stealing lives and futures right now in the bahamas in paradise california. We can go on and on. And the arsonists are in charge in country after country. There is faced strange glee being taken. Scott morrison is coming from australia to the u. N. Ja. They are all going to be prowling around. Scott morrison the Prime Minister of australia bridis hunks of coal into the house of commons there were and held the pig you know here in d. C. With the snowballs and so on. Things get so bad here in the u. S. That i think theres a tendency to think oh its just us. This is a global context for something really scary is happening. In the death throes of this ideological projects of the urgency for the forces that really understand its now or never that we have been given 11 years. Now we see the sunrise and young people that have these tshirts that say 12 years that they. Up after that ipcc report came out. But its 11 now. That report came out in sober. Some of the over. By the time theres a new administration it will be 10. This is the thing about time, it marches on. So we just have to win and we have this really narrow pathway. We have got to get somebody coming out of these primaries who gets this, who really gets this. They have to have a track record of taking on very powerful actors. They cannot be about what they say. Has to be about the track record as well is what they say. Then we have to take back the senate and all of that, hold onto the house and then stay organized, become more organized than we have ever been. The important thing about calling it the new green deal as it reminds us of the old greendale and what we see is so interesting when you look at what was going on in this Popular Mobilization during the years of the original new deal. You think when you were winning massive victories like social security, Unemployment Insurance , regulating the banks that peoples money but relax a little bit but oh no 19351936, 1937 they went up. All of the progressive elements of the new deal and there were many elements that were not permissive. Africanamericans were excluded from a programs women and Agricultural Workers were excluded. Mass deportations of mexicanamericans. There was discrimination in the distribution of relief particularly in the south. There were also programs for africanamerican artists that were unlike anything this country has ever seen. The more people fought the more they got. That is the lesson of the original new deal and its something we need to keep our eye on. Where we are at, not where we should be, better than where we were. Time marches on and we have a hell of a lot of work to do. [applause] thanks for that. It does seem thanks to you and many organizers and leaders that the left and progressives are seeing the connection between the war on immigrants and the migration flows and the Climate Crisis that we are in the middle of. The right is also making connections. You have written about the rise of what do you see emanating from the right . We are going to get to the hopeful part. We have got to go into the fire first. The way i sort of map it is we have a climate fire but we also have these political fires on the right and they are also spreading and they are contagious. We see these connections between these figures the Mutual Admiration Society that echoes around twitter be