Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

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Rebecca Solnit: you know, so credibility, you know, having language, not just in having words, but living in a society that will listen to them, having credibility, um, consequence, uh, you know, audibility, are survival tools that women didn't have, and you know, I care about climate. I'm totally committed to it. I've kind of retooled my life to, for that to be mostly what I do. But I can't not care about feminism, and they're not all that separate. And feminism is also like my own life story, including family histories of domestic violence, intense street harassment here in San Francisco, and although harassment doesn't convey the menace and threat. And sometimes assault I faced. Feminism is my life, climate is my planet. The turning away from individual needs and demands, with wailing red-faced insistence on entitlement and endless satiation might prove intractable. But as the devastation and poison of hatred continue to take their toll, I believe that the greater preponderance of humans will turn away in innate, almost involuntary disgust. Violence, I think, is also very clarifying. That is, in a way, almost easier to deal with than the other thing that’s happened — decades of denying, trivializing the climate crisis, all the greenwashing, the pretending that they are doing what the climate requires. When it comes to a lot of fossil fuel–related entities and beneficiaries of the industry, we see delay, distraction, false promises, which are almost harder to fight than violence.

I think the fundamental role of imagination and hope is just the ability to imagine a world that’s different from what it is now. [Writer] Adrienne Maree Brown once said that all organizing is science fiction because you’re imagining something that doesn’t exist yet. But of course, it’s like, what is it that you’re imagining? I find that so many people around me are very good at imagining everything falling apart, everything getting worse; they’re good at dystopia, they’re bad at utopia.

Ariana Brocious: I love that last line and this idea of finding paradise, of finding solace and comfort and community and togetherness in the worst of times. And, uh, you write in that essay and I think in some other places about responses to disasters like Hurricane Katrina. So, how did you come to this idea that these times that can seem like the most dire can actually be, um, really powerful and uplifting and community building?

Oil companies are spending a lot on advertising that features outright lies and the hyping of minor projects or false solutions. These lies seek to prevent what must happen, which is that carbon must stay in the ground, and that everything from food production to transportation must change. Contributors include Julian Aguon, Jade Begay, adrienne maree brown, Edward Carr, Renato Redantor Constantino, Joelle Gergis, Jacquelyn Gill, Mary Annaise Heglar, Mary Anne Hitt, Roshi Joan Halifax, Nikayla Jefferson, Antonia Juhasz, Kathy Jetnil Kijiner, Fenton Lutunatabua & Joseph `Sikulu, Yotam Marom, Denali Nalamalapu, Leah Stokes, Farhana Sultana, and Gloria Walton. Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:00:18] This week, we talk about the outrageous comments made by Stewart Kirk of HSBC and the wider war that is brewing on what is now being called woke capitalism. We speak to Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua about their new project, It's Not Too Late and we have music from Mica Millar. Thanks for being here. All right, you two. So big on the outrage this week. Let's just get it out of the way when we start. Christiana, I know you've been like a cork in a champagne bottle over the last few days ready to let loose about this issue. A few days ago well actually about a week ago now that we're recording this, Stuart Kirk, the head of responsible investing at HSBC, gave a speech.

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Of the more than 20 essays in the book from writers, activists and organizers, it’s the humanity of the approach taken that is most striking. Not Too Late levels a gentler, more measured approach to social change, suggesting that commonality, the communal and community-driven action are the only ways genuine, far-reaching change can take place. That means trying to get as many folks as possible on board. Tom Rivett-Carnac: [00:25:37] I mean, congratulations on it. We think it's absolutely wonderful. So we were so thrilled. Cristiana sent it around, said and in full caps "They have nailed it with this one", we absolutely love it. So we hope everybody will find it and follow what you're doing. And it couldn't be more important, right? I mean, the research that came out, 50% of young people believe that humanity is doomed in the short to medium term. I mean, this is a generational experiment in anxiety that's having its own impact. I'd like to just take you in a different direction to talk about something that has really been worrying me, which is that as the impacts on climate are manifesting more and more, and as the hour is getting later and later, I'm sensing there's this kind of breathless anxiety amongst the general population who pay attention to this and amongst people who care about climate. There's this sense that because it's become so urgent, we've now got to double down and go bigger on all the things we've been doing. So that means that activists are getting more demanding and more angry and more people in corporations are talking more about sustainable growth and how you decouple. And this is all good stuff, but I'm sensing that a shared narrative that makes it feel like we're all in this together is in a weird way, sort of slipping away from us a bit as everybody doubles down on their bit. And I see a concern that people are spending more time arguing with each other about definitions of net zero and all these other different pieces, rather than staying focused on the fact that we can still solve this and working on the real issue. Could could you talk around that a bit? Do you recognise that analysis and how do we sort of capture and move beyond some of that to this place of hope and determination? And with that ringing invocation, it’s off to the races, as people seek out ways to dismantle things that are actively destructive as well as posit new and better ways of being. We still have time to choose the best rather than the worst scenarios, though the longer we wait the harder it gets, and the more dramatic the measures are required. We know what to do, and that knowledge is getting more refined and precise, but also more creative, all the time. The only obstacles are political and imaginative. Rebecca Solnit: [00:32:14] I think we both feel that the climate crisis demands nothing less of us than than that we make a better world. And again, just like we have the energy solutions, I think we have the imaginative solutions present. As you know, I was talking to Roshi Joan Halifax last night, and we continued after the public part to talk about how present indigenous and Buddhist and other ideas outside of kind of Western capitalism and kind of the fragmentation of the world of isolated individualism. You know, we have those pieces and I've seen those ideas move through even American culture really powerfully over the last 30 years. The fact that indigenous people who are being told that they no longer existed, they were extinct, they were obsolete, are doing so much leadership, is a sign that we do have these other visions already, giving us so much already at work already. You know, these ideas have already taken hold, the seeds have been planted and they're growing. They just, you know, one of the despondent left frameworks I constantly run into this idea we're starting from scratch. Somebody should do something. We should start this. I think that work is well underway. It's not dominant culture in an obvious way, but it's a transformation, you know, deep in people's imaginations about interconnectedness, thinking in terms of systems rather than isolated objects, responsibility, seventh generation thinking and so much more. But I should hand it to Thelma, who she lives in one of those communities in Fiji.

Greg Dalton: She does and for decades, the mainstream environmental movement has been mostly white and well off. And because of their limited perspective, solutions hasn’t always gone as far as they needed to. Ariana Brocious: But this idea that people really come together and find like a truer sense of being in these situations, I think is one that is very hope filling when you think about what future... Most likely, uh, you know, even if we do accomplish what we're hoping in terms of keeping climate impacts lesser, we're still going to have them, we're going to continue to have them, and we're going to have to find that resilience. What have you changed your mind about, and why? Various people, including the theologian Walter Brueggemann and the climate activist and lawyer Julian Aguon, talk about memory as crucial to hope. And I share their belief. If you don’t understand the past, you don’t understand that people have faced the end of their world. Things change powerfully and profoundly over and over again — change is the one constant — and then you can narrow in and focus on the fact that grassroots movements, citizens organizations, NGOs, activists — people who are often considered to be powerless, irrelevant, marginal — have changed the world over and over again.

Not So Moral Money? - link to the Business Green article Christiana mentions in the episode that deunks Stuart Kirk's presentation. You’ve probably read different iterations of the arguments towards transitioning away from fossil fuels many times over. The information isn’t new, and because of this, it’s easy to slide through the facts and figures without much impact. But the overall effect of the book is cumulative. It takes a while to situate itself, roots curling into your heart and gut, even as one’s mind is assaying the scope of the information on offer.

In concise, illuminating essays and interviews, Not Too Late features the voices of Indigenous activists, such as Guam-based attorney and writer Julian Aguon; climate scientists, among them Jacquelyn Gill and Edward Carr; artists, such as Marshall Islands poet and activist Kathy Jeñtil-Kijiner; and longtime organizers, including The Tyranny of Oil author Antonia Juhasz and Emergent Strategy author adrienne maree brown. Christiana Figueres: [00:39:34] Well, Tom and Rebecca, thank you so much. This has been so, so delightful. So, ladies, we we could go on forever talking to you and listening to you, especially listening to you because you you sing from the bottom of our heart. So thank you very much for that. Sadly, we do have to come to a close and we have a typical closing that we're not going to use today. We would like to ask you a different question. What out there or in here, either way or both, convinces you that it truly is not too late? I finally understood everything I'd written about feminism was about, wasn't about violence, but it was also about voice. So a lot of it is just understanding better. And one of the joys of being a writer that I always hoped is shared by the reader is understanding something better, seeing something more deeply, finding out something. In my book, Orwell's Roses, I found out nobody who wrote about Orwell was very interested in the fact that he was an absolute passionate gardener who took deep joy in the natural world and maybe it didn't matter to people writing those books in the 70s 80s 90s. But I think for our time it matters and so my mind changes all the time and I think we just call it learning, and hopefully having a little bit of flexibility, you know, I've learned so much. I heard W. Kamau Bell say that he would have talked about race differently had he known then, ten years ago, what he knows now, I think we've all had an incredible crash course in thinking about race, thinking about trans identities, about gender, and getting past the binary, you know, we've had, we've all learned a lot about climate. So if we're learning, we're changing, and we're changing our minds. In concise, illuminating essays and interviews, Not Too Latefeatures the voices of Indigenous activists, such as Guam-based attorney and writer Julian Aguon; climate scientists, among them Jacquelyn Gill and Edward Carr; artists, such as Marshall Islands poet and activist Kathy Jeñtil-Kijiner; and longtime organizers, including The Tyranny of Oilauthor Antonia Juhasz and Emergent Strategyauthor adrienne maree brown.A climate protest organised by the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Sunrise Movement and other groups in Washington DC, October 2021. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Our team of independent journalists takes pride in doing in-depth reporting and taking time to get it right. We're able to focus our attention on publishing impactful journalism in the public interest, and publish it for free for all to read, because we have the support of Tyee Builders. Rebecca Solnit: Yeah, and so what you're really doing is giving up on behalf of people. You're saying, let those kids starve. Let the, let those, let that ice melt. Let those storms destroy the crops of those people in Central America. Let you know we're you, we, we who are relatively comfortable, safe, affluent, and therefore powerful, I think have no moral right to give up and we're giving up, you know, to let other people die first, other people lose first, other species lose first, I don't think it's ethical, and I think the facts say there's a lot worth fighting for now, and fighting for it is a really good way to live. Christiana Figueres: [00:13:57] And well they're fighting for their own survival at the expense of the survival of humanity.