[ Applause ]
>> Anne Mossat: Good
morning, everyone,
and welcome to the
Festival of Dangerous Ideas.
I'm Anne Mossat from
the Sydney Opera House
and what you've just seen,
appearing for the first time
on a big screen anywhere,
is a trailer
from This Changes Everything,
the documentary film.
Which will be premiering soon
at the Toronto International
Film Festival.
Welcome to this session
on Capitalism
and the Climate,
with Naomi Klein.
Before we start, I want to
acknowledge that we meet
on the traditional lands
of the Gadigal people
of the Euroa nation and
I'd like to pay my respects
to their elders past
and present.
As well as being a full house
here in the concert hall
at the Sydney Opera House, this
session is being livestreamed.
And I know from what we've
been seeing on Twitter
that people are all around
Australia and I'm sure
around the world
tuning in to watch this.
So, welcome to all of you.
Thank you to friends at
Getup for telling everybody
that this would be happening
and ensuring that as many people
as possible can hear from
Naomi Klein at the Festival
of Dangerous Ideas today.
As you know, Naomi Klein is an
author, activist, filmmaker.
Author of No Logo,
The Shock Doctrine,
This Changes Everything,
Capitalism Versus the Climate.
And her films include The Take
and of course the
forthcoming documentary This
Changes Everything.
This outline doesn't do
justice to Naomi's career.
She has a depth of engagement
with the most important
issues of our time.
And the impact of her analysis
and her advocacy
are substantial.
You don't need me to tell
you about that impact
because you have the good
fortune of seeing her today.
Her dangerous ideas are around
capitalism and the climate.
Her argument?
That we haven't done what we
should do to lower emissions
because of the intractable
conflict with the dominant
and controlling ideology
of regulated capitalism.
And that a broader
movement of social
and political liberation is
needed before we are going
to be able to do
what we need to do.
Naomi argues that this, of
course, is not a dangerous idea.
That these are the kinds
of discussions and ideas
that would lead us
all to safety.
But her ideas are very
dangerous to the status quo,
to those who hold power, to the
political and economic elite,
and those who benefit from
the extractive industries
around the world.
Her ideas also challenge our
own feelings as individuals
and communities, our
feelings of powerlessness.
Our apathy or confusion.
And she challenges us by
asking all of us to take hold
of the power that
we have to act.
And asking all of us
to rise to the occasion
and to answer the
call of history.
Please join me in
welcoming Naomi Klein.
[ Applause ]
>> Naomi Klein: Thank
you so much, Anne.
And everybody at FODI and
the Sydney Opera House,
my publisher, Penguin.
All the other amazing speakers
who are part of this festival.
Ann, I want to thank you for
your acknowledgement of country.
Out of respect, I'd also like
to acknowledge the traditional
owners of the land, past
and present here in Sydney
and the elders of the over
500 aboriginal nations
across Australia
where, I'm told,
5000 more people are
joining us via livestream.
Oh my God.
[ Applause ]
When British colonisers
first came to this land,
they treated it as if these
nations did not exist.
As if it were empty land,
unsettled, terra nullius.
These early settlers
encountered people, of course.
It's in all the colonial
records.
But the humanity of those people
and the ancient complex culture
that they had built was
not recognised under law.
Humanity nullified.
That highly profitable refusal
to see the full humanity
of others, made possible
by crude theories
of racial superiority,
is the foundational sin
of your country,
as it is of mine.
In Canada, where I come
from, we often sign treaties
but we broke them with impunity,
so it's really not
all that different.
If our respective nations had
truly learnt from the violence
of our past, done the
hard work of change,
then perhaps it would be
adequate to acknowledge,
as we have today, what
our ancestors failed to do
that we are on indigenous lands.
And then we could swiftly
move on to other things.
But unfortunately, I fear
that we have not learnt
from that foundational sin.
If anything, it feels
like the categories
of nullified humans is
expanding all the time
and that racism still plays
a central enabling role.
Indigenous people are
still being disappeared
into your country's
prisons, and my country's,
at shockingly high rates.
Indigenous land rights
are still being denied
through various forms of legal
trickery to make way for mining
and drilling that will render
those lands unrecognisable.
And in the midst of the
global refugee crisis,
both of our governments and
many others' highly restrictive
immigration policies are
effectively nullifying the
humanity of whole
categories of people.
Denying them safe
haven from wars
in which our states are
often directly complicit.
Conflicts, like the Syrian one,
that have been badly exacerbated
by drought linked
to climate change.
And of course we are also
disproportionally complicit
in that, too.
We tell ourselves
stories to make all
of this seem okay,
as our ancestors did.
We tell ourselves
perhaps that migrants
from conflict zones
are dangerous to us,
whether because they will
steal our jobs or blow us up.
But really, we are part
of a system doing the same
thing, the same old thing.
Denying the full humanity of
others and with that humanity,
their full human rights.
Refusing to share our wealth,
ill-gotten as it may be.
This week, all Canadians
have been confronted
with the unbearable
truth, that Alan Kurdi,
the 3 year old boy whose tiny,
drowned body has
become the tragic symbol
of this moral crisis, should
by all rights be living safely
in Vancouver right now.
Instead, he, his brother and
his mother all died off the
Kurdish coast.
Alan's aunt, who lives in
Canada, had been trying
to sponsor members
of her, sorry.
She had been trying
to sponsor members
of her family to
come as refugees.
But the increasingly
hostile bureaucratic process
that my country has failed
her, and failed her family.
Desperate, and with Canada
unwelcoming, the family decided
to trust their fates to
that precarious plastic boat
and those fake life jackets.
Our government has closed
a door on so many others.
Accepting 10,000 fewer Syrian
refugees than they had promised.
But Canadians have never before
been so directly confronted
with visual evidence of the true
cost of our government's policy.
Politicians are good
at that kind of thing,
hiding the human
costs of policy.
Here I believe you call it
Operation Sovereign Borders.
That policy that sees your
Navy ruthlessly intercept boats
of migrants, bringing them
to detention facilities far
from prying eyes, run
by private companies.
Proving that no misery
is too great to turn
into a profit-making
opportunity.
Terrible things happen
in those camps
but workers sign gag orders
and cameras are judiciously
kept out.
All of which helps prevent
the consciences of good people
from being shocked as they have
been this week by the image
of Alan Kurdi's small
body on that beach.
So obscure are the camps,
that Australian migrant rights
advocates have started calling
them black sites.
It speaks to the reality
that people are being
willfully disappeared again.
Not for being terrorists,
as the US has done
with its black sites during
the so-called war on terror
but simply because their
need is inconvenient.
Tony Abbott has been in the news
a lot this week marketing his
black sites as a humane
solution for Europe.
A way, says your prime minister,
to, quote, keep people safe.
Yes, that's right.
Prison camps for
safety, from the man
who brought you coal,
good for humanity.
Up is down, war is peace.
And while I'm on the topic of
oxymorons, I would be remiss
if I did not mention the
Ethic Centre Co-Curator
of this wonderful festival.
On its board, retired
Major General James Molan,
one of the main architects of
the sovereign border policy.
A policy not just devoid of
ethics but any rational standard
but as The New York Times put it
a couple of days ago, inhumane,
brutal and of dubious legality.
Though he is a board member,
the Ethics Centre does not share
Molan's views on immigration,
I'm told, nor does it
fund this festival.
Still, given the association,
a bunch of us speakers recently
issued a statement strongly
separating ourselves from the
immigration policies Molan has
helped introduce in
Australia, particularly
because he's actively trying to
export those policies to Europe.
This is the Festival of
Dangerous Ideas, sure,
and we are all very risqué.
But it's time to say that
some ideas are just too
damn dangerous.
Especially when those ideas
are acted out on real bodies
in the real world, which
makes them more than ideas.
It makes them international
crimes.
Now.
[ Applause ]
Our statement, which was signed
by Johan Hari, Lori Penny,
Tara Gali, John Ronsen, it
wasn't very polite, nor,
as you may have gathered,
is what I'm doing
right now [laughter].
And I'm sorry, Ann.
I adore you.
Biting the hand and all of that,
and I'm a Canadian
so this hurts me.
We are polite [laughter].
We writers were scolded a
little bit, told by the head
of the Ethics Centre that we
should have raised our concerns
privately first and
perhaps we should have.
Only, that's part of
the problem, isn't it?
All of this going
on in the shadows,
out of the public glare,
out of sight, out of mind.
All of this being
polite about ideas
that just have no place
in polite company.
[ Applause ]
Now, a few of you are thinking,
this is not what
I came here for.
I came here to hear
about the book,
about how capitalism is
waging war on life on earth.
Something relaxing,
not so upsetting.
Dangerous ideas are
supposed to be fun.
Well, before anyone goes to the
box office demanding a refund
for your undelivered
anticapitalism, let me shift
to the connexion
between capitalism
and the very live debates
about migrant rights
and climate change.
Because there is a bright line
connecting the degradation
in the way we treat
human beings,
whether they are refugees
from Syria trying desperately
to reach Greece or whether
they're Greek citizens suffering
under unending attacks to
their standard of living,
bloodlessly called
austerity [applause].
And the degradation of the
planetary systems on which all
of which life depends.
Indeed, Greece is told that
the way to get out of debt is
to drill for oil and gas in
the Ionion and Aegean Seas.
The same forces, the same
logic, are behind all
of these attacks on life.
Because a culture that places
so little value on human beings
that allows them to be thrown
to the waves is also going
to allow poor peoples' countries
to disappear beneath the waves.
Because that is a threat
to today's prophets.
And then that same system
will figure out how to profit
from that misery tomorrow.
That is what our
current system is doing
and it's why I make the argument
that climate change is not just
about carbon pollution.
It's the collision
between carbon pollution
and a toxic ideology of
market fundamentalism
that has made it impossible for
our shackled leaders to respond.
While they simultaneously make
the problem so much worse.
It's how Barack Obama can
say all the right things
about climate change
as he visits the artic
and simultaneously open it
to Shell's artic drilling.
So, we suffer from this case
of bad timing and you see it
so clearly here in Australia
under your government
so in the grips of this
ideological project.
Slashing the taxes that tax the
polluters to pay for us to try
to get off fossil fuels.
Whether the carbon tax or the
mining tax, the dismantling
of environmental laws,
the totally inadequate
emission reduction targets.
Which, according to
all experts won't mean
that because there's no
serious regulation making sure
that they will be met.
This is the collision.
And the result is not
just hotter weather.
It's a meaner, crueller society
and that is the connexion
with what we're seeing
with the refugee crisis
and that's why we have to
challenge the system head on.
[ Applause ]
You know, I make the argument in
the book that we need a movement
of movements and we
need to build coalitions
across traditional divisions.
We need environmentalists
working with trade unions
and farmers with
indigenous people.
And just to prove how diverse
this movement has to be,
I'm going to quote the Pope.
Which is a bit odd for a
secular Jewish feminist.
Now, I don't agree
with every word
in his historic encyclical
on climate change.
But I would urge everyone to
read this remarkable document.
Because it is truly a
revolutionary meditation
on these overlapping crises
and how they intersect.
And it's also really
quite beautiful.
And several themes come up again
and again in the encyclical
and one of them is I think
particularly relevant
to these themes that I've been
talking about and that so many
of us are struggling
with right now.
There's a term that is used
five times in the encyclical
and that term is
throwaway culture.
Essentially, it refers
to the process
that systematically turns
the precious into trash,
that writes off people and
places as if they do not matter.
And he says that
is the same process
that is turning the process into
in the very memorable phrase,
most quoted phrase of the
encyclical, turning the planet
into an immense pile of filth.
The throwaway culture is
based on the core idea
that we can take what we want
and toss away the rest and just
because we can't see it,
we convince ourselves
that it doesn't really exist.
There are a lot of places
that typify this logic,
a lot of sacrifice
stones out there.
But there's one place more
than any I've ever studied
that brings these expressions of
the throwaway culture together.
And I think if we look at it,
it really clarifies how many
fronts we need to work on
and the need for system change.
And the place I'm referring
to is one that most people
in the world have
never heard of,
but it's a place Australians
know quite a lot about.
That place is Nauru.
I write about it in
This Changes Everything,
but I rarely speak about it.
I've never lectured
about it before,
in part because it feels
too complicated to explain.
But I thought I would
do it today.
I thought I would
talk a little bit
about that section in the book.
So, I'm just going to read
a very abridged version,
if you don't mind.
For thousands of years,
Nauruans lived on the surface
of their island, sustaining
themselves on fish and fowl.
That began to change when
a colonial officer picked
up a rock that was later
discovered to be made
of almost pure phosphate
of lime.
A German-British firm began
mining, later replaced
by a British-Australian-New
Zealand venture.
Nauru started developing
at record speed.
The catch was that it was
simultaneously disappearing.
By the 1960s, Nauru still looked
nice enough when approached
from the sea, but
it was a mirage.
Behind the narrow fringe
of coconut palms circling the
coast lay a ravaged interior.
Seen from above, the
forest and top soil
of the oval island were being
voraciously stripped away,
the phosphate mined down to
the island's sharply protruding
bones, leaving behind a forest
of ghostly coral totems.
With the centre now
uninhabitable,
and largely infertile.
Life in Nauru unfolded along
that thin coastal strip.
Now, none of this
came as a surprise.
Indeed, Nauru's successive waves
of colonisers had a simple
plan for the country.
They would keep mining phosphate
until the island
was an empty shell.
Quote - When the phosphate
supply is exhausted in 30
to 40 years' time,
the experts predict
that the estimated population
will not be able to live
on this pleasant little island,
a Nauruan council member
said rather stiffly
in a '60s era black and
white video produced
by the Australian government.
Nauru, in other words,
was designed
as a disposable country.
It's not that these
extractive companies
or the Australian government
had anything against the place.
No genocidal intent, per se.
It's just that one
dead island that a few,
that few people knew
existed seemed
like an acceptable sacrifice to
make in the name of progress.
Later, Nauru became the target
of a more virtual
form of extraction.
In the 1990s, aided
greatly by the wave
of financial deregulation
unleashed in this period,
the island became a prime
money-laundering haven.
For a time, Nauru was the home
to roughly 400 phantom banks
that were utterly unencumbered
by monitoring, oversight, taxes,
regulation or bricks and mortar.
They did not actually exist.
These schemes have since
caught up with Nauru too,
and now the country faces
a double bankruptcy.
With 90% of the island
depleted from mining,
it faces ecological bankruptcy.
With a debt of at
least $800 million,
Nauru faces financial
bankruptcy as well.
But these are not
Nauru's only problems.
It now turns out that the island
nation is highly vulnerable
to climate change.
Speaking to the 1997
UN conference
that adopted the Kyoto protocol,
Nauru's then-president very
evocatively described an image
that I've never been able
to get out of my head.
He says we are trapped,
a wasteland at our back
and to our front a
terrifying rising flood
of biblical proportions.
Few places on earth
embody the suicidal results
of building our economies
on polluting extraction
more graphically than Nauru.
Thanks to its mining
of phosphate,
Nauru has spent the last
century disappearing
from the inside out.
Now, thanks to our collective
mining of fossil fuels,
it is disappearing
from the outside in.
Nauru is a warning.
For a couple of hundred years,
we've been telling ourselves
that we can dig the
midnight black remains
of other life forms out of
the bowels of the earth.
Burn them in massive quantities
and that the airborne particles
and gases released
in the atmosphere.
Because we can't see them,
we'll have no effect whatsoever.
Or if they do, we'll just
invent some things to fix it,
as we humans always have.
We tell ourselves all kinds
of similarly implausible no
consequences stories all the
time about how we
can ravage the world
and suffer no adverse effects.
Indeed, we are always surprised
when it turns out otherwise.
We extract and do not
replenish and wonder
where the fish have disappeared.
And why the soil
requires ever more inputs
like phosphate to stay fertile.
We occupy countries
and arm their militias
and then wonder why
they hate us.
We drive down wages,
shift our jobs overseas.
Destroy worker protections.
Hollow out local economies
and then wonder why
people can't afford to shop
as much as they used to.
We offer those failed
shoppers cheap credit instead
of steady jobs and then
wonder why no one saw
that system being so
prone to collapse.
At every stage, our actions
are marked by a lack of respect
for the powers we
are unleashing.
A certainty or at least a hope
that the nature we have turned
into garbage and
the people we treat
like garbage will not
come back to haunt us.
And Nauru knows all about this
because in the past decade,
it has become a dumping
ground of another sort.
In an effort to raise
much-needed revenue,
as you all know, it is an
offshore refugee detention
centre for the government
of Australia.
There are great efforts that go
into keeping images from getting
out of Nauru but they
make it out nonetheless.
Horrifying photographs
of refugees
who have sewn their mouth shut
using paperclips as needles.
Mark Isaacs, a former Salvation
Army employee who worked there,
has said that Nauru is all
about taking resilient men
and grinding them into dust.
On an island that itself was
systematically ground into dust,
it's a harrowing image.
As harrowing as enlisting
the people
who could very well be the
climate refugees of tomorrow
to play warden to the
political and economic
and war refugees of today.
Reviewing this island's
painful history, it strikes me
that so much of what has gone on
there has to do with this idea
of the middle of nowhere.
This idea that we can just
throw away without consequences.
So, if Nauru is what the Pope
calls a throwaway culture and if
that is the problem,
then the task is clear.
To create a culture of
care taking in which no one
and nowhere is thrown away.
In which the inherent
value of people and all
of life is foundational.
Now, what would such
a society look like?
What would it mean to
fight climate change,
social exclusion,
economic injustice, racism,
gender inequality,
all at the same time?
What would intersectional,
that most trendy of phrases,
mean if it was actually about
solutions, not just problems?
It would mean recogising that
we have so many crises in front
of us that we actually
can't afford the time
to fix them sequentially.
At this late stage,
baby steps won't do.
Steps in the right
direction won't do.
What we need to do is
leap to the next economy,
to the next system now.
And since the book came
out, I've been part-
[ Applause ]
I've been really lucky since
This Changes Everything came
out one year ago almost exactly.
To be part of these
amazing conversations
in different countries,
particularly in my own country,
Canada, but also in the US.
A little bit in Europe,
about what that leap
to the next economy
would look like.
I've been in rooms filled
with incredible activists
including here in Australia
over the past 10
days, brainstorming
about if we all came together.
If we stopped pinning our
issues against each other.
If we came out of our silos.
And started really to
imagine a holistic solution,
what would it look like?
So, brace yourself.
I'm going to get specific
and propose a series
of interlocking policies.
The change may be transformative
but it's anything but vague.
We actually know how to do this.
It starts with respecting
the inherent rights and title
of the original caretakers
of our countries.
Indigenous communities
have been at the forefront.
[ Applause ]
Indigenous communities
have been at the forefront
of protecting rivers, coasts,
forests and lands from out
of control industrial activity.
And they still are, from the
Alberta tar sands in my country
to the ill-fated Carmichael
mine in your country.
We can all bolster this
crucial role and begin
to repair our relationship
by fully implementing the United
Nation declaration on the rights
of indigenous people which
requires that mining companies
and any actors have prior
and informed consent before
any activity takes place
on indigenous lands.
Caring for one another
and caring
for the planet could
be the economy's
fastest-growing sectors.
Many more people could
have higher-wage jobs
with fewer work hours.
Leaving us ample time
to enjoy our loved ones
and flourish in our communities.
The latest research out of
Stanford University shows us
that it's feasible for
us to power our economies
with 100% renewable energy
in the next 20 to 30 years.
We could have that 100% clean
economy here in Australia,
where I live in Canada,
by mid century.
Not by the end of the century,
as our leaders are
meaninglessly pledging.
If this is possible, if
the technology is there,
it means there's
no longer an excuse
for building any new
infrastructure projects
that lock us into
increased extraction decades
into the future.
That's why the iron law
needs to be when you're
in a hole, stop digging.
No new coal mines.
[ Applause ]
But more than that.
Since we are capable
of powering our lives
without poisoning anyone,
the idea, the very idea
that raises notion of the
sacrifice known belongs
in the dustbin of history
next to manifest destiny.
No new infrastructure projects.
And this is not just
about changing
where we get our energy.
It's also about changing who
profits from the generation
of energy, how it is produced,
changing our economic system.
This is often called
energy democracy.
What it means is that
wherever possible,
communities should collectively
control the renewable energy
that they are generating,
control it democratically.
Keep the profits in their
community to pay for services.
And this is what's really
been working in Germany
which is now getting
30% of its electricity
from renewables,
80% on a sunny day.
They have created
400,000 good jobs.
Tell that to Tony Abbott who
says that you have to choose
between jobs and
the environment.
But they've done this by--
[ Applause ]
They done this by taking back
control over their energy grids.
Voting in big cities
like Hamburg
to reverse the privatisation
of their energy systems
because they believe that
the profit motive is standing
in their way.
And the other principal should
be that in indigenous people,
particularly in countries like
Australia, should be first
to receive public support to own
their own clean energy projects.
So should communities
currently dealing
with the heavy health impacts of
polluting industrial activities.
Yesterday's sacrifice zones
need to be transformed
into today's super
empowerment zones.
If we generate power this way,
it doesn't merely
light our homes.
It redistributes wealth.
It deepens our democracy.
It strengthens our economy and
it starts to heal the wounds
in a very tangible way that date
back to our country's founding.
This is what climate
justice looks like.
[ Applause ]
Now, it also means an end
to corporate trade deals
that give corporations
the power to end,
the corporations the power to
interfere with our attempts
to rebuild our local economies,
to regular corporations,
to stop damaging
extractor projects.
Under these trade rules,
provinces and states
that have banned fracking
are facing trade challenges.
Germany is facing a
huge trade challenge
for its energy transition.
Being sued for 4.7 billion euros
by a private company that says
that this transition, which
is the kind of transition
that we all need to embrace,
is standing in the way
of their right to earn
profits from coal and nuclear.
We simply cannot afford to
allow trade to trump the planet.
So--
[ Applause ]
Now, a lot of people say
well, we can't afford it.
But we can afford it.
We live in a time of
unprecedented prosperity
and we just need to
release that money.
We can do it, as Australia has
the past with carbon taxes,
with higher royalty
rates on extraction.
With financial transaction
taxes.
We need to invest in the public
sphere on a massive scale
to protect ourselves from the
heavy weather we've already
while locked in.
But also because so
much public sector work
and so much caregiving
work, healthcare, teaching,
this is already low carbon work.
Artists are low carbon
workers, not just the people
who put up solar panels.
We need to embrace this.
We need to enlarge these
parts of our economy.
We need to redefine
what a green job is.
One thing is certain.
It is long past time to
declare that austerity,
which has systematically
attacked these low
carbon sectors.
To declarative that austerity
is a fossilised form of thinking
that has become a
threat to life on earth.
We can pay for this.
[ Applause ]
So, once you start talking
about this, you know,
it raises all kinds
of other issues.
Like the fact that corporations
have way too much power
over our political system.
We need to be talking about
campaign finance reform
and why elections need to
be 100% publicly financed.
We need to shut that
revolving door
between business and government.
We need to change the media.
[ Applause ]
You know, I was asked before
I came here, you know,
why it is that climate
change denial is
so strong in Australia.
And the US and the UK, and
I gave this elaborate answer
about how it is with the
frontier mentality in countries
with a strong colonial history.
But then I was thinking
about it.
I was like, well, there's
also something else.
Those are all countries
where Rupert Murdoch owns a
huge amount of the media sphere.
[ Applause ]
Now, we need to change
everything.
But you know what, everything
isn't working for us anyway.
If the only problem with our
current economic system was the
slight matter of
rising sea levels,
we'd have a real problem.
This economic system is failing
the vast majority of people
on this planet with or
without climate change.
It is a moral crisis.
Climate change supercharges
this transformational imperative
and tells us that we
cannot afford to lose.
It puts us on a firm, unyielding
science-based deadline.
It tells us to get
out of our silos
and build the movements
we know we need.
Now, I want to end
with a final thought.
I began today's talk by speaking
about that harrowing image
of abandonment and neglect
that has been filling our
screens the past few days,
of Alan Kurdi and
his broken family.
And I'm sorry that
I got emotional.
As a mother who desperately
misses her 3-year-old son,
I have found these past
days so far from home
and family very difficult.
But let's also recall that
there have been other images
and stories, too.
Tourists fishing refugees out of
the water and caring for them.
10,000 people in
Iceland volunteering
to open their homes to refugees.
Spontaneous refugees, welcome
rallies, protests petitions
from London, Toronto,
to Melbourne.
One does not cancel
the other out.
We humans are all these things.
The people who turn
away, choosing not
to see what is right
front of us.
And the people who reach
across vast oceans to help.
The people who throw away
so casually and the people
who care so much it hurts.
We are all of it.
Both sides of us are real,
but we have a culture
that systematically tries
to suppress that caring part
of ourselves while actively
encouraging the careless part.
So, the task is to build a
culture that does the opposite.
That encourages the caring
and discourages the careless.
The path is clear.
It's exciting.
It's difficult as hell.
But we must always
remember this.
Difficult is not the
same as impossible.
Huge social movements have
changed the world before
through a magical
combination of culture, theory,
spirituality, policy and law.
We can do it again.
We will be told it's
impractical, unrealistic,
unserious, making the
perfect the enemy of the good.
As if perfect didn't
leave the station
of the real Earth Summit
more than 20 years ago.
All of that.
But I want to end with
some words from Nauru.
Which is not just a prison
camp, not just a nation wracked
with economic and
political scandal.
It's also a country
looking into the abyss.
They come from Marlene
Moses, who is long served
as Nauru's ambassador to the UN.
She said this in 2012.
She was speaking in her capacity
of representing not just Nauru
but all small island
nation states.
She said this.
As leaders, we have
a responsibility
to fully articulate the
risks our people face.
If the politics are
not favourable
to speaking truthfully,
then clearly we must devote more
energy to changing the politics.
Clearly we must.
[ Applause ]
This is our sacred duty to
those our countries have harmed
in the past, to those suffering
needlessly in the present.
And to all those
who have a right
to a safe and bright future.
Now is not the time
for small steps.
Now is the time for boldness.
Now is the time to leap.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Anne Mossat: Now,
I absolutely love your
enthusiasm and I share it.
But we have a limited amount
of time with Naomi and I know
that many of you
will have questions
that you want to ask her.
Thank you so much to
Naomi for that wonderful
and inspiring address.
Microphones are in
the auditorium.
One and two are down
here and another two
at the top just there.
So, if you do have a
question for Naomi please come
to the microphone immediately.
We have about 10 minutes.
And we'd like to get through
some of those questions.
Can I also to say a quick hello
to the people who are watching
from another place in the Sydney
Opera House, the Utzon room.
Another sign of our
great enthusiasm
for what Naomi has to say.
With questions, can I ask you
to make it brief and a question
so that many of us have a chance
to contribute to
the conversation.
Over to here, microphone
number 1.
>> Hi Naomi.
You spent actually your whole
lecture talk about everything
and all the problems
you always find.
And I agree with you when you
say we have a moral problem
and we might have to
change our ways of economy
and politics and social works.
And you spent a lot of time
talking about immigration
and that's a good point.
Because when the changes
in climate do come,
because they will come,
no matter whatever we do,
if we will actually
reopen our frontiers
and borders to these people.
Because when the changes
come, it doesn't matter
if you're a man,
woman, black or white
or whatever age or anything.
>> Ask a question!
>> Yes, I will.
Give me a second, please.
Okay, I will ask my question.
My question is you said
it in the beginning,
you spent six years studying,
researching this
point or whatever.
And you use climate
to advance your ideas
about capitalism or whatever.
But, okay, my question.
What is the science behind it?
Because I haven't seen any
at all [audience booing].
>> Naomi Klein: All right.
Okay. Look, guys.
It's a fair question.
You know, I made a decision
not to spend my talk proving
that climate change is real.
I think that there have been
a lot of really great books
and lectures that
have done that.
You know, I do, you
know devote--
[ Applause ]
97% of climate scientists agree
that climate change is real
and that humans are causing it.
There's lots of great
stuff you can read
but we're going to move on.
Thanks for your comments.
[ Applause ]
>> Anne Mossat: It'll work.
Go ahead.
>> Hello. My name's Tully.
I just wanted to say
thank you so much
for everything you do, Naomi.
And that was always going to say
and then I thought of a question
and I was like, what
you do in those moments
and in your life over, when you
felt, oh my God, overwhelming,
is this ever going to change.
Is this idiocracy
that we're living in.
Like, what are some
little things that you sort
of recommend or do
in those moments?
>> Naomi Klein: Yeah.
I mean, I think the most
important thing to do
in those moments is exactly
what people are doing right now
which is get into rooms
filled with other people.
Because when we are alone, it
is completely overwhelming.
And you know, one of the
arguments that I make
in the book is that
part of the problem is
that because we have
been unwilling to admit.
That really we're dealing with
this collation of an ideology
and an ecological crisis,
we have produced solutions
that reflect that ideology.
So, a lot of what we
heard in this first phase
of the climate movement was
you can solve as a shopper.
You know, change your
lightbulb, drive a hybrid,
you know, write a letter.
But it really wasn't about
building a mass movement.
You know, maybe once in
awhile it was go to a march
but it was not that really
building that connective tissue.
And for me, the only
cure for that feeling
of being totally overwhelmed,
and I have it all the time,
is getting into rooms
filled with people
that are doing the work.
And, you know, I called
Tony Abbott a villain
and made headlines in this
country but I've also said,
and I hope people heard this,
that Australia is filled
with far more than its
share of climate heros.
There are so many amazing
movements in this country,
like Lock the Gate, the Bentley
blockade, this historic struggle
against the Donney's
coal mining.
Coal mine.
And so just plug into that.
And there is going to be a big
people's climate march time
to this UN summit coming up.
For anybody who wants to engage
with the climate movement,
the climate justice movement.
There's a huge UN summit coming
up at the end of November
and there's going to be a march
here in Sydney on November 29.
You can get lots of information
from Get Up, from Greenpeace,
from, you know, any
of these other groups.
350.org, there's the fossil
fuel divestment movement.
There's a session actually
right after this one
where people are going to
be talking about divestment
as a tool that they're using
at their universities,
their local councils.
You know, I think Australia has
the fastest growing fossil fuel
divestment movement
in the world.
And what all of this
is about is, you know,
people not standing
by helplessly just
because the Abbott
government is taking them
in the wrong direction.
But filling that political
vacuum, that failure,
keeping the carbon in
the ground, at source,
using every tool, you know,
in the nonviolent arsenal.
From going after the banks
to getting their local
councils to divest.
So, so much amazing is
going on in this country
that there's really no
excuse for not plugging in.
[ Applause ]
>> Hello Naomi.
First of all, loved
the talk and I agree
with a lot of what you said.
I just want to ask if you
really believe that the tack
that you took in that argument
is really the right way.
You mentioned nothing about
the positives of capitalism.
Probably half the people
in this room are alive
because of antibiotics.
All have been injected
with a needle
where the metal came
from the ground.
And I wonder if when you're
talking about we all need
to come together and
build local communities.
If coming towards capitalism
as you've done nothing right
and you've only destroyed the
environment, which I agree with.
They have destroyed
the environment.
Maybe a little bit of okay, this
is a system that we designed.
But humans aren't
really at fault.
It's the system at fault and
we need to change the system
and stop blaming people for just
doing what laws actually allow
them to do.
>> Naomi Klein: Well, I don't
think I am blaming people.
I mean, that's the whole point
of my analysis is to talk
about a system, to bring
a systemic analysis to it.
I think far too much of the
analysis we've heard has blamed,
you know, something
called human nature
and said we're all just
helplessly greedy people.
And I really, I'm sorry if
this didn't come across but I,
you know, I believe we
have a system that rewards
and encourages that side
of us which is real,
which is in everybody.
And discourages the sides of us
that expresses solidarity,
compassion.
That wants to help and
care for each other.
And we need to change that.
So, you know, for me this is
not about vilifying people
and it's also not about saying
that there is no role
for markets in this.
I don't believe that and
you're right that I didn't talk
about that in my speech.
And, you know, this isn't
my usual sort of pattern
because I decided to spend
a lot of time talking
about refugee crisis
for obvious reasons.
What the argument I'm making is
that the market will
not fix this for us.
We have been telling ourselves
that for a very long time
because we're so
trapped and it's so scary
to challenge capitalism.
That's not the same as saying
that there is no
role for markets.
It's just that we, you
know, that this idea
that we can just set up a
cap and trade system or put
in a carbon tax and
then sit back
and there's some silver bullet.
No, it's going to be a
much more planned economy.
Yes, we can expand large
parts of our economy
but we also have to contract.
There's going to have to be
higher taxes, more regulation.
And there's also going to have
to be large parts of our economy
that is not controlled
by the profit motive.
And that's why you have
people taking back control
over their water,
their electricity.
But that said, you
know, I admit that part
of the reason why this renewable
energy revolution is happening
is because the price
of solar is down 70%.
And that is a combination of
public investment in solar
but also the market working.
The problem is that the market
in fossil fuels is also booming.
And the market in disaster
capitalism is also booming.
So, we can't mistake the fact
that there is indeed
a green market
for that being the solution.
I quote Kevin Anderson
a lot in the book
and one thing Kevin Anderson
said, he's a climate scientist
at the Tyndall centre.
Is we have to make a distinction
between going more slowly
down the wrong road and actually
getting on the right road.
And because we've waited
so long and we now need
to cut our emissions so deeply,
it really does require a swerve.
And that kind of swerve is not
something the market can manage.
[ Applause ]
>> Anne Mossat: Question from
microphone number four, please.
>> Hi Naomi.
I just want to know, what would
you suggest as an alternative
to capitalism and
would that be similar
to what Chomsky calls
social libertarianism?
>> Anne Mossat: Another
small question.
>> Naomi Klein: You know,
the truth is is that I don't,
I don't think there is a,
you know, a perfect name
for the system that we want
and I don't think that we are.
You know, we're certainly
not talking about a return
to industrial socialism.
Although obviously the
principles that I'm talking
about here share much
with eco-socialism.
But if we look at the
industrial socialist,
the states that call
themselves socialist,
we know that they were very,
very hard on the environment.
Mao declared war on nature.
It was called the war on nature.
And we know that global
emissions have gone
down at a few different
points in history.
One was the Great Depression
when the market crashed in 1929.
One was when the Soviet
Union collapsed in the 1990s.
And we also had a
significant drop after 2008
when the financial
crisis happened.
So, you know, both of
those systems are working.
Yes, I agree with
Chomsky a lot on what
that next model should be and
the role of cooperatives in that
and new ownership structures
like the ones I'm talking about.
Germany has 800 new
energy cooperatives as part
of its energy transition and
we rarely hear about that.
So, it is something new and
I'm sorry that I don't have
like a perfect name for it.
But I did write a book
called No Logo in my defence,
so I'm not that, you
know, I'm sort of,
I'm a bit logo adverse
on this stuff.
[ Applause ]
>> Anne Mossat: I'm afraid
this is going to have
to be our final question,
from microphone number one.
>> Naomi, you point to
Bolivia's government,
that Evo Morales led
government as a social movement,
as a post capitalistic example.
Could you reflect a little
bit more on that and comment
on the revolutionary processes
that are unfolding
in Latin America?
Cuba obviously the beginning
stages of that process.
But Ecuador as well
as Venezuela.
Thanks.
>> Naomi Klein: So, I
mean, honestly, you know,
thanks for your question
but I actually think
that your question
is very related
to the answer I just gave.
Which is that many of the
governments that you mentioned,
Bolivia, Venezuela and
Ecuador really do show
that this is not just about,
you know, a shift to the left.
Because all of those governments
actually have increased their
extractive processes.
And there's a phrase that
used in Latin America now
by many social movements and
that's progressive extractivism.
To describe the fact that
despite the fact that, you know,
Morales's rhetoric about climate
change is really fantastic,
the rights of Mother
Earth, Ecuador
and Bolivia have both
enshrined rights of nature
in their new constitutions.
Both governments find themselves
in very active conflict,
now with indigenous movements
that helped bring them to power
because they haven't found
this post extractive economy.
Now, we share responsibility
for that.
Bolivia is a country
that made, you know,
the most compelling argument
for the payment of climate debts
at the Copenhagen
summit in 2009.
Korea went to that summit
and made the argument
that the world should have
Ecuador to keep the oil
in the Yasuni National Park
in the Amazon rain forest
underground because it's in all
of our interests for
that to stay underground
and protect this incredibly
biologically diverse carbon
sequestration rain forest.
And why should only be Ecuador
that has contributed very little
to the climate crisis?
Why should Ecuador bear
that financial burden alone?
They made a great proposal that
the world meet them halfway.
They would, they asked for the
world to defray half the cost
of leaving that oil
in the ground.
They said they would
use the money to pay,
to leapfrog over fossil fuels.
And we let them down.
I mean, almost no money
was put into that fund.
But I think we're still
waiting is the answer,
for that non-extraction
based new economic system.
And it's not that we
can't take from the earth.
Yes, we all have to take
from the earth but it has
to be a process that, where
we value regeneration.
Where we take and
we also take care.
And this is where I think
that sort of phrase that's
in the encyclical
of the throwaway culture
is really, really useful.
And why I spent, you know, so
much my time here today talking
about Nauru as an example as
the most sort of potent example
of these layers upon layers
of the throwaway culture
intersecting with one another.
And how we need to
shift to a culture based
on these core principles of
taking care of one another
and caring for the planet.
And, you know, that has
to be our beginning point.
And just a last point because
I think I'm getting kicked off
stage in a minute.
I just want to just
finally say that, you know,
I know there's a great deal of
scepticism or some scepticism
out there about taking
on so much all at once.
Right? You know, sometimes
I'm taken aside by some
of my environmentalist friends
and told, you know, Naomi,
climate change was already
a big enough problem.
Did you have to make it
about capitalism, right?
Now, of course I make the
argument that it's not me
who made it about capitalism.
But, you know, I do
understand the argument.
That said, I think what
we're missing is this really,
is really an analysis of power.
You know, the fossil
fuel movement is founded
on really an equation.
Bill McKibben wrote an article
for Rolling Stone
called Do The Math.
And it was based on some
research that had come
out of England, out of the
Carbon Tracker Institute
that showed that the fossil
fuel sector has five times more
carbon in their proven
reserves than is compatible
with the 2 degree
temperature target
that our governments are still
claiming they're committed
to reaching.
Even the Abbott government has
not officially abandoned the 2
degree temperature target.
Which by the way, it
should be lower than that.
But, you know, taking them
supposedly at their word.
If we're really going to try
to keep temperatures
below 2 degrees,
fossil fuel companies have
five times more carbon
in their proven reserves.
And they're still pushing
spending billions of dollars
on new exploration to
find new pools of carbon.
So, this is a business model
that is really incompatible
with life on earth, which
is why it's being targeted
for divestment.
But those reserves represent
trillions of dollars, right?
Many trillions of dollars.
You know, by some
counts, $20 trillion.
Now, obviously those interests
are going to fight like hell
to protect their business
model, to protect their profits.
And I think that there's been
a way in which the discussion
about climate change
has really not reckoned
with just how hard our
opponents are fighting.
They're highly motivated
because they're fighting
for their lives.
And the lives of
their businesses.
And what I am arguing
is that if we can come
up with these intersectional
solutions
that fight climate
change, lower missions.
But also reduced inequality,
also tackle racism,
also create a living wage.
Unionised jobs, if we can weave
together this holistic vision,
then people will
fight for that future.
They will fight for that future
because it's better
than their present.
It's better than their present.
And as far as I know, the
only way to win a battle
against forces with a
huge amount to lose is
to build a movement
of many more people
who have a great
deal more to gain.
And that's what this
is all about.
I think it's realistic.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you so much
for your response.
Naomi will be in the foyer
signing books after this talk.
Thank you, please join her
again, me again in thinking her
and enjoy the rest
of the festival.
[ Applause ]
