Polly Leger: For weeks, I’ve been watching videos of flood damage in B.C.
And there’s this one that I can’t stop looking at.
you can’t hear a whole lot, really just the sounds of the motor.

There’s six, shivering, soaking wet calves that are crowded into this tiny, tin boat.

That’s secured to another boat, which is also full of miserable young cows. There’s only room in each boat for two people.

Brad Mueller and other volunteers in Abbotsford B.C. made this journey back and forth over and over again. Grown men in water over their knees, passing these calves from the high ground of a trailer in a barn into these tiny, little floating convoys. They rescued 50 calves this way after the November floods that swallowed southern B.C., washing out roads and forcing people from their homes.
Now take that one instance. Multiply it by hundreds of cows and hundreds of volunteers.
 

Shaghayegh Tajvidi: If you’re in B.C. you haven’t been able to catch a break this year. 
Fires. Heat waves. Floods. People have died. People have lost homes. Livelihoods. Everything. 

Polly: When fires burned the town of Lytton to the ground this summer residents headed to Merrit for refuge. Two months later, the entire town of Merritt had to be evacuated because of another wildfire. In November the town was emptied again -- this time because of floods.
All within the span of five months.
 

MAYOR LINDA BROWN:  What you are coming home to is a city that’s changed. 

 

Shaghayegh: This is Linda Brown, the town’s mayor.

 

MAYOR LINDA BROWN: You will be on a boil-water advisory because the health officials tell us the water is not safe to drink. You will be asked to put as little sewage as possible down the drains as we cannot process it. You will be asked to used as little water as possible to preserve supplies for the fire department, and you will not have an operational hospital.

 

Shaghayegh: But this isn’t just a B.C. problem. And it’s not just a B.C. story. This is a microcosm for climate catastrophe. A week after record rains overwhelmed roads in British Columbia, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia were drenched with nearly two months worth of rain in a single storm, washing out highways there as well.

 

TAPE: That’s my road. And that’s where my bridge used to be. I am not safe here.. Ten feet from this eroded edge.
 

Shaghayegh: This year has been just a peek into what a collective future could hold all across Canada-- whether or not we’re ready for it.

Polly: And this means we’re going to be forced to make really, really hard choices. And we can’t do that if no one is talking to each other.
Today: we’re breaking down silos:

 

Naomi Klein: We don't live in a time of just one emergency, we live in a time of overlapping and intersecting emergencies. And we cannot afford to say, well, we're just gonna, we'll solve climate, and then we'll deal with systemic racism and poverty and gender exclusion. 

 

Shaghayegh: We’ve got author and activist Naomi Klein, as well as Seth Klein, who happens to be a National Observer columnist, an author, and adjunct professor.

Seth Klein: The solutions that are required now,  it's not that they're incompatible with capitalism, per se, they're incompatible with neoliberalism.

 

Shaghayegh: And yes, these Kleins are famously related.

Polly: But first, how to keep in the race even when your legs feel like jelly

Julian Brave NoiseCat: We need kids to be rowdy to take on climate change. Civil disobedience is just as essential a climate solution as any form of technology.
 

Shaghayegh: I’m Shaghayegh Tajvidi

Polly: I’m Polly Leger. From Canada’s National Observer, this is the final episode of Race Against Climate Change.

***

Shaghayegh: okay! So we’re here. Episode 6

 

Polly: Test? Hellooo? Ok. Making my blanket fort. All the covers from my bed, pulled over my head. This is recording during covid. 

 

Shaghayegh: The entire time that we’ve been making this series, it’s been against the backdrop of climate breakdown pummelling Canada. Before this, for a lot of people, this emergency was playing out somewhere else. On a TV screen or in a news headline.

Polly: But it’s happening here. Those viral videos are coming from the places where we live, from your phones. And it’s not just videos of extreme weather….
 

Voice 1: They’re walking to the door.  They’re breaking it down.
[Sound of axes hacking at a door]

 

Polly: As floods overwhelmed southern B.C.,  to the north  RCMP arrested Wet’suwet’en land defenders blocking construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline on their territory. Police cut down walls of a home with chainsaws and axes. And also arrested journalists, including Michael Toledano who recorded the tape you’re listening to.

VIDEO FROM MICHAEL TOLEDANO:
Voice 1: They’re use axes found in camp to break down the door 

Voice 2: and the chainsaw 

Voice 1: and a chainsaw that they found in..

Police: You’re under arrest.

Voice 3:Don't touch me 

Voice 4: Don't touch her. Get your hands off of her. This is sovereign Wet’suwet’en territory. 

 

Shaghayegh: The climate crisis is so much more than just numbers or metric tonnes of CO2 equivalents. It’s about all these connected, overlapping issues that can’t just be looked at in isolation.

Polly: It’s everything at once. It’s Indigenous rights AND reducing CO2 emissions from natural gas AND going home to a town that no longer has working sewage treatment or a hospital AND rescuing livestock after floods.

 

Shaghayegh: We spoke with two National Observer journalists who bring these intersections to the core of their reporting. Julian Brave NoiseCat and Jesse Firempong are both in their 30s, they’re both journalists of colour interfacing with a future that can feel, how do I say this?

 

Polly: Like a hellscape? 

 

Shaghayegh: Except, we wanted to know how they actually stay in the race. But first, a little slice on what has influenced each of their work. Here’s Julian Brave NoiseCat. 

 

Julian Brave NoiseCat:
[Julian introduces himself in Secwepemctsín]

Weyt-kp xwexwéytep. Julian Brave NoiseCat ren skwekwst. Ren kiké7ce te skwest re Alexandra Roddy ell ren qeqe7tsé te skwest re Ed Archie NoiseCat. Secwecwepmc-ken ell St’itlimx-ken. Te Tsq’escen re tst7ekwen. Te Oakland re tst7ekwen. Le7 ren pupsmen ne7elye tek tmícw w7ec re Piscataway-ulucw. W7ec re Washington, D.C.

 

I thought it would be appropriate to introduce myself in my kyé7e’s, my grandmother's language, the Secwepemc language. Because of that history of the residential schools, the language that I introduced myself in, the Secwepemc language, only has about 200 remaining fluent speakers. 

And so I think it's really important, as we talk about issues of existential consequence, issues like climate change, that we honor and acknowledge and carry forward and preserve the beautiful things of this world that have been brought to the precipice.
 

I got into climate change and climate justice thinking and activism via the Indigenous rights movement. So I was coming of age in sort of the late 2000s and 2010s, when a number of very prominent Indigenous rights movements were happening.

 

[Speaker at Idle No More Rally in Winnipeg: We have a vision, a vision of our ancestors to protect the land]

 

 Julian: The Idle No More movement swept across Canada.

 

Shaghayegh: And for Jesse Firempong… 

 

Jesse Firempong: Half my family grew up in Canada, and half my family is from Ghana, West Africa. And so I really grew up learning about colonization from my dad, learning about South African apartheid and about the Rwandan genocide, and really interested in peace and racial justice. And really understanding just action on human rights and poverty as preconditions for peace.

 

Polly: For Jesse, being part of the  climate movement is fully intersectional.

 

Jesse: I think that bringing people who are concerned about climate change into the fight for justice, economic justice, racial justice, justice, for colonial violence, I think is a really important way to make sure that we all get through the climate crisis together. 

 

You know there’s been some criticism of climate anxiety being an overwhelmingly white phenomenon, while communities on the frontlines are dealing with climate grief. Because their losses are real and immediate and right now. It's very hard to also be part of the fight when you're also struggling to maintain your mental health.

 

Shaghayegh: All of this means dealing with the elephant in the room:

Jesse: How do you disengage from the tentacles of white supremacy culture? This sort of culture of urgency and perfectionism and productivity and individualism that it brings.

 

Polly: All the things that lead to burnout in the climate movement. Not just for front line activists, but maybe for you, too.

 

Shaghayegh: So how DO you disengage from that? Here’s Jesse again:
 

Jesse: Find ways to make space for relationships and building collective power instead of a lot of outputs and urgent campaign actions. So I think that that work is really, really beautiful and makes me want to stay more involved. 

You need both acknowledgement and perspective to avoid just getting lost in the sorrow or the fear.
 

Polly: Here’s Julian’s take for dealing with that sorrow and fear: 

Julian: We need kids to be rowdy to take on climate change. 

 I kind of think that you know, just as much as you know, photovoltaic panels and batteries that like civil disobedience is just as essential a climate solution as any form of technology. And it is really going to be important to getting the right policies in place and to also to stopping some of these bad polluting projects that entrench colonialism and racism in the environment from moving forward. 

 

I stay in the race by working with other people who inspire me who are thinking really deeply about these problems, who make me feel that I'm not alone in this. 

 

Shaghayegh: Polly, can I just say that you also make me feel like I’m not alone in this.

Polly: Awwwww, back at you my friend.
After the break we’re joined by two authors, activists and siblings who have also thought really deeply about these problems. None other than Naomi Klein and Seth Klein! 

***

Hi, I'm Chris Hatch, and I cover the climate emergency for Canada's National Observer. 

You can catch my Sunday newsletter Zero Carbon, where I dig into the latest climate news and ask what's working? What's holding us back? And what should we be doing about it? 

If you like this podcast, you'll love Canada's National Observer. Become a subscriber today and get 20% off with the promo code RACC. Just head to nationalobserver.com/subscribe.

 

***

Naomi Klein: I wouldn’t describe him as a taste-maker, for me [laughs]
Seth was very much like the suckup to my parents for a lot of our childhood in terms of liking hippy music. But he did get oddly cool, maybe in 10th grade. And then there was a lot of English Beat, The Specials, UB-40. I wouldn’t have admitted it, but I did actually think it was pretty cool.

Seth Klein: I introduced her to the struggle.
 

Polly: That last voice, that’s Seth Klein. He’s a regular contributor to The National Observer, and the author of A Good War, mobilizing Canada for the climate emergency. And the person speaking before him-- you know, the one Seth introduced to “the struggle”? That would be his younger sister, Naomi Klein. You know, the internationally renowned activist, filmmaker, and author of books like This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine. That Naomi Klein

 

Linda Solomon Wood: Welcome, Naomi Klein, welcome Seth Klein, great to have you both with us today.
 

Polly: At that voice,  as you probably know by now is Linda Solomon Wood, the editor in chief of Canada's national observer. She sat down with these powerhouse siblings to talk about the road ahead.

Linda: Seth, let's start with you. How do we make sure that equity is at the center of conversations around climate?

 

Seth:So first of all, we have to recognize that we need to do that. Linking tackling the climate crisis with tackling inequality is actually how we win. Because the richer you are, the higher your emissions, the poorer you are, the more vulnerable you are to climate and and more impacted by climate policies. So it means we have to insert that lens in the design of all climate policies. And to put at the heart of our climate policies, just transition policies, income supports for lower income households. But the shortest answer to your question is that's The Green New Deal.

 

Linda: And Naomi, how would you answer that? No

 

Naomi: Well, I think that we design policies that multitask. So we start, as Seth said, from the premise that we don't live in a time of just one emergency. We live in a time of overlapping and intersecting emergencies. And we cannot afford to say, well, we're just gonna solve climate, and then we'll deal with systemic racism and poverty and gender exclusion.
Because actually, that guarantees a very narrow constituency that's going to be fighting for this. Because you know, if you are on the frontlines of any of those crises, they are existential crises by their very nature.
And when you look at that, you see, not just how do we make sure that equity is at the center of this, but I think to Seth’s point, how do we build constituencies that are going to fight for it, right? Because if a Green New Deal means a better home for you and your family, in fact, a beautiful green home, much better than what you have right now, that's something you're gonna fight for.

 

Linda: So The Green New Deal offers a really bright plan for the future. And yet also, we see so much polarization in the United States. So if we're going to look to the United States, can you speak to, you know, how are we going to push this Green New Deal forward fast enough? How are we going to make these things happen?

 

Seth: Well, you know, there's polarization about a lot in politics, there isn't polarization about the Green New Deal in either the United States or here. When you give people a definition of the green New Deal, tackling those twin crises of inequality and climate and approaching it with big infrastructure programs, along the lines of what Naomi just described, it's hugely popular. More popular than any political party, it even gets 50% support in Alberta.

 

Linda:  Wow. 

 

Seth: These ideas actually are hugely popular. They are how you mobilize a public with a sense that not only are we going to tackle the climate crisis, we are going to emerge out the other end, a more just and equitable society than the one that we're leaving behind. 

But all of this is so different from our current approach, right? Current approach of our federal and provincial governments is to try to incentivize change, price signals, rebates. The problem with that approach is that they have a huge bias towards wealthier families, who can actually take advantage of those rebates instead of big public spending, like Naomi's describing where you can target the support to those who most need it. 

 

For the longest time, in Canada, at least, we have been and our leaders have been peddling a lie, which is that we can be serious about climate while continuing to double down on the expansion and production of fossil fuels. You can't square those things. And that's why we haven't seen that translate in where we most need to measure success, which is actually greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Linda: Naomi, the single biggest piece of the pie when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions in Canada is in the oil and gas sector. When you look at how deeply oil and gas is embedded in Canada's politics, and its banks, what do you think it's going to take to break the grip oil and gas has on Canadian climate policy?

 

Naomi: One of the things that's stymied us with oil and gas companies is people don't have a lot of choices if they are in the fossil fuel economy. If they don't have, you know, public transit options, if they can't afford an electric vehicle, they have to fill the car up somehow. People don't like their getting to gas companies, but they still fill up their cars. 

When it comes to banks, there are more options. And I think that we need to be organizing as a bloc. It's not just about you know, a single consumer pulling their money, but I always remember Seth's first act of political activism as as a youth was to pull his bar mitzvah money from the Royal Bank during the anti apartheid struggle. And I think that this, this kind of, but I think it needs to be mass consumer pressure on the banks [laughter] He marched! He marched over!

 

Seth: To the Toronto Dominion, God help us, as if they were that much better. I mean, I think divestment is part of this clearly. It's just more broadly about delegitimizing and stopping appeasing these companies. Why do these companies have power and influence? It's not because they donate directly to political parties anymore, that's been banned. They have power and influence because for many Canadians, they still view their economic livelihood and employment as reliant on these companies. So the more we build out that alternative, with the kind of bold and audacious employment programs that we're talking about with the Green New Deal, the more we take away that power.

 

Linda : This is a question for both of you, either of you. Throughout this podcast, we've talked about what we eat, retrofitting the places we live, the ways we get around, getting off oil and gas and the ways we're going to generate more electricity going forward. We've heard lots of possible solutions for keeping the worst of the climate crisis at bay. Looking ahead to the next 10 years, what do you think we need to do to make all of these things come together?

 

Seth: I mean, look, we don't lack for solutions. We know what the solutions are. The problem is, it's all voluntary. It's all incentive based. When you think about effective policy, I think we ought to think about them in terms of carrots and sticks. So the carrots are the public support, programs for lower income households to help pay for this transition. But our governments though, thus far have been reticent to employ the sticks. The sticks are clear, near-term dates by which these things are required, right. We know how to electrify our transportation, but the zero emission vehicle mandates are still at fanciful dates, 2035 2040, that do not communicate emergency.

 

Naomi: The characteristics are also in our own lives. A lot of us have organized our lives based on this fiction that we could continue to live this way, right? My husband's family is on the other side of the country. When we decided how we were going to live we imagined a world where distances were collapsed in a way that they aren't going to be in. They can't be.
What is the carrot? The carrot is maybe free public transit in our cities and a real commitment to connecting rural communities with, you know, innovative electrified alternatives of different kinds, right. And this is where I think Seth’s work looking at the Second World War mobilizations is a really great model. When there was a ration program, the poorest income people in the United States and Canada and the UK, actually had more than previously. There was a leveling effect. So that over consumers had less and the under consumers had more. 

One of the big lessons of this period is that the kinds of income inequality that we are living with are an absolute moral hazard for our ability to deal with this crisis, because the rich believe they can buy their way out of this crisis. You know, I've been researching disaster capitalism for a long time. And what I know is that the rich -- and here, I don't just mean the Jeff Bezoses and the Elon Musks and this sort of exaggerated idea that you can have your own space colony. I just mean like the Ted Cruz's of the world who, when an ice storm hits their community, all the neighbors start texting each other about going to the Ritz Carlton in Cancun. Because they believe that their wealth will protect them. And this is why we are in this moment of total recklessness, where we all hear the alarms going off, but the people who have the wealth and power are not acting because they believe they're safe. So I just think they have to become less rich, I think we need to be frank about that.

 

Linda: People might be listening and thinking, ‘how are we going to reshape capitalism, or dismantle it? This is taking away from solutions that are potentially viable right now.’ Naomi, what's your response to that?

 

Naomi : Yeah, I think this is kind of one of these straw man arguments, because nobody is saying, ‘Oh, we have to dismantle capitalism, before we can do anything.’ We have conversations about whether or not a capitalist economy that is based on the pursuit of endless growth is compatible with the level of emission reductions that the climate scientists have told us we must embrace. The things that we're talking about are non-market solutions. So it doesn't mean you have to put the whole economy on hold. But it does mean that we don't wait for the market to solve this for us.

 

Seth:The solutions that are required now, it's not that they're incompatible with capitalism, per se, they're incompatible with neoliberalism. You know, why aren't we spending what we have to spend to just get this job done? Why aren't we just using the regulatory power of the state to require that this happen? And the answer is because all kinds of governments across the political spectrum, incidentally even even left wing ones, accept these false neoliberal assumptions about what is and isn't allowed, and we need to jettison that we need to escape from that straitjacket. 

 

And I know I'm like a broken record on this. But that was the point of the war, right? Private sector had a huge role to play. You know, they were mass producing, you know, all the military vehicles and the planes and all kinds of things. But the point is they were directed to do so. They didn't do so out of their goodwill, or because of market signals or because of patriotism. They did it because they were told that's what they had to do.

 

Naomi: I think there is a more fundamental conflict than just with neoliberalism. I think there's a fundamental conflict with a culture of overconsumption. 

 

Seth: Yes, I agree with that.

 

Naomi: And this is where we have to have an honest conversation about what is enough. And capitalism doesn't really let us have that conversation. I think we can defer it for a few more years while we get this off the ground. But ultimately, and we have to be honest about the limits of so-called “green extraction”, you know, all of it takes its toll.

 

Seth: We don't disagree about that.

 

Linda: We've talked about the Green New Deal. We've talked about mobilizing as if it's a war to fight climate change. What do you think's going to happen?

 

Naomi: I think where I feel some optimism is that there is this incredible renewable resource that is activism. When we first started talking about the need for this kind of intersectional response, Hurricane Katrina was my wake up call in 2005. And just seeing firsthand the intersection of white supremacy, years of austerity and starved public infrastructure meeting this storm, this superstorm, and the whole thing falling apart.  The cruelty  was turning on Fox News and seeing people, black people in New Orleans being monsterized by all of the commentators, you know. And that was my wake up call. Before that I had been like, okay, the environmentalists are dealing with this. And realizing, okay, this is everything. This is just a really toxic soup. 

 

You know, when I first started getting involved in this, there was a small group of climate justice warriors who were making the connections, connecting the dots. But it was a hard sell  to the rest of the world. And now I think there is a genuine mass movement. I take my hope from that from a huge shift in the zeitgeist. But I'm terrified. I do despair. And I despair for our leadership class because they're blowing this chance. And we just can't let them blow it. And Seth is better at sort of that, he's got that calm voice, you know, he's gonna He's gonna take it home for you.

 

Linda: He does, yeah

 

Seth: My short answer to your question is we don't know. We live in a very anxious and ambiguous time where we do not know if we will meet this moment at the speed and scale that's now required, you know, soon enough.
 

You may have heard me say before, and this is where I reach into this and find some solace from this World War II story. I've written in your pages about youth and in the mobilization then and now, right.
 

I find hope in the youth led and in the Indigenous led mobilizations we've been seeing. And then I see this historic parallel. In the war, Canada was a population of about 11 million, over a million of those people enlisted. 64% of them were under the age of 21. Because the emergency was in that moment, that calling was in that moment. But what they didn't know, Linda, is if they would win. They did it anyway. But what we also know is that part of what allowed that mobilization to take off is when, in both tackling the super rich with excess profits tax and tax increases, and also starting to provide and envision the first income transfer programs and the post war welfare state, we made a pledge and a promise to people that the country they would come back to would look different and more just than the one they were leaving behind.
 

And Naomi talked about the sacrifices we have to make in the present, we do. But there's also this promise that when we come through this the world that emerges is more just, more caring, than the one that we're leaving.

***

 

Polly: We started this podcast to bring some solutions to the table. They’re definitely not the only solutions out there and they’re not enough to get Canada’s emissions to half of what they currently are.

 

Shaghayegh: And, like we’ve covered in this show, every solution has a very real trade-off.

Polly: We have this little sliver of time, less than ten years, to really hack down how much carbon dioxide this country emits into the atmosphere.

 

Shaghayegh: Every single person who we talked to for this show puts equity front and center in the race against climate catastrophe. And it’s not a winnable race unless we stop working in silos.

The only thing we’re short on is time. 

 

Polly: And, of course, political will. If you want some calls to action -- look at the money and see who has a hold on politics. Put all that climate rage and despair and put that power towards breaking down the profit motives that keep stalling real climate action. 

 

Naomi Klein: This is why we are in this moment of total recklessness, where we all hear the alarms going off, but the people who have the wealth and power are not acting because they believe they're safe. So I just think they have to become less rich. I think we need to be frank about that.

 

Ta'kaiya Blaney: climate change is not a blameless phenomenon. There are names behind it. There are governments behind it. There are corporations behind it. I didn’t come here to fix the agenda. I came here to disrupt it.  

 

Polly: That was Ta’kaiya Blaney, a water protector from the Tla'amin Nation, on what you may know as the Sunshine Coast of B.C.She was speaking to leaders at COP 26:

 

Ta'kaiya Blaney: We will outlive these empires that were built on our genocide. Our ancestors survived many apocalypses and when we talk about this climate apocalypse, you know, we're gonna survive it too, but it's gonna come from the people. [cheering]

 

[Sound of climate protesters chanting]

 

Polly: This is the do or die moment. The race isn’t over. 

And nothing about a crisis of this scale is going to be incremental. 

 

Shaghayegh: It might sound drastic... but so is what we’re living.

 

***

CREDITS

 

Polly: Before our credits take us out, we want to acknowledge that this podcast was produced out of Vancouver on the ancestral, unceded territories of  the Hul'qumi'num speaking peoples, including the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

Shaghayegh: As well as in Toronto, on the traditional territories of Ojibwe and Mohawk speaking Nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat Peoples. 

 

Polly: Thanks this week to all of our guests. You can actually find more of Julian, Jesse and Seth’s writing-- along with more coverage of the climate emergency -- at nationalobserver.com.

 

Shaghayegh: This show was written, produced and edited by us, Shaghayegh Tajvidi…

 

Polly: And Polly Leger.
Some very special thank yous to the many people who helped us make this series along the way, including:  Sadhu Johnson, James Hutt, Lorie Rand, Stephen Sheppard, Johnna Wagstaffe, Alex Thornton, Alex Waber, Mendel Skulski, Taylor Wilson, Allie Graham, Pat Kinch, Elfred Mantining and the entire Tajvidi family. As well as Charlotte for letting us turn our Airbnb into a full-blown podcast studio!
 

Shaghayegh: And Chris Hatch, Sandy Garossino, Seth Klein, David McKie, for all their early feedback.

Polly: Along with the whole team at the National Observer.

Shaghayegh: Fact check this week from Luke Ottenhof. Suzanne Dhaliwal does our promotions. Final audio mix by Tyler Gillis and the Aftertouch Audio team. Artwork by Ata Ojani. Music this week from Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks to the Parkland Institute for the use of their tape, and Michael Toledano and Yintah Film for use of their footage.
 

Polly: Canada’s National Observer wouldn’t exist without founder and editor-in-chief, Linda
Solomon Wood. Race Against Climate Change is a joint project from Canada’s National Observer and the Canadian Centre for Journalism. You can follow us on Twitter AND Instagram @NatObserver.

Shaghayegh: If you enjoyed this series, there’s definitely good news because we’re just getting started! There’s actually a lot more podcasting and videos and other forms of media production to come from Canada’s National Observer. 

 

Polly: In the meantime, help us to reach as many ears as possible by continuing to like, subscribe and spread the word.

 

***

 

Julian Brave NoiseCat:  I write a column for the best newspaper in Canada. It's called Canada's National Observer.