We are so excited to host the new book on the Climate Crisis but i would first like to introduce the executive director. Amy played an integral role in helping organize and was one of the inspirations behind the book so we will bring her up first. Its so wonderful to be here. Im delighted to introduce. The last time we were purchasing in washington, d. C. So its perfect we are here with our favorite politics and prose and im counting the days until we are able to do that again. The need is greater than ever and i hope that you will read the book and be able to join us when we protest again. Its so dark out from the smoke it looks like it is the middle of the night. It is disorienting and so apparent im almost at a loss of words how extreme the situation is. Jane fonda needs no words. We know her acting career currently with the netflix hit grace and frankie and her work on incredibly important issues. Everybody knows the actor and the activist so i want to introduce a different side, another side. Jane is a hungry learner and understood the urgency about climate and wanted to learn more so she dove in. I remember we had these climate experts breathing on the policies and one of them said i dont want to get too much in the weeds and she said get in the weeds. She speaks out and listens to voices on the front lines on the voices often ignored its been such a joy to work alongside of her this past year and see it captured in this book. I asked maureen dowd the other day what she thought of the book and she said it is an odyssey of selfdiscovery. That said great description to guide us on that odyssey from climate despair to action that we all need so much, so welcome. We also have amber with u ambero moderate the evenings program. You might recognize her from many covers of fashion magazine and her acting work and entrepreneurial work founding the cutting edge but i know amber from marching together in the streets demanding climate action. Throughout all of her work in fashion and business into and activism, shes been committed to advancing environmental awareness and very importantly inspiring others to get involved in the collective joyful work of driving social change. Shes joined multiple rallies speaking, marching. The impacts which we see unfolding on the west coast and around the world today. It is great to see you both. Im counting the days until we are back demanding the leadership. Until then, over to you to take it away. It was about a year ago when i realized we have to get out of our comfort zone and behave like we are in a crisis because we are in a true crisis. I knew the person i had to call was the director of greenpeace. I mean, is there a braver organization . I know that they embrace big, strong powerful actions that wake people up and annie is at the helm. It means so much to me we were able to get this thing going and continuing to grow. I cant wait to get to all of that and hear how it started. Thank you for asking me to do this and thank you to politics and prose. It has been an honor to march with you and to be rested and learn from you and feel so blessed to be here tonight so i just wanted to say when i was reading your book, i love tell personal this book was because you were talking about big issues we were facing about Climate Change and you interwoven your own personal history and stories and i found it so inspiring and it helped me to make it human and connect the dots so i hope others will find that. I just wanted to start by saying that. I loved hearing all the stories and people that showed up for you. Just amazing. I know youve been an activist but you were also aware of the Environmental Issues even as early as the 70s. What led you a year ago now to start a fire drill friday . I was pretty depressed because i kept asking what can i do. I did all the personal things. I cut back on meat and i have an electric car. I know thats the onramp, thats the first step. But those of us that our celebrities have a platform. How do i use my platform appropriately. It was naomi kleins book and maybe some people watching have read it. It was that book that really shook me and how she quoted greta to get out of your comfort zone and put yourself on the line. Thats when i realized. I called and said i want to move to dc for a year. Im going to camp out in front of the white house. I remember the silence on the phone and then she said thats great that you want to put yourself out there, but its illegal. We cant camp out anymore so we have to find another way and then we worked out the once a week friday fire drills. I love how you came up with that name. We didnt know what to call it. There was a documentary film crew following us. We spent the day in the room and we couldnt think of one so we were packing up to go and the sound guy said what about fire drill fridays. You spoke about feeling kind of despair and i think that we all have been challenged with feeling this despair and sort of whats going to happen coupled with whats happening in california and texas and louisiana and not just in the United States but all over the world we are seeing the effect of Climate Change. How do you stay above all of that . Guest sometimes i dont. We have a governor who just today on the news said he will not tolerate people that are denying Climate Change but he keeps assigning permits for further drilling and that is what we have to decide. When he claims to be and is a climate activist but he cant stand up to oil, many of whom have been on fire drill fridays. Its knowing how people change. I think 16 people got arrested and when we left, there was well over 300 people. Now weve been doing them for six months virtually. We had Something Like 750,000 following us which is pretty amazing. They are now doing things that really matter, calling in writing and texting and reregistering people and loving how they feel they are making a difference. That is what helps me get over climate despair is activism. What do you think back on that first rally so much had changed especially in the United States, but globally theres been a lot of upheaval but here in the United States we have seen a big summer full of protests and massive amounts of social change. How do you feel now when you think about that first arrest compared to now . Guest i am glad her than ever that i was there and that i did it and that all of those wonderful people were there with me on that first day we kept at it. It was scary at the beginning. We didnt know. There were more photographers than there were protesters. In the midst of the triple crisis we are facing now theres the uprisings following george floyd. This is an important time. Not only do we have to deal with the election we also have to dig deep and figure out who we are. Who do we want to be. We have two fundamentally, and i hope that we will, we have to change the way that we feel and function and learn to care for each other and not let these dog whistling politicians who dont care at all lead us down a dead end road which is what is happening now. But i always tend to look at the bright side. Covid didnt break us. It exposed where we were already broken. People saw things i dont think they are aware of. They didnt realize how our federal government has been so weakened and crippled. When you are facing a pandemic and a Climate Crisis, you need a strong federal government that is coordinated and strategic and prepared. People now face what happens when we dont have that. Another lesson from covids Pay Attention to the experts, the medical experts and the scientists which havent been happening. People see now what happens when you dont have that. And then i think people are seeing the essential workers, the farm workers, the domestic workers, the delivery people, all of the people that make our lives function that are missing so much and getting so little in return. We have to really fight for them not just now, but in the future so that they can support themselves. All these things that reflect on who we are as a people. I feel very hopeful. Guest thats one of the things that i have come to realize getting involved in different types of activism is that all of these paths converge. Racial justice, womens issues, indigenous issues, sustainability, even things like clothing, oil industries, clean air, everything merges. People just dont realize how interconnected everything is. Each fire friday was about a different issue but you had people speaking on different backgrounds and you collaborated with people in different backgrounds. Can you talk about why its so important that we collaborate with different movements . Guest you are right when you say they are all interconnected. The mindset that is the foundation of the United States its the mindset that people are fungible and the land is to be used and then discarded. We treated human beings and the land and nature as disposable and now we are in the far extreme of that mindset and what its given birth to. Its staring us in the face so we have to get over it. We cant just have a new politician and policies. We have to have a new paradigm that guides us into the future. Host one of the things that is so important to that shift they dont understand how we could have their future and i know you have a lot of young activists, and work with you during fire drill friday. Talk about how you didnt necessarily need to do that but you all joined together guest imagine if i started these actions on friday without ever meeting with the folks that had been there every friday for a year already. It wouldnt have worked. It is to annies credit. She knew that in order for this to work we had to sit down with the people that had already been there and that included the young climate strikers and the heads of all of the other environmental organizations that believed in action. There are some environmental organizations that are about conservation and they dont do big actions. We got the organizations together that understand and it was together that we figured out what we needed to do and a lot of them spoke at the rally. I brought in celebrities who were my friends. To introduce these people of color, these young women, these young indigenous people, people whose voices are not heard. We wanted to give them a platform and their stories were potent and heartbreaking and important. But there was one, and environmental justicenvironments particular friday. What a lineup. There was a young girl from Standing Rock and the niece of walt disney and arianna from houston in the shadow of a refinery and what it was like growing up in a place people couldnt breathe and everybody has lung disease and so forth and then it was bobby kennedy. So, it was just beautiful and made me so happy. One of the things i love about this book is when you look at the pictures, you can see how it was centered in joy and love. It was great. Guest there was a lot of support. Martin spoke and gave that speech im not sure who it was that he wa but he was so pod generous and gracious with so many people. And there were so many other incredible people that came that day, people from all over. It was just powerful. Lets talk about some of the demands that you were making on fire drill friday and some of the biggest. I dont know if a lot of people fully understand the Green New Deal. Could you give a quick if possible summary so the people listening can understand why its so important and why we need this. Guest its easier if i describe why we dont need it. A lot of coal miners have black lungs because of their work. The owners canceled healthcare for these people. They are supposed to support the workers. That disappeared so theres all these out of work coal miners who see no future, who have no institutional help. They are the victims of the transition away from fossil fuel. That cannot happen. We need to make sure that when we moved from a fossil fuel based Energy Economy that the workers and families who were impacted are trained for new jobs, where they live in their communities. Union jobs to the right with collective bargaining so they dont lose anything except now the jobs are healthy and clean. In the fossil fuel industry a lot of the workers were unionized. We had action to leave that and go to work making solar panels for 30,000 a year, 40,000 a year. So, what the Green New Deal does as a resolution, it is a vision of how to move forward in such a way that we leave no one behind and raise up. We raise up those that work in the low carbon sectors, the ones that we call essential workers and they are listed to a place they dont live in constant anxiety they could have Maternity Leave and paternity leave and they were taken care of when they were sick in a sustainable economy kind of like what roosevelt did in the 30s when he was trying to lift the country out of despair during the Great Depression and by the way, he didnt do it because he was this great guy, there were millions of people that forced him to do it and he said at one point i agree with you now go out and make me do it so they did and the same time the same people that were opposed to him, he would have killed me knowing his son was marrying somebody that lived roosevelt and my father the only time i saw him cry a is the day roosevelt died. That wasnt part of our dna as a family. Thats what the Green New Deal does. Its not just lets take paint and paint over the conservation corps. It requires changing the way we think and live and all the people opposed to it they say its too expensive, its not real is the way that they did with Franklin Delano roosevelt. But one of the things the pandemic has shown is that government can come up with money. The money just has to be used not to put us back where we were before, but use the money after the elections. It needs to go to putting people to work in a green economy. Our country is not resilient. We dont have a country that can stand up to whats coming. Look what happened in california and houston and louisiana. Our homes and schools and stores and hospitals and Healthcare Systems need to be shored up and restructured so they can withstand. Lets move them away from piping oil to clean water and places that dont have clean water. The victim of the Climate Crisis and lack of water is scary. Directly to that point talking about the lack of water and how much they are linked to the Climate Crisis. Talk about the disparity between the White Privilege. You never have an oil drill or no clean water in santa monica or shooting out chemicals for people in this White Privilege to neighborhood where you do in the low Income Housing and indigenous communities so theres a huge disparity. Talk about how link to these are two Climate Change. Guest i write about it in the book. After she got out of school and studied, she studied things like how you would choose where to put an oil rig or refinery and in school she was taught you put it in this kind of geological place for obvious reasons. There was a study that came out if im not mistaken that showed how the decisions were made where it is assumed they dont have the power to fight back and so generation after generation goes up in the situations where kids are constantly having to use in a leaders when they are playing sports because the refineries are flaring and people are dying of cancer and Heart Disease and all kinds of things. We focus on that several times with the fire drill friday. There they go right next to a home or a school. They are fighting back now and we are standing together in this fight back because that has to stop. There is one reason why those communities are so much more vulnerable to the pandemic because they are already suffering from lung diseases and things that make them very vulnerable. I know that women are also disproportionately affected by Climate Change. Many of the refugees. Generally they are the ones going out and working taking care of the children at the same time. How do you see women leading the Climate Change, this Climate Movement . Theres a lot of reasons women are in the leadership and theres also a lot of really good men that are leading. We notice month after month that like two thirds of the people there are women and a lot of them have gray hair. You couldnt miss it and i think theres a lot of reasons for it. They become a little more sedentary and there is more estrogen than testosterone. Women are less vulnerable and we are conditioned to socially to depend on each other more but its also evolutionary. It was us sitting around the campfire telling each other where the water was better overr the poison weeds were growing and then that grew into book clubs and we hang together and the way that we relate to each other is just different. We relate face to face, i to i. Its a little bit less whether they relate to each other so this is extremely important right now because the people who are in charge want us to believe that individualism is a good thing. They are trying to make the word collective a bad word and women dont fall for that so i think its one of the reasons we relate more. We are the ones that they are the children and they suffer with the Climate Crisis because we carry toxins. It affects the toxins. I cant remember the word now, but sequestered. Women sequestered toxins in our body fat, goes to the fetus and kids are getting sick in huge numbers all over the world. I want to know why right to life dont get on the bandwagon if they care so much about children. So theres all kinds of reasons women are in the leadership of this vital movement. They come up with the ideas of having solar panels to heat schools. They tend to be the ones that sign the climate treaties. Theyve also done better during covid. Guest thats right. Good point. I know you are surrounded by guest laura and elizabeth and annie leonard, my friends are my heroes. Guest host this doesnt seem like it would be connected to Climate Change but we are talking about women so now more generally driven by men but it is driven by that power and i dont think people think are connected but it is vastly connected to the war in the last eight years oil is the number one offender. Talk about how we can possibly change that. Guest i didnt realize how connected it is to the Climate Crisis. Its the Worlds Largest user of fossil fuels. This really blew my mind. The pentagon has been exempted from environmental regulations and as a result, the sites are all around the military bases. Guys are getting sick from the toxins in and around military bases that you have with the u. S. Forces did in iraq tossed into villages and they are not going to get into trouble because they are not going to be held to account by environmental regulations. Then on top of all of that, its not just the Largest Military budget in the world, our military budget is larger than russia, iran, china, north korea all the big countries combined. We have bases all over the world. Other countries dont have that many bases. We have a dozen aircraft carriers. Russia has may b maybe one. Its just ridiculous. A huge portion of every dollar in america goes to the military. Is it making us safer, no its not. What makes us safe is children who dont have asthma and homes to withstand the storms and people not worried about eating and stuff like that. So we have to take that away from the fossil fuel industry. Right now we spend 20 billion a year to support the fossil fuel industry, take the pentagon money and put it into the Green New Deal. Education, innovation, collaboration. What about water, we know water is life. The whale is an important mammal but how important they are to actual Climate Change, they sequester so much carbon like algae and plankton, we dont realize those species are actually creating and helping us with the air we breathe and keeping climate out so when we disturbed all that, we harm ourselves. Guest the ocean is one of our greatest allies. They are absorbing our poisons and it absorbs so much of our heat and as a result its becoming acidified and what happens is it supplies us with our oxygen and thats pretty scary. Whats going to happen when the ocean can can supply us with on anymore. Look whats happening in the amazon as it is burning down. Our lifesupport system is unraveling. The scientists tell us we have ten years to cut them fast and then phase out to zero. Thats a huge undertaking. Its a greater task than has ever happened before but the scientists tell us we can do it. We have everything we need except numbers of people ready to roll up their sleeves and make it happen so thats why im so committed to fire drill friday and greenpeace. So much good is being done around water. On the fire drill friday we did on water, like the water person in the world she knows more about water and what to do and she has been creating all over the world the blue municipalities in the church, university, whole city, whole country can make the determination that its going to go blue and not have privatized water. It will be a public right. We will have a system to transport it that is clean and resilient. A huge percentage of Water Management firms in the United States are worried that they wont withstand any more extreme weather events. They are too vulnerable right now. Theres so many millions of the people in the world that dont have clean water and its going to keep expanding so water is something that we need to be very careful about and we will be. We are going to fight for it and we are going to win. Host thats what the Green New Deal will do. It will fix these problems we keep talking about. Before we go to questions, i would love for you to talk about whats in store the next year and what people can do. Im sure we will address more about what people can do but what is in store this next year . Guest i dont go back to work on grace and frankie on till next year so a lot has to depend on the pandemic. Im itching to get back into the streets. I dont know what im going to do except im staying as healthy as i can and as positive as i can. Im trying to stay on top of things and im doing a lot of reading. When the time comes im going to go back out with the fire drill friday community and greenpeace and make it happen. We have to do everything we can to make sure joe biden gets elected. Weve run into a lot of people that are big bernie supporters and im not sure if they can bring themselves to vote for biden. Ive done so many interviews today but this is what annie says to them and she let me use her praise. Its better to push a centrist thafan to fight a fascist. Hopefully that will have some effect. So we have to work hard with fire drill friday and many other organizations to make sure that as many people are registered to vote will vote. I have had two Postal Worker Union and they are quite confident that the Postal Service can handle mailin ballots, but we have to make a plan. But then once the election is over, no matter who, we have to roll our sleeves up and make sure that on day number one they start doing what is needed. Host we have a bunch of questions. Sorry i have to look down at my phone. I think you kind of spoke to this actually. The first question was about a N Administration anand administrau hope they will do to address the damage thats already been done. Do you want to put a little more on that . He has ten days and we have ten years. Starting on day number one he has to do things like declare an emergency, get us back into the climate treaty and then no new fossil permits on public land, begin a gradual phase out. Theres a few more that i cant think of right now. But we are going to have to force them to do that. We have to shut down the government if necessary, but we have to force him to do that and its not going to be easy which is why we need people to read the book and sign up. Text 87787 to become a volunteer and actually do something and join this army. Host the other question i keep hearing nonvoters tend to lean left. Is the despair and hopelessness that keeps them on the couch. Guest im not an expert in why people do or dont vote. So im not sure. There tend to be liberal people who dont vote. Im not sure that thats true. Host what advice would you give for small Environmental Advocacy groups doing local on the groundwork from your perspective what are the most pressing priorities for pressing change within local governments and communities . Its important for people to realize its good to have a president we can work with in the senate and house, but how important are the governors and how important are the secretaries of state and sheriffs and boards of supervisors and city councils. The ticket is critical. You know who knew this, the coke brothers and all these oligarchs in america under the radar who created these operatives and think tanks and political organizations that little by little took over and won the state legislatures, governorships and so forth and then suddenly there they were and people thought it happened overnight but it was working silently under the radar to make this happen. Dont vote for somebody taking money from the fossil fuel industry. For people that are killing us. Host how does someone find out that they are taking money . Guest you can go into the records and find out who gives them money. Thats really good to know. And also, i dont know who all is watching, but if any of you who are watching have stock, invest in stock. Make sure they are not in fossil fuels or pentagon related investments and things like that and try to make sure that your school or church or university, whatever institutions you are involved with invests in the fossil fuel industry. Many trillions of dollars have already been taken out of the fossil fuel industry because of these efforts and it has to continue. Host have you been surprised by any pushback in the industry . Guest i havent been surprised by pushback and no, i havent been surprised. Host i had the privilege of being arrested during a fire drill friday and i had the privilege of being welcomed into the movement. How can we stay focused without burning out when there are so many disasters at the moment, covid, racial justice, the ongoing crisis of the border et cetera on the topic of literal fires on Climate Change . Guest personally, i think that its good to look at this moment as arent i lucky to be alive in a time that is so crucial, the entire future of humankind is at stake. It is a generational responsibility that we are lucky to have. You know, with every tiny little increase and warning, millions of lives will be lost. So, what a great responsibility we have to make a difference and to save lives for ourselves and our species. So, that is what i think when i look at the fires and protests, they fill me with hope. Its wonderful because of the diversity on every level. I wouldnt want to miss it for the world. Im glad that i am still alive and able to do something. Even if i couldnt leave my home and i were in a wheelchair, theres so much you can do. We talk about it every friday. And this book, every chapter is about a different aspect of the crisis. And at the end of each chapter is a section called what can i do, and its very userfriendly and very practical. So it has everything we need to move forward in the right way. Host i love how you state problem, solution. Guest exactly. Host you make it very human for all of us and i think that is what is so vitally important right now is we realize how important and connected. Guest you are talking like we are done. Host i would like to talk about civil disobedience lastly, because theres been a lot of civil unrest and we had the privilege of getting arrested i would say in a way because for something we believed we align our values and. Would you talk about your birthday is coming up in december. You spent your birthday last Year Spending the night in jail. What is the importance of yes, peaceful protests but also civil disobedience. I know it isnt safe necessarily for a lot of us to go out and do that because of covid but why continue to be vitally important and not just fight institutions to get our voices out of their . Guest history has shown civil disobedience is what works. For 40 years, we have petitioned and marched and protested, written articles, pleaded. Weve used all of the leverage that is available to us and we have not been heard. So, the next step is civil disobedience. To free india from the colonial rule by the british, Martin Luther king and those wonderful kids in the south who sat in the lunch counters to break the law saying black people cant sit at these counters, thats a civil disobedience and they were beaten for it and put in jail. Rosa parks when she refused to sit at the back of the bus, that was civil disobedience. Breaking bad walls and being willing to get arrested for it is what works historically. It changes history. It may be the only thing this does. When we started fire drill friday, and i write about that in the book, we were aiming for people who know that there is a Climate Crisis, but they dont know what to do. They are not sure what to do. We offered them something and they started coming all over the country. We would ask them have you ever done this before and the project on the Climate Communications says there are 13 Million People in america who said they would do civil disobedience, but no one has asked them. So thinking in terms of the great un asked we have to go out and ask them to join us and it is a wonderful feeling. To put your body in alignment with your values. Its like stepping into authenticity and empowerment. Its wonderful and very transformative. Host thanks to you i learned so much. It was so diverse. Host thank you so much. I think we are actually right on time. Host thank you so much and thank you to annie leonard. [inaudible] this is one of those books that is an imperative to buy. Im so honored to have you both here to talk about this. Thank you so much for everything that you have done for the movement. Guest thank you to all the people that tuned in. I appreciate your questions. Booktv spoke with republican senator joni ernst about her life and career. Heres a portion of the interview. I grew up in a very rural part of the state. The dedication, the hard work my parents taught me has carried me through so many different challenges in my lifetime, opportunities in my lifetime, and i wanted to tell a story that could be uplifting certainly. People will face challenges throughout their lifetime, but we all should understand that those challenges dont necessarily have to define us. The book is titled daughter of the heartland