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Greta is coming
58 Plays5 years ago
Greta Thunberg is coming to Alberta. And while she’s been the centrepiece of a massive youth led climate uprising no one does this work alone. There are Greta Thunbergs all over the place and we were lucky enough to speak with a couple of amazing young Alberta based climate activists this week on the podcast.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:19
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to the Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording here in Amiskwichiwa Skigan, otherwise known as Edmonton, here in Treaty 6 territory.
Greta Thunberg's Impact on Climate Activism
00:00:29
Speaker
And, I don't know if you've heard this, but Greta Thunberg is coming.
00:00:34
Speaker
It seemed like only a minute ago she was shaming world leaders for their inaction on climate change at the UN, it seemed like only a minute ago she was shaming world leaders for their inaction on climate change at the UN, and it was just a few weeks ago here in Canada that just under 700,000 people were in the streets, with millions more around the world demanding climate action.
00:00:53
Speaker
And while Greta offers up a compelling media narrative, she's not doing this all by herself.
Youth Climate Activists: Juan Vargas and Alyssa Tonnes
00:00:58
Speaker
There are thousands and thousands of other Gretas out there, young people who are in their communities, who are doing the work, doing the organizing and planning actions and building signs and getting out in the streets and harassing political operatives and politicians.
00:01:14
Speaker
And that's what this episode is about. We are talking to a couple of real live youth climate organizers. And so today I'm very grateful to have two young climate activists in studio. And they were even involved in organizing the climate strike here in Edmonton, the one that had 4,000 people in the streets, the most people I've seen in the streets my entire time here in Edmonton in the past 10 years. First up, we have Juan Vargas, an undergraduate student here at the University of Alberta. He is a member of Climate Justice Edmonton. Juan, welcome.
00:01:42
Speaker
Hi, thanks for having me on. I'm really excited to be here. And we also have Alyssa Tonnes. Alyssa just graduated from high school here in Edmonton, and she's a member of Edmonton Youth for Climate. Hi, it's nice to be on here. Yeah, no, thanks so much for coming on.
00:01:59
Speaker
I know how we said it was all about how Greta can't do it by herself, but the news of her coming to Alberta has kind of like detonated. And I was just curious, like, how are you feeling about Greta coming to Alberta?
Alberta's Reaction to Greta Thunberg
00:02:13
Speaker
Well, it was kind of sudden to just see it like out of the blue, but I always kind of hoped, you know, fingers crossed. So I'm looking forward to it and I'm very excited.
00:02:23
Speaker
I'm also super excited. It actually made me think a little bit about climate activists that we've had and so-called famous climate activists that we've had in the province over the last few years. I know Jane Fonda was here last year and there was some controversy around that and her flying over the oil sands, but I'm incredibly excited. I think it's going to be
00:02:44
Speaker
you know really great to see her and I think it's going to be hilarious to see your own men in their pickup trucks waving their truck nuts in the air and like anger and fear of a 16 year old girl who is like very right about what she's talking about.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, I was at my parents' house for Thanksgiving. I'm just literally looking at my child to sleep. I'm looking at my phone, and it's late on a Saturday night or something. And it's like, holy shit. Greta's just casually dropped that she's coming to Alberta. And the best part of it is the giant flop sweat that she immediately induced in Alberta's media and political class.
Challenging Alberta's Climate Narratives
00:03:18
Speaker
Um, you know, we saw panicked reactions from someone like the likes of Alicia Corbella, the former UCP member and, uh, and post media columnist. Her reaction to this news was that who was funding her travel? Why is she involving herself in a Canadian election? Is this part of the quote unquote tar sands campaign? I assume her heart rate was around 120, 130 when she sent that tweet out. I mean,
00:03:41
Speaker
She was in a frenzy. Yeah, like this idea, this angry and correct like 16 year old Swedish girl is just like kryptonite to so many people out there and it is forcing Alberta's, well it hasn't forced yet, but it will shortly force Alberta's kind of political
00:04:00
Speaker
and media class to kind of confront the realities of what has to be done on climate change here because we are kind of just wandering around in a fog here. Jason, can you want an overwhelming mandate? But when you look around at what has to be done and when you do the reading and when you listen to what Greta has to say, it's like the bromides around jobs or the bromides around
00:04:27
Speaker
like Saudi Arabia or Russia or ethical oil or whatever, like who gives a shit? I think it's very much like when they were tweeting about, oh yeah, is she gonna be coming to like Saudi Arabia anytime soon? Is she gonna be going to Russia where it's like a lot more strict and a lot, a very much more like unwelcoming to like climate activists. I think it kind of just shows that it's a veiled threat. Like they're trying to instill fear in the fact that ground is coming here.
00:04:55
Speaker
But as you can see from the frenzy that they've picked up, they're the ones who are scared right now.
Climate Justice Edmonton vs Alberta's War Room
00:05:01
Speaker
And they're trying to, I guess, kind of convince us that we should be scared of them still, that they still have power, especially when they're part of the government, like the overwhelming majority of the government.
00:05:12
Speaker
I remember I read Minister Sonia Savage's message that was basically like, oh, we're going to welcome you in the most Canadian way possible. We're going to be really nice to you, but also just invokes a bunch of whataboutism about a bunch of different other countries and trying to
00:05:31
Speaker
you know, invite Greta to be the spokesperson of how great and ethical and green Alberta's tar sands and energy industry is compared to other places and then lists every place that the minister can think of. So I mean, that's what I'm expecting to hear a lot of people just saying like, oh, like what about Venezuela? What about Saudi Arabia? What about Iran?
00:05:53
Speaker
I mean the arguments used by you know, the ucp and jason kenny are arguments that are ultimately extremely thin and flimsy right like like our media here and our Media political class here is just like has just kind of shrugged their shoulders or is just happy to accept it but like ultimately the idea of say like per barrel emissions going down Is absolutely fucking meaningless if overall emissions are up. Yeah It's not just russia. It's not just venezuela. We have to do our part too. We can't be slacking
00:06:21
Speaker
Yeah, and the whole collective action problem, too, right? Like, the idea that we shouldn't act on climate because no one else is doing the exact same thing that we are doing, it's like, I'm just gonna roll my window down when I'm driving, and I'm gonna throw a bunch of garbage out the window. And it's not my problem, because if everyone, if I just stop throwing garbage out the window, I'm only removing a tiny amount of worldwide global garbage, roadside garbage, right? But see, the thing is, when everybody starts doing it, then it becomes a problem.
00:06:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean like one of the funniest things to me with all the messaging that we've been seeing from opponents of environmentalists in Alberta, at least the official quote unquote ones, is that they're just flagging everything that they're going to talk about. Like they're putting out all their talking points and they have no idea the approach that Greta is going to bring into it.
00:07:05
Speaker
So she's coming in expecting exactly what their responses are gonna be She's gonna deal with them all very efficiently or you know the people that are gonna be talking who have been doing the work are gonna talk about those things very efficiently and very well and They're gonna be completely blindsided by because of the fact that we already know what their responses to what she's saying are gonna be It's gonna be amazing
00:07:26
Speaker
Yeah, like Greta is not the Alberta NDP, right? There's a very different type of actor here. Greta coming here is also a bit of a crucible for this thing that Jason Kinney has spent so much time talking about and so much time, you know, pitching to Albertans as a as a huge, you know, thing in the war against, you know, foreign funded radicals. And that's the war room.
00:07:45
Speaker
You know, just this week, sorry, just last week, a new managing director of the War Room was appointed. And I don't know how familiar the people in the room are with Tom Olsen, but actually I'm kind of pleased that he got appointed to be the managing director of the War Room. He's an absolute failure at everything he's ever done.
00:08:04
Speaker
which is not something that you hear often. You don't normally expect praise for someone's failures, but I mean, here we are. I mean, he's just one of those extremely kind of mediocre middle-aged white men who just failed out upwards. Yeah, exactly. Right. And before we get into Tom Olson and what he's all about, let me play a little bit of the musical country stylings of Tom Olson and the wreckage. It's not like nothing I've ever seen. It's a mess.
00:08:43
Speaker
I guess I should've seen you coming Should've run far away When the devil demands attention, you gotta pay
00:08:55
Speaker
Tom Olsen and the wreckage, everyone. So, okay, so Tom Olsen is a pretty hilarious figure in kind of upper political and media circles. So he was a scab in the 1999 Herald strike that broke the union. He was a conservative political columnist for both the Herald and the Journal, where he wrote favorably about Ed Stalmak before being hired to be Ed Stalmak's spokesperson. While he was spokesperson, he launched a proto-war room
00:09:21
Speaker
like 10, 11 years ago called For the Record, where it was explicitly set up to go after journalists and correct them vociferously when they were making errors about the oil sands. And eventually he ended up getting fired from that position, because it wasn't any good at it, and he failed upwards, as we said, into being the manager of PR for the Alberta delegation at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010.
00:09:46
Speaker
Eventually he ended up in the public affairs lobbyist world, where he ended up being a lobbyist for just the real cream of the crop when it comes to clients, groups that represented landlords and payday lenders. And the kicker, the real cherry on the top, is that he was a UCP candidate in 2019, one of only three UCP candidates in Calgary to actually lose.
00:10:08
Speaker
Yeah, in the Calgary stronghold. And this war room, it's got $30 million. It's got a lot of hype behind it. But really what I'm interested in, Juan, is I've heard, I mean, I gave some money to the Climate Justice Edmonton War Room. Let's compare and contrast the two, like what's going on with the Climate Justice Edmonton War Room? We're sitting all on the edge of our seats right now.
00:10:29
Speaker
I mean, there was a meme about this that went out. It was pretty good. And the wise words of the immortal Joe from Fury Road, the UCP war room is basically just 21st century McCarthyism at this point. It's getting to that point, but it's also just like...
00:10:50
Speaker
You know, it is getting, what is it, $30 million from the government to probably fail, most likely fail. It is not foippable, so we have no idea how that money is being used.
00:11:07
Speaker
There is zero transparency on behalf of that. It is essentially a public agency, so it gets the same benefits that other public agencies within the government get without the added benefit of being favorable, so we have no idea what's happening. In contrast to the CJE war room, which I will admit I'm not as big a part of with regards to the funding there, but we are 100% people funded. Sometimes I wish I was a foreign-funded radical,
00:11:35
Speaker
because I could definitely use the money, but
00:11:38
Speaker
You know, it's 100% people funded and people here in Alberta, pure transparency and what that looks like. Sometimes we have potlucks, which are really nice. Are you saying the Rockefellers aren't cutting you like $100,000 checks? Yeah, no, not yet. And probably never, unfortunately. But you know, it would be nice. It would be nice to, you know, to get $30 million for something that we know we're going to win. But, you know, it's a completely different type of worm.
00:12:06
Speaker
And a lot of the times we have dogs. It's really nice. Pretty transparent on that, too. Big fan of dogs in the office.
Personal Journeys into Climate Activism
00:12:12
Speaker
I've seen a couple of them. Nice. And Alyssa, what are your thoughts on both Tom Olsen in the war room and the war room itself, especially as Greta Thunberg comes to town? I think there's a real opportunity for them to really step in it. See, with the war room, I kind of feel like, as one said, it's not transparent whatsoever. And that's kind of scary in this day and age.
00:12:34
Speaker
And see the thing about that, the fact that they have to obscure it, and they also renamed it to the Canadian Energy Centre. You know, I feel the fact that they had to rename it to make it more, how to say, appealing, less threatening, I guess. I think that should speak volumes about the kind of work that they're doing behind closed doors.
00:12:53
Speaker
We've got to call it the war room, by the way. Jason Kenney called it the war room for like six months. It doesn't get to be called the Canadian energy center. They call it the Canadian energy center now, but it was and will always be the war room to me. Greta Cumming kind of blew up the original script we had because I did want to get into the reasons and the motivations behind why someone like you and someone like YWAN and someone like Alyssa would start doing climate activism as a youth.
00:13:20
Speaker
And so, Juan, I gotta know, what got you involved in climate activism? Was there a moment that you realized that this was the thing that you had to start spending time on? Or was it a gradual realization? How did you come to it? A lot of things point to me doing this work now over the last few years.
00:13:36
Speaker
just like how I am informed as a first generation immigrant, how I am informed as someone who's seen what the oil industry has done to migrant labor and immigrant labor within my family, racialized labor. And that's something that I talk a lot about.
00:13:52
Speaker
on a more public facing angle, but over the last year, and it's a year now at this point, the first, the two big things. So the first thing was the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the one that basically told us we have about 12 years to make a change until we go to a point of no return.
00:14:11
Speaker
really put me in a very existential mood where I questioned a lot of big things that I was doing in my life, whether it be my aspirations to have a family, which I've thought about a lot deeper. It's not unethical to have children in the age of climate change. It's unethical to have climate change in the age of children. It definitely made me rethink a lot of my individual choices, which, you know, are granted or aren't what's going to make the system change, but I think can be important if that's the conversation that you want to have with yourself.
00:14:38
Speaker
But the second big thing, as someone who is from Colombia, who, you know, Colombia being one of the countries in the world that's at very high risk of the impacts of climate change, not just because of the fact that it's a coastal country, not just because of the fact that it's a mountainous country, but also because of the fact that it's a country that's currently undergoing a transition to peace from an era of civil war, basically. That peace is put at risk by the fact that climate change around the world is a driver of conflict.
00:15:08
Speaker
And it has a ton of oil and gas development, too. Oh, 100%, right? And a lot of it is Canadian multinationals within Colombia as well. So that's a pretty big thing there. So there's a Canadian investment in making sure that that piece isn't lasting, in my opinion. But the second thing that really activated me was in February, I was visiting Colombia with my family.
00:15:31
Speaker
And my family has a coffee farm. My uncle has a coffee farm. And coffee is usually planted in the mountains, pre-mountainous areas. And when I was a child, I would go out to these areas and they would be pretty cold. You know, it's in the mountains, it's pretty rainy, not a lot of sun. And I'm not someone who sunburns very easily, but I was there for
00:15:52
Speaker
possibly two hours and my son burnt like nothing and I had a conversation with my uncle who does the majority of the work there asking him like you know like how have you seen climate change impact impact the way in which you in which you grow and he's been working there for for decades since before I was born and his response was yes he you know the the heat is making it so that
00:16:13
Speaker
pests around coffee are more common now to the point where a lot more of his crops are being destroyed. And where the pests don't do the work, the sun is burning a lot of the coffee. So, you know, where I'm from, those impacts are being seen already. And coming back here and seeing that people just didn't really care just, you know, made me think a lot about what role
00:16:36
Speaker
I was playing not just on an individual level but also just like systematically Columbia isn't one of the world one of the countries in the world that's putting out the largest amount of emissions But it's going to be one of the countries in the world that's going to see what that looks like Up front and very soon, right? So those two things really activated me to like become way more involved than I had been in the past. Mm-hmm. And Alyssa what what was your inciting incident? Like what radicalized you?
00:17:02
Speaker
Well, I think it kind of really started a little bit before the May 3 strike. I think that was kind of like my call to action. See, I had always grown up with like, you know, like climate change being taught in schools, not really in depth or like what you can do about it beyond like individual actions like, oh, yeah, reuse, reuse, reuse, reduce, recycle, that sort of stuff.
00:17:23
Speaker
which always seemed like all right, but also what about the big corporations that are like wreaking havoc all across the world? What about like the oil sands up in Northern Alberta, right? And they never really addressed that sort of question. So for me, I never really felt like spurred to action, I guess. Like you would see the Lorax as a kid and you'd be like, okay, all right, I see the message. Now what? But I think like around May 3rd, it kind of just like hit me like,
00:17:52
Speaker
I don't know how to explain it, but it was just kind of like a call to action where it was like, I had seen like some people like prepping and making their own signs for the May 3rd strike. I had seen the post by like Edmonton Youth for Climate and I was like, wow, there's like people in the oil capital of Alberta, like all these people that are interested in attending and going out on like a student strike, like kids that are still in school, people my age, people like me, you know? And I kind of saw myself in that and I'm like, well,
00:18:21
Speaker
Protests are normally something that seems so far off and so far away and that nothing ever really happens here But I think for me it was kind of like Yeah, it does happen here. Yeah, I do have a part to play in this Yeah, I can join with everyone else and we can combine like our collective efforts Instead of just like using our individual actions, which are also incredibly important But I don't think it really realizes the extent of the problem like sure everyone can like
Organizing the Edmonton Climate Strike
00:18:49
Speaker
not litter on the ground. Everyone can like, you know, turn the lights off when they're not using them. Basic simple actions like that. Everyone can go pick up litter. Everyone can go do that. But see the thing is, a lot of it has to be like a systemic overhaul of the current system that we have. Especially with the UCP and power, but even under the NDP, I feel like, well, the government is not doing enough. So if the adults can't act like adults,
00:19:18
Speaker
who's left, and then you basically get to a point where you see youth activists like Greta Thunberg, you see groups like Edmonton Youth for Climate rise up to fill that place.
00:19:29
Speaker
And I feel like that's very empowering for a lot of people, and especially empowering for me that time. And this May 3rd action was a student strike on May 3rd, and 700 people were in the streets. And I don't think media touched it at all. I don't even think media noticed that there was 700 youth students in the streets. It was touched on a little bit, but not really that much. If you were going about day to day, nobody would be like, hey, did you go to the May 3rd strike? Whoa. It was more like.
00:19:58
Speaker
low-key, I guess you would say. And then media is like, oh, now there's 4,000 people in the streets for the climate strike that was in September. It's like, how did this happen? And they just haven't been paying attention, I think is the really easy conclusion to make, right? And I think the climate strike is an interesting
00:20:16
Speaker
kind of like moment to think about, right? This is the most people I've ever seen in the streets in Edmonton in the 10 years I've ever been here. There was what, like 400,000 people on the streets in Montreal, 100,000 people on the streets in Vancouver. I mean, this is something that I don't think our political and media class has really reckoned with, the fact that there's a legitimate moment happening when it comes to the climate movement, the social movement around climate activism, and that they are able to get these amount of people in the streets.
00:20:44
Speaker
Like the 4,000 people that came to Edmonton, that was like one of the smallest ones like around the world. Like you said, like Montreal had like over 400,000 people. So when you compare that to 4,000, it doesn't seem like much, but considering that it's like right at the heart of like Alberta, I feel like that's very like a momentous occasion that we should all be celebrating.
00:21:06
Speaker
Definitely and I think getting four thousand people in the streets I think what I'm curious about is like what were the little what were the roles that YouTube played in that effort? Like I know there must have been dozens and dozens of people involved in pulling that event off But I know you were involved even in your own little ways like what were you up to one? So I did a lot of work as part of climate justice Edmonton on the Alberta campus University of Alberta so that looked a lot like
00:21:30
Speaker
Reaching out to people reaching out to profs putting a lot of pressure on the students union which unfortunately didn't really get the results that we wanted but we got a degree of results and I think that we Started getting a lot of pressure on the students team in that that will have pretty good impacts going forward with regards to how students union deals with these issues Going forward in a pretty positive way
00:21:50
Speaker
But, you know, we're all cogs in the community-based machine that we're building here. So on campus, I helped organize a lot of the logistic aspects of what that looked like. Going over to the legislature, again, helped a little bit on the logistical aspects there. I spoke as well, but overall, just one of the many people doing a lot of the work to get students excited, get students talking, and it was impossible to ignore.
00:22:20
Speaker
that energy on campus, even if things weren't being talked about, you could feel that energy being put up amongst students everywhere. And it was amazing because I wanted to shoot a pretty conservative idea of how many people I thought would show up, especially on campus.
00:22:40
Speaker
But we had, like, 700 people on campus alone, right? Which, you know, for a campus of 30,000 students, 30,000 undergrads, and 10,000 post-grads is not phenomenal, but when you consider the fact that that's the exact same amount of people that showed up to the May 3rd strike, it's a pretty big number. And there was a point walking from campus to the legislature where I was one of the marshals, getting people down the right paths and making sure that everyone was safe.
00:23:08
Speaker
I couldn't see the beginning of it, and I couldn't see the end of it, and it was overwhelming in all the best ways possible. And honestly, I'm excited to see more of it because this isn't going to be the last step that we see, something like this. There's one of the biggest, and it shouldn't be surprising to me, but- It always is. It always is, yeah. One of the things that I keep
00:23:30
Speaker
realizing every time is that we keep being afraid that we'll have a low turnout and those expectations are shattered every single time and it's because students really care about this and students really want to show up for this and students are showing up for this and it's just it's been you know it's been really amazing to be part of these conversations to be part of this work especially when you see just how much people care and how much people are willing to you know to move to make a change on what these things are and what we want to see happen.
00:23:58
Speaker
And what about you, Alyssa, what were you up to during the strike? See, I think I played a pretty small part. I like what Juan said about being a small cog within the community-based machine. I feel like I contributed most in just mostly group effort stuff. I've mentioned Youth for Climate mostly focuses on high school students and sometimes junior high students. Actually, we have a member that's from junior high, which is actually exciting to see people younger and younger getting involved.
00:24:28
Speaker
But mostly what we were doing was reaching out to schools and like trying to organize like the strike from Churchill to the legislature, like the general march. And also during the, like the whole thing was like the week of action. We were doing the die-in on the 20th. And then what culminated in like the 4,000 people showing up on the 27th was the general strike. During the week, I was,
00:24:54
Speaker
trying to like set up like an art mural project with like some other people but that didn't quite work out. I'm not as involved with that right now so hopefully it'll be on the grounds sometime soon but it didn't really work out for then. I also helped with the land acknowledgement with another member and we brought that up and made the speech together and it was a pretty nice back and forth effort between us I think.
Youth Climate Activism in Edmonton
00:25:24
Speaker
Awesome, and you two have talked about these two organizations, Climate Justice Edmonton and Edmonton Youth for Climate, but what do these organizations do? How many people are involved? Are there regular meetings? If people are interested in them, how can they get involved?
00:25:40
Speaker
On the Klamath Justice Edmonton part, I mean like I've only been involved for so little. I thought I was checking actually a few days ago to see like how long have I been involved? How long have I been going to meetings? I've been going to meetings since April, since like the end of April. But Klamath Justice Edmonton as a group
00:25:55
Speaker
has existed for over the past two years. It grew from a group that had around six people to one where now we're getting, and 4,000 people is a conservative estimate. There are estimates that say there was 5,000 people possibly at the highest points, getting that many people
00:26:12
Speaker
moving out, you know, going from from actions like the banner drop on the high level that said no, Kinder Morgan, that was like one of the first actions to the people on the paths, which was again, another another action, an art action against Kinder Morgan. Up to now, that's how long I've been involved. So really not that long. But we do me pretty regularly.
00:26:34
Speaker
on a weekly or biweekly basis just as a general group. We have a few campaigns that were really excited to roll out that aren't public yet, but very excited to see them be public. And really the best way to get involved, I'll plug the social media now and I can plug it at the end too.
00:26:50
Speaker
is really to reach out on the social media places like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. People are always keeping their eyes on those, making sure that they're seeing all the messages that are being sent out. So I'll just share those now. And I can share them again at the end. The Facebook is just Climate Justice Edmonton. The Instagram is Climate Justice Edmonton. Again, one big one. And the Twitter is CJ Edmonton. Really great.
00:27:15
Speaker
Messaging those places you usually get people responding to those messages basically right away and giving you the information In the right in the right in the right pathway their position in the right place to get started with that work cool So I had heard of climate justice Edmonton, but Alyssa when I was reaching out to people for this episode I hadn't heard of Edmonton youth for climate. So like what's what's the story there?
00:27:36
Speaker
Basically it kind of started out like tied to CGE more so from what I've been hearing. I wasn't there in the beginning. I pretty much just joined like the first open meeting after the May 3 strike. But see the story there is kind of that we were tied to like CGE but we're trying to like break out and be like our more like independent group that's
00:27:58
Speaker
For the most part, like I mentioned, we're more focused on youth and youth activism, so we're reaching out to schools right now and we're hoping to be working more with environmental clubs and stuff like that in the future. And we also meet on a weekly basis. We usually meet every Thursday. Sometimes the location changes, but if you could reach out to the social media accounts, like Juan said, I can just plug them now.
00:28:27
Speaker
That would be Edmonton Youth for Climate on Facebook, at Yeag underscore Strike on Twitter, and the Instagram is at studentstrike.yeag. If you reach out to there, a member will reach out to you and tell you when the next open meeting is. We usually have open meetings pretty frequently, and honestly, they're pretty casual. We like joking around and stuff like that, but we stay pretty on topic when we need to be.
00:28:56
Speaker
Cool.
Climate Change in the Federal Election
00:28:57
Speaker
Okay, so we are in the middle of a federal election, though it is easy to forget that in Alberta. I don't know about that. I've been targeted for way too many political ads, even though I can't vote, so I'm not sure who's sending me those. Well, I mean, it's too bad. You'll get to vote soon, I guess, right? Yeah, next election, next election. But do you feel that the issue of climate change has been pushed onto the agenda of this election at all?
00:29:27
Speaker
I feel like it has. I feel like with the leaders debates, it has been brought up and like people have been addressing like their climate platforms much more readily, I think. But I feel like a lot of the platforms that have been out aren't the best, I guess I would say. I feel like they're not taking it as seriously as it needs to be. I don't think people are listening to like, especially like the IPCC report
00:29:54
Speaker
that we have about 11 years to basically turn things around and like fix this I don't think people have been taking the weight of what that means very again seriously if they were it would be a lot more okay we need to get this this this that you know you'd be ordered you would be more organized you would be coming up with solutions and I haven't really been seeing that on like
00:30:20
Speaker
the federal stage during this election that much. It hasn't been really as forthcoming as I would have liked.
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah, my response to this comes with the caveat that I very much exist in a very large bubble where a lot of my interactions, almost all of my interactions now, are very directly based around climate change and climate change activism around the country. But I would say that compared to the last election, the conversations around climate change have been completely radical in every single way, to the point where
00:30:54
Speaker
The idea of a green new deal or the idea of of a transformational change as opposed to a more incremental change Is one that's being at least in my eyes had more in the public in the public sphere I don't know what that looks like and I think that there are more conversations than there would have been had this work not been done But I think there there is so much to go right? I think that
00:31:17
Speaker
conversations around a Green New Deal are happening and there are questions that have been asked unfortunately not like a national debate on climate change which was one of the many things that Climate Justice Edmonton worked on as part of for example the our time campaign our time being kind of a national
00:31:35
Speaker
Group that does climate change electoral Activism, but also part of the campaign of climate. Just some and some kind of moving for a clump for a leaders debate on on climate So I think there's way more than than you know, we would have expected absolutely But unfortunately not as much as we would have wanted to see of course But I mean, I mean politics is always a trailing always trails behind culture and I and I think the culture
Power Structures and Climate Action
00:32:03
Speaker
is and when you pull people yes the the the support for action on climate is extremely high but when you actually look at the results of what of what politicians get up to when it comes to climate action the results are extremely tepid and it comes down to challenging power right and and that's what i think is fundamentally different about this moment in in climate activism world than perhaps past moments is that there is
00:32:27
Speaker
a systemic analysis and a critique of power that acknowledges that you will have to fight for it, that this will not be easy, that the economic interests that profit from turning our planet into a hellscape will not go quietly. As much as we want it to, you can't just vote it out.
00:32:47
Speaker
You're right. Yes. So like the question of social movements versus electoral politics is also kind of at the core of the work that you're doing, right? Like like you have to be involved in electoral politics as a social movement, but you can't Have your entire identity all your work everything that you're doing wrapped up in it because ultimately it's never going to do or go as far as you want, right? 100% and I mean like a lot and this is something that that was very transformational the way in which I thought about electoral politics someone was in climate justice in a few weeks ago and
00:33:15
Speaker
brought up the quote that sometimes we don't vote to get all the wins that we want. We just vote to make our enemies easier to fight. And the fights that we fight under a liberal minority with NDP backing are substantially different than the fights that we fight where to be a conservative government. And I think that the fights on the former are winnable fights, whereas the fights on the latter are ones that are a little bit more existential in nature. And I think that
00:33:42
Speaker
you know, hand in hand, that's how we get a lot of the movement that we want. And it is also through that activism that we move the idea of what is unacceptable and like generally understood conversation within the public sphere, right? Like the Green New Deal conversation wouldn't be happening and the like electoral sphere were not for the thousands of activists that have been pushing for conversation in the Green New Deal, not just through the Sunrise Movement in the States, but also through activists all throughout so-called Canada here.
00:34:11
Speaker
Yeah, I kind of agree with that. I feel like voting is more a means of harm reduction than actually changing the systems of power that are in place. But I would encourage people definitely to reach out to grassroots community organizing and start with action there because I think that's where you're going to get
00:34:36
Speaker
like the most results and the most satisfying results seeing like maybe your vote uh like if you're a more apathetic voter who's like yeah i care about climate but i don't feel like my vote is going to count i don't feel that in my district whichever party has like the best climate platform is going to win here i feel it's going to be you know something that's going to be against climate that doesn't even believe climate
00:35:03
Speaker
like the climate crisis is a real threat to humanity so when you look at that it's like well it's very discouraging so i feel like there can be a lot of climate grief associated with that so i feel like direct direct action would be one of the more meaningful ways to like get involved beyond just voting at the ballot box on like
00:35:23
Speaker
What was it? October 21st, I believe. October 21st is coming right up. I mean, I am, I think a more radical, I think a more radical politics is more possible now than at any other time that I've been alive, right? Like the neoliberal consensus.
00:35:38
Speaker
about how our society is currently ordered is kind of cracking at the seams.
Social Movements and Electoral Politics
00:35:42
Speaker
And I see a lot of, you know, anti-capitalists, I see a lot of like the anti-colonization decolonization signs at the protests that I go to. And it is, this is the acknowledgement that like climate change is not some policy issue about which we can disagree. It's an existential threat to our species that has clear interests on one side and then us on the other.
00:36:04
Speaker
And that is heartening, right? Because I've worked for, you know, E-NGOs and I've done work that is like, oh, if we can just do X or Y or Z, this climate change solution, this climate change solution, we can fiddle out around the edges of the system we have and we can fix it. I think we've all acknowledged that that is just not possible anymore.
00:36:23
Speaker
and that a more radical politics is needed to have that. And electoral people involved in electoral politics need to realize that it's the work done by these social movements that gives them the space to actually do stuff that is actually good. And realizing that these people are not your enemy, I think is key.
Direct Action in Climate Activism
00:36:43
Speaker
So for all the Alberta NDP and NDP folks out there who listen to this podcast, just know that these people aren't your enemy.
00:36:50
Speaker
Finally well, maybe not finally I think we have a couple more things to talk about but the question came up recently You know, we had an action here in Edmonton. I think last not this Monday, but Pat last Monday Yeah on the Walterdale bridge with XR. Yeah with extinction rebellion I think nine people chaining themselves together during rush hour over the course of a morning on the Walterdale bridge and
00:37:12
Speaker
I know neither of you were involved with that organizing it or being a part of it, but it did kind of get kind of centrist liberal tongues wagging. And I think I am curious about your thoughts on the action and really the place of direct action in, you know, the tactics that are used by the climate movement.
00:37:33
Speaker
So I think that I've actually spent a lot of time thinking about this because I think an action like that is so disruptive in ways that people don't want to be disrupted. There's a very big difference between nine people blocking themselves at the entrance of a bridge at rush hour in the morning versus 5,000 people doing basically the same by taking up some space on a street at noon on a Friday.
00:38:00
Speaker
And I think that when we talk about the role of disruption, and the role of disruption is something that's inconvenient, I think it plays a very, very, very important role, particularly in the time where we are now, where people are going to be mad because they say, well, if you want to get people on your side, then do it in a way that's convenient to them. I think that unfortunately, this in part,
00:38:21
Speaker
does create some enemies but i think it is also very clear in stating that there is a line between whether you're on our side or not and i think that when people get angry about actions like this yes they're going to be angry yes they're going to react but i think part of it also means then seeing who they're being aligned with right i think that it demands
00:38:42
Speaker
seeing that the ways in which they react are also very closely tied to the ways in which the government might react. And then they see those reactions of the government tied to specific actions on either, for example, having a thing like an unfoippable like machine to basically pursue climate activists, which will always endanger indigenous activists who do frontline work first.
00:39:06
Speaker
But I think that for a lot of people who see those those reactions from the government and the ensuing actions for the government, the conversation that they have to have with themselves is then. Well, yeah, exactly like I'm angry about this, but this is meant to a degree to ask me to ask myself, which side am I on? Right. And I think that people have to make the choice of whether they're on, you know, the side that that's that's doing, you know, environmental harms or the side that's doing an hour plus of like
00:39:36
Speaker
and essentially like a rush hour delay, right?
Diversity of Tactics and Intergenerational Support
00:39:39
Speaker
Which I think then leads to deeper conversations on what it looks like to really prioritize your work that much that you think that like being in convenience for an hour is more important than the fact that you're going to be gravely in convenience by climate change if we do nothing about it.
00:39:55
Speaker
Not to get all Robert's rules here, but it calls the question exactly right that There's a bigger piece that I was like thinking a little bit more about when it comes to you know different activist groups around a city or around around a region and disagreeing with tactics like I There are tactics that that extension rebellion does that I don't completely agree with I think we have very different politics in a lot of ways but I think that
00:40:19
Speaker
There's an expectation of specific activist groups to disavow other activist groups and in a way that's done very deliberately. And the example that I think of was last year in Ontario where some anarchist activists had, I don't know if you remember this, put out a guillotine at Queen Perry's, I don't remember what it's called, Queen Mary Park.
00:40:44
Speaker
Yeah, uh, but where where their legislature is and there was so much demand of other leftist organizations to completely disavow that action to completely say we're not with them Uh, they're just like the awkward like cousin or whatever, but I think that there's a specific expectation uh of activist groups to always disavow and kind of like perform a type of um
00:41:09
Speaker
incongruity between different act like groups that do specific actions and I think that That benefits a lot of the people that we're working against right this idea that like we're not like we're on the same side But we're not them right
00:41:25
Speaker
And I think when we talk about the current zeitgeist that we're in of the role that activism plays in our daily lives, I think it's really important to think, yeah, we might disagree with a lot of different tactics that a lot of different peoples do, but at what point is it valuable to disavow those tactics, to disavow those groups if the greater
00:41:45
Speaker
It's like the shared vision that we all have. Do we agree on the end goal? Yeah, exactly. So I mean, it's something that I was thinking a lot about because at that time, a lot of people really disavowed that action. But looking back on it, it's important to have actions that we see as a little bit extreme or that we might not agree with the tactics because we can't afford to act completely like there's a vision. Not to say that we shouldn't call out behaviors that we think are harmful, because that's a completely different conversation. But I think that, you know,
00:42:14
Speaker
It's more about constructive criticism and like working together with other groups so that we're not tearing each other down Pitting ourselves against each other because that's what the people in power kind of want us to do We're supposed to be working together because in the end we have the same goal
00:42:30
Speaker
how we get there might be different and we might not agree on those tactics but that's pretty much like up for like individuals and like groups to decide for themselves but i think as long as we have like kind of that shared vision like that shared goal of like a green new deal of a just transition to like a green livable future i feel like we can get along fine
00:42:50
Speaker
It's kind of like the argument between like reformation and like radical action. It's like, okay, do we want to like incrementally like eventually get there? Do we want to increase and like do a bunch of actions to like force the government's hand to like force the
00:43:10
Speaker
the system of power or do we want to do more covert actions? Do we want to rely on electoral politics? I think it's more of a philosophical debate that we can have among ourselves, but I think in the end,
00:43:27
Speaker
Everybody gets to like choose that for themselves and I think we shouldn't really be wasting time, you know Just having endless discussions about things. It's good to talk about and it's good to have like Like to call out people on like problematic behavior sure, but I think that we need to like
00:43:43
Speaker
mostly be focusing on these actions. We can have like responses to that, but I don't think that should take up like the main part of the conversation. I think it should be like, okay, is this effective? Is this not, do we want to do this? Okay, no. And then go like our ways from there and collaborate when we can and collaborate in the ways that make sense for us and our groups. Yeah, I think it's important to acknowledge that any social movement, any successful social movement,
00:44:10
Speaker
requires a diversity of tactics, all the way from the most milquetoast electoral politics bullshit to chaining yourself together or being super disruptive to the way the system is working or the economic system is working.
00:44:25
Speaker
And there's just never been any successful social movement ever that did not disrupt society in some way. Like go back, you know, suffragettes, unions, Indian independence, black civil rights, I don't know more, act up and AIDS activism. Like these things could not have been as successful if they were.
00:44:45
Speaker
if they did not actively disrupt society and so it's also important that to know to realize that there are honest disagreements within a movement and that it's important to have like those are the way hashing out those disagreements is important.
00:44:59
Speaker
But it's also important to not just use your platform to just shit on people who are doing stuff that you don't necessarily agree with, right? Okay, I mean, that's a very important question, and I'm super glad that we were able to talk about it. Finally, I kind of want to end on a bit of an upbeat note. Okay, so this is a question that kind of bedevils all social movements too, right? Is this intergenerational question of how do the people who have the energy and the time and the...
00:45:26
Speaker
the ability to actually go out and do a lot of this work, how do the people who are older than them support them? I think it's a real easy trope for liberals and centrists to just look at Greta Thunberg and the climate strike and the climate march is happening and be like, oh, well, the kids got this, and not actually do anything to support the work that's being done.
00:45:48
Speaker
And I think it's important to even just place ourselves on a generational scale, right? Like I'm 36 years old. I'm technically a millennial. I'm an older millennial. Like I have a young child. I think Juan, you're probably like a young millennial. Yeah, university student, that kind of thing. University student. And you grew up in like medicine hat too, which kind of like
00:46:06
Speaker
Culturally yeah, I mean like it's interesting because part of my experience is like I have a very different experiences growing up as like a first-generation immigrant who didn't have the same access to Media as people my age did so like a lot of the things that that came to me Came to me much later than to other people my age specifically when it comes to you know to media and I think that would be different a different
00:46:30
Speaker
than to me who is like white and has that kind of sort of privilege and like I'm 17 right now I can't vote in this election guys so it's that kind of thing so like I'd be more of a zoomer but there's like a little bit of overlap but I think generations are fake but yeah generations are fake but sometimes the distinctions are important like within like cultural attitudes I guess you could say it yeah
00:46:55
Speaker
And the question is, is like, how do I help you like even I'm 36 years old, I don't have a ton of access, I don't have a ton of power or money in my disposal, but I have more than you two do. And it's a question of how do you build solidarity between those groups? And how do we
00:47:11
Speaker
How do we help you, not even just access to money or connections or power or whatever, but it's even just the experience that we have. Organizing itself is an extremely cringy activity that you are just going to fuck up all the time at, right? I've been doing it for however many years longer than you have been doing it. I would not wish anyone to do the stupid cringy shit that I did when I was 10 years younger.
00:47:32
Speaker
And so, I mean I don't have an answer here, but I am curious as to how do we build that cross-generational solidarity and kind of knowledge transmission within the activist community.
00:47:44
Speaker
Um, see I kind of, I kind of feel different about people who have been like kind of doing the work like before I was even born versus like as you said like the centrists and the liberals out there, the people who are like especially like the useless centrists as I as I've heard someone say once. I think that's an interesting phrase because like a lot of people are like even now somehow still find themselves to be on the fence.
00:48:08
Speaker
which I find interesting in this day of information and ready access to like the internet and to like different points of view.
Indigenous Justice and Climate Activism
00:48:20
Speaker
But see the thing is, I think with that, a lot of people, as you said, like they don't realize that, you know, like, no, the kids don't got this. The kids are doing this because you didn't get this.
00:48:34
Speaker
It's like kind of like a generational torch that was passed down. But instead of just like passing it off cleanly, you're kind of like accidentally lighting some bits of them on fire and you're like, oh, well, sorry, your clothes on fire. I guess that's your problem now. And it's like, well, I didn't ask for this, but I guess I'll put the fire out since it seems to be spreading to you and everyone else too. Like the fire being like the climate crisis, obviously. That was like a bad metaphor. But with that, it's kind of like
00:49:03
Speaker
Yeah, there are people who do have like more ready access to resist who.
00:49:08
Speaker
to resources who do have more privilege than like youth and especially like youth, like people of color or like indigenous folks who are on the front lines. And I think that's like good to address in the fact that a lot of, like, as I said, a lot of this comes down to we need to have that intergenerational support. It can't just be the youth who are doing this because we're the ones like taking time of school. A lot of people criticize us for like,
00:49:38
Speaker
Oh, like, why aren't you in school? Well, it's because I would rather like devote my time to this and then focus on my homework later, that sort of thing. Um, I'm not sure how, how to like phrase it, but basically it's like,
00:49:55
Speaker
We can't vote. We can't even do like that much, but we want to like affect change in the ways that we are able to. And I think a lot of people at the very least should like come out and join us, come out and like be in support of us. So when like Greta comes to Alberta, you don't just shit on her because like, what does a 16 year old know? You listen to her, you listen to the people who have been doing this work.
00:50:22
Speaker
in Alberta who are not foreign funded from Alberta, you listen to them, you hear what they're saying and you go and take action with them. You hold hands and you like support and you do the whole kumbaya thing. Yeah, I really love this question because I think it can go in so many different directions. I didn't get into climate justice work
00:50:49
Speaker
to personally get something out of it. I think that what I want out of climate justice work is a livable world. And I think that the reason for, a key reason for why I got involved with Climate Justice Edmonton is that a lot of the work that Climate Justice Edmonton does is that it
00:51:05
Speaker
It just recognizes at its core that a lot of the work that is to be done with climate justice needs to be, for example, migrant justice, needs to be racial justice, it needs to be gender justice, labor justice. But I think most vital for the place where we are is indigenous justice.
00:51:25
Speaker
And I think when we look back at the work that informs this work, this work isn't possible without the previous work and the previous generations of anti-colonial resistance from indigenous peoples, right? Given that- It's like the building blocks where you can, if you don't have a solid foundation, you're not gonna be able to build your house. You need that background support. You need that solid foundation. You need the work of others to be able to continue the work that we're doing today. And it needs to address
00:51:54
Speaker
different facets that come under the whole umbrella of what the climate crisis involves. It really brings up the question, what does climate justice look like? Yeah, exactly. For as long as there's been resistance to colonial violence, that same resistance has also been resistance to environmental degradation. I can't do this work without recognizing that
00:52:23
Speaker
I have come to this place from the patience of indigenous peoples who have shown me what it looks like to think about like the ways in which we're repairing relations and forming new relations and what that looks like, right? I work not just to ensure that there's a world that we can live in, but also to make sure that no one gets left behind in the work and what that looks like. So then what it looks like to me to get intergenerational research sharing
00:52:50
Speaker
is really just to get people who have resources and who have wealth to think about first of all in what ways has that wealth been amassed in a settler state so always tied to a certain degree of environmental violence and in what ways does that then inform the responsibilities that that wealth means to indigenous people. So what I mean by that is that
00:53:14
Speaker
intergenerational wealth isn't just gained just like independently of of that colonial violence it also means that one of the ways in which that needs to be repaired is by giving not only resources to indigenous peoples who are working on the front lines but also looks like giving the land back to indigenous peoples to me climate justice can't start to happen when we actually start having genuine conversations or what it looks like to take care of the land and when we start recognizing that like
00:53:43
Speaker
the people that have been taking care of this land for as long as there's been an environmental issue have been indigenous peoples. So when we talk about intergenerational wealth, that often also looks like the inheritance of land as one of the main ways in which wealth is amassed. So for people out there who have a family plot,
00:54:07
Speaker
And who aren't sure what they're going to do with it, but they know that they're going to inherit it. My request to you is consider giving it back to indigenous peoples. Right. That's where it came from. Exactly. Right. So, like, you know, the conversation of land back obviously is not one that I'm an expert on since I'm not an indigenous person. But.
00:54:24
Speaker
If we are to recognize that the history of environmental degradation on this land is tied to the history of colonization, then we can't separate those fights, right? And the part of the conversation then between generations isn't just how are you giving intergenerational wealth to where it needs to go. It's also like, where is that a mass? And where it's a mass ends up on the land and that land needs to go back for those fights to actually start to happen.
00:54:52
Speaker
Mm
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:54:53
Speaker
-hmm. I think it's a fantastic place to end it Juan. Thank you so much and Alyssa Thank you so much for being on the podcast. It is been a fantastic conversation. Thanks so much for having us on. It was great. Thank you Yeah, this is the end of the show. So again give your give your plugs for your various organizations Whoever's first to their to their phone. Yeah Always the youth on their phones. Let me find it here. There we go. Okay, so I
00:55:21
Speaker
Gotta follow Edmonton Youth for Climate on Facebook, at YEGG underscore strike on Twitter, and the Instagram is at students strike YEGG. So for Facebook, again, it's Climate Justice Edmonton. On Instagram, it's Climate Justice Edmonton, all one big username. On Twitter, it's CJEdmonton. If you see me around, say hi. And then you get it. Oh, and I'd love for people to say hi to me too. Please, I'm always up for talking. And if you want to just DM any of these accounts that we just
00:55:50
Speaker
unload it onto you guys that would be wonderful the people who like run the accounts are like from our groups and they will get back to you like
00:55:58
Speaker
So quick, it's amazing. Awesome. Okay, well, I mean, thanks so much again to Alyssa and Juan for coming on the pod. That's it for this episode of the podcast. If you like what Progress Alberta does, go out there and smash that like button. Also share the podcast, text it to your friends, post it on Facebook, post it on whatever social media network you use. Reviews are actually really helpful. So if you're on Apple Podcasts, reviews, not just five stars, but an actual written review would actually really help.
00:56:28
Speaker
And if you like this podcast and you want to support what we do, thank you. And you can go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons, put in your credit card and give us a small amount of money every month. Five dollars goes a long way. We've got 200 other folks who do this and it's really key to us continuing to put out this product. So thank you so much to our existing donors. And if you do want to hear more of this podcast, you do like it, you want to support it, go to progressreport.ca slash patrons, become a patron.
00:56:55
Speaker
Also, if you have any notes, thoughts, or comments, either you think I need to hear, I'm on Twitter at Duncan Kinney, and you can reach me by email at DuncanK at ProgressAboarda.ca. Thanks so much to Cosmic Family Communist for the amazing theme. Thanks so much for listening, and goodbye. Bye. Bye.