>> next, naomi kline argues that climate change will never be addressed properly until the u.s. gets rid of the free market capitalist system which she says created and continues to drive the problem today. after her ranks on the book, ms. kline discusses the issue with a panel of environmental and labor activists. bro duesed by bill mcgiven. [applause] >> well, thank you much. this is really important and interesting night, and so good to have clay get us going in the right spirit. really not just for tonight but for this whole weekend that's

coming up. there's going to be talk and ceremony and things for the next couple of days, and then on sunday, we're going to march in record numbers. the reports coming in are amazing. as of sometime this afternoon there were more than 500 buses of people heading toward new york city. this is going to be not just the largest climate demonstration there ever was but it's going to be the biggest political gathering of any kind in this country, and a great many years, and then the next day, and the next morning, people will be down on wall street, flooding wall street, and that will be great and powerful, and -- [applause] >> earlier today a reporter asked me, why are you doing all this? and i said, because we have

really -- have to?÷ give naomi's book a great launch. and this is the greatest book -- authors are forever complaining about how their books don't get -- a publisher hasn't done enough -- 200,000 people coming to new york for your book launch. and in this case, it is entirely appropriate because this is a really, really important book. its title is, i think, exactly right. i think this book will go a long ways towards changing things. and i think that's because uniquely, naomi has been able to realize something. it's hard to grasp, which is that climate change is not sort of one more problem on a list of problems that we need to tick off and do something about.

it's a lens through which to understand the world we live in now. it's a wayzo of grasping what it is that everything adds up to. the power relationships on our planet. the way that wealth and power are distributed. that are all reflected now in very cubic meter of air around and what we need to change because we can't change those

basic numbers without changing an awful lot else, and naomi, no surprise, she is the great thorough thinker of our time. the author of two previous -- the most important books of political and economic thinking that we have yet had. no surprise that she has dug as deep as she could and the result is a spectacular, spectacular book that will teach you a great deal as you read it. she's going to be signing copies of it afterwards. very, very important to get the signature of an author in a book. i must tell you. but in this carm2ñ actually, don't just take it home and put it on the shelf, even if you know a lot about climate change, even if you think i don't need to read another book.

you're completely wrong. this book will instruct you inlk so many ways. and the best part of it is that naomi, again -- fairly uniquely among writers -- is not just committed to writing about things. she is committed to changing them herself. she has been a stalwart part of this fight. it's been an amazing experience to have her on the board at 350.org and even more amazing experience to go to one rally after demonstration after arrest, and whatever, in her company, and see the intelligence and good humor and penetrating, penetrating insight that she brings to each of them. for me, a great, great teacher.

and a great, great partner in movements. when she goes out there to sign books she'll be setting next to josh russell, who will be selling copies of the book about a line -- that clay wrote a chapter for and other people. she is using this book to build this movement, and that is what we need, because if wearing we're going to change everything, it's going to take great writers, but more importantly it's going to take those great writers inspiring all the rest of to us goub. to work. our only hope at this point, in a ravaged world, is movement big enough to scare our leaders as much as they're scared of the money power of the fossil fuel industry, and if we can raise that kind of movement, then we

have no guarantee but at least a fighting chance. and there is no one who has done more to raise that movement and to bring all the movements together that we need to have as a part of this one big movement% to understand that this is not an environmental issue, that this is an issue, a crisis that calls on every strand of human society to do their part. no one has understood that better than naomi, and when you read this book,áj you'll understand why this is a signal event tonight. i'm so happy to introduce, naomi klein. [applause] [applause] >> hey, everybody. wow.

what an honor to bò)ñ here tonight. what an honor to be introduced by my dear friend, bill mcgiven. i'll never forget that introduction, and as i say in the acknowledgement of the bill, you wrote most of this decades ago, and i love being in this fight with you. clayton, thank you for opening family affair. some of my best friends, almost all my best friends, are here. my family is here. my teachers are here. the people who inspired this book in so many ways are here. the people who contributed to this book, who edited this book, so thank you all for being here for this very meaningful launch. and if i thanked everybody who i owe a debt to, it would use up

all my time so i'm just going to do a few ones. i want to thank the new school and mary watson, the nation magazine and the nation institute, and bether rothberg for incredible work, bringing this night together. michael primo, an incredible activist who i first met at panel of activists and artists and thinkers, to make this not a regular book launch. this is not just me talking at you, putting forward a theory about how climate change can spark a transformational movement. we're going to have a panel

where you hear from some of the finest thinkers and leaders who are already doing this. and i'm very excited to be sharing the stage with them. my editor is here, robert bender. i don't know where you are, bob, but thank you so much for all of your dedication to this project. and i want to thank everybody at simon & simon & julia prosser, who did a lot to make this evening possible. i want to name a few more people are here, katy mckenna, alex kelly, josh lynn barnes. martin lucas, the whole beautiful solutions team who you'll be hearing from. everywhere i look i see another person who i love and have to thank.

this is -- there are two people here who i really want to single out for extra embarrassment, and some people have been kind enough to call this book a manifesto, a call for revolutionary change. that may be, but it is one.li&t is heavily, heavily noticed.ç -- and alexandra, please stand up. my closest colleagues on this project, and it was a lonely,

long journey, but you made it possible in so many ways and every pain -- pain of the book is enriched with dedication. no book is bulletproof, as we know, about i feel better being out there with you having my back. so, friends, much too many, many to many friends to mention, but there are a few here who i just want to mention. >> eve, katherine, malena, who is a dear friends' somebody who taught me so much about the -- this great wound in the middle of my country and bete reed, my friend and editor at the nation. as i said this is a family aware. my parents are here. i don't know where they are. bonnie and michael klein. hi, momfa and dad.

haven't had a chance to say hello. any in-laws are here. my husband is here, although i think he mightdbme spending the entire evening in the hallway with my two-year-old son. you'll read about toma if you read the book. and as i said this isn't going to be your -- the usual format of a book launch, which is just beginning a lecture and then q & a. it's going to be followed by a panel discussion so i'll keep my remarks briefer than usual. so i want to just give you a pretty quick -- start with ah(lñ fairly quick coverage of the thesis of the book, which you may have heard in other format s. >> here's the bottom line. i'm convinced that climate change represents an hoytic opportunity, historic opportunity on the scale of the new deal, but far more

transformative and just. as part of the project of getting our emissions down to the levels many scientists recommend, we once again have the chance to advance policies that dramatically improve lives, close the gap between rich anddz poor, create huge numbers ofú7)e democracy from the ground up, rather than the ultimate example of the shock doctrine, the subject of my last book, frenzy of resource grabs and repression. climate change can be a people's shock. a blow from below.

they would get to the root of why we are facing crises in the first place. both ecologically and economically, and would leave us with a more habitable climate than we are headed for and a far more just economy than the one we have right now. because as bill said, underneath it all is a real truth we have been avoiding, climate change isn't an issue to add to the list to worry about next to health care and taxes. it's a civilizational wakeup call, powerful lesson spoken in the language of fires, droughts, floods, and extinction, telling us we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing the planet, telling us we have to evolve.

my called the book, "this changes everything," abuse if we stay on the road we're on, scientists tell us -- not just scientists. some of the most establishment institutions in the world, the world bank, the international energy agency, price waterhouse coopers, tell us we are on a road leading to warming of four to six degrees celsius. and that happens if we just do nothing. we don't have to do anything special. just keep on the road we're on. they call this business as usual but it's not business as usual because we -- to stay on the road we have to double down on the dirtiest fossil fuels, natural gas from fracking, mountaintop removal, coal minding. that's the road we're on. that's the bad news. if we stay on that road, everything changes about our physical world.

four to six degrees warming celsius is not compatible with anything that we understand as an organized society. the model starts to break down. they don't know what would happen. they don't even know how to predict it. but they know it's going to involve mass crop failures, huge sea level rises. there is still time to stop catastrophic warming. we have already locked in a certain amount of warming. we're already experiencing it. but it is not too late to lower our emissions, in time to avoid those catastrophic outcomes 0, or at least to give ourselves a pretty good chance. scientists like kevin anderson and alex larken, who i quote, tell us if we want to do that, we need cut our emissions in the wealthy world by about eight to ten percent a year. that's a lot.

that's a lot. and here's the catch. if we want to do that, we have to pretty much change everything about our economic system, and our political system. because that level of emission reduction challenges the core logic at the heart of our economic system and that is the logic of unfettered growth and expansion. so, if we want to avoid outcome, it means we have to start breaking the rules of this free market ideology, the so-called free market ideology, that has dominated our lives for going on four decades. and i spend a lot of time in the book outlining precisely what we need to do in the face of climate change, directly challenges the argue. of neoliberalism. and we all know this stuff. it's privatization,

deregulation, cuts to government spending, sometimes called austerity, and of course, the free trade deals that lock it all in. association i go through this in the book quite systematically, showing how those free trade deals make many of the things -- many of the climate actions we have to take illegal, how governments are being challenged at the world trade organization when the introduce good climate policies or decide to close off carbon frontiers and ban fracking. they get sued in international trade courts. but we know what we need to do. we need to plan the kinds of economies we want. when i say it challenges growth-doesn't mean that everything has to contract. quite the opposite. it means we have to contract the parts of our economy that are at war with the earth and expand those parts of our economy that are already low carbon, like the care-giving profession, like education, like the arts. we need to expand these parts of

our economies not just because they're low carbon but these parts or our economy will allow to us care for one another as we encounter this heavy weather that will inevitably come. responding to climate change flies in the face of the logics of austerity, that we have all been living with to so long and has accelerated so much since the economic crisis in 2008. the fact we're told all the time our governments are broke and we have to pay the price. i'm always amazed when people say, people won't take action on climate change because people are selfish and won't make sacrifices in the name of an an distract -- abstract goal. real? people are giving up their pensions, health care inch canada we're being asked to give up the fact they still deliver our mail. we're being asked to give up so much n the name of an abstract concept like austerity, balancing the budget. people are making no end of

sacrifices. i think we would make a few sacrifices in the name of saving our shared home if those sacrifices were equitably imposed. obviously we need to challenge the logic of austerity if we can responsible to this crisis because we need massive investment in the public sphere. we need massive investment because here in new york city you know what it means for heavy weather to collide with weak infrastructure. yousaw what it meant to be dependent on a state that wasn't there to be living in public housing that had been allowed to decay. the same thing that it meant in new orleans when heavy weather collided with neglected levees. that turned a disaster into a catastrophe. we need to invest and re-invent our public sphere. the logic of austerity is incompatible with climate action. and it's not just about preparing for the storms.

it's about getting off fossil fuels. the huge infrastructure projects we need to reimagine our cities to build good public transit, and to roll out the renewable technologies that are already the technology is there, it's getting cheaper, we know it works. we can look to a country like germany which now has 25% of its electricity supplied by renewable energy and this happened in a matter of a few years, happened so quickly. one thing we don't hear about germany's incredible renewable energy transformation is that one of the reasons it's happening is bat in hundreds of cities and towns in germany, people have voted or the governments have simply decided they must take back their energy systems from the private corporations that had privatized them in the 1990s because the private companies weren't interested in the renewable energy transition because it wasn't profitable.

so they have had to take their power back, and this is happening in small towns, also happening in big cities like hamburg. people are 0 discovering the logic of privatization is incompatible with what we need to do. we need control over our resewerses and need to re-invent it so it's accountable to us. a few more of the ways in which this class plays out -- clash plays out. we have to relearn the art of saying no, to multinational corporations. we seem to have lost this. just as we lost the art of economic planning. one of the things about the german transition is that, as remarkable as it is, they now have 25% of their electricity renewables. at the same time as the put great incentives in place to say yes to renewables, the and a --l

government will not say no to coal, so as demand drops they just export it. same thing in this country. we need to help them re-discover it because what we need to do is close off these new carbon that political leadership, people are doing it themselves. they're blocking the pipeline. they're winning fracking moratoriums. they're blocking new coal expert terminals. we need to go further than that. we need to say no drilling in the arctic. we need to expand the moratoriums into bans and expand them from being just in one state to being across our country. to fight climate change we have to fight inequality. within our countries, and between them. the panel is going to talk more

about this specifically and we have some of the leading thinkers on this question. some of the people who really inspired this book for me, when i heard the concept of ecological debt. one of the key thinkers who came up with the concept but ecological debt and climate debt. it's simple. countries like ours got a 200 year head start on emitting carbon. there's a finite carbon budget. there's a right to exit poverty, to address the unequal exchanges that were built between our nations powered by fossil fuels. super powered by fossil fuels in the early days of the burning of coal. andes per ran a is going to lay out an inspiring vision for how addressing climate change can and must heal the wounds of colonialism and turn the world right-side up. in our own countries, we will

not stop this fossil fuel frenzy unless indigenous people and people of color and low income communities have real options and are not being asked to choose between poverty and pollution. that is an impossible choice. and front-line communities are telling us, it's not enough just to stop the bad projects. we need real economical concerntives in our communities. the prim has to be that the people who -- the principle has to be that the people who suffer most under a toxic economy need to be first in line to benefit from the positive transitions to the new economy. all of this is possible. more than that, it's desirable. because, the only -- the problem with our reining economic model, it's that our world is brutal

and as it warms, if we don't change the system, it will become more brutal. if we hear this call, we have an opportunity to change our world to the better in so many ways. this will leave us with more liveable cities, stronger communes, healthier bodies. just go to any of the countless pockets of resistance. the countless pockets -- the places where people aren't waiting for their leaders to change things for them and are just doing it themselves. they're doing it -- it at the neighborhood level, at the city level. they're doing it at the town level, the transition town movement, and you go to places where these transitions are happening, and they're some of the most joyful places you can visit. there is so much pride in what is being built. the sense of community and camaraderie, the rebuilding of our frayed public sphere is so pal panel.

we have a project called, beautiful solutions." working with a wonderful group of writers and activists who are highlighting these beautiful solutions.yt we'll hear from them later on. ...

a renewable energy program at the national scale and putting up solar panels. this is what passes for realism. we need a new definition of realism. one round in the reality of what our atmosphere can take. one grounded in the reality of our oceans can take. one grounded in the reality of what our communities can take. one grounded in the reality of what our bodies can take. thresholds are being reached and we know it. here's the good news. we are starting to fight back. we are starting to come .-full-stop we are reaching over thresholds of how much we will take and we are starting to express that and you see it in those frontline battles the

resistance to the pipelines, to this transnational space some of us have started to call blockade -- blockadia. we are going to see it sunday in the streets when hundreds of thousands of people gather to sound what is being called the climate alarm, to express the urgency that the leaders seem not to feel in the face of the six essential crisis and we are going to see it on monday at wall street when we take the fight to the multinational corporation to the belly of the beast to the heart of the logic that was sacrificed. everyone and everything in the name of the prophet including the life-support system in which we all depend.

the storms are not just coming, my friends. the storms are already here. i have an anecdote about some time i said increase when we were filming for our documentary because it is a european country that has been most ravaged by the austerity and people have been asked to sacrifice so much on the altar of economic crisis and we have heard the stories, the ravaging of the public education and healthcare. what we don't hear about is that in greece the public sector is so starved when they have forest fires they can't afford to change the tires on their track and at the same time they are rolling back their green energy program and they are told they can no longer afford to take the

climate change and they are told that the way out of the crisis is to drill in their beautiful fees and they they should've used that money to pay back their creditors. it almost won the last election and they are doing some fantastic things and the voice became the prosperity that they haven't drawn the connections yet with climate change. and so they are not opposing the drilling they are just saying they should use it for pensions. so those connections aren't being made and i think that is true in so many of the movements we are failing to make these obvious connections and we need to make them now. so we need to understand when people are rioting and demanding three transits in rio, those are

climate activists even if they don't call themselves climate activists and if they never used the word climate change, we need to build these bridges. i was having dinner with a group of friends in aspen the night before i was going to interview the leader of this political party and i asked them if you were sitting across the table from the justice what would you ask him and they suggested a bunch of possible questions and then if someone had asked him history not that you answer and i wrote that one down and i thought that is a really good question. history is knocking. well we answer? thank you. [applause]

>> we are going to win because the other side in this fight has all the money into that usually is enough to triumph, but not always. and when the passion and spirit and creativity and numbers of bodies come together, there is a possibility of matching that kind of currency but the currency of our own and that is what the movements are about. that is what the book is all about and the organizing that she has done with so many. we are going to bring up some of those people that ask him for fight that kind of organizing to show you how this is not your old school and environmental movement. we are taking it in the very near ways now and powerful ways

with people that have been doing this for so long and with such integrity and power. you can come up as we are introducing the panel. [applause] the national coordinator of the power campaign. he worked forever through the southwest organizing project which everybody knows about. he served as a national coordinator of the grassroots global justice alliance connecting u.s. grassroots organizations to the international social movement. if you went to the social forums, that was pete played a key role of the executive director in unity and alliance. organizing in the different sectors into the working-class communities of color. he is an important leader in this fight and do so is a stella

vasquez. [applause] she is the vp. let's give it up to the service employees, the largest healthcare unit in the country, the largest union local in the country. these are the people that have been taking care of you and she came from the dr where she was back in the fight and ever since she got out of jail but that is precisely what we need and she stands among other things the profound role for the labor movement is playing.

when you watch people marching on sunday watch for those labor in gyms and that is going to send a chill. clayton thomas, where are you? he introduced himself a little bit before. let me just say in the introduction that there is nobody that we have worked more closely with over the last four or five years but we wanted to get involved in the work around at the very first person i called called said it's all right if we join this effort. they had been fighting up there longer than anybody. they thought that they would never have any problem they had

so much money and is a so political power. but they are now caught up in all of that they can hardly move forward and it's mostly because of what his comrades have been doing up there. so many thanks brother. [applause] and the name we talked about a little bit, the cofounder comes from ecuador where she has been fighting chevron hard and i have to say it is possible in the sweepstakes for the company that chevron might be right up there. they've got some competition but they are tough and it indicative

-- vindictive folks fighting to be held accountable for the damage they did down there and who damaged the lives of people all around the world. she's done amazing work that the campaign focused on the protection and the defense of the sunni national park is pleased that they have more way of diversity than any spot on earth and also sadly a big pool of oil underneath it so far a lot of people that run the oil companies over the biodiversity mattered not at all and that the whole plan. and the amazing plan to leave that a whale underground but she hoped developed and the fight that is still going on the grassroots initiative to gather signatures in ecuador to the referendum and the government of course trying to make it difficult to take that to the

united united nations and the commission on human rights and it's not just a fight for that rainforest like all these other sites like the fight for the tar sands and all over the world it's also a fight for our atmosphere. we are all part of that fight. this is an amazing panel that naomi is going to interrogate for your edification. i just want to thank all of you for being here and it just say we will see you on the streets sunday and monday street sunday and monday this will be one hell of a weekend. [applause] >> thank you bill. as my microphone working? i want to thank anthony one more time for sharing the tremendous talent with us and this amazing panel for being here.

we launched the sock debate could shock doctrine together. microphone is not good? how is that? can you hear me up there at the top? what we wanted to do with this night is turned to the real experts who are fighting every day for the just response to climate change that heals the world and that fights the crisis of inequality and raises those and this is an incredible group of people to talk about that and i want to start first with michael who has a huge amount of the first-hand experience in

what a lot of people called just transition which is not an abstract theory. it's happening in the communities like richmond and projects like the water coalition. and i wonder if you can sketch for the audience how you see the connection between fighting inequality and how do these issues supercharge each other? sure. >> someone's microphone is working. >> first of all, thank you. it makes so many connections that it's almost hard to know where to start and i think looking back over the history that you talked about and the trajectory the last 40 years and

what it's meant those of us that have been organized we've been struggling with that every day and if we are able to make the connection in terms of climate i think really fundamentally it's the problem is and that clash between the economic system doesn't match what we need to do so i just want to thank you for that. i grew up in the environmental justice movement for many years in the state of mexico i was organizing the communities that were fighting on the frontlines of the industries that were being poisoned and that went to the national global movement and then later in the global justice movement justice movement as well fighting for the issue around global capital. so i have seen a lot over and over the years into the struggle people take on every day.

my newest organization i'm working for now is the climate justice alliance and it's interesting how you named the book copenhagen and it's kind of a wake-up call and i think that was for many of the environmental justice and the climate justice alliance started as a result of that and out of this alliance country came together with a new vision held to be actually rebuild our community, held we transform our economy because clearly it's on a collision path. how did he do that and understanding the challenges of what we have been in the national federal government right now to be able to get a new deal program like that, we thought let's start where we have ourselves at the local

level. let's start in the communities around the country that still have these kind of policies to build upon the alternatives every day and build a national movement around about to put pressure at the international government as low so that was basically the fundamental idea and we have the pilot site of the country and then we are inviting other communities as well. you mentioned richmond california as one, the home of -- recently in fact we had a national convening and it was the one-year anniversary that took place at the refinery last year but the work that's going on in terms of organizing, the

collaborations that are happening at the organizations like the environmental network and the communities for a better environment we have the environmental justice organization and unions and student organizations, just a whole range of the community coming together around an agenda which is the exchange of the economy in and the city. of course it isn't going to be but at least we know there is that vision and if there is anything in the message it's not just about the hope that people are coming to new york over the weekend but it's also the result you also mentioned the war coalition on the buffalo preservation or the navajo nation which isn't owned by a

nation by the way, by the company that's fueled by peabody and also the also have powers that a central arizona project which basically is a water reservoir and the native people that have been working to the solar project and at the same time marketing different sustainable agriculture developing a sustainable cooperative solar and all those different kinds of things. both in terms of developing the alternatives and then at the same time building the political powers that we can do as we say that goes up with resources, the law and policy, etc.. others name that which we have in the private sector right now and the commonwealth that will show up.

building the administration and their vision in jackson mississippi and detroit is also going to be showing up in the members here. in san antonio texas as well. [applause] >> i have a short follow-up question. i talked about some of these spirits and i think people know who their enemies are. so what i was saying is part of

this fighting spirit in the climate movement has been the incredible rise of the fossil fueled investment movement. i know that it's active right here on campus. we are told that they are working on it. this is spread to hundreds of campuses in the organizations into dozens of cities have announced that they are going to divest from fossil fuels. it's exciting a lot of people are even more excited about the investment piece of the fossil fuel movement and i wonder how you see that intercepting and your work because there's been the critique like okay it's moved from exxon somebody else will buy it and it's not going to hurt exxon. but if the money gets moved from exxon to some of these climate projects that could make a huge difference.

what dc the potential? >> we are working with 350.org and the university's student organizations also because we have these different models that are being developed around the country. if they have the resources to be able to show that a work they work that is i think a huge change and so it is a very exciting development and the other side of that is where do we put the resources and use those resources to empower the communities and corporations spec i want to go to your next. >> is there anybody here still

-- pic of some of the could just grab a hand held it would be much easier. >> can everyone hear me? okay i want to put a similar question to you and asked to do with the role of labor in the climate strike and it's tricky because of course there has been a lot of tension between the labor unions and the oldest fight. these constituencies are often put against each other and they can get pretty ugly around the keystone fight and get i want to hear your thoughts on how what

climate change can mean to the labor movement's and do you think that it can be a catalyst for the new wave and how does this go beyond and what does it mean to you? >> spin at its huge >> its huge interest with me say thank you for inviting us all today. i would like to say that not all of labor .-full-stop the conclusion that the family for mother earth is a worker side. we can't talk about the can talk about the jobs when children in the community whether it is in the south bronx show the largest percentage of the cases in new

york. what is the sense of having the job when you don't have a backyard that you can sit and breathe the air because the would be choking to death. that doesn't make any sense. two years ago we saw it in the hospitals where we work. the hospital on the east side having to cover new board a beast without innovators may not only saw it as the communities they broke took away new jersey and in staten island or home care work is in the homes of the

client where they cannot go and work and those members are leaving public housing where they are trapped in buildings without electricity, without running water, without in some cases medication that they needed. so, in the realization that for the workers right but it is for the human rights in the community that of the community that we live and for the entitlements and in the plans that we live we have a very diverse membership so we have members in the facility that experienced last year the devastation referred to in the media. we have the members in south america with the same levels

have the very existence of the country, so it is natural for us to say that the environment is not something abstract where the environment is where we work and where we place and therefore decide for the climate change because the same people, but 1% are the same people that are denied workers rights in this country and the oppressed workers all over the world. so for labor this is our fight. [applause] >> do you have any thoughts that you share about what it would take to bring more parts of the labor movement on the

particularly those parts of the movement that are pretty heavily invested in the fossil fuel economy because that is where we start to see the clashes. >> it is educating the frontline level and it is challenging the misconceptions that those that control the mass media in the country had put forward the fight for the environment that is incompatible. we can fight for the jobs that go with the question of having clean energy that is accessible to all instead of building the soccer stadiums. but the average metaphor that can just be created in

retrofitting and creating the new forms of energy and in creating transportation that is clean creating the new society where the determining factor is not profit but the determining factor is the well-being of every being on earth. [applause] >> because the you work with healthcare workers in particular i wanted to also ask you of the many crises that the country faces, a big one is the lack of the healthcare system and it continues post-obamacare and as a canadian someone that is lucky enough to come from the country that has something like universal healthcare is been repeatedly shocked when covering

disasters in the united states, hurricane katrina and also sandy to see how this already dysfunctional healthcare system becomes so much more dysfunctional in the midst of a crisis today i had an extraordinary experience when i was in new orleans where we got into a car accident in downtown new orleans. we were in the car and if you can remember the imagery during hurricane katrina how people desperately needed health care and they were dehydrated and hungry and turned the hospital into this makeshift first aid clinic. we got into this car accident in downtown new orleans and it's a long story that but we were

taken to a hospital and it was empty and beautiful and private and it was the strangest experiments because there were all these doctors and nurses and they were not doing anything in above a disaster. they said i hadn't thought of that. i want to ask you how does climate change impact the struggle for the universal healthcare in this country? >> if the change continues control we will see see and ideally the number of organizations have spoken about the increase and we are witnesses of what is happening in africa in the crisis and there is the fever that has been

expressed and i think that in terms of the united states by obamacare and the affordable care act there are millions in this country without health care you are not covered by the portal care act and right here in the city come at the department of health released a recent story that all the hospitals in new york were totally unprepared for the crisis that was created in terms of health care so one of the things we are raising is here in new york 12 hospitals have been closed and they closed in the hospitals because of the prophets whether you can pay for health care or not and if

another disaster is similar as to be also additional profound changes in the healthcare health care that it shouldn't be for the wealthy it should be for everyone and one interesting factor is this issue of the canadian who was getting treatment in one of those for-profit care facilities and she died in her deathless front-page news that the issue of the lack of care and the delivery of care to all the people black, latinos and they made the front page of "the new york times" of the daily news. so in part of this environmental

justice we are finding ourselves in a new coalition and it will be fighting for the environment is also fighting for this job and also fighting for quality health care for all and fighting for equal that he for all people in the society. [applause] >> i want to turn it over to clay. i would love for you to talk about how the issue of climate change and besides to prevent catastrophic warming is intersecting with the resurgent movement that we are seeing around the world and in canada

moore has spread and you don't need much prompting from me but before i threw it over to you i want to acknowledge we have a lot of people here from the delegation and in particular i am so happy tom is here from the end of generous environmental director such an intellectual leader taking us beyond the issue and pointing us towards the fact that this is when we say it is a wake up call it is about the fact we need a shift in worldview and i would love for you to talk about how you see that worldview as it relates to climate change.

>> when i say i told you say no more. i ago, a little louder, i don't. that's a good enough. what's really important to understand in canada which is a member of the club and we are one of the biggest provider of energy to the military superpowers in the united states and soon china and the bilateral trade agreement that harper a signed and ratified a week before his trip to china as well as the comprehensive economic trade agreement in the european union which has also been signed but not ratified yet. there is an agenda that is being led by our extremist government to really walk canada into

becoming somewhat of this resource colony to the military superpower across the planet that's not to say canada isn't an imperialist power in its own right because they have the bilateral free-trade agreements with a lot of countries in the south like through and others where canada is acting as the reader of the treasurer chest and so to speak and in all of this political bs is of course indigenous peoples and the sovereignty movement and the right to protect mother earth into the sacred waters from the agenda of big oil and king cole and places like northern tarzan's. i think the important thing to understand is that it is the

same manifestation of the experience that has been going on through the generations of the colonization since the land began. i think that the difference though between this moment in time that the social movement are seen as the fact that it came from our native women and it was a birth to a covert from the plate to get complacent about principle which is the place that all of for all of our discussions and the strategies and tactics around politics and economies and around our social systems in our spiritual systems needed to be coming from because it is a great and balance. it's a great and balance and i think that a lot of that and balance comes from white men in power and i think that in our people of color and indigenous movements even us have

internalized a lot of that and it's a screwed up the ways in our movement and so it is a very inspiring thing that has got the government government of canada and the prime minister quaking in their hearts. they are afraid of it and that's why we see this bonanza spreading across the unfettered expansion of the canadian tar sands. you think keystone is bad, have you heard of the 1.1 million-barrel per day pipeline they want to build from alberta to atlantic canada across 185 nation territories plus that is the reality that the one thing that we have that's exciting and i want to jump off of the transition piece and the excitement of the organized labor getting involved

in the fight for the climate justice, the issue of the jobs versus the environment, there've been hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions invested into making you all think that i either have a job or have a healthy environment and this is one of those moments in time that we see the emergence of the social movement partnership. that is the indigenous people of all of the land and that's not to say that we are owning it in the western contact in the future generation those people and the social movement uniting with workers of the country whose lives are in a strictly linked to the development of resources in the land this is a place we are going to see

incredible power against the free-market agenda this is something that has caused the establishment to spin out all kinds of initiatives to try to keep the status quo after they. a month ago we had the form where we saw organized labor and the strike movement. have you heard about the student strikers? they put a half a million students on the street and head of the three term government educated in the entire year generation about to the austerity agenda and i think that the exciting moment we have right now there's only 30 million people in the country and there are 2 million native people, 75 are under the age of

30, and we reference this moment of time. it's called the seventh generation prophecy that talks about the generation of our young people that would be born from the shackles of the colonial mind and lead us to a better place and that is the moment we are in right now and it's come from a place of that creative principle to repair and fix the imbalance that we are facing right now to put us back into that sacred circle of life not separate about it. [applause] >> thank you so much.

first thank you for being here and i wanted things your translator. she understands this perfectly but she's going to speak in spanish because that's her language and she wants to and we welcome that. [applause] >> she's quoted more than anyone else in my book this space called the blockadia that we've been talking about, the blocking of the pipeline movement that is about keeping the carbon in the ground. that movement was not born here. in the book i talk about if we want to choose a place we could save nigeria in the niger delta and they are kicked out of the territory. and what they didn't know about climate change committee

nigerians in, the nigerians in the '90s called one of the largest protests operation climate change. i learned that by reading a book that she helped to edit and of course the fight in ecuador to keep the oil underground in the amazon has been at the forefront to keep the carbon in the ground model and one of the quotes you have in the book is very simple why should we sacrifice new areas if they should be extracted in the first place which is a very good question. the concept of the climate says ds lets leave it underground but leaving it under the amazon, that should be recognized as a contradiction to the world and that there shouldn't be a false

choice between the right to education and healthcare and greater jobs and electricity keeping the carbon in the ground can you explain to us the concept as you see it as climate debt and ecological debt? i guess i will put the question to you another way. eduardo talks about how we live in a world upside down. it could climate change turned the world right side up? steve 11 >> translator: i'm going to speak in spanish and i will speak slowly because i know that many of you speak spanish and for those of you that don't,

cassandra is going to help you out. >> [speaking in spanish] >> translator: i would like to do a recap of what the ecological debt is. it's much more than just the historical debt to the local south. certainly it also includes the steps of the process of the colonialism has generated and

continues to generate as well as unequal and unfair trade but it's larger than that. ecological debt also encompasses the debt capital has with nature >> [speaking in spanish] ..

[speaking in spanish] >> translator: when we think about what has sustained capital and the capitalist model and when we start to scratch at it and trying to get to the nitty-gritty, we rapidly come across oil and oil is at the heart of the accumulation of capital, and oil is also the

subtext of ecological climate debt and of course oil isn't just about accumulating capital, it's also very much the subtext of the war and corruption, geopolitical blackmail, the lack of healthiness and healthcare and these giant cities of our. [applause] [speaking in spanish]

if we want to talk about climate debt and how we are going to address climate change we have to stop burning oil. we need to free ourselves from the addiction to fossil fuel and oil. it's not that it's bad in and of itself, but it is the extracted model and the model of the consumption that doesn't respect the natural cycles of the planet and just cannot continue. >> speaking

>> [speaking in spanish] [speaking in spanish] moscow [applause] >> translator: the worldview of oil is that oil is the blood of mother earth, and many

indigenous people of the amazon also feel that oil is the blood of their ancestors had gone back to the earth and become stone and oil and for other indigenous people, oil is the blood of a giant underground being with an enormous penis that makes love to the rest of mother earth and the oriole is very erratic stuff. >> [speaking in spanish]

[speaking in spanish] [speaking in spanish]

[speaking in spanish] >> translator: oil has a great deal to do with ecological and climate debt but it also has also has a great deal to democracy. from time to time, we go through the charade of participating in the decision-making and we vote for the candidate who most times than not disappoint us, but the real decision-making we are not participating in and it's what

every drill for oil in alaska, but whether we poison our water these are the real decisions and we are not making them. we are not participating in the decision-making processes. we are being used in the processes. so, whether we need to drill and whether we should sacrifice the most bio diverse place on earth, those decisions we have been marginalized from but i would like to conclude by saying that specifically in the case of ecuador we are very blessed this evening to have the youth of ecuador with us that organized a play on the word of the sunni national parks and it also means

united and inspiring the young people invited to make the decision about whether to extract oil and whether we should destroy so we collected hundreds of thousands of signatures in organized majority of the people said no. [applause] >> it's important to understand how an environmental jr because so often we hear this argument it doesn't matter what we do. china and india and brazil in china they are literally choking

on climate change, they are literally choking. there is such a vibrant debate going on in china at the cost of economic growth allows more advanced than the growth going on here that you can talk about and this tension between the government and its massive grassroots movement in ecuador is one example of the strength of that pushback and of the division. so let's keep that in mind it doesn't matter what we do here we have to find ways to support each other's movements and one of the mistakes that the environmentalists in the country made was not picking up the call for the ecological debt and when the call was made in the sunni for us to pony up and help pay for keeping the oil in the

grounds of the entire burden was not on the people committed our organization make that a priority? we didn't. that isn't one of those issues that you are supposed to bring up because they don't like to talk about the redistribution of wealth or so i'm told over and over again. [applause] there is so much in what you said and what you were saying about the connection between oil and fertility is something i came across in my research again and again and in so many cosmologies there is a connection between oil and fertility and you might not believe that there is that underground love to the earth but when we burden of legal and cold we may get less for tile and we know that for sure. that's why i ended up with a chapter called the rights to regenerate because it really is

to protect the systems of regeneration. we know digging up the carbon is definitely not helping. i want to ask if you want to talk about this but any of the panelists would any of you like to address the issue of how climate change and immigration rights intersect? this is the city of immigrants and more and more people are being displaced by the impact of climate change as well as the structural policies. we could have had a panel of 12 talking about every issue and criminal justice, women's rights, there's all kind of things we didn't do but i think it's important to talk about migration before we end.

does anybody want to jump in on that? one has dominated the headlines for the issue of the crossing into the borders of the united states and in the discourse in the debate is to increase the xenophobia and hatred at the background of the story the conditions that are created to be sourced are the result of policies by the united states. in the 1970s the united states spent millions of dollars attacking the government of nicaragua. people remember oliver north.

millions of dollars of the attacks against the people that were fighting to create to get rid of the dictatorship of what the military and now finding the outcome results of the policies are creating the migration to this country. the economy has been destroyed in the same way that now the central american free trade agreement and now they are talking about the specific alliance created the conditions that push people out of the country that destroyed the local destroy the local economies and that creates dependence on the foreign imports.

when i came to new york in 1965, as the result of an invasion of the united states they are leading the popular revolt and 45,000 marines against 55 communists but the transformation that occurred was to bring mexico free and it destroyed some of the local economies today the dominican republic exposed because the industry has been destroyed and local economies have been the straight and sometimes the only alternatives people have is to leave our country and come to the united states to the devastation of the environment and what is happening in parts of africa and the land is also pushing migration to europe so i

think that concept that is mentioned as a fascinating one. the industrial revolution was built on two things. the slave trade and the natural resources of the new world. so these stories have said that they took enough silver out of peru and bolivia to build all the way to madrid spain so this issue of the conditions in the policies cost and the privatization that people are talking about what happened 40 years ago in latin america and we still pay the debt debts that is imposed by the united states so it isn't just an ecological

one, it is economic and political and social that does explain this culture. [applause] to bring history to life that are real and relevant to our lives today. we can't relate what it's like to ride in a carriage everywhere but we can understand what it's like for our families to be separated one another by distance and so that is the one i tried to focus on are those things we still have in common with women that have gone before us.

as a way of mentioning before, that i worked at the white house for a few years and i was president george w. bush's webmaster and this was in the era president clinton was the first president to have a website since this is the second president of the transition to the website president president so it was an exciting time before broadband into smart phones and things like that and technology has changed a lot. but i had a love of writing before we moved up here and i wrote a book about the sam houston and his book. it was a children's book but it doesn't come out until 2002 when i was working in the white house and so you can imagine the excitement of having your first book in print and so but i was really sweating it because the night before, i was supposed to leave to go to the texas book festival in austin and i was

coming straight from the office to the airport and i didn't have my books yet. i got home and sure enough there was a box of books and i had my first copy and i was nervous i wouldn't have a copy to take with me. i go to the office the next day and i was in the executive office building. we are going to pretend that this is a book and i wanted to show it to a friend of mine in another office and i walked into the hallway and there was no one around except a secret service agent standing to the side. that isn't your time to just chat with them you are supposed to stand aside and let him pass

but you're not supposed to stop him. it's in a written rule to figure out pretty quickly. i was really excited about my book and sure enough the doors opened and president bush starts walking right towards me. without really thinking i didn't really say anything i just did this. he started flipping through the book and i thought i have to make sure he understands this is about the civil war so he's flipping through it and then he looks at me and says i need an autograph and i realize he thinks that i'm giving it to him and i'm really not a cause i needed it to go to austin and i thought what do you do with the the president of the united states thinks you're giving him the buck so i was so nervous and i said would you like me to sign

this for you now or later and he gave me that puzzled look then he figured out and said later so he goes on his way and i go to mine and i go to do the book festival with my book and when i got back i photocopied the inside cover a couple times and practiced what i would say and once i had it down i wrote a little note and send it to the oval office and got a nice note back from him.

>> you were 27-years-old. you finished medical school but you were just getting started in your php efforts on microbiology at the institute of medicine. a mysterious test tube sample shows up in terrible condition. you figure out there is a new disease in africa and you turn to say i know i'm only 27 but i want to go to africa to the middle of this adventure. where did all of this comes from? >> i was actually a shy person. [laughter] my mother always said speaking his silence and gold but anyway

now, first of all i had an incredible urge for discovery from when i was a child and when i was a teenager he worked i worked for a travel agency and went one month to morocco and to turkey when there was no infrastructure and when i was ten i had one goal in life and it was get out of here which was a very kind of conservative village but it was a combination of the adventure and the incredible curiosity which was to the despair of my mother and my whole family because then i was like i always asked why what drove everybody nuts. and not to annoy people, that i really wanted to know. and i also had not much respect for authority.

so that's why i said yes let's go for it and do it and it's not because i'm 27. also, later on most people who have more seniority and are more experienced they actually were also jumping up and down to go. >> host: because they knew what a hellhole they would be if you didn't. >> guest: i guess so. >> host: coming away from the way that you describe the episode, there are four things that i think are the key x.. these were the realizations come at the moment out of the ebola episode because this 27-year-old flying to africa for the first time is as it turns out the ebola epidemic. first you experience africa and fall in love with africa. second, you discover

internationalism and all the difficulties of coordinating and working together with scientists and all sorts of other folks around the world. you discover the global inequity if people don't have syringes they will be spread of disease than you discover that do good can do so badly that it would be better if they were not there in the first place. let's take these apart. what was it that this 27-year-old killed children love with? >> i think it was the warmth of people, the human side, the creativity. i cannot hide also the music but the fact i thought that it was

on the one hand so much to do in credible needs and the will to improve it. so i saw opportunities which i think are very underestimated today in africa. when you look at the growth of gdp today in the world the highest rate today are in africa. i am not saying that they've made it but we see the natural resources that are out there. it was a combination of the human side and also i got very upset and angry because of the inequality. there was a group of plutocrats

stealing the country and there was a great university but nobody was paid. there was no electricity. so people were denied some basic opportunities and i cannot explain why i was bitten by the virus.