Naomi Klein on the Great Clash Between Capitalism and the Climate

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http://www.alternet.org/books/naomi-klein-great-clash-between-capitalism-and-climate

AlterNet editors Don Hazen and Jan Frel spoke with Klein via phone in Canada, where she lives, on Friday, Sept. 12, prior to her traveling to New York and participating in a wide range of protest events, debates and discussions. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

AlterNet: Let's start with the big climate march on Sunday and your support of and involvement in it. Do you have a reaction to Chris Hedges' critique of the march which seems to be consistent with your critique of the big enviro groups in your book? Basically he says the demands are amorphous, anybody can join, it doesn't have much meaning.

Naomi Klein: Knowing the amount of work, energy and coalition-building and care that has gone into the organizing, the march—which you know obviously it's not perfect—but I think it was grossly mischaracterized as being simply some big green thing. When It's actually been incredibly grassroots.

Do I think a march is going to do anything? No. The point is this march is different in that it's a manifestation of real rooted movements that are fighting fracking in their backyard, and refineries that are giving their kids asthma, and students who are demanding divestment of fossil fuels at their universities, and faith groups who are doing the same in their churches and synagogues. And what the march will be is a moment where people feel the size of this movement, and it will give people the strength to go home and continue at these moments of convergence too. Every once in a while it's nice to see how big you are. Especially since so many of these movements are local, right? It can feel small and isolated. There haven't been many moments of convergence like this for the climate movement, so I think it's great.

[lovemydog]

1. K & R for the climate movement

and for Naomi Klein's honesty & intelligence.