Front Burner - What’s the future for global climate action?

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

It’s been a devastating summer of climate events in Canada, and the world. Canada saw its worst wildfire season on record, and the country was abnormally dry. There were also dramatic floods: on July 21st, Halifax got three months worth of rain in 24 hours. That’s the backdrop for the large-scale global climate action protests we saw this past weekend. Arno Kopecky is a longtime environmental journalist who attended the protests in Vancouver. After this summer, he decided that he wouldn’t just write about the environment, and the dangers it faces…he wanted to be part of trying to save it. Today on Front Burner, he’ll share what led to that decision, the challenges facing the climate action movement, and what it means to figure out how to respond in the face of escalating climate change. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Tamara Kandaker. So chances are, no matter where you lived this summer, you or someone you know was affected by an extreme weather event. There were devastating wildfires in B.C., the Northwest Territories, Hawaii. Paradise on fire as flames fueled by winds from Hurricane Dora ripped through West Maui.

The historic town of Lahaina, built in the 1800s, devastated as flames engulfed its popular front street. Record-breaking heat. Containment efforts are made harder by record-breaking temperatures, which are making life miserable and dangerous across Europe. We didn't expect it to be as hot. We expected heat, but not this hot. Severe drought and flooding. Four people in Nova Scotia, including two children, are still missing tonight after torrential rains hit the province over the weekend, the scale of it leaving people stunned.

It's practically biblical. You know, we're just waiting for the locusts now, right? We've got the fire, the floods, you know, it's crazy. That's the backdrop to this past weekend's global climate protests, organized by the Global Fight to End Fossil Fuels and Greta Thunberg's Fridays for Future. to end fossil fuels and Greta Thunberg's Fridays for Future. In New Delhi and India, as elsewhere, Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who inspired all this, was fated. I don't think we can hope to have jobs or have a nice future when our existence on this earth is not guaranteed.

From India to Indonesia, the scale and reach of this protest surely unprecedented. Since Friday, tens of thousands of people took part across Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and North America. But the protests were nowhere near as big as the last major international climate action in 2019, when Greta Thunberg brought out millions of people into the streets. Arno Kapetsky is a longtime environmental journalist who attended this year's Global Climate Action protests in Vancouver. After this summer, he decided he wouldn't just write about the environment and the dangers of it. He wanted to be part of trying to save it.

Today, I want to talk to him about what led to that decision and the challenges facing the climate movement. Hi, Arno. Thanks so much for doing this. How's it going? Hi, Tamara. Thank you. I am good. Thanks. Okay, so let's start with the protests this weekend. They were happening all over the world. This was supposed to be the first big climate action since 2019, before the pandemic, when millions of people came out. And there were really high hopes for this.

So how has it gone so far? Have a lot of people turned out to these protests? That's right. This is the biggest global climate weekend of action since 2019. And, you know, I feel mixed reviews have come in. So I live in Vancouver. I went to Vancouver's climate march on Friday, and it was a joyous, vibrant event. Thousands of us came out and filled the streets. I went with my daughter, who is seven years old, and some of her school friends, and they drew signs, and it was an all-ages event. There were people from all walks of life, and it was clever and raucous, and there was carnival bands, and it felt very real.

It did not feel like a bust at all. Nevertheless, four years ago, there was 100,000 people who came out to this march in Vancouver. And on Friday, there was 5,000 people. So we have lost an order of magnitude. And I think to some degree, I don't know the global numbers, but I do think you'll see some sort of similar drop in numbers all over the place. So yeah, it is definitely smaller than four years ago, but also I'm trying to think of another cause or movement that can bring out protesters in every continent, over 50 countries, over 500 cities, still millions of people out in the streets. Yeah. And there was a lot on the line here because, as I said, there were really high hopes that this would bring out a lot of people because before the pandemic, the climate

movement was seeing a lot of momentum, right? Then the lockdowns happened and that really sort of sucked the wind out of the movement. So can you talk a bit about that and the impact that the pandemic had on climate activism? Yes, that's right. Momentum really is the key word here. Numerous organizers I've spoken to have emphasized that activism and movement building is all about momentum. And in retrospect, looking back, 2019 really was a high watermark. You had Extinction Rebellion really burst onto the scene in 2018 and shut down downtown London with a very creative and theatrical series of protests. Protesters wanting the government to take urgent action on climate change have descended on the capital. They have smashed windows at the Shell headquarters near Waterloo, painted their messages

on the streets and blocked key roads, saying they'll stay as long as it takes for the government to listen. You know, they brought sailing boats into the middle of traffic and all kinds of really quite incredible obstruction. And, you know, a few weeks later, the UK announced a climate emergency. So that was really effective. And, of course, Greta Thunberg was riding a wave of fame back then with Fridays to Future, Friday's Poor Future. And that rode all the way to the 2019 protest in New York.

Climate change protests happening right now in lower Manhattan. This is video from Chopper 4 showing the massive crowd marching from Foley Square near the courthouses down to the Battery. Among the people flooding city streets were students who were allowed to skip class today to join this cause. Also down there, activist Greta Thunberg, who recently sailed to Manhattan to drive home her points. Well, that was also a global protest that, like this weekend, the epicenter was New York City ahead of the UN's Climate Ambition Summit then as now. And so that, you know, with Greta Thunberg's star power and all of that momentum building, climate change was already having significant impacts four years ago as well.

So people were out in force. And then along came the pandemic. And like you said, it just sucked the wind out of not just the climate movement, but certainly including the climate movement. Not only did it make it really impossible for people to gather in numbers, but also a lot of the organizations that organize these things, they lost funding, they lost members. And so everything really was set back by a number of a number of years. And so this, I understand, was kind of a big moment for you personally too, right? Like you've been an independent journalist

for a long time and you've stayed away from activism, but you decided to march in this one. And what compelled you to do that? That's right. I have been covering environmental issues and climate change for almost 20 years now. And, you know, I have covered a lot of activist movements and actions and over those years and always kept them at a bit of arm's length, partly for professional reasons that, you know, it's important to have a boundary between yourself and the people that you are writing about and covering. But also, I think personally, you know, activism, I think it's important to say that, you know, no big social change has ever happened without activism. It's never been unaccompanied by activism.

That's why we have child labor laws and minimum wages and, you know, the civil rights movement as a gold standard, I think, for that. But a lot of activism is also expressed in the language of certainties. And there's a tendency to banish complexity and deliver simple, clear messages through slogans that often rhyme. And I've always had a bit of an uncomfortable relationship with that. As a writer and a journalist and a storyteller, I lean towards uncertainty and I tend to question myself and others. And I have a lot of curiosity. And so, yeah, I have more questions than answers, I suppose. But this summer in July, things just got so hectic. You know, the state of the climate impacts, the brutality of them and the global spread of them.

You know, I've been writing and thinking about them for almost two decades, but to see them actually arrive with such force and violence this summer really shook me. And it made me think, you know, maybe I'm being a little too principled about this and maybe I'm overthinking things a little bit. And maybe I can just get into the streets and join the chats for a minute and surround myself with like-minded people and try to make some noise. Yeah. Yeah. I've kind of wrestled with the same thing too. Just, yeah, I guess like how to feel about this as a journalist, it's sometimes hard to feel, it's hard not to feel like what you're doing is futile, even though it's important.

And you wrote in The Globe earlier this summer that the impact of carbon emissions have finally untethered from the abstract hypotheticals of scientific literature and leapt into the daily lives of several billion people. And so you just touched on this. We're at the tail end of summer now, so it feels like a good time to recap kind of how it went. How did we experience this in North America? Yes, I think this was really the summer that the evidence of our senses caught up to the, you know, the theories that we and the predictions that climate scientists have been delivering for years and journalists have been reporting on for years. And it was no longer a matter of abstract truths distant from us in time and future. But now it's, you know, the smoke coming through our windows.

It's the water coming up our door, under our doorsteps. I think, you know, like in July when I wrote that, there was no part of North America that was untouched by some combination of wildfire or wildfire smoke or drought or heat dome. Smoke had drenched New York and Chicago and Toronto and Ottawa. Tens of millions of people across eastern North America will be struggling to breathe today through another day of thick, almost soupy air quality. The entire southern United States and northern Mexico was blanketed in this epic heat dome. I mean, Phoenix, Arizona set a new record. We're seeing a big heat dome over the

southwest and it hasn't moved for weeks now. And so that's really the problem is that we're stuck in a specific weather pattern as opposed to having them come and go as we're used to. It's very dramatic. And it was that's what really got to me. A simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years.

I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cups. Scientists say that extreme weather events are only going to get more and more frequent if we keep emitting greenhouse gases. So while all of this is happening, how are we doing in the fight against climate change? The UN recently released its first global review of progress

that's been made since the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. So maybe put that into context for us. What kind of progress are we making right now? Sure. Well, I think here too, there's two ways to see it, or maybe two truths are happening simultaneously. One is that the oil industry and oil and gas are booming. They're making more money than ever. Last year was a year of record profits. We are producing more oil than ever before in history and burning it. The U.S. and Canada are leading that charge. Canada is the fourth largest producer of oil in the world. The U.S. is the largest. And in Canada, we have doubled production since 2010. And it's still going gangbusters. So that's one reality and it's grim. But at the same time,

there's a much more hopeful and positive counterpoint to that reality, which is expressed in clean energy expansion. And there's just, you know, just as we're hitting tipping point after tipping point and ecosystems sort of flipping in bad ways and scary ways, the renewable explosion is also hitting its own positive series of tipping points. Next year, about a year from now, according to the IEA, by 2025, the International Energy Agency predicts that renewables will replace fossil fuels as the world's number one source of electricity. Okay, so that's the backdrop to this weekend's climate protest. And I want to go back to why you decided to join.

I'm wondering, based on the conversations you've had with people around you, do you think other people are also feeling the same sense of urgency since the summer? I do. I don't know about you, but many of, you know, definitely I have a slightly self-selecting crew of friends and family, but certainly many of us are terrified and aghast at what's happening. Ironically, Vancouver, where I live, had a pretty mild summer. We didn't get too much smoke. We had a little, but we've had many worse summers for smoke in the last five years than this one. But just seeing the news come in from all over everywhere else has been, in terms I have just tried to describe, very overwhelming. And certainly many people felt that.

And I, you know, I want to go back to something you said earlier about what made me sort of think about going beyond journalism and entering the fray of activism. There does come a point when, as a writer, you feel like, well, am I just observing events? Is that enough? I believe deeply in the power of words. I don't think they are superfluous. I've lived in countries where dictatorships really persecute journalism. And I know I take that as one very powerful indicator that journalism does matter and make

a difference. But you always ask yourself, is there more that I could be doing? And there's also a rich tradition of amazing writers who have crossed over and both write stories and do journalism, but also enter activism. I think of George Orwell and Albert Camus. You know, there's Naomi Klein and Rebecca Solnit today and John Valiant. So it's certainly possible to do both without necessarily becoming a propagandist or a cheerleader. And that's, I think that's the fear. And that's, that's partly what, what makes me a bit nervous about, about associating myself or aligning myself too closely with, with activists. I'm wondering, we haven't seen like a giant climate march in of the stadium. We've seen activists throwing food at famous artworks. Just a couple of days ago, 3,000 people were arrested in the Netherlands for blocking a

major highway in protest against government subsidies for oil and gas. And these are just a few examples. And last summer, I interviewed climate activists in Germany about the thinking behind some of these more disruptive tactics. And they told me that they were kind of escalating things because they felt like these big marches hadn't had enough of an impact. And I'm wondering how you're thinking about that. Yeah, like these more escalating, quote unquote, disruptive tactics versus big, more traditional protests like the ones that happened this weekend? Yeah, it's a question I think about a lot. I don't have a certain answer about it. I think a lot of people feel, I agree, I feel that

the climate movement has been perhaps a little too polite and diffident. I think if you accept the magnitude of what's coming our way, and we've just gotten a sneak peek this past summer, and I think it's important to remember that that is just the beginning, that it's going to continue to get worse until we reverse course here in terms of burning fossil fuels. So history will tell if we've been too careful or not careful enough in terms of the audacity of our activism. I think the risk is when you do something like throw oil at a painting or block traffic for days on end, the risk is that you alienate the very public that you're trying to win their support. trying to win their support. But I can't help thinking of a cartoon that I saw recently where there was this massive flood had washed out a street and was washing cars away. And somebody

was looking down from above and saying, you know, oh, how dare that water block traffic like that? You know, I think that captured the spirit of what these activists who do resort to more drastic civil disobedience, you know, that's their point. And I have a lot of sympathy for their spirit, whether strategically it is effective or not. That's, you know, I think their numbers are too small at this point. I think if you look at, you know, so I live in British Columbia. For us, the big movement here over the recent years have been the protests at Ferry Creek to protect old growth. And those have been very effective. But they're also very directly related to the subject at hand.

If you block a logging road and you block loggers from cutting down trees, there's no questioning the link of what you're doing. questioning the link of what you're doing. Whereas I think if you block a bridge to disrupt business as usual, it's harder for people who are being interrupted from picking their children up at school or making a doctor's appointment or whatever. They're not necessarily making the link between the disruption that they're experiencing and climate change and the burning of fossil fuels. So there are a lot of tactical strategic questions here. I was thinking about this just kind of in the lead up to our conversation, and I remember asking activists about, you know, why they've decided to target paintings and other symbols that don't on the surface seem to have anything to do with climate change. And the argument that they make is that targeting symbols of climate change often doesn't get the same buzz and it doesn't piss people off enough. often doesn't get the same buzz and it doesn't piss people off enough. And they also talk about something called the radical flank effect, which is something that happens in a social movement

where if you have a radical flank, that can increase support for moderate factions by making them seem more reasonable. So yeah, it's just really interesting to see how activists are kind of grappling with these questions. I'm wondering, yeah, have you had any conversations with organizers about the lessons they've learned about how to create and sustain momentum since the pandemic? Well, you know, the one lesson is just that it takes money. I mean, it takes boots on the ground. is just that it takes money. I mean, it takes boots on the ground.

I spoke to the people I spoke to, the local organizers of the march here in Vancouver, were volunteers. They put in, you know, there's a range of how much time they can put in. One fellow I spoke with, he didn't want me to share his name because he was afraid that, he told me he'd been putting in so much time

that he was afraid that his employer would be upset with him if they realized how much time he's been putting into volunteering for this. And I think it's been cutting into his work life a little bit. That's, you know, you just can't expect people to do that day in, day out for weeks, months, years. You know, I think one of the reasons also that this year, in spite of its success, I do think that this weekend has been and will be very successful as the global march goes. But part of the reason that it hasn't been as big as before is also that there's just so much other stress in people's lives. We have a cost of living crisis that's going on, a housing crisis, inflation,

there's any number of things. And so protests like this, you know, I have an immense amount of respect for the people who volunteer all of their time and really learning how to do it as they go. It's a lot of people who have never done this before. So you need professionals to maintain these movements. You need money to go into it. You need to pay people to get on the phone, to have these meetings, to go door to door, to put up posters, to put out the word, to reach out to journalists, to have these interviews. It all takes time. And I think if you want to build these movements, you need it needs to be, you know, grassroots is great and equally important.

But you also do need professionals to sustain these things and to build on, you know, what's going to happen next. It's going to take more organization, whatever it is. So to wrap up, Arno, I think a lot of people struggle with how they're meant to respond to what's happening. And for a lot of people, it's hard not to feel a sense of like despair and hopelessness about the climate crisis. And, you know, even you talked about kind of questioning the impact of journalism alone. And I wonder how participating in the march has affected your own sense of like morale and sense of hope about the future. How does it feel to be part of something like that? It feels good. It feels really nice to be surrounded by like-minded people who are,

you know, intelligent, professional, clever, and creative, and there's song, there's joy. You know, I don't need to tell you that it can be lonely work being a journalist and a writer sometimes. You're in a room, you're alone, thinking about these things, working on these things. I like solitude, but it's very nice to get out also and be surrounded by people in a movement and realize that you are part of something bigger. I think that is just a fundamental human trait that we all long to belong to something bigger than ourselves and to know that our values are shared by others. And so that was one really real thing about this weekend, just getting out and sharing that joy, as well as, of course, you know, sending a message to our political leaders and to business leaders

that, you know, this is a real movement. You can take some chances and we'll have you. You will be rewarded for taking risks on behalf of climate. Arno, thank you so much for this conversation. It was lovely to talk to you. Tamara, great to speak with you as well. Thank you for covering this issue. All right, that's all for today. I'm Tamara Kendacker. Thank you for listening, and FrontBurner will be back tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.