Climate change has been associated so much with a peaceful mentality - obviously peace and love are good, but we need to think about climate as a threat to survival.

Social movements throughout history take place in people's minds. If we got 5,000 Americans who were talking about climate change to their neighbors and to their coworkers, and talking about this pledge, that would change the political and social landscape so much more than if 5,000 people got arrested for protesting a pipeline.

My grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. Some heroes of mine have long been the Jewish Partisans, these young people who just went into the woods with whatever guns and bombs and what not they could get their hands on, and just would fight Nazis, and try to help people escape.

What we accomplished during World War Two is just amazing. We turned our country upside down. African Americans were demanding to be given combat missions. 10% of Americans moved in order to relocate for a war job. We as a country accomplished this heroic, nearly miraculous thing, and we have this legacy of policies and agency - how did they do it? How did they fund it? How did they organize it? It is actually an example that we can borrow from very productively to guide us.

By looking the other way on climate change we facilitate a collective denial, and we do it for each other.

The problem is so severe that trying to say, "First we'll fix the government and then we'll tackle climate change," or, "First we have to figure out alternative systems to capitalism and then we'll tackle climate change," I don't see how those things are possible in the very short term.

I argue that I don't think it's a moral position to say that civilization is going to collapse, and that's okay. Because that would cause the deaths of billions of people. It's certainly not something I'm willing to accept.