There are lots of incredible people who are working in very flawed structures that are designed to keep us apart, so we're going to have to figure this out. The first stage is just talking about it openly: We are all working within structures where there is a disincentive to do what we most need to do, which is come together. I don't know what the answer is but I definitely think that that first stage is just being honest about it and trying to speak about it in a way that is not just accusatory.
Naomi KleinI think there is a danger that an environmental crisis can be used in precisely the same way as the terrorist threat can be used in terms of giving up freedom.
Naomi KleinThe deeper message that is resonating with people is that it is possible to build. It is possible to invest in people; it is possible to invest in green infrastructure; it's possible to change.
Naomi KleinIt is eminently possible to have a market-based economy that requires no such brutality and demands no such ideological purity. A free market in consumer products can coexist with free public health care, with public schools, with a large segment of the economy -- like a national oil company -- held in state hands. It's equally possible to require corporations to pay decent wages, to respect the right of workers to form unions, and for governments to tax and redistribute wealth so that the sharp inequalities that mark the corporatist state are reduced. Markets need not be fundamentalist.
Naomi KleinThere is plenty of room to make a profit in a zero-carbon economy; but the profit motive is not going to be the midwife for that great transformation.
Naomi KleinAnd most of all, it means continually drawing connections among these seemingly disparate strugglesโasserting, for instance, that the logic that would cut pensions, food stamps, and health care before increasing taxes on the rich is the same logic that would blast the bedrock of the earth to get the last vapors of gas and the last drops of oil before making the shift to renewable energy.
Naomi Klein