How can we make climate activism more inclusive? And why must me do that?
It’s vital that we make environmentalism more inclusive because the BAME community and indigenous communities are the most affected but have the least to do with it.
It goes back to colonialism. It goes back to how we have historically viewed the planet. It’s mother nature – it’s a feminine thing, seen as something that’s easy to crush. It’s talked about as something erratic, emotional, something to put in a box, to manage, to extract from. It’s interesting, if we framed the planet in more of a male way, would we still have this approach to it?
“It’s essential that the environmental movement is diverse because diversity gives us strength”
It’s essential that the environmental movement is diverse because diversity gives us strength. If we just sent all-male negotiating teams to COP, for example, it’s a narrow, invested interested. We need to have female representation, indigenous representation, BAME representation because that’s what makes up our population. Those teams are there to negotiate on our behalf, so how can you negotiate on our behalf if nobody looks like or represents who we are?
The world seems to feel increasingly polarized, where it’s almost impossible to reach any middle ground or consensus between the left and right. Is progressive, ambitious climate policy only in the hands of the left-wing right now?
It would do a massive disservice to the climate movement if we said that only liberal, left-leaning people could join in. That would be as exclusionary as the people that we’re calling out. It is the responsibility of everyone to care about their home, their communities and the planet that they live on and leave it in a better state than what they found it in.
I’ve never understood this, personally, because even you are the biggest champion of de-regulated free-market capitalism, you still need a healthy planet for that to happen. And coronavirus has just given us a very small taste of what’s to happen. It’s halted global economies; it’s stopped everything in its tracks. And this is just a tiny taste of what’s to come if we don’t manage this planet effectively.
“It’s the responsibility of everyone to care and it’s the job of both sides to keep everyone honest and to challenge each other”
It’s the responsibility of everyone to champion this. Jeremy [Jones] has done this in his Purple States – if you’re a more right-wing Republican who supports gun laws and is a hunter you might be seen as someone who’s not on the climate change bandwagon, but they still care for their environment.
It’s the same here in the UK, it’s the responsibility of everyone to care and it’s the job of both sides to keep everyone honest and to challenge each other. I don’t think this is an issue of whether or not climate change exists, it’s about how we should tackle it.
With Protect Winters you’re tapping into something that people might see as being more outside the political sphere. You’re tapping into passions, be it snowboarding skiing, surfing, climbing, and so on. And there’s a big variety of people with different views, backgrounds and beliefs who participate in them. Is that a big part of POW’s success?
So, as a charity, we’re bound by charitable law to be apolitical. So we support policies that any party could adopt. They could pick them up off the shelf and run with them. Whether they’re a right-wing party or a left-wing party, these are policies that can be put in place that will better our planet.
And again, diversity gives us strength. By having queer voices, black voices, young voices, old voices, it’s giving us multiple lenses to apply to a single problem – we’re coming at this from various different ways.
That is a good thing. That is a really, really good thing. It opens up people’s blind spots. If this was just some sort of big, left-wing vision then we would have massive blind spots of things that we don’t see, or don’t want to see.
That’s what’s awesome about our movement – we host all these voices. Yeah, we’re not going to agree all the time but, hopefully, we can do that in a way that’s reasonable and respectful.
“By having queer voices, black voices, young voices, old voices, it’s giving us multiple lenses to apply to a single problem – we’re coming at this from various different ways”
You’ve become a prominent figure within the UKs environmentalism movement. How have you made your voice heard?
I turned up to village hall debates and stuck my hand up and called out politicians. I’ve trolled oil companies on social media [laughs], I’ve written to my MP, I’ve taken calls with my MP [Member of Parliament] and MSP [Member of Scottish Parliament] to talk about my concerns. I’ve campaigned and made movies about it, and I’ve tried to tell compelling stories so that hopefully it strikes a chord with other people, so they want to care about those things, too.
I guess that’s all I’ve ever tried to do. I’ve never told anyone what they need to care about, or how to care about it and, hopefully, that might speak to someone in a way and inspire them to want to make change.
Has it been difficult? Have you faced hard setbacks?
[Laughs] Listen, I’ve been laughed out of the room – in rooms full of hundreds of people – for the changes I said I wanted to see and was crying in my car afterwards, I’ve been trolled on most social media channels, I’ve had some pretty spicy emails, I’ve had people tell me I’m an idiot, that I’m fucking annoying, I’ve kind of had it all. I’ve also been told that because someone found me attractive that I shouldn’t have an opinion on these things, and I should just not rock the boat too much.
So, do you know what? It’s not acceptable — I’m not saying any of it is — but creating change is hard. What we’re trying to do is challenge the way that people see the world. Everything is going to have to change – the way that we bank, the way we make our food, our transport systems, our public health systems, everything is going to have to change for us to live in this carbon-neutral or net-zero world.
“Creating change is hard. What we’re trying to do is challenge the way that people see the world”
I guess the job of activists is to hold up a mirror so that we can reflect what we see, and change what we don’t like. Sometimes people don’t like it. They don’t want to know. It’s an inconvenient truth. It’s too much to handle. And I don’t blame those people, because this is tough, it’s going to be tough.
We’re going to have to consciously uncouple ourselves from a broken system. And like any breakup, it’s painful. Anyone who’s gone through it knows just how shit it is. Your lifestyle changes, your bank account changes, you no longer have the car. It’s a painful process.
So, I think when someone like myself says this has to change, people can’t grasp that it’s over, in a sense. They might kind of lash out, it’s too painful to deal with. And that’s where POW comes in because if we can engage people through what they love, be it skiing, snowboarding, climbing, then it’s easier to talk about that breakup than to just go “Bam! Everything’s changing. You’re dumped, bye!”
So there’s my hot take. [Laughs]