January 17, 2025 • 51 mins
What if stopping fossil fuel expansion projects and fighting for climate justice was as easy as taking a targeted digital action for a few minutes a day, and getting rewarded for it? Prepare to be fired up for this super motivating conversation.
In this episode, Madeleine sits down with Christian Vanizette, a URL/IRL anti-fossil fuel campaigner and co-founder of Chilli.app, the world’s first climate action app. Christian breaks down how effective anti-fossil fuel campaigning is not as difficult as one might think, and how we can all get involved in ways that energize us, not burn us out.
We discuss:
- How to take digital and IRL climate action daily
- How to find what motivates you to action
- Pranking banks and mocking dictators(!)
- How to sustain action and be relentless in a way that doesn’t burn us out
- How to act in global solidarity against FF expansion no matter where you are
- Christian’s concrete advice for listeners on finding their climate superpowers!
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Book: Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World
- Carbon bombs map: www.carbonbombs.org
Co-founder of Chilli, the first climate activism app, Christian Vanizette is a pioneer in leveraging technology for global impact. An Obama Scholar at Columbia University and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Christian hails from Tahiti and is the proud dad of 7-year-old Leo. Before founding Chilli, Christian co-founded the global NGO makesense.org, which runs development programs worldwide and oversees a €100 million impact fund to support social and environmental innovation. He is passionate about stopping oil and gas pipelines ✊
Follow Christian and Chilli!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chilli.app
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coconutsurfing
Website: https://www.chilli.club
Follow Seeding Sovereignty:
Instagram/TikTok/Twitter/YouTube: @seedingsovereignty
Website: www.seedingsovereignty.org
Follow Madeleine:
Instagram/TikTok: @madeleinemacgillivray
Website: www.madeleinemacgillivray.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:02):
Hey, everyone, welcome to supersede a series of
conversations between me,Madeleine MacGillivray and
passionate folks from allsectors who have found their
superpowers. This is abouttaking that big existential
question of what can I do andturning it into specific,
grounded actions and takeaways,we want to inspire you all to
supersede the systemic powers ofoppression and sit in your own
(00:26):
powers to collectively buildtowards a joyful and equitable
world.
Christian Welcome, to supersede.
Thank you. Menton, I've beenwanting to talk to for a while.
First of all, we met because youcame to a seating event. You
came to a super seed sort oflive podcast recording where we
(00:47):
were talking with Christy andSaad about diversifying green
jobs. And you came up to me andyou were like, Hi, I'm Christian
I have an app. I have a climateapp. And I was like, Cool. And,
you know, then I realized thatyou are kind of like one of the
most tapped in folks who isorganizing and actually
campaigning on a long term deeplevel, really strategically, and
(01:11):
you are a treasure trove ofinformation and experience on
these topics. So I'm reallyexcited to talk to you about all
of these things. Thank you forinviting me. So I'm going to
read your bio really quickly,just for listeners. Christian
venizet Is the co founder ofChile, the first climate
activism app. Christian is apioneer in leveraging technology
(01:32):
for global impact. He's an Obamascholar at Columbia Forbes 30,
under 30. He is from Tahiti andthe proud dad of seven year old
Leo, before founding Chile,Christian co founded the global
NGO makes sense.org which runsdevelopment programs worldwide
and oversees a 100 million euroImpact Fund to support social,
environmental innovation. He'spassionate about stopping oil
(01:55):
and gas pipelines. That's you,yes. Like the first thing on my
mind is something that veryexciting that happened two days
ago. And I feel like we have totalk about that first, which is
that you celebrated a very bigwin, like a very big win. So
basically, in campaigning and inclimate activism, we don't have
wins all the time. And two daysago, there was a great news.
(02:17):
Paul Watson, legendary activistdefending the whales, one of the
first members of Greenpeace,like really the one of the
beginning of the environmentalmovement, was in jail in Denmark
because Japan asked Denmark toput him to jail because Japan
doesn't want him to stop themfrom wailing again. And so we
(02:37):
campaigned for five months, manyorganizations, many people
across the world, hundreds ofactivists who organized protests
in front of the Danishembassies, digital actions every
day on Chile. And we got thenews two days ago that Paul
Wesson is free. He won't beextradited to Japan, which would
have been a death sentence forhim, because he's already 75 and
so we're excited. And this meansnot just it's great because it
(03:01):
saved an activist, but alsobecause now he can continue his
work with all the otheractivists who are fighting
against whaling. There's threecountries who continue to do
whaling, Japan, of course, theFaroe Island, Iceland, and so
this means we can now fight tostop this once and for all to
protect the wells, because it'sone of the biggest carbon sinks
(03:23):
on the planet, and also becauseit's beautiful creatures.
Congratulations,yay. Paul is free and really
largely to do with you and yourwork at Chile.
Yeah, it's us. We've beenorganizing campaigns across the
world, but there's also a bigmobilization that happened in
France, with the team of SeaShepherd there, they got 1
million signatures on petition.
The French president tookposition, and we did our part in
(03:44):
other places, in the US, in theUK. So it was great campaign,
and also it shows that in amoment where activists are being
repressed and harassed bypowerful corporations and
governments, we can still havetheir back with people power.
Wow.
And so much people power, andthat is what Chile kind of
(04:08):
harnesses. Would you explainwhat you have created or CO
created? Explain Chile to folks?
Yes. So you guys have an iPhone.
It's an app. Every day. You cantake action with climate
activists to do something greatfor a climate campaign. So it
can be to stop an oil and gaspipeline that's going to emit
like, 100 million tons of COtwo. Or it can be to write to
(04:30):
the Prime Minister of Denmark sothey really spoil Watson, for
example. Or it can be to send anemail to the president of Brazil
so they do better to protect theAmazonia and based on the place
where you're in the world, basedon who's your bank or who's your
insurance company, you gettailored call to actions for you
where your voice matters evenmore as a consumer, as a citizen
(04:52):
of certain places. And there's alot of campaigns in New York
City too, because that's wherewe are today. Yeah. I
mean, one of the things thatintrigues me so much about this
app because there are other appsthat you know sort of tackle
this issue of like individualaction and harnessing that and
kind of gamifying it a littlebit, because that is the most,
(05:15):
if not one of the most effectiveways to motivate folks to
action. But I think what'sunique about Chile is what
you're talking about, you'reharnessing the power of of tech,
basically, to, like, create veryspecialized, very specific and
very focused actions and callsto action that you know not.
(05:36):
It's not just like someonerandomly emailing the
representative. It is a verytargeted and strategic approach.
How did you develop that? And,like, you know, like, where did
that come from? It'salso not just digital actions.
Like, actually, when you take anaction on Chile, you send an
email, you earn coins, and thenyou give these coins to real
groups on the ground who aregoing to go to go protest in
(05:59):
front of the representativeoffice that you send an email
to, or in front of the banksthat you just sent an email to.
So there's going to be boots onthe ground going in real life
thanks to the coins you give tothem, because we fund them with
our foundation, so they can havethe means and tools to go and
rally and recruit people andorganize this protest. So it's
(06:19):
really this relentless onlineactions that you do, but also
the offline actions thatgrassroots groups can take. And
when you blend both, you createa new way of campaigning that is
relentless, and that makes itthat if you want to, for
example, a bank like Citibank,to stop financing fossil fuels,
if you organize every day likethat. It might be just like 5%
(06:40):
of their business, but then itbecomes 99% of their problems,
because people keep talkingabout this. And so it's this
blend that works. And so thisform of campaigning is just an
evolution. If you look, forexample, there was change.org
with the petitions. And sothere's new forms and techniques
that evolved with the newcontext in which we work in. And
so yeah, that's how it came tolife. And one of the first
(07:04):
campaign we took on, and webased the approach of Chile and
how it works based on thesuccess of that campaign, is the
campaign to stop the longestheated crude oil pipeline in the
world. It's called the ECOP, theEast African crude oil pipeline.
It's like made in Uganda andTanzania, and it's built by a
big French oil company namedtotal and so to stop this
(07:25):
pipeline, which would emit 400million tons of carbon emission,
which is massive. It's like 10%of carbon emission of a country
like France or the UK everyyear, just one project, we
campaign against different banksacross the world. We got 30
banks to drop to say we won'tfinance this project, and so the
French company doesn't have thebillions it needs to build the
(07:46):
pipeline and to make those banksdecide to not finance it. It was
this kind of actions, likeemails, social comments, like
commenting on the LinkedIn ofthe CEO, and at the same time,
boots on the ground, going infront of the bank every day. So
you had like seven people inTokyo every day in front of a
Japanese bank. And because theyare not used to have protests
there, even just said sevenpeople made a difference. So we
(08:07):
replicate those techniques, andthen you just do it again and
again. And you can have banksdropping projects, insurance
dropping projects. You can havesuppliers who stops supporting
and also governments. Wow,it's such a strategic, targeted
approach. And as you're saying,it's like you are literally
combining the digital with theIRL and those two together. It's
(08:29):
like it's, as you said, it'srelentless. And I saw it
firsthand, because we did, youknow, summer of heat, you also
supported summer of heat, youknow, this year in New York,
where activists and organizerswere relentlessly showing up at
the headquarters of Citibank.
(08:52):
That energizes me so much, and Ifeel like it would energize
anyone listening, and so forthat energy to turn into joining
and action. What do people do?
So the Citibank example is anamazing example of a campaign.
Citibank is the largest bank inthe world, funding fossil fuels,
and the scientists have saidthat the priority if we want to
(09:14):
solve climate change is no newoil and gas infrastructure. It
doesn't mean no oil fromtomorrow, because we still need
it for cars and stuff. But if webuild new fossil fuel projects,
we're gonna, like, it's gonna bereally hard to get out of oil in
the long term. And so the nonnew oil and gas and so Citibank,
the tactic that were used bygreat groups like that organized
(09:36):
the summer of it is really toput pressure on them and be
relentless. And we did thisapproach in Europe, and we got
the biggest bank of Europe,which is bien pearite, the
French bank, to announce a fewmonths ago that they would stop
financing not just new oil andgas projects, but they would
stop financing companies whokeep on doing oil and gas
(09:56):
projects. So they would stopfinancing Big Oil. Basically, I.
And it's the biggest bank ofEurope. And so in the US, the
biggest one financeinfrastructure is Citibank. So
the same tactic and approach.
And so when you blend this kindof tactics of relentless online
and offline organizing, and ifyou add like taking them to
court for climate in action, ifyou add like investigations and
all these kinds of other formsof campaigning, you can actually
(10:18):
get those big corporates to dropso Citibank has just announced
that they would stop financingprojects in the Amazon region.
It's not enough. And so now thefight continues, and hopefully
we're going to win. And sopeople on Chile have been able
to send, like, 1000s of emails,1000s of digital action but at
the same time, gave their coinsto support the campaign so that
(10:39):
the activists have more means toorganize and can continue the
fight.
It's just so cool, like it'sjust so cool.
So we calculated, for every 0.0024 Euro. I don't know how much
is it in dollar, must be 0.00$30 that you give to activists
(11:04):
that operates on Chile you stopone ton of carbon emissions. And
if you look at the carboncapture when it's greenwashed,
because it's done by Big Oil,it's 30 euro to save one ton of
carbon emission. And it's ifit's a big, big oil company
doing it, and usually they reusethe carbon they capture to
create more fracking. So this islike totally green watch, but
(11:27):
the real price is around 250euro for good carbon capture per
ton of carbon. So activism isreally the most efficient way to
stop carbon emissions, basicallythrough Chile, not just through
Chile.
The thing we want to build isjust an entry point so people
can get started, because noteveryone can go to the protest,
(11:50):
go to the rally. Sometimesparents, you have kids, you
still want to contribute, butyou don't have the time. And
with Chile, we want to make itan easy way to get into that
world and to support the peoplewho are on the ground and who
dedicate their lives to stoppingclimate change,
yeah, yeah. There's really acamaraderie and a collaboration
with people who are doing thecampaigning, doing the strategy,
(12:14):
and who have dedicated theirlives like you have, and then
folks who are just so hungry fordoing something and something
that you know we talk about andlike the purpose of this podcast
is to really ground what itlooks like to work in climate
justice, but really justgenerally, to know your
superpowers as a person, toinspire not just climate but
(12:38):
just Social Change in general,and fight for justice, but
oftentimes that kind of esotericidea of which is also a very
personal journey of, who am I,that people are going through,
that we're trying to unpack,needs to come alongside with,
like specific, tangible actionsthat people can take. And so I
(13:00):
think this is an incredibleplace to start. And
I think people underestimate thesuperpowers they have, because,
like for example, to get a bigbank like the biggest bank of
Europe, like BNP, took care tostop fossil fuels all it needs.
It's 5000 of its own clientstelling them, I don't want my
money to go there. And thisraise an alert for them in terms
(13:20):
of reputations towards their ownclients, and then they would
say, oh, maybe we should look atthis issue and as consumers, as
citizens, we have power in ourvoices. It's just, how do we use
it more? And the whole game ofthese big old companies or
authoritarian leaders is to makeyou feel powerless. But even
just feeling that you're in thistogether with 100 people, 200
(13:41):
people gets you going, and thenit grows. And so, yeah, everyone
listening, like, just askyourself, what is it that you're
a client of, like, where do youvote? And how can you use that
voice that you have to make achange on climate? And there's
going to be many, many avenues.
That is a question that I askguests to think about and offer
(14:05):
to our audience, kind of at theend of conversations. But thank
you for for taking opportunity.
Because, yes, there's so muchopportunity for people, and I
think it's hard to sort ofidentify where they might have
power. One of our previousguests shout out. Whitney bauck
said that, you know, you havemore power than you think. She
talks to sometimes, people whohave billions of dollars who
(14:26):
think that they, you know,aren't able to do enough, and so
thinking relatively, it's reallyhelpful to be reminded that you
really have a lot of power. Andactivists and citizens, you
don't need that much money tocreate an impact. I'll give you
an example in France to get thisbank to drop and find that in
fossil fuels, it's something youcan't do in the US, but works
(14:49):
really well in France. It's fiveyear old, literally, to buy
painting and to go repaint thebank and so, oh, to buy paint,
paint, and then you go and you.
Spread it on the bank, and thenthat's how we got this bank to
drop. And it was five euro.
Don't do it in America, but inFrance, it was not illegal
anymore, because they want thecourt case. But it's just like,
(15:10):
this is one, like, bit radicalexample, but it takes five euro
to change that. The other thingthat people don't realize is
that if you live in places likeNew York, like London, in those
financial centers, most of thesefossil fuel projects and these
companies, they come to findfunding here. And oftentimes
it's to find funding in NewYork, in London, to do projects
(15:31):
in places where it's notdemocracies. So the example of
the ECOP is a dictatorship. Andso our friends in Uganda and
Tanzania who oppose thispipeline, they get put in jail,
and it's really hard for them tospeak up. And so acting in New
York so that Citibank and otherbanks don't finance these
projects in Uganda when there'sbigger democratic spaces that
(15:53):
you can use is also to showsolidarity with people that are
on the front lines. And so askyourself, Where do I live, and
how can I be of support and insolidarity with the bigger
movement? Because, yeah, maybefrom New York. It can help my
friends in Uganda, and overall,it helps me. Because if there's
not 400 million tons of CO twogoing in the atmosphere, it's
(16:14):
good news for the climate. It'smean, like your kids are going
to be able to grow up all therein a world that's more
beautiful. Canwe go back a little bit to sort
of your origin story? Yes, andlike share more about how you
got started in this work, andfeel free to go back as far as
(16:38):
you want. I mean, you're, youwere born in Tahiti.
There's something I realized. Myfriend told me, when you're born
in an island like Tahiti, likeyou have to really imagine like,
it's exactly how you think aboutit. It's like beautiful blue
lagoons, like small islands, butwith steep mountains like
(17:01):
luxurious green and you reallyare surrounded by nature that
you don't even realize. What isnature. You take it for granted.
Yeah, it's just like, that's howit is. And so, so then it's like
you're part of nature, andnature is part of you, in a way.
And so it's just like being afish in water, and you don't
know what is water, right? Andso this is, like, really
(17:23):
amazing, but then you don'trealize it. And then I went to
study in France, that's where I,like, started to be in Paris, in
big cities, and then yourealize, Oh, wow. Like, that's
not the same. If you grow up inParis or in New York and stuff,
you don't see as much natureand, yeah, so it's also harder,
maybe, to feel connected to it.
But I didn't realize it before Imoved from Tahiti, right? And,
(17:46):
and when did you move? I movedwhen I was 2020, years old. So
you lived until,yeah, you lived your entire
adult, young adult life. Yeah,it
was a bit of a shock. The firsttime I took the train, I was 20
years old, and I was reallyworried of falling asleep and
(18:07):
missing the stops. But yeah, Igrew up in tidy nature, and then
what really got me, like active,into doing things for the
planet, is really the fact thatone of the key thing that's
happening because of climatechange is that the coral reefs,
the corals are bleaching,they're becoming like, white,
(18:28):
and it means, like, fish are notgoing and stuff. And then you
realize, oh my god, this canhappen in my lifetime, that,
yeah, the coral reefs that we'reseeing, and these go in the
lagoon, and then you're like, ohmy god, you won't see them
anymore. And I think of my kid,who's like, seven, and if it
continues like that, by the timehe'll turn 15, will be gone. And
(18:51):
so this was, this is reallyscary for me. And at the same
time, it's not the like, westill have a High Island that
are enough high up so we like,they won't disappear underwater.
But when you think of otherplaces like Sen and stuff, it's
and you're like, wow, we'relosing our homes. And then you
realize, well, actually placeslike Paris are even more in
danger because of the heat wavesand things like that. And so,
(19:14):
yeah, it's global issue. Nowit's happening. For me, it was
just easier because I feelreally connected to nature, and
it's just like, how do we buildthis kind of sense of connection
between people and nature?
Because I think it's morepowerful than to talk about,
let's stop climate change, isto, how do we make people feel
like and really fall in lovewith nature and feel it so that
(19:34):
they want to protect it, becauseyou only want to protect what
you love. And I think this is apowerful tool for the climate
fight. Is the ocean, the forest,all these things that most
people feel connected to. Andhow do we recreate that link? I
think that's going to be thekey.
Yeah, it's kind of like thechilly strategy of digital and
(19:59):
on the ground. Binding. And thenthere's like a third one, which
is reconnecting. And you know,we are nature, because
you won't wake up in the morningthinking, I want to stop climate
change, but you wake up in themorning saying, I love the
ocean. And if you live next tothe ocean, you want to protect
it, or you want to go walk inthe forest. And so this kind of
feelings is what we need to useto get more people involved, not
(20:22):
the brain, like stop climatechange, which is hard to
understand, and I think that'sthe threshold we need to do. But
now there's so many problemincreases at the same time, it's
gonna be a tough few yearscoming. Yeah,
it is gonna be a tough few yearscoming. Do Can we talk about
that a little bit?
(20:43):
I just think I have kind ofresisted,
you know, yeah, I recognize thatit might be a it comes from a
place of privilege. It alsocomes from a place of kind of
overwhelm, and I haven't reallygiven a ton of thought, per se,
to exactly what it's going tolook like. I just, I'm not sure
(21:06):
how I feel about that. I'mtrying not to analyze it, but
I'm I'm scared and I'm worriedand I'm also energized. How do
you think about the next fouryears? Because one of the things
that I also appreciate havingyou on and having this
conversation with you is thatyou have a perspective that is
(21:30):
more global. You have youdirectly work with and, you
know, collaborate on campaignsand make stuff happen in Europe
and other countries, eCoPAfrica, and also you're in the
US now, so you get to see whatactivism looks like, kind of
across the world. And thoseinsights are really important.
Because I think oftentimes, whenyou're in one place, and you
(21:51):
know, I'm just in New York City,I'm from New York,
I center of the known universe.
You joke, thecenter of the known universe,
the center of my known universe,at least. And I think I can get
a little bit in my bubble aboutwhat activism and what climate
looks like in just New York, butit's really beautiful to think
(22:12):
about the global community ofpeople trying to stop carbon
bombs and trying to fight forclimate justice. So I appreciate
your insights on that. And so assomeone who has more of a global
perspective and directly workswith folks outside of the US and
folks inside of the US, what isthe perception and what are the
(22:32):
main fears from a perspective ofof the incoming administration,
if you can speak to that. Orjust like, how are you thinking
about organizing at Chile?
Yeah, so, like, we live in aworld that's like capitalist,
capitalism across the world, andunfortunately, and the center of
(22:53):
capitalism across the world,when you work on climate change,
and you look at the carbonemissions and where does the
majority of the emissions comefrom, which country, where does
the financing of these emissionscome from to build this kind of
new, massive fossil fuelprojects that just there's 420
new there's 420 what's calledcarbon booms. It's like fossil
(23:15):
fuel projects that would emitmore than 1 billion ton of
carbon emission over theirlifetime. We map them on the
map, carbon bombs.org, you cango see them, and you can see who
finances them. And when you lookat this map, all the roads lead
to the US, like the biggestcarbon bomb in the world, 16
billion tons of carbon emissionis just one carbon bomb that
will blow up the ParisAgreement. Like objective of 1.5
(23:38):
is the Permian Basin in Texas.
And so first, instead ofemission, it's here, and also in
terms of financing, and the citywhere you grew up in, which is
New York, is the center ofFinance, Financial Center of the
whole world. And so there's somuch that can be done from here.
And so the what's happened, likethe space, and how can we
organize in the US to stop theseprojects is the key to solve
(24:02):
climate change. Now, it's luckythat there's some Democratic
spaces still in the US where youcan organize. The thing that I'm
a bit worried about, and thatI've seen across the world is
that as the crisis is gettingworse, politicians and big
corporations, instead of helpingsolve the crisis, they fight the
(24:23):
activists and the people who aretrying to stop this crisis from
happening. And so we startedwith Paul Watson, but this
repression of these activists isincreasing all across the world.
And so what I'm a bit worriedabout is that it's so important
to organize in the US, becausewe can't solve climate change
otherwise, and at the same time,it seems like it's going to be
(24:45):
more and more complicated toorganize, that there's going to
be more legal threats, morepersecutions of the activists.
And so it become a democraticquestions right now, when you
don't have democratic spaces,there. And you can't do activism
and you can't solve theseproblems. So the climate crisis
and the democratic crisis aredeeply intertwined, because we
(25:05):
can't solve this problem withoutdemocracies. And so how people
in the US are going to resist inthe next two years? The cool
thing is that you guys are afederal state, so it's not a
federal country, so it's notgoing to be the same depending
on the states you're in. And soI think it's going to be like,
how do you play defense at thefederal level so they don't undo
everything, and how do you playoffense at the local level, so
(25:28):
that the progressive democraticstates, like New York State or
like California, push thefrontier of climate action, so
that other states copy. And ifyou do these two strategies,
hopefully it can work, and if weuse some solidarity across
border, and I give you anexample, the Permian Basin, the
fracking in Texas, actually,that Trump is president now
(25:51):
gives a huge opportunity to stopthis carbon bomb, because 50% of
the exports of the permanentmachine is for Europe and
especially Germany, but thepeople in Europe and Germany
don't want to be dependent onTrump for their energy, because
the guy is like, nuts. And sosuddenly you have an opportunity
to convince the Europeancountries to say, let's not
(26:13):
import the gas from Texas thatis being fracked, and suddenly
you can have less demand. Soeven if Trump wants to double
down on the drilling in Texas,there's not going to be enough
people to buy it, and so he'snot going to be able to sell it.
And so this there's some cracksthat can be found in the system
that we can play with. Anotherexample is in London, you have
(26:33):
an insurance marketplace calledLloyds of London's and 40% of
the fossil fuel projects acrossthe world try to find insurance
there. So from one building inLondon, you can actually put
pressure to stop an LNG terminalin Louisiana, because they find
insurance in London. And inLondon, it's still okay to
organize, even if the repressionhave increased. So you can play
(26:53):
like that with the differentlike nodes in the financial
system to put pressure and tocampaign strategically and to
stop things, even if Trump wantsto continue to drill,
it's, it's like, I love that.
You know, this is so energizingbecause I just want to take a
step back, because I feel likethere's, there's a lot of ways
(27:15):
that we can expand on and followthe threads of what you're
talking about, but I just wantto just like, observe the fact
that you really inspire me andpeople to to like, do this, to
do what you're doing. I thinkthat it requires a level of
(27:36):
curiosity. What can we find likethat? To me, is so interesting.
I had no idea that. You know,40% of insured projects comes
from one building in London.
Like that is the type of workthat is necessary to do that
kind of research and find these,these connections. I love that
(27:56):
you guys have a map like that isso cool. A carbon ball is
horrifying. What carbon bomb mapis that, by the way, just like
is what webs. I'll link it. I'lllink it in the Okay, carbon
bombs over, getting back tothinking about like, the kind of
geopolitics of it. It's reallyinteresting to hear that because
I also didn't know about the LNGlike strategy around where we
(28:23):
can kind of find that in findthat crack. How do you find
those cracks? Like, how did youwhen you look at the activist
groups, and how did they decide,what are we going to campaign
on, and stuff like that? Yeah,it's based on just like data,
like the on the carbonemissions, you just look at what
is the biggest source of carbonemissions happening. And a lot
of this is grounded in thescience of what the IPCC and the
(28:46):
climate scientists say, like thepriority non new island. So
people like you just go and youfollow the site the science, you
analyze the market mechanism,and then you find those cracks.
The hard part is it's socomplex. How you break it down
in small bits, so that theeveryday citizen can be like,
Oh, my God, I can participate inthis because I'm in this bank,
(29:06):
etc. And so it's just about, howdo we make it easier and simple?
But the cool thing is that everytime there's a big change, it
reshuffled the cards, and thenyou can find new opportunities.
And so the fact that Trump is inpower, is bad news for climate,
but we can still get some bigwins. And then the question
becomes, how do we safeguardfaces to keep organizing? And
(29:27):
yeah, it's gonna be interestingtwo years. It's gonna
be an interesting two years. AndI love before the midterms.
That's why I said two years.
Yeah, two years before themidterms, exactly. And in terms
of I love this framework ofthinking about it, from defense
on the federal side and offenseon the state level. And it's
true that you know somethingthat actually we talk about and
(29:51):
that we've been working on atseating is inspiring more
grassroots political action andadvocacy. See, and similarly
with Chile, I mean, likeliterally taking action in terms
of making relationships with thepeople that you have voted into
power who listen to you and whoin fact, work for you, and
realizing that you don't have tobe a lifelong political
(30:13):
organizer to know and you don'thave to know exactly the inner
workings of your local politicsto inspire political change and
fight for critical climatejustice related legislation to
pass. And by the way, when I sayclimate justice, I'm talking
about anything and everythingyou know, resources, mutual aid,
shelter, housing for migrants,all of it is connected. And so I
(30:36):
just want to put a pin in thatidea, because it's really
powerful, and it also is justconnected to just finding your
people, you know, community, andhow all of these things work
together. It's like beingconnected to an incredible
strategic community of peopledoing like, highly targeted
(30:59):
actions on a platform like Chileon Chile, showing up if you can,
if you're able, depending onwhere you are, and also just
looking at wherever you are,what is going on, where you are,
and getting to know your people,getting to know your neighbors,
and creating those lateralconnections. I talk about this
all the time, and I think it'simportant to repeat it often is
just lateral connections are thekey to resiliency in the face of
(31:23):
climate and whatever it may be,and so continuing to, like, make
that mycelial network by justknowing people around you and
being able to support you andsupport each other in times of
crisis and not is reallycritical as all of this is
happening,yeah. Give you one example.
There's, there was a 19 yearsold, like, young woman on Chile,
(31:45):
yeah, who is in school and justfinished high school, and she
was like, Oh, I really want topush for this bill so that
climate change become like,mandatory in the curriculums in
Illinois. And then shecampaigned on chili, like she's
just just an everyday citizen.
She wasn't an activist, shedidn't had a huge follow on
(32:06):
Instagram, and then hundreds ofpeople rallied around her, and
then she made it happen. And sothis is what you mean, like,
it's like, how do we give moreaccess to this platform, the
lateral connection to morepeople, so that people can build
the change they want to see. Andwe've seen this story again and
again, and so it's not thathard. It's just about saying
what you want to achieve, andthen you like, with platforms
(32:29):
like Chile and others, it willrally other people's won't join
you, yeah. And when you looklike, really, I've been
campaigning since five yearsagainst biggest oil companies in
the world, and the worst enemiesare 24 year old woman who have
Instagram account and just talkabout what's happening, and it
becomes the worst enemy of a CEOof a billion dollar company,
(32:51):
because just there's a lot ofpeople who care about the same
thing, and that's something thatgives me hope, is that you don't
need to be a 70 year old, superExperienced to start to make the
change, you can just go for it.
You open an Instagram account,you start telling your story,
and then, like, you go,Wow, it's so energizing. That's
why I love talking to you,because you you are so connected
with this, this energy in thisworld. And I think it's
(33:16):
wonderful to have a balance ofvery motivate, like, it's very
motivating, and it's energizing.
And also the we Okay, so we talkabout this, I would love to have
this kind of mini conversation,because we've talked about it
before, but our approaches toactivism or climate are
(33:38):
different. Just, yeah, we havedifferent, like, tendencies and
different needs as human beings.
And so we've talked about theidea that, you know, having
myself been involved in inadvocacy, in like an integral
level since childhood, I have amore kind of low and slow, long
term approach to activism thatdoes not include lots of
(34:04):
adrenaline, and you have anapproach to activism that, from
what I've observed with you, andlike going to actions with you
and talking with You, that ismore kind of like you have these
big wins, and not all the time,obviously, a lot of the time.
(34:25):
It's just a sustained pressureover time. It's another thing
that another wonderful guest ofours, Dr Marcus Erickson, talked
about, which is small wins overtime, and just keep the pressure
your you know, as for as long asyou can, which this is the work
of our lives, so hopefully, aslong as you are physically able.
But yeah, let's talk about that.
(34:48):
Because, like, how do yousustain yourself? Because I
remember saying to you, kind oflike, I'm worried you're gonna
burn out, basically, but maybe Iwas projecting my own
experience, and your answer wasreally interesting.
Yeah. The reason I wanted tomeet you also was the fact that
you've been in this for so long.
Like, you were 15 when you took,like, the your government to
court for climate in action,yeah, and you've been at it for
(35:10):
like, more than me. Like it'sbeen only four or five years. I
do you've been working right,right, right where I was working
before. But, like, thecampaigning is only favianna. So
my question is, how can Isustain? And that's what, like,
I love the workshops you do on,like, finding your superpower
and how you sustain, becauseI've seen so many activists
(35:30):
burning out around me, and then,like, it's sad, because someone
will campaign hard for sixmonths, and then they burn out,
and so then you don't see themfor the next five years. And so
the movement lose overall. Andcampaigning is hard, especially
if you're on the front line.
It's hard, like, it's, it's,it's hard stuff. You know,
people get killed. Yes, yourfriends get killed. Your friends
(35:53):
get put in jail. It's not like,even mentally, it's, it's
complicated sacrifice. And sothe question for me is, how can
we sustain that? And there's howwe sustain ourselves. But also,
the big thing we're trying withChile is that, how do we build
technology to make it easier,like, how can I run 15 campaigns
(36:15):
at the same time against 15pipelines across the world? And
it all it takes me is the sameamount of work that I've been
doing for one but thanks totechnology, I can run 15 and
then you increase your potentialimpact without having to
increase your workload andeverything. And so this is the
(36:35):
things, is that we need to buildinfrastructures and tools that
allow us to be more impactfulwithout having to work more or
burn out. And then the otherthing is, and I took it from
you, is that you don't think ofit like, Oh, I'm happy when I
win, I'm sad when I lose. Itjust has to become a way of of
being and embodying your values.
And it's like you resist justbecause it's the way of
(36:58):
surviving, even as a species, weneed to solve this climate
change otherwise. And so itbecomes more of like kind of a
mantra, or something you do justbecause you know it has to be
done, no matter the end result.
So then the question becomes,how do you have fun at the same
time? And the cool thing aboutactivism is that is the Okay,
(37:19):
it's hard, but it's also themost funny moment of my life,
like one of the ways we gotthese banks to drop funding the
biggest pipeline in the worldwas by making pranks. So we
built like a whole campaign,which was making a fake oil
pipeline going all across Europeand sending 1000s of letters to
people saying, you have to leaveyour home because a new pipeline
(37:42):
is going to be built in awealthy neighborhood of France.
We were sending message, andthen it went all over the news
because people freaked out. Wecreated a fake call center when
they could call about the weekup the Western European crude
oil pipeline, there was likefake work in progress. In some
cities, you had interviews of abakery who was saying, again,
work at the city center, I'm notgonna have clients, and all of
(38:04):
this for a fucking pipeline. Andso this was so fun, it was all
over the news, and it was aprank organized with 1000
people. Like, where did you getto organize pranks with 1000
people? And it makes good to theworld, you know. So this is all
the funny part, and the besttool that we have as activists
is art and communication. And soit's beauty. It's, How do you
(38:24):
use these beautiful things thathuman can create? You just use
it for good. And so it's, yeah,it's hard, but it's also fun.
And so I encourage everyone tostart and try,
yeah, yeah. It's, it's you'rehaving fun, which, yeah, as long
as you have fun, you don't burnout. I mean that, yeah, and I
think that's good fun. Yeah, itwas good fun. I want to, I want
(38:45):
to also, you know, you know,there's a lot of folks fighting
for their survival and fighting,fighting extraction and
expansion in their homes.
Definitely thinking about thepeople in the Permian Basin, the
folks that we get to work withand, you know St James Parish
and folks who are reallyexperiencing severe when
(39:06):
you meet them, they're the mostjoyful yes and fun person ever.
Yes, yesexactly, because humor sustains,
and joy is what sustains. Thisis what a lot Exactly. And so
imbuing the mindset of this workfrom a place where of that
because that is connection andthat is community, is a very,
(39:26):
very important mindset shift fora lot of folks who I think maybe
if you're okay, I've experiencedthis. I've experienced
witnessing people who are sokind of excited and eager to use
their energy and their powersfor activism, but coming from a
(39:50):
place of kind of thinking thatit has to be a sacrifice, and
coming from a place maybe oflike guilt or something or
survivor. Skills, if it isn't asacrifice, but that is
ultimately what is gonna burnyou out. And the real Sustainer
is joy. And it's really fun towatch you have fun with what
you're doing, because also theseare huge, huge wins. And you're
(40:13):
not gonna have wins all thetime, but you have to still
derive joy when you don't havewins. Trolling the
powerful is the most runningthing ever. And like, there's an
example of even like in there'san amazing book, I think I don't
know which country exactly it isin Europe, but it's an activist
(40:35):
who wrote a book about how totake down a dictator, and the
main lesson of his book is humorand ridiculizing them yes, and
ridiculing ridiculing thedictator Yes, so that then no
one takes them seriously andthen, and I think it's a book
that everyone in the US shouldread for the next two years,
because then you learn liketactics on how do you use humor
(40:58):
and fun, also to fight againstauthoritarianism and these kind
of things. And yeah, if I thinkit's it's useful. But as you
said, it's like the people I'vemet doing this work are so
motivated, incredible. They haveamazing, like resistance spirit,
that it's the it's hard, but atthe same time, I'm so happy I
(41:19):
get to spend time, yeah, witheveryone fighting against these
projects, and we're in thistogether, because if they lose,
we also lose, no matter whereyou're on the planet, because
the carbon emissions and theglobal warming is for everyone,
yeah,exactly. And also dancing, yeah,
yeah. We have in Paris. Weopened a museum for activism,
(41:44):
and there's a club because,yeah, a lot of the the I've
noticed like actors, they loveto party. And actually, that's
the best parties I've done in mylife. Is after we blocked with
Greenpeace, another with 1000people, we broke the general
assembly meeting of this Frenchroyal company, total, like,
literally blocked the building.
And, like, the police couldn'ttake everyone, because we're too
(42:06):
many, and so they couldn't havetheir general assembly meeting.
And then everyone went to partytogether, and it was the most
amazing party you you werebasically, like, stuck with
people you don't know, withchains and stuff for hours, and
then they become your bestfriend. And so this, this is,
like, big community events,yeah,
exactly. And you know, dancingis the primal force of life and
(42:33):
joy and connection, I think,right, I mean, and it's also,
like, clinically shown to be themost effective antidepressant.
And so we got to dance,yeah, yeah. And also, you can
block banks by dancing. Youbring a DJ in front of it, and
then 1000s of people. And that'sa form of activism. Yes,
absolutely.
It's so cool. We need more ofthat. I think in the US, I feel
(42:56):
like it's more of a it's alsothat you it's like tactics like
that, that show joy is easy toget the general public with you,
because then they want to joinyou, because it seems fun. And
so it's also changed theperspective of activism. So one
of my friend in Germany, forexample, when they want to block
street, they don't just blockstreet. They organize soccer
games. And so you play soccer,and then people come and
(43:18):
everyone starts blocking thestreet just because everyone
loves to play soccer, and alsoit sends a message, like, let's
take back our streets to playinstead of using it for cars.
And so this is, like,interesting, and it's might be
more effective than just like,doing yourself to block it,
right, right? I mean, I thinkthat that's also a really
beautiful reminder, is there'sso many ways that we can get
(43:40):
really creative and really thinkoutside the box about what
activism looks like. And I thinkwe could use especially the
progressive not, I know we'renot talking politically, but
like, specifically thepolitically progressive folks in
the United States coulddefinitely just get a little
more unhinged, you know, justget a little more unfiltered,
(44:00):
like we have to get a little bitwe have to shake things up more.
The activist I've met here andthe organizers like I've never
seen, so much energy, becausethe chance that you guys have is
that you have such a richhistory of organizing. And
because people in the US don'texpect the state to solve their
problem or the government,people stand up and they they
(44:21):
build communities, and they'relike, we're going to do it
ourselves. And this is apowerful tool for activism. In
France, you have these imagesthat people protest and do all
these things all the time, butthe main thing people demand is
like the state to they wait forthe state to solve the problem
for themselves, which is great,because then it makes it that
you have free healthcare, allthis kind of stuff that which is
cool, but at the same time, itdoesn't Empower as much
(44:42):
individual to demand, so youhave to find the right balance.
But the organizing things likethe City Bank, like three months
non stop blockade of the bankwith like, 1000 people getting
arrested and being on New YorkTimes and all this thing is
crazy cool, like, I've neverseen this organizing power
anywhere else. And. So yeah,like, I think it's going to be
two years where people are goingto resist in the US and how the
(45:06):
new generation is going to showup. Will they do the same as the
generation four years ago? Ornot? It's going to be the big
question.
Is a big question. And I'm soglad that, you know, seating and
Chile are collaboratingtogether, like, the more
overlaps we have the better. Andso for folks to keep an eye out
about that kind of just want toreturn back to you know you
(45:32):
shared a lot of wonderfulmessages and advice. Actually,
for people listening, just wantto give you the opportunity if
you have any more to share forpeople listening on how they can
be involved or find theirsuperpowers and what advice you
have.
It's one advice is to not losehope in the next two years to
(45:58):
find the cracks. So I gave youthe example of the LNG. So even
if Trump wants to double down inTexas, which is super
conservatives, there's stillways to stop it. Even if Texas
wants to do it, even if Trumpwants to do it, you can still
stop it. One other thing I wouldlike to highlight is that a
state like California, just byitself, is the fifth largest
(46:19):
economy on the planet, onestate. So for every huge bank in
America, for every company, thisplace is super important. This
place is also the place whenthere's wildfires, where
Californians are aware thatclimate change is real. They
can't insure their home anymore.
There's they're really, reallyaware of the issue of climate
(46:39):
change, and at the same time,they have the fifth largest
economy of the planet on theirown. And so there's a lot of
change that could be made justfrom California. So if you live
there, there's so much you cando to organize, to put pressure
on the banks, the corporations,even within the Trump
administration. And so that'ssomething powerful to realize
that. And then my main thing foreveryone else who is not there
(47:04):
is, yeah, just start somewherelike join the local groups, make
new friends who care aboutclimate, and then slowly, it's
going to be an amazing journey.
And also join all the webinarsand programs that you guys have
with ceiling sovereignty,because you've been at it for
so, so long.
And, yeah, huge fans. So thankyou so much for inviting me.
(47:25):
Thank you, Christian. Yeah, it'swonderful to have that balance.
And it's all of it. You know, weneed all of it. And so you're
inspiring me to be more directlyactive. I think, you know,
creating. I don't think you needinspiration. No, no, we're all
we all inspire each other, andthat's what, like, creates this
biodiverse, symbiotic communityof people, yeah, like, we need
(47:50):
all of it. We need all theenergy. We need me being more
like sustained and, you know,coming from a place of building
those systems. And then we needyou, and everyone in Chile
coming from, like, let's stopthis carbon bomb, you know, and
like going dancing, and likedancing to protest, like, it's
all it's all really important.
Our final question, which I askeverybody, is, that's, that's
(48:14):
the final question. Oh, yeah.
Anything else talk about? No,no. What is the final question?
No? Is there anything that wedidn't talk about that you would
like to talk about? No, no. It'sjust a lot of thank yous, but
Okay, the final question that Iask folks is, what are your
superpowers? Iwould say being that the reason
(48:36):
I think it's a superpower, isthat before I had a kid, like, I
knew climate change is bad formy island, things like that, but
it still wasn't like a fire Iwas feeling in my body. And the
moment I became a dad and I sawmy kid, and then you see him
growing up, and then yourealize, like, it's gonna then
(48:59):
you have, like, this kind ofparent instinct of like, you
want to protect your kid. Andthen when you know that this is
a problem that's gonna affectyour kid, it creates so much,
like, drive and energy, it'sit's insane. And then you're
like, Okay, let's go stop thispipeline against this billion
dollar company. And then, like,nothing's gonna stop me. And
then you find other parents whoare like, Yeah, let's do it. And
(49:22):
so this creates, like, a huge,huge motivation that for me,
helps me move mountains all thetime. And so I think that's my
main superpower,and the empathy and self
awareness that comes with that,yes, you have those qualities.
(49:45):
And then being a dad,yeah, you can you. I realized I
felt more yeah for for peopleand what was happening around
me, maybe as a woman, as man islike, I. Yeah, it's like
something that, you know, youlive your life like a first
player view, you know, like in avideo game, and then soon you
(50:05):
have a kid, and it's like,whoop, you see from a bit more
up, and it's their view. Andthat was a big change. Wow.
Thank you so much. No, thankyou, Madeleine, for all what
you've been doing since you're15 years old on climate nine.
But nine, okay,no, yeah. Thank you so much for
for this incredibleconversation. What is your
(50:26):
superpower? Oh, what is youknow, it changes all the time,
so I don't know. I mean, everyday, I have a different answer.
Right now, at this particularmoment, I feel like I'm using my
superpower ofconnection and listening.
(50:48):
But I think, yeah, there's alot. I mean, every day, it's
different. My superpower,honestly, is always being
curious about what my superpoweris. Nice.
Thank you. Thank you.
(51:11):
Okay. Thank you so much forlistening everybody. I hope that
you enjoyed that episode as muchas I did, and I will say also,
please share these episodes withyour friends, with your family,
with your coworkers, review themon Apple and Spotify if you've
benefited or enjoyed or learnedsomething from this episode,
(51:33):
from other episodes, it wouldmean a lot to us if you did all
that and always feel free tocheck out our website and we'll
see you next time, thanks,everybody. You.
Hey, everyone, welcome to supersede a series of
conversations between me,Madeleine MacGillivray and
passionate folks from allsectors who have found their
superpowers. This is abouttaking that big existential
question of what can I do andturning it into specific,
grounded actions and takeaways,we want to inspire you all to
supersede the systemic powers ofoppression and sit in your own
(00:26):
powers to collectively buildtowards a joyful and equitable
world.
Christian Welcome, to supersede.
Thank you. Menton, I've beenwanting to talk to for a while.
First of all, we met because youcame to a seating event. You
came to a super seed sort oflive podcast recording where we
(00:47):
were talking with Christy andSaad about diversifying green
jobs. And you came up to me andyou were like, Hi, I'm Christian
I have an app. I have a climateapp. And I was like, Cool. And,
you know, then I realized thatyou are kind of like one of the
most tapped in folks who isorganizing and actually
campaigning on a long term deeplevel, really strategically, and
(01:11):
you are a treasure trove ofinformation and experience on
these topics. So I'm reallyexcited to talk to you about all
of these things. Thank you forinviting me. So I'm going to
read your bio really quickly,just for listeners. Christian
venizet Is the co founder ofChile, the first climate
activism app. Christian is apioneer in leveraging technology
(01:32):
for global impact. He's an Obamascholar at Columbia Forbes 30,
under 30. He is from Tahiti andthe proud dad of seven year old
Leo, before founding Chile,Christian co founded the global
NGO makes sense.org which runsdevelopment programs worldwide
and oversees a 100 million euroImpact Fund to support social,
environmental innovation. He'spassionate about stopping oil
(01:55):
and gas pipelines. That's you,yes. Like the first thing on my
mind is something that veryexciting that happened two days
ago. And I feel like we have totalk about that first, which is
that you celebrated a very bigwin, like a very big win. So
basically, in campaigning and inclimate activism, we don't have
wins all the time. And two daysago, there was a great news.
(02:17):
Paul Watson, legendary activistdefending the whales, one of the
first members of Greenpeace,like really the one of the
beginning of the environmentalmovement, was in jail in Denmark
because Japan asked Denmark toput him to jail because Japan
doesn't want him to stop themfrom wailing again. And so we
(02:37):
campaigned for five months, manyorganizations, many people
across the world, hundreds ofactivists who organized protests
in front of the Danishembassies, digital actions every
day on Chile. And we got thenews two days ago that Paul
Wesson is free. He won't beextradited to Japan, which would
have been a death sentence forhim, because he's already 75 and
so we're excited. And this meansnot just it's great because it
(03:01):
saved an activist, but alsobecause now he can continue his
work with all the otheractivists who are fighting
against whaling. There's threecountries who continue to do
whaling, Japan, of course, theFaroe Island, Iceland, and so
this means we can now fight tostop this once and for all to
protect the wells, because it'sone of the biggest carbon sinks
(03:23):
on the planet, and also becauseit's beautiful creatures.
Congratulations,yay. Paul is free and really
largely to do with you and yourwork at Chile.
Yeah, it's us. We've beenorganizing campaigns across the
world, but there's also a bigmobilization that happened in
France, with the team of SeaShepherd there, they got 1
million signatures on petition.
The French president tookposition, and we did our part in
(03:44):
other places, in the US, in theUK. So it was great campaign,
and also it shows that in amoment where activists are being
repressed and harassed bypowerful corporations and
governments, we can still havetheir back with people power.
Wow.
And so much people power, andthat is what Chile kind of
(04:08):
harnesses. Would you explainwhat you have created or CO
created? Explain Chile to folks?
Yes. So you guys have an iPhone.
It's an app. Every day. You cantake action with climate
activists to do something greatfor a climate campaign. So it
can be to stop an oil and gaspipeline that's going to emit
like, 100 million tons of COtwo. Or it can be to write to
(04:30):
the Prime Minister of Denmark sothey really spoil Watson, for
example. Or it can be to send anemail to the president of Brazil
so they do better to protect theAmazonia and based on the place
where you're in the world, basedon who's your bank or who's your
insurance company, you gettailored call to actions for you
where your voice matters evenmore as a consumer, as a citizen
(04:52):
of certain places. And there's alot of campaigns in New York
City too, because that's wherewe are today. Yeah. I
mean, one of the things thatintrigues me so much about this
app because there are other appsthat you know sort of tackle
this issue of like individualaction and harnessing that and
kind of gamifying it a littlebit, because that is the most,
(05:15):
if not one of the most effectiveways to motivate folks to
action. But I think what'sunique about Chile is what
you're talking about, you'reharnessing the power of of tech,
basically, to, like, create veryspecialized, very specific and
very focused actions and callsto action that you know not.
(05:36):
It's not just like someonerandomly emailing the
representative. It is a verytargeted and strategic approach.
How did you develop that? And,like, you know, like, where did
that come from? It'salso not just digital actions.
Like, actually, when you take anaction on Chile, you send an
email, you earn coins, and thenyou give these coins to real
groups on the ground who aregoing to go to go protest in
(05:59):
front of the representativeoffice that you send an email
to, or in front of the banksthat you just sent an email to.
So there's going to be boots onthe ground going in real life
thanks to the coins you give tothem, because we fund them with
our foundation, so they can havethe means and tools to go and
rally and recruit people andorganize this protest. So it's
(06:19):
really this relentless onlineactions that you do, but also
the offline actions thatgrassroots groups can take. And
when you blend both, you createa new way of campaigning that is
relentless, and that makes itthat if you want to, for
example, a bank like Citibank,to stop financing fossil fuels,
if you organize every day likethat. It might be just like 5%
(06:40):
of their business, but then itbecomes 99% of their problems,
because people keep talkingabout this. And so it's this
blend that works. And so thisform of campaigning is just an
evolution. If you look, forexample, there was change.org
with the petitions. And sothere's new forms and techniques
that evolved with the newcontext in which we work in. And
so yeah, that's how it came tolife. And one of the first
(07:04):
campaign we took on, and webased the approach of Chile and
how it works based on thesuccess of that campaign, is the
campaign to stop the longestheated crude oil pipeline in the
world. It's called the ECOP, theEast African crude oil pipeline.
It's like made in Uganda andTanzania, and it's built by a
big French oil company namedtotal and so to stop this
(07:25):
pipeline, which would emit 400million tons of carbon emission,
which is massive. It's like 10%of carbon emission of a country
like France or the UK everyyear, just one project, we
campaign against different banksacross the world. We got 30
banks to drop to say we won'tfinance this project, and so the
French company doesn't have thebillions it needs to build the
(07:46):
pipeline and to make those banksdecide to not finance it. It was
this kind of actions, likeemails, social comments, like
commenting on the LinkedIn ofthe CEO, and at the same time,
boots on the ground, going infront of the bank every day. So
you had like seven people inTokyo every day in front of a
Japanese bank. And because theyare not used to have protests
there, even just said sevenpeople made a difference. So we
(08:07):
replicate those techniques, andthen you just do it again and
again. And you can have banksdropping projects, insurance
dropping projects. You can havesuppliers who stops supporting
and also governments. Wow,it's such a strategic, targeted
approach. And as you're saying,it's like you are literally
combining the digital with theIRL and those two together. It's
(08:29):
like it's, as you said, it'srelentless. And I saw it
firsthand, because we did, youknow, summer of heat, you also
supported summer of heat, youknow, this year in New York,
where activists and organizerswere relentlessly showing up at
the headquarters of Citibank.
(08:52):
That energizes me so much, and Ifeel like it would energize
anyone listening, and so forthat energy to turn into joining
and action. What do people do?
So the Citibank example is anamazing example of a campaign.
Citibank is the largest bank inthe world, funding fossil fuels,
and the scientists have saidthat the priority if we want to
(09:14):
solve climate change is no newoil and gas infrastructure. It
doesn't mean no oil fromtomorrow, because we still need
it for cars and stuff. But if webuild new fossil fuel projects,
we're gonna, like, it's gonna bereally hard to get out of oil in
the long term. And so the nonnew oil and gas and so Citibank,
the tactic that were used bygreat groups like that organized
(09:36):
the summer of it is really toput pressure on them and be
relentless. And we did thisapproach in Europe, and we got
the biggest bank of Europe,which is bien pearite, the
French bank, to announce a fewmonths ago that they would stop
financing not just new oil andgas projects, but they would
stop financing companies whokeep on doing oil and gas
(09:56):
projects. So they would stopfinancing Big Oil. Basically, I.
And it's the biggest bank ofEurope. And so in the US, the
biggest one financeinfrastructure is Citibank. So
the same tactic and approach.
And so when you blend this kindof tactics of relentless online
and offline organizing, and ifyou add like taking them to
court for climate in action, ifyou add like investigations and
all these kinds of other formsof campaigning, you can actually
(10:18):
get those big corporates to dropso Citibank has just announced
that they would stop financingprojects in the Amazon region.
It's not enough. And so now thefight continues, and hopefully
we're going to win. And sopeople on Chile have been able
to send, like, 1000s of emails,1000s of digital action but at
the same time, gave their coinsto support the campaign so that
(10:39):
the activists have more means toorganize and can continue the
fight.
It's just so cool, like it'sjust so cool.
So we calculated, for every 0.0024 Euro. I don't know how much
is it in dollar, must be 0.00$30 that you give to activists
(11:04):
that operates on Chile you stopone ton of carbon emissions. And
if you look at the carboncapture when it's greenwashed,
because it's done by Big Oil,it's 30 euro to save one ton of
carbon emission. And it's ifit's a big, big oil company
doing it, and usually they reusethe carbon they capture to
create more fracking. So this islike totally green watch, but
(11:27):
the real price is around 250euro for good carbon capture per
ton of carbon. So activism isreally the most efficient way to
stop carbon emissions, basicallythrough Chile, not just through
Chile.
The thing we want to build isjust an entry point so people
can get started, because noteveryone can go to the protest,
(11:50):
go to the rally. Sometimesparents, you have kids, you
still want to contribute, butyou don't have the time. And
with Chile, we want to make itan easy way to get into that
world and to support the peoplewho are on the ground and who
dedicate their lives to stoppingclimate change,
yeah, yeah. There's really acamaraderie and a collaboration
with people who are doing thecampaigning, doing the strategy,
(12:14):
and who have dedicated theirlives like you have, and then
folks who are just so hungry fordoing something and something
that you know we talk about andlike the purpose of this podcast
is to really ground what itlooks like to work in climate
justice, but really justgenerally, to know your
superpowers as a person, toinspire not just climate but
(12:38):
just Social Change in general,and fight for justice, but
oftentimes that kind of esotericidea of which is also a very
personal journey of, who am I,that people are going through,
that we're trying to unpack,needs to come alongside with,
like specific, tangible actionsthat people can take. And so I
(13:00):
think this is an incredibleplace to start. And
I think people underestimate thesuperpowers they have, because,
like for example, to get a bigbank like the biggest bank of
Europe, like BNP, took care tostop fossil fuels all it needs.
It's 5000 of its own clientstelling them, I don't want my
money to go there. And thisraise an alert for them in terms
(13:20):
of reputations towards their ownclients, and then they would
say, oh, maybe we should look atthis issue and as consumers, as
citizens, we have power in ourvoices. It's just, how do we use
it more? And the whole game ofthese big old companies or
authoritarian leaders is to makeyou feel powerless. But even
just feeling that you're in thistogether with 100 people, 200
(13:41):
people gets you going, and thenit grows. And so, yeah, everyone
listening, like, just askyourself, what is it that you're
a client of, like, where do youvote? And how can you use that
voice that you have to make achange on climate? And there's
going to be many, many avenues.
That is a question that I askguests to think about and offer
(14:05):
to our audience, kind of at theend of conversations. But thank
you for for taking opportunity.
Because, yes, there's so muchopportunity for people, and I
think it's hard to sort ofidentify where they might have
power. One of our previousguests shout out. Whitney bauck
said that, you know, you havemore power than you think. She
talks to sometimes, people whohave billions of dollars who
(14:26):
think that they, you know,aren't able to do enough, and so
thinking relatively, it's reallyhelpful to be reminded that you
really have a lot of power. Andactivists and citizens, you
don't need that much money tocreate an impact. I'll give you
an example in France to get thisbank to drop and find that in
fossil fuels, it's something youcan't do in the US, but works
(14:49):
really well in France. It's fiveyear old, literally, to buy
painting and to go repaint thebank and so, oh, to buy paint,
paint, and then you go and you.
Spread it on the bank, and thenthat's how we got this bank to
drop. And it was five euro.
Don't do it in America, but inFrance, it was not illegal
anymore, because they want thecourt case. But it's just like,
(15:10):
this is one, like, bit radicalexample, but it takes five euro
to change that. The other thingthat people don't realize is
that if you live in places likeNew York, like London, in those
financial centers, most of thesefossil fuel projects and these
companies, they come to findfunding here. And oftentimes
it's to find funding in NewYork, in London, to do projects
(15:31):
in places where it's notdemocracies. So the example of
the ECOP is a dictatorship. Andso our friends in Uganda and
Tanzania who oppose thispipeline, they get put in jail,
and it's really hard for them tospeak up. And so acting in New
York so that Citibank and otherbanks don't finance these
projects in Uganda when there'sbigger democratic spaces that
(15:53):
you can use is also to showsolidarity with people that are
on the front lines. And so askyourself, Where do I live, and
how can I be of support and insolidarity with the bigger
movement? Because, yeah, maybefrom New York. It can help my
friends in Uganda, and overall,it helps me. Because if there's
not 400 million tons of CO twogoing in the atmosphere, it's
(16:14):
good news for the climate. It'smean, like your kids are going
to be able to grow up all therein a world that's more
beautiful. Canwe go back a little bit to sort
of your origin story? Yes, andlike share more about how you
got started in this work, andfeel free to go back as far as
(16:38):
you want. I mean, you're, youwere born in Tahiti.
There's something I realized. Myfriend told me, when you're born
in an island like Tahiti, likeyou have to really imagine like,
it's exactly how you think aboutit. It's like beautiful blue
lagoons, like small islands, butwith steep mountains like
(17:01):
luxurious green and you reallyare surrounded by nature that
you don't even realize. What isnature. You take it for granted.
Yeah, it's just like, that's howit is. And so, so then it's like
you're part of nature, andnature is part of you, in a way.
And so it's just like being afish in water, and you don't
know what is water, right? Andso this is, like, really
(17:23):
amazing, but then you don'trealize it. And then I went to
study in France, that's where I,like, started to be in Paris, in
big cities, and then yourealize, Oh, wow. Like, that's
not the same. If you grow up inParis or in New York and stuff,
you don't see as much natureand, yeah, so it's also harder,
maybe, to feel connected to it.
But I didn't realize it before Imoved from Tahiti, right? And,
(17:46):
and when did you move? I movedwhen I was 2020, years old. So
you lived until,yeah, you lived your entire
adult, young adult life. Yeah,it
was a bit of a shock. The firsttime I took the train, I was 20
years old, and I was reallyworried of falling asleep and
(18:07):
missing the stops. But yeah, Igrew up in tidy nature, and then
what really got me, like active,into doing things for the
planet, is really the fact thatone of the key thing that's
happening because of climatechange is that the coral reefs,
the corals are bleaching,they're becoming like, white,
(18:28):
and it means, like, fish are notgoing and stuff. And then you
realize, oh my god, this canhappen in my lifetime, that,
yeah, the coral reefs that we'reseeing, and these go in the
lagoon, and then you're like, ohmy god, you won't see them
anymore. And I think of my kid,who's like, seven, and if it
continues like that, by the timehe'll turn 15, will be gone. And
(18:51):
so this was, this is reallyscary for me. And at the same
time, it's not the like, westill have a High Island that
are enough high up so we like,they won't disappear underwater.
But when you think of otherplaces like Sen and stuff, it's
and you're like, wow, we'relosing our homes. And then you
realize, well, actually placeslike Paris are even more in
danger because of the heat wavesand things like that. And so,
(19:14):
yeah, it's global issue. Nowit's happening. For me, it was
just easier because I feelreally connected to nature, and
it's just like, how do we buildthis kind of sense of connection
between people and nature?
Because I think it's morepowerful than to talk about,
let's stop climate change, isto, how do we make people feel
like and really fall in lovewith nature and feel it so that
(19:34):
they want to protect it, becauseyou only want to protect what
you love. And I think this is apowerful tool for the climate
fight. Is the ocean, the forest,all these things that most
people feel connected to. Andhow do we recreate that link? I
think that's going to be thekey.
Yeah, it's kind of like thechilly strategy of digital and
(19:59):
on the ground. Binding. And thenthere's like a third one, which
is reconnecting. And you know,we are nature, because
you won't wake up in the morningthinking, I want to stop climate
change, but you wake up in themorning saying, I love the
ocean. And if you live next tothe ocean, you want to protect
it, or you want to go walk inthe forest. And so this kind of
feelings is what we need to useto get more people involved, not
(20:22):
the brain, like stop climatechange, which is hard to
understand, and I think that'sthe threshold we need to do. But
now there's so many problemincreases at the same time, it's
gonna be a tough few yearscoming. Yeah,
it is gonna be a tough few yearscoming. Do Can we talk about
that a little bit?
(20:43):
I just think I have kind ofresisted,
you know, yeah, I recognize thatit might be a it comes from a
place of privilege. It alsocomes from a place of kind of
overwhelm, and I haven't reallygiven a ton of thought, per se,
to exactly what it's going tolook like. I just, I'm not sure
(21:06):
how I feel about that. I'mtrying not to analyze it, but
I'm I'm scared and I'm worriedand I'm also energized. How do
you think about the next fouryears? Because one of the things
that I also appreciate havingyou on and having this
conversation with you is thatyou have a perspective that is
(21:30):
more global. You have youdirectly work with and, you
know, collaborate on campaignsand make stuff happen in Europe
and other countries, eCoPAfrica, and also you're in the
US now, so you get to see whatactivism looks like, kind of
across the world. And thoseinsights are really important.
Because I think oftentimes, whenyou're in one place, and you
(21:51):
know, I'm just in New York City,I'm from New York,
I center of the known universe.
You joke, thecenter of the known universe,
the center of my known universe,at least. And I think I can get
a little bit in my bubble aboutwhat activism and what climate
looks like in just New York, butit's really beautiful to think
(22:12):
about the global community ofpeople trying to stop carbon
bombs and trying to fight forclimate justice. So I appreciate
your insights on that. And so assomeone who has more of a global
perspective and directly workswith folks outside of the US and
folks inside of the US, what isthe perception and what are the
(22:32):
main fears from a perspective ofof the incoming administration,
if you can speak to that. Orjust like, how are you thinking
about organizing at Chile?
Yeah, so, like, we live in aworld that's like capitalist,
capitalism across the world, andunfortunately, and the center of
(22:53):
capitalism across the world,when you work on climate change,
and you look at the carbonemissions and where does the
majority of the emissions comefrom, which country, where does
the financing of these emissionscome from to build this kind of
new, massive fossil fuelprojects that just there's 420
new there's 420 what's calledcarbon booms. It's like fossil
(23:15):
fuel projects that would emitmore than 1 billion ton of
carbon emission over theirlifetime. We map them on the
map, carbon bombs.org, you cango see them, and you can see who
finances them. And when you lookat this map, all the roads lead
to the US, like the biggestcarbon bomb in the world, 16
billion tons of carbon emissionis just one carbon bomb that
will blow up the ParisAgreement. Like objective of 1.5
(23:38):
is the Permian Basin in Texas.
And so first, instead ofemission, it's here, and also in
terms of financing, and the citywhere you grew up in, which is
New York, is the center ofFinance, Financial Center of the
whole world. And so there's somuch that can be done from here.
And so the what's happened, likethe space, and how can we
organize in the US to stop theseprojects is the key to solve
(24:02):
climate change. Now, it's luckythat there's some Democratic
spaces still in the US where youcan organize. The thing that I'm
a bit worried about, and thatI've seen across the world is
that as the crisis is gettingworse, politicians and big
corporations, instead of helpingsolve the crisis, they fight the
(24:23):
activists and the people who aretrying to stop this crisis from
happening. And so we startedwith Paul Watson, but this
repression of these activists isincreasing all across the world.
And so what I'm a bit worriedabout is that it's so important
to organize in the US, becausewe can't solve climate change
otherwise, and at the same time,it seems like it's going to be
(24:45):
more and more complicated toorganize, that there's going to
be more legal threats, morepersecutions of the activists.
And so it become a democraticquestions right now, when you
don't have democratic spaces,there. And you can't do activism
and you can't solve theseproblems. So the climate crisis
and the democratic crisis aredeeply intertwined, because we
(25:05):
can't solve this problem withoutdemocracies. And so how people
in the US are going to resist inthe next two years? The cool
thing is that you guys are afederal state, so it's not a
federal country, so it's notgoing to be the same depending
on the states you're in. And soI think it's going to be like,
how do you play defense at thefederal level so they don't undo
everything, and how do you playoffense at the local level, so
(25:28):
that the progressive democraticstates, like New York State or
like California, push thefrontier of climate action, so
that other states copy. And ifyou do these two strategies,
hopefully it can work, and if weuse some solidarity across
border, and I give you anexample, the Permian Basin, the
fracking in Texas, actually,that Trump is president now
(25:51):
gives a huge opportunity to stopthis carbon bomb, because 50% of
the exports of the permanentmachine is for Europe and
especially Germany, but thepeople in Europe and Germany
don't want to be dependent onTrump for their energy, because
the guy is like, nuts. And sosuddenly you have an opportunity
to convince the Europeancountries to say, let's not
(26:13):
import the gas from Texas thatis being fracked, and suddenly
you can have less demand. Soeven if Trump wants to double
down on the drilling in Texas,there's not going to be enough
people to buy it, and so he'snot going to be able to sell it.
And so this there's some cracksthat can be found in the system
that we can play with. Anotherexample is in London, you have
(26:33):
an insurance marketplace calledLloyds of London's and 40% of
the fossil fuel projects acrossthe world try to find insurance
there. So from one building inLondon, you can actually put
pressure to stop an LNG terminalin Louisiana, because they find
insurance in London. And inLondon, it's still okay to
organize, even if the repressionhave increased. So you can play
(26:53):
like that with the differentlike nodes in the financial
system to put pressure and tocampaign strategically and to
stop things, even if Trump wantsto continue to drill,
it's, it's like, I love that.
You know, this is so energizingbecause I just want to take a
step back, because I feel likethere's, there's a lot of ways
(27:15):
that we can expand on and followthe threads of what you're
talking about, but I just wantto just like, observe the fact
that you really inspire me andpeople to to like, do this, to
do what you're doing. I thinkthat it requires a level of
(27:36):
curiosity. What can we find likethat? To me, is so interesting.
I had no idea that. You know,40% of insured projects comes
from one building in London.
Like that is the type of workthat is necessary to do that
kind of research and find these,these connections. I love that
(27:56):
you guys have a map like that isso cool. A carbon ball is
horrifying. What carbon bomb mapis that, by the way, just like
is what webs. I'll link it. I'lllink it in the Okay, carbon
bombs over, getting back tothinking about like, the kind of
geopolitics of it. It's reallyinteresting to hear that because
I also didn't know about the LNGlike strategy around where we
(28:23):
can kind of find that in findthat crack. How do you find
those cracks? Like, how did youwhen you look at the activist
groups, and how did they decide,what are we going to campaign
on, and stuff like that? Yeah,it's based on just like data,
like the on the carbonemissions, you just look at what
is the biggest source of carbonemissions happening. And a lot
of this is grounded in thescience of what the IPCC and the
(28:46):
climate scientists say, like thepriority non new island. So
people like you just go and youfollow the site the science, you
analyze the market mechanism,and then you find those cracks.
The hard part is it's socomplex. How you break it down
in small bits, so that theeveryday citizen can be like,
Oh, my God, I can participate inthis because I'm in this bank,
(29:06):
etc. And so it's just about, howdo we make it easier and simple?
But the cool thing is that everytime there's a big change, it
reshuffled the cards, and thenyou can find new opportunities.
And so the fact that Trump is inpower, is bad news for climate,
but we can still get some bigwins. And then the question
becomes, how do we safeguardfaces to keep organizing? And
(29:27):
yeah, it's gonna be interestingtwo years. It's gonna
be an interesting two years. AndI love before the midterms.
That's why I said two years.
Yeah, two years before themidterms, exactly. And in terms
of I love this framework ofthinking about it, from defense
on the federal side and offenseon the state level. And it's
true that you know somethingthat actually we talk about and
(29:51):
that we've been working on atseating is inspiring more
grassroots political action andadvocacy. See, and similarly
with Chile, I mean, likeliterally taking action in terms
of making relationships with thepeople that you have voted into
power who listen to you and whoin fact, work for you, and
realizing that you don't have tobe a lifelong political
(30:13):
organizer to know and you don'thave to know exactly the inner
workings of your local politicsto inspire political change and
fight for critical climatejustice related legislation to
pass. And by the way, when I sayclimate justice, I'm talking
about anything and everythingyou know, resources, mutual aid,
shelter, housing for migrants,all of it is connected. And so I
(30:36):
just want to put a pin in thatidea, because it's really
powerful, and it also is justconnected to just finding your
people, you know, community, andhow all of these things work
together. It's like beingconnected to an incredible
strategic community of peopledoing like, highly targeted
(30:59):
actions on a platform like Chileon Chile, showing up if you can,
if you're able, depending onwhere you are, and also just
looking at wherever you are,what is going on, where you are,
and getting to know your people,getting to know your neighbors,
and creating those lateralconnections. I talk about this
all the time, and I think it'simportant to repeat it often is
just lateral connections are thekey to resiliency in the face of
(31:23):
climate and whatever it may be,and so continuing to, like, make
that mycelial network by justknowing people around you and
being able to support you andsupport each other in times of
crisis and not is reallycritical as all of this is
happening,yeah. Give you one example.
There's, there was a 19 yearsold, like, young woman on Chile,
(31:45):
yeah, who is in school and justfinished high school, and she
was like, Oh, I really want topush for this bill so that
climate change become like,mandatory in the curriculums in
Illinois. And then shecampaigned on chili, like she's
just just an everyday citizen.
She wasn't an activist, shedidn't had a huge follow on
(32:06):
Instagram, and then hundreds ofpeople rallied around her, and
then she made it happen. And sothis is what you mean, like,
it's like, how do we give moreaccess to this platform, the
lateral connection to morepeople, so that people can build
the change they want to see. Andwe've seen this story again and
again, and so it's not thathard. It's just about saying
what you want to achieve, andthen you like, with platforms
(32:29):
like Chile and others, it willrally other people's won't join
you, yeah. And when you looklike, really, I've been
campaigning since five yearsagainst biggest oil companies in
the world, and the worst enemiesare 24 year old woman who have
Instagram account and just talkabout what's happening, and it
becomes the worst enemy of a CEOof a billion dollar company,
(32:51):
because just there's a lot ofpeople who care about the same
thing, and that's something thatgives me hope, is that you don't
need to be a 70 year old, superExperienced to start to make the
change, you can just go for it.
You open an Instagram account,you start telling your story,
and then, like, you go,Wow, it's so energizing. That's
why I love talking to you,because you you are so connected
with this, this energy in thisworld. And I think it's
(33:16):
wonderful to have a balance ofvery motivate, like, it's very
motivating, and it's energizing.
And also the we Okay, so we talkabout this, I would love to have
this kind of mini conversation,because we've talked about it
before, but our approaches toactivism or climate are
(33:38):
different. Just, yeah, we havedifferent, like, tendencies and
different needs as human beings.
And so we've talked about theidea that, you know, having
myself been involved in inadvocacy, in like an integral
level since childhood, I have amore kind of low and slow, long
term approach to activism thatdoes not include lots of
(34:04):
adrenaline, and you have anapproach to activism that, from
what I've observed with you, andlike going to actions with you
and talking with You, that ismore kind of like you have these
big wins, and not all the time,obviously, a lot of the time.
(34:25):
It's just a sustained pressureover time. It's another thing
that another wonderful guest ofours, Dr Marcus Erickson, talked
about, which is small wins overtime, and just keep the pressure
your you know, as for as long asyou can, which this is the work
of our lives, so hopefully, aslong as you are physically able.
But yeah, let's talk about that.
(34:48):
Because, like, how do yousustain yourself? Because I
remember saying to you, kind oflike, I'm worried you're gonna
burn out, basically, but maybe Iwas projecting my own
experience, and your answer wasreally interesting.
Yeah. The reason I wanted tomeet you also was the fact that
you've been in this for so long.
Like, you were 15 when you took,like, the your government to
court for climate in action,yeah, and you've been at it for
(35:10):
like, more than me. Like it'sbeen only four or five years. I
do you've been working right,right, right where I was working
before. But, like, thecampaigning is only favianna. So
my question is, how can Isustain? And that's what, like,
I love the workshops you do on,like, finding your superpower
and how you sustain, becauseI've seen so many activists
(35:30):
burning out around me, and then,like, it's sad, because someone
will campaign hard for sixmonths, and then they burn out,
and so then you don't see themfor the next five years. And so
the movement lose overall. Andcampaigning is hard, especially
if you're on the front line.
It's hard, like, it's, it's,it's hard stuff. You know,
people get killed. Yes, yourfriends get killed. Your friends
(35:53):
get put in jail. It's not like,even mentally, it's, it's
complicated sacrifice. And sothe question for me is, how can
we sustain that? And there's howwe sustain ourselves. But also,
the big thing we're trying withChile is that, how do we build
technology to make it easier,like, how can I run 15 campaigns
(36:15):
at the same time against 15pipelines across the world? And
it all it takes me is the sameamount of work that I've been
doing for one but thanks totechnology, I can run 15 and
then you increase your potentialimpact without having to
increase your workload andeverything. And so this is the
(36:35):
things, is that we need to buildinfrastructures and tools that
allow us to be more impactfulwithout having to work more or
burn out. And then the otherthing is, and I took it from
you, is that you don't think ofit like, Oh, I'm happy when I
win, I'm sad when I lose. Itjust has to become a way of of
being and embodying your values.
And it's like you resist justbecause it's the way of
(36:58):
surviving, even as a species, weneed to solve this climate
change otherwise. And so itbecomes more of like kind of a
mantra, or something you do justbecause you know it has to be
done, no matter the end result.
So then the question becomes,how do you have fun at the same
time? And the cool thing aboutactivism is that is the Okay,
(37:19):
it's hard, but it's also themost funny moment of my life,
like one of the ways we gotthese banks to drop funding the
biggest pipeline in the worldwas by making pranks. So we
built like a whole campaign,which was making a fake oil
pipeline going all across Europeand sending 1000s of letters to
people saying, you have to leaveyour home because a new pipeline
(37:42):
is going to be built in awealthy neighborhood of France.
We were sending message, andthen it went all over the news
because people freaked out. Wecreated a fake call center when
they could call about the weekup the Western European crude
oil pipeline, there was likefake work in progress. In some
cities, you had interviews of abakery who was saying, again,
work at the city center, I'm notgonna have clients, and all of
(38:04):
this for a fucking pipeline. Andso this was so fun, it was all
over the news, and it was aprank organized with 1000
people. Like, where did you getto organize pranks with 1000
people? And it makes good to theworld, you know. So this is all
the funny part, and the besttool that we have as activists
is art and communication. And soit's beauty. It's, How do you
(38:24):
use these beautiful things thathuman can create? You just use
it for good. And so it's, yeah,it's hard, but it's also fun.
And so I encourage everyone tostart and try,
yeah, yeah. It's, it's you'rehaving fun, which, yeah, as long
as you have fun, you don't burnout. I mean that, yeah, and I
think that's good fun. Yeah, itwas good fun. I want to, I want
(38:45):
to also, you know, you know,there's a lot of folks fighting
for their survival and fighting,fighting extraction and
expansion in their homes.
Definitely thinking about thepeople in the Permian Basin, the
folks that we get to work withand, you know St James Parish
and folks who are reallyexperiencing severe when
(39:06):
you meet them, they're the mostjoyful yes and fun person ever.
Yes, yesexactly, because humor sustains,
and joy is what sustains. Thisis what a lot Exactly. And so
imbuing the mindset of this workfrom a place where of that
because that is connection andthat is community, is a very,
(39:26):
very important mindset shift fora lot of folks who I think maybe
if you're okay, I've experiencedthis. I've experienced
witnessing people who are sokind of excited and eager to use
their energy and their powersfor activism, but coming from a
(39:50):
place of kind of thinking thatit has to be a sacrifice, and
coming from a place maybe oflike guilt or something or
survivor. Skills, if it isn't asacrifice, but that is
ultimately what is gonna burnyou out. And the real Sustainer
is joy. And it's really fun towatch you have fun with what
you're doing, because also theseare huge, huge wins. And you're
(40:13):
not gonna have wins all thetime, but you have to still
derive joy when you don't havewins. Trolling the
powerful is the most runningthing ever. And like, there's an
example of even like in there'san amazing book, I think I don't
know which country exactly it isin Europe, but it's an activist
(40:35):
who wrote a book about how totake down a dictator, and the
main lesson of his book is humorand ridiculizing them yes, and
ridiculing ridiculing thedictator Yes, so that then no
one takes them seriously andthen, and I think it's a book
that everyone in the US shouldread for the next two years,
because then you learn liketactics on how do you use humor
(40:58):
and fun, also to fight againstauthoritarianism and these kind
of things. And yeah, if I thinkit's it's useful. But as you
said, it's like the people I'vemet doing this work are so
motivated, incredible. They haveamazing, like resistance spirit,
that it's the it's hard, but atthe same time, I'm so happy I
(41:19):
get to spend time, yeah, witheveryone fighting against these
projects, and we're in thistogether, because if they lose,
we also lose, no matter whereyou're on the planet, because
the carbon emissions and theglobal warming is for everyone,
yeah,exactly. And also dancing, yeah,
yeah. We have in Paris. Weopened a museum for activism,
(41:44):
and there's a club because,yeah, a lot of the the I've
noticed like actors, they loveto party. And actually, that's
the best parties I've done in mylife. Is after we blocked with
Greenpeace, another with 1000people, we broke the general
assembly meeting of this Frenchroyal company, total, like,
literally blocked the building.
And, like, the police couldn'ttake everyone, because we're too
(42:06):
many, and so they couldn't havetheir general assembly meeting.
And then everyone went to partytogether, and it was the most
amazing party you you werebasically, like, stuck with
people you don't know, withchains and stuff for hours, and
then they become your bestfriend. And so this, this is,
like, big community events,yeah,
exactly. And you know, dancingis the primal force of life and
(42:33):
joy and connection, I think,right, I mean, and it's also,
like, clinically shown to be themost effective antidepressant.
And so we got to dance,yeah, yeah. And also, you can
block banks by dancing. Youbring a DJ in front of it, and
then 1000s of people. And that'sa form of activism. Yes,
absolutely.
It's so cool. We need more ofthat. I think in the US, I feel
(42:56):
like it's more of a it's alsothat you it's like tactics like
that, that show joy is easy toget the general public with you,
because then they want to joinyou, because it seems fun. And
so it's also changed theperspective of activism. So one
of my friend in Germany, forexample, when they want to block
street, they don't just blockstreet. They organize soccer
games. And so you play soccer,and then people come and
(43:18):
everyone starts blocking thestreet just because everyone
loves to play soccer, and alsoit sends a message, like, let's
take back our streets to playinstead of using it for cars.
And so this is, like,interesting, and it's might be
more effective than just like,doing yourself to block it,
right, right? I mean, I thinkthat that's also a really
beautiful reminder, is there'sso many ways that we can get
(43:40):
really creative and really thinkoutside the box about what
activism looks like. And I thinkwe could use especially the
progressive not, I know we'renot talking politically, but
like, specifically thepolitically progressive folks in
the United States coulddefinitely just get a little
more unhinged, you know, justget a little more unfiltered,
(44:00):
like we have to get a little bitwe have to shake things up more.
The activist I've met here andthe organizers like I've never
seen, so much energy, becausethe chance that you guys have is
that you have such a richhistory of organizing. And
because people in the US don'texpect the state to solve their
problem or the government,people stand up and they they
(44:21):
build communities, and they'relike, we're going to do it
ourselves. And this is apowerful tool for activism. In
France, you have these imagesthat people protest and do all
these things all the time, butthe main thing people demand is
like the state to they wait forthe state to solve the problem
for themselves, which is great,because then it makes it that
you have free healthcare, allthis kind of stuff that which is
cool, but at the same time, itdoesn't Empower as much
(44:42):
individual to demand, so youhave to find the right balance.
But the organizing things likethe City Bank, like three months
non stop blockade of the bankwith like, 1000 people getting
arrested and being on New YorkTimes and all this thing is
crazy cool, like, I've neverseen this organizing power
anywhere else. And. So yeah,like, I think it's going to be
two years where people are goingto resist in the US and how the
(45:06):
new generation is going to showup. Will they do the same as the
generation four years ago? Ornot? It's going to be the big
question.
Is a big question. And I'm soglad that, you know, seating and
Chile are collaboratingtogether, like, the more
overlaps we have the better. Andso for folks to keep an eye out
about that kind of just want toreturn back to you know you
(45:32):
shared a lot of wonderfulmessages and advice. Actually,
for people listening, just wantto give you the opportunity if
you have any more to share forpeople listening on how they can
be involved or find theirsuperpowers and what advice you
have.
It's one advice is to not losehope in the next two years to
(45:58):
find the cracks. So I gave youthe example of the LNG. So even
if Trump wants to double down inTexas, which is super
conservatives, there's stillways to stop it. Even if Texas
wants to do it, even if Trumpwants to do it, you can still
stop it. One other thing I wouldlike to highlight is that a
state like California, just byitself, is the fifth largest
(46:19):
economy on the planet, onestate. So for every huge bank in
America, for every company, thisplace is super important. This
place is also the place whenthere's wildfires, where
Californians are aware thatclimate change is real. They
can't insure their home anymore.
There's they're really, reallyaware of the issue of climate
(46:39):
change, and at the same time,they have the fifth largest
economy of the planet on theirown. And so there's a lot of
change that could be made justfrom California. So if you live
there, there's so much you cando to organize, to put pressure
on the banks, the corporations,even within the Trump
administration. And so that'ssomething powerful to realize
that. And then my main thing foreveryone else who is not there
(47:04):
is, yeah, just start somewherelike join the local groups, make
new friends who care aboutclimate, and then slowly, it's
going to be an amazing journey.
And also join all the webinarsand programs that you guys have
with ceiling sovereignty,because you've been at it for
so, so long.
And, yeah, huge fans. So thankyou so much for inviting me.
(47:25):
Thank you, Christian. Yeah, it'swonderful to have that balance.
And it's all of it. You know, weneed all of it. And so you're
inspiring me to be more directlyactive. I think, you know,
creating. I don't think you needinspiration. No, no, we're all
we all inspire each other, andthat's what, like, creates this
biodiverse, symbiotic communityof people, yeah, like, we need
(47:50):
all of it. We need all theenergy. We need me being more
like sustained and, you know,coming from a place of building
those systems. And then we needyou, and everyone in Chile
coming from, like, let's stopthis carbon bomb, you know, and
like going dancing, and likedancing to protest, like, it's
all it's all really important.
Our final question, which I askeverybody, is, that's, that's
(48:14):
the final question. Oh, yeah.
Anything else talk about? No,no. What is the final question?
No? Is there anything that wedidn't talk about that you would
like to talk about? No, no. It'sjust a lot of thank yous, but
Okay, the final question that Iask folks is, what are your
superpowers? Iwould say being that the reason
(48:36):
I think it's a superpower, isthat before I had a kid, like, I
knew climate change is bad formy island, things like that, but
it still wasn't like a fire Iwas feeling in my body. And the
moment I became a dad and I sawmy kid, and then you see him
growing up, and then yourealize, like, it's gonna then
(48:59):
you have, like, this kind ofparent instinct of like, you
want to protect your kid. Andthen when you know that this is
a problem that's gonna affectyour kid, it creates so much,
like, drive and energy, it'sit's insane. And then you're
like, Okay, let's go stop thispipeline against this billion
dollar company. And then, like,nothing's gonna stop me. And
then you find other parents whoare like, Yeah, let's do it. And
(49:22):
so this creates, like, a huge,huge motivation that for me,
helps me move mountains all thetime. And so I think that's my
main superpower,and the empathy and self
awareness that comes with that,yes, you have those qualities.
(49:45):
And then being a dad,yeah, you can you. I realized I
felt more yeah for for peopleand what was happening around
me, maybe as a woman, as man islike, I. Yeah, it's like
something that, you know, youlive your life like a first
player view, you know, like in avideo game, and then soon you
(50:05):
have a kid, and it's like,whoop, you see from a bit more
up, and it's their view. Andthat was a big change. Wow.
Thank you so much. No, thankyou, Madeleine, for all what
you've been doing since you're15 years old on climate nine.
But nine, okay,no, yeah. Thank you so much for
for this incredibleconversation. What is your
(50:26):
superpower? Oh, what is youknow, it changes all the time,
so I don't know. I mean, everyday, I have a different answer.
Right now, at this particularmoment, I feel like I'm using my
superpower ofconnection and listening.
(50:48):
But I think, yeah, there's alot. I mean, every day, it's
different. My superpower,honestly, is always being
curious about what my superpoweris. Nice.
Thank you. Thank you.
(51:11):
Okay. Thank you so much forlistening everybody. I hope that
you enjoyed that episode as muchas I did, and I will say also,
please share these episodes withyour friends, with your family,
with your coworkers, review themon Apple and Spotify if you've
benefited or enjoyed or learnedsomething from this episode,
(51:33):
from other episodes, it wouldmean a lot to us if you did all
that and always feel free tocheck out our website and we'll
see you next time, thanks,everybody. You.
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