 With corporate power looming behind them, nation states have failed to deliver on their promise of security for populations in the most dramatic, conceivable way, by allowing the warming of the climate to put hours and future generations' lives at risk. During this session, we will take a look at the perception in the west of this crisis, its reality, and the paths that societies can take to reverse this trend and assure the survival of future generations. Here to discuss this topic with us is Martin Lukash, environmental journalist from Canada, and writer for The Guardian and the newly founded The Breach Media Outlet. Martin is also the author of the Trudeau formula, seduction and betrayal in an age of discontent. Joining Martin in the latter part of the session will be Radhima Pandey, youth climate activist from India. Radhima gained global prominence in 2017 when at the age of nine, she filed a lawsuit against the Indian government for not adhering to its target set under the Paris Climate Accords. Radhima was also among 16 children to file a complaint with the UN in 2019 for violations of its convention on the rights of the child due to the climate crisis. Welcome to everyone to this third session on the Alternative Security Conference about the ecological crisis. I'm Tom Stopford, a member of DM25's foreign policy group, the DM Spontaneous Collective on Peace and International Policy, and I'll be moderating the session today. We'll start out in the first part with a comparison of the way the climate crisis is perceived in the western world and compare that to the reality of the crisis. Here to help us with that is Martin Lukash, as just announced, writer for The Guardian and The Breach Media. Then in the second part of the session we'll talk about solutions to the climate crisis. Joining Martin and me will be Radhima Pandey, as just mentioned, climate youth activist from India. Also note that you'll have the chance to put your questions to the speakers in the comment section of the YouTube stream. We'll then try to forward them to the speakers at the end of each part of the session, so we'll have two short Q&As. So joining me now, Martin, thanks for being here. Glad to talk to you. Thanks for having me. I want to start out by asking you, how is the ecological crisis perceived in the west? How do our media portray it? What kind of causes are being identified? How are the effects portrayed? I think we're in the middle of a very fierce battle over the perceptions of the ecological crisis and honestly I think we've never been in a stronger position to determine what that perception is. But what we're up against has been very clear for a long time. I think in the official arenas of debate about the ecological crisis and the media and legislatures and elite circles, the crisis is still perceived in a dominant neoliberal ideology. So what we're presented with are techno-utopian solutions getting saved by a few billionaires, swooping in on their fossil-fuel-free jets or electric vehicles, or the solution is posed as one of collective and stoic self-sacrifice. So we all know the script that is repeated in mainstream television to us regularly. Half fewer children drive less, recycle, print less paper, use decomposable, edible hemp pens. It gets to truly epically absurd heights in some cases. And I think what that has meant is that the climate crisis for too long has been perceived as a fight without enemies. All of us, to some extent, have a small consumption, have a small amount of complicity in the system. But oil companies have taken advantage of this and spun it into relentless propaganda over the decades. And that approach can be summed up in the Pogo cartoon that some people may know, which is the line that we have met the enemy and it is us. So just in the way that neoliberalism has freed corporations to treat the atmosphere like a sewage dump, it's also encouraged us to turn to feeble individualistic responses when it comes to the climate crisis. So I think when it comes to the perception we've all, to some degree, internalized the creative neoliberalism, which tells us to act as consumers instead of citizens as atomized individuals instead of deeply social collective. So I think that has been the kind of great ideological con of our age is to put all this relentless pressure on individuals to green their lives when in fact we know it's corporations and the underlying capitalist global economy, which is responsible for the brunt of climate change. Tom, I think you're muted. So as you were saying, at the end, the real causes aren't being talked about. There's focus on consumption as a way to combat the crisis and so on. Could you expand a little bit more on the causes then of the crisis that are not in the front of the media coverage? Well, we know that despite the relentless talk about all of us being individually responsible for climate change, we know that just 100 fossil fuel companies have been the source of more than 70% of greenhouse gas emissions in the past three decades. So our actual enemies don't only have names and addresses as someone once put it, but they could literally be fit into one giant San Francisco or London mansion, right? So there's that that, you know, there's a very narrow layer of fossil fuel executives who have with full knowledge, in fact, with with knowledge well before anyone anyone else thanks to their climate science departments at full knowledge of the impact of their business model and have continued despite their awareness. In fact, have for decades funded right wing misinformation and disinformation campaigns to sow confusion in the public, in the media and delay any climate action. And I think more broadly speaking, ideologically, climate change has often been presented as a single issue that can be siloed off, rather than being a symptom of a deeper dysfunction in our political economic system. So, you know, the carbon is in the air because the economy put it there. And I think, you know, there's a way in which not just, you know, the dominant, you know, the dominant ideology in the guardians of that ideology, but also I think to some extent the mainstream environmental movement, which is, you know, the last five to 10 years been changing, thankfully, and there's a way in which they were guilty of a kind of carbon fundamentalism, which presented the use of fossil fuels as if it existed in a vacuum, disconnected from the, you know, capitalist political economy in which in which we live, the racist and hierarchical organization of our society. In my country, Canada, settler colonial land theft and relentless extraction on indigenous lands. All of these are the true underlying causes of climate change and have to be reckoned with when we consider a path out of it. There's also a way in which I think mainstream environmentalism for so long has been guilty of a kind of enormous condescension of priority. The idea that the climate trumps all other issues, that we have to deal with them before we get to dealing with racism or militarism or inequality. But in fact, it's precisely those issues that are not just at the root but are an accelerant. And there's a way in which climate change is a force multiplier for so many of these inequities in society and that will likely, in fact, make our societies more unequal, more war prone, more brutal and mean if we don't mount a challenge to those roots. Just as a side comment, I think you can find that in great parts of the left, by the way, that there's a focus on quite a narrow range of issues, but not necessarily a connection to the deeper institutional structures in society, which are causing a lot of the problems that people are, you know, concerned about. Moving on from this picture that is presented to us in the mainstream media, there's another open question, which is, what kind of an effect does this have on the general population that is exposed to it? How, indeed, do people see the issue? Are their attitudes changed by what they see on television or read in the newspapers? So maybe you could talk a bit about that, what kind of consequences it has on people's attitudes? Yeah, I mean, I think we shouldn't overstate the effect that dominant ideology has on the population because I still think to a large degree, certainly in my country, there's a huge appetite for full transformative policies with regard to the ecological and climate crisis. So in my country, you know, 75% to 80% of people want to see something like the Green New Deal. They want to see increased taxation on the wealthy. They want to see expanded public services, all of the things that we need to combat the climate crisis. But I do think that there is a real disconnect between the mainstream perception of the climate crisis and where people are at. And I think that the impact that it has had on people has flattened and constricted our people's political imagination. So I think one element we certainly see in political culture is that, you know, there's a real difficulty to imagine alternatives to hyperunregulated capitalism. So and I think we see that in a lot of the fictional and cinematic depictions of climate change, right, which is usually hyper dystopia. You know, these projections of absolute worst case scenarios based on the presumption that the status quo politics could never change. You know, there's this there's this phrase from Frederick Jamison that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. And I think what we're seeing in the media class is that it almost feels like it's easier for them to imagine the end of the world and apocalypse, a climate apocalypse, than it is, you know, the possibility of just imposing higher taxes on corporations to pay for a green transition, right? Like we're not even talking about the end of capitalism. We're talking about social debt, bold social democratic measures that would actually rain in corporations and rain in, you know, runaway, you know, fossil fuel extraction. But I also think that, you know, when we see coverage in the media that, you know, that that that poses this threat of climate disasters, but then proposes merely solutions like changing your light bulb or having less children. There's, I think, a tendency for people to disconnect. Like, like, you know, if you're saying it's this bad, but you're posing only these puny solutions, then either, you know, it's not actually that serious, or climate change is not a problem at all. So I think that there's been a there's been a tendency for people as a result of that to disconnect and to become depoliticized when it comes to the climate crisis. That said, I think the movement that many of us have been a part of to build momentum for a global Green New Deal, I think has a long way to push back against this problem. So not necessarily that people adopt exactly the picture that is that is being presented to them, but that they just feel disconnected and feel apathy with regards to the subject. What then about the environmental movements that have been growing in the last couple of years? You know, the Fridays for Future movement, which is very prominent, the movement from Britain, the Extinction Rebellion, which is spread around the world as well. How are they being covered then considering this, what we heard just now? What is what is their role in it? I mean, you know, I think we've seen from the media, the standard forms of I mean, look, the media class live in the same bubble as the political class, you know, and share many of the same values and perceptions. And, you know, I think that we can expect the media to give a fair shape to these movements. So, you know, we've seen them deride and smear and infantilize the social movements that are rising in this moment, you know, and on many of the core issues on which we need movement, the media have often played a reactionary role. So, you know, the elite media attempt to present cuts to the poorest as belt tightening, you know, but tax, tax increases to the richest make them scream about class resentment. You know, they derived regulation of corporate polluters as red tape, but applaud deregulation as an incentive to unleash innovation in the magic of the market. You know, the media direct anger at the most vulnerable and directed away from those who are most culpable for the crisis. So I think without a powerful and noisy movement of the source that we've seen in the last few years, and which need to grow, we can't hope for any shifts in the media coverage. I mean, we've gotten small improvements. But to a large degree, we're still seeing how certain, for instance, in the US media coverage of and mention of the climate has actually gone down rather than increasing, even as we see climate disasters striking from coast to coast. So, I think to a large degree, the, the solutions, the holistic solutions like the Green New Deal that we need are not being amplified to people through the mainstream media there. They're getting out there through the vehicles and platforms that people are building in independent institutions in grassroots political parties. In the rare left parliamentarians that we're seeing in the United States, certainly people like Bernie Sanders and Alexander Ocasio-Cortez who have played a huge role in mainstreaming these kinds of holistic solutions that really break with the neoliberal democracy that has fenced in our political imagination for so long. And we see the effects of that to some extent in the media as well. I see we're now reaching the question and answer period. I haven't received any question until now. So I'll just backtrack for a moment again, if that's all right, to this question of the causes, because I think there's a bit more to be said there about the climate crisis being a market failure and this concept of externalities, the climate problems being externalities, maybe you could talk a bit about that since there haven't been any questions until now. Sure. Well, it's undoubtedly true that certainly over the last 40 years of the ascendance of neoliberalism, so many of precisely the kinds of public policy that we would need to avert the climate crisis have been considered beyond the pale by the mainstream political framework. So the urgent reality to regulate corporations, to engage in a public led transition to renewable energy, the need even for public publicly owned corporations to lead that transition to invest in renewable energy, to engage energy to build the kind of infrastructure that we need to put us on better footing to handle the kind of shocks that we know we have already locked in, but also to build a much more abundant, equal and humane society that really gives people a stake in the transition. All of those run headlong up against the neoliberal orthodoxy, right, that the market is always better, that government should stay out of regulating the market, and that, you know, we should leave things to the magic of the market. But as you say, the environmental costs, which have gone to the point now where they pose existential threat to the life support systems of this planet are simply not taken into account by the market. So the, you know, the real inconvenient truth of the climate crisis, you know, as Naomi Klein has so insightfully written is that we need to reverse so many of these reactionary, regressive and neoliberal trends over the last 40 years. And I do think that that thankfully we're starting to see that in many places around the world, there has been this incredible insurgency against neoliberalism, and it's put many of these, you know, basic questions of, you know, basic levers of government power and policy back on the table. And, you know, those externalities finally have to be taken into account. And, and I think we're, we're probably on better footing than we ever have been to do that. Question from the audience now. Alexander, Elijah, which I've pronounced that correctly, is asking, is pressure on the institutions, the only thing we can do, or can we also imagine people cooperating to solve the problems themselves through direct action and commons. I mean, undoubtedly, undoubtedly, we have to use every tool we have in the toolbox. And I think that there's a lot to be said for for combining a firm know with a compelling yes in the organizing that we do. So, undoubtedly, there needs to be direct action of the sort we've seen from extension, extension rebellion and anti extractive movements around the world. Forcing our governments to say no to endless fossil fuel extraction and putting an end to the opening of new carbon frontiers and direct action has been at the center of that. And, and meanwhile, we certainly also have to build the, the popular power that movements have to push for those alternatives that we need. Paramount among them, the Green New Deal, which to my mind is the most compelling and exciting framework for collective political action that we've had, certainly in my in my generation in my lifetime. So I think there's no doubt that that that collectivities and movements have a role to play in both, you know, stopping the bad and and pushing for the good. Sort of a follow up to that expanding on the same topic. Another question. Robert could ask, what about the democratization democratization of companies and corporations? Could they help influencing the impact of climate change? Also, with regard to improving accountability. Yeah, for me, it's hard to imagine us being able to win just transition without that involving democratic economic planning. And I think I've been, and I know many people have certainly been inspired by the way that certainly the UK Labour Party under Corbyn and Bernie Sanders in the in the United States was putting forward, you know, innovative policies that would see workers take greater stakes in companies. Because I think it if we leave private corporations to maintain their victims of power, we've seen that they will continue to have governments at their beck and call through lobbying through legalized bribery. And I think that if we're not able to extend some measure of democratic control and planning over the private sector, we simply won't be able to usher in a transition in the amount of time that we have. But just to better comprehend, are you thinking while saying that of institutional changes in changes to the structure of the economic institutions? Or are you thinking solely about regulating them more strongly than they have been in the last decades? I think it has to be both. I think we're at the point now where our movements are digging ourselves out of a hole in the sense that we have to contend with the hyper unregulated nature of so many of the key sectors that we need to rapidly decarbonize. So naturally it does have to start with a very tough regulatory agenda of setting everything from caps on production and exploration for fossil fuels, which we've seen certainly in some European countries. We're behind in Canada and the United States. We need to put our hands on the inordinate private wealth that both the fossil fuel companies have, but also the corporate sector across the board, and use that money to pay for this transition. But I think over the longer run, we do have to move towards putting on the table questions of expropriation or nationalization. And I mean over the long haul certainly holding fossil fuel executives responsible in criminal courts at the hate for the damage that they've brought globally. Perhaps the last question, this question and answer period. Chris Lothian asks, don't you think that the problems of environmental plundering, logging, commercial fishing, etc. are far more important than CO2 production? I mean, I think that all of these ecological crises are interconnected and that the problems of relentless resource extraction, whether that's fishing or logging or the emitting of carbon emissions, have at their core the same problem, which is a hyper unregulated fossil fuel capitalist system. And I think rather than imagining ourselves trying to fight these on different fronts, we have to get out of this siloed mentality. And to my mind, the Green New Deal is exciting as a framework for that because it shows us that everything is connected and it shows that if we can address those root crises, the symptoms can also be remedied. Although one might add that the symptoms caused by CO2 production are the most urgent since they pose the greatest danger. So there should be probably an emphasis on those but not leaving the others out of the picture. Well, I think we can go over to the second part of the session now with Ritima. Well, thanks until here. Now, turning to Ritima, thank you to you also for being on, great to have you. I'd like to first of all start by asking you how you got involved in climate activism, what got you started, what was the initial motivation? So I guess that most of the time it happens that as for you as being a child, we don't really realise an importance of something until and unless we face that ourselves. And that somewhere happened with me as well because in 2013 when I was six, I guess five or six, there was a very devastating flash flood that happened in my home state at Rakan. So when the flash flood occurred, my mum was watching TV and my dad went there to rescue the animals. So while my mum was watching TV, I wanted to watch Cartoon to be honest, but she didn't allow me and she was like, you know, you have to see what's been happening in the world. You can't just be in your own imaginary world all the time, you know, see how many people have been hurt and stuff like that. So I sat there, not very willingly, but when I saw, you know, the visuals on, you know, that the reporters were showing us on the news, I was able to see kanji scaring, you know, it was whole mudded water, the water level was really high. It was having broken tree branches and, you know, material of broken houses. The place was destructed so badly, people and animals hurt really very badly. They were crying and they were saying that they're trying to find out their family members, but they can't and they're scared if they're alive or not. And the kids were like, they don't know what they're going to do if they won't find their parents and, you know, their whole little world was devastated. And it made me really scared and I asked my mum, you know, that what was the reason, you know, behind this destruction. Then she told me about flash floods and, you know, how they usually occur. And it made me really scared of thundering and raining. And even till today, I'm 13, but I'm still scared of, you know, thundering whenever it thunders. You know, I just be like, you know, you don't better, you know, burst. I don't want the cloud to get bursted. I don't want to lose my parents. And, you know, I just, I'm just really scared of thundering and flooding. So this fear and somewhere, you know, as I had to, as I used to experience this thing a lot, you know, I asked my mum, what was the reason behind the flash flood and how can I stop flooding that I didn't know it was a natural phenomenon. I can't do much to stop it. The only thing that I had in my mind was that I have to stop flooding. I just really have to because I don't, you know, I can't lose my parents. I can't lose my home. So then they sort of introduced me to what global warming is. And the way they explained me that it was, it was quite difficult to understand that in the beginning while my dad was trying to make me understand that. But once my mom said that, you know, you can imagine it sort of, you know, that there's been a fire that has put has been put in underneath the earth. And as, you know, the earth has been on the top of the fire, you know, it's getting hotter and hotter. And that fire is because of our emissions. And at that time as being a child, for me, only cars used to me. So I was really very confused that, you know, how can us driving cars, you know, change the temperature of such a big earth and how can, you know, the temperature being hotter be bad, you know, because I used to like summers a lot at that time. I was kind of confused. I was really curious and I was scared of flooding as well. So all these things, you know, drove me to learn more and more. And as I started learning, I see the loopholes of, you know, how the government have been working, how this whole political scenario has been working, how they've been crushing our future, our rights for the development for the economic wealth and growth and all these stuff. So at the point, you know, I felt like it's just enough. Somewhere if no one will do it, I certainly have to take action for myself for my life. And that made me, you know, to take action and be activist in who I am today. So following up on that, you started mentioning your activism. So what were the kind of things you started doing after this initial motivation was there? It was mentioned in the introductory video, you had this famous court case with the Indian government. Was that the first big step or were there other things beforehand? So I can say that was the biggest step. But eventually before that, a year before I filed my petition against the government of India, I started living a sustainable life. I can't say it was proper sustainable, but I tried to reduce my own carbon footprint. You know, I tried to save electricity, water. I tried not to waste food, which I used to do a lot as a child, you know. And I tried enough to use single-use plastic. I had to, you know, cut down my consumption of my snacks because that created a lot of single-use plastic. So it was really tough, you know, to give up on the things that you really liked. And to be honest, when I was a kid, I loved Coca-Cola, but eventually when I came to the reality, I was like, it's not that great, you know, and it affects my body and it's affecting the whole world as well. So I, you know, I would have it completely. It's very occasionally that I drink that. So it was really tough in the beginning, but these were the steps, very small steps that I took. But eventually what happened was that when, so it's like I read in an article that living a sustainable life, like changing, bringing small changes can really help. So I thought in my mind that if I will live a sustainable life, things would change. So no more global warming, no more climate change and things would be, you know, nicer and my future would be secure. So I didn't knew that it has to be a collective action when it comes to living a sustainable life to bring a change. I just thought just me living a sustainable life can change the whole world. So I lived it. I lived a sustainable life for a month or so, but still I was able to see their droughts are occurring, plastic are occurring, the sea levels are still rising. So I was really confused that am I wrong or was the article wrong or did I did something wrong? I asked my mom, you know, so many questions and then she told me that it has to be a collective action. If you want, you know, people, you know, sustainability to change up the whole thing, then it can't really happen. There has to be a bigger action. And at that point of time, I felt like, you know, what can be more bigger than, you know, doing a petition against your government and, you know, telling them on their forefront that you are doing this wrong and you have to be right in these ways. So I did my petition, my so-called landmark petition in 2017 at the National Green Tribunal, which is a green bench which takes all the cases related to environment. But my petition was dismissed after one and a half year on the grounds that the government was doing everything right. And in my petition, it was clearly mentioned that the work has been going on paper and things have not been done on ground and I want them to be on ground so that there could be real actions that, you know, could change up the things and could change up the scenario. But after seeing this whole paperwork, they decided to dismiss by case. I took it to the Supreme Court, which is the highest court of India, so I can't take it further from there. And it's still pending there from over one and a half years. It's kind of, you know, it's going to be two years now. So it's just pending. But yeah, this is how I came to an idea to do that for sure. So you're kind of a little bit doubtful that you'll have success with the case. Yeah, right. I see. Well, having heard that, Martin, maybe we can talk now a bit about the solutions. Redeemer mentioned collective action, which has to be undertaken. You mentioned it in the first part of the session. You also touched upon the Green New Deal saying that's a very important program. Why is that? Why the Green New Deal? Why is that such an important program, which has to be undertaken and backed by collective action? Well, let me just first respond to Radhika and say, if only more people in North America could, even at three times their age, go through that kind of consciousness elevation and realization, we would be in a much better position than we are now. I mean, I think in your short life, you've gone through a trajectory that I think many people still haven't reached but need to for us to get to the point where we can fight for a Green New Deal. Like, I think that, you know, capitalism for so long has thrived on people believing that being afflicted by structural problems of an exploitative system like poverty, joblessness, poor health, and now the climate crisis was actually just a personal deficiency, right? And the way in which our political and corporate-led system has put the burden of potential ecological collapse on the shoulders of individuals. I think that, I mean, the story you tell is heartening for me because I think that we are finally starting, perhaps, to see the power of that trick, ideological trick starting to dissolve. And of course we need people to consume less and innovate all kinds of low-carbon alternatives. You know, building sustainable farms, inventing battery storages, all kinds of zero-waste methods, but individual choices won't amount to anything unless the economic system we have can provide those options for everyone, not just an affluent or intrepid few. And I think that's the question that the Green New Deal tries to answer because, you know, if affordable mass transit isn't available to everyone, people will still drive their cars. You know, if local organic food that is grown sustainably in a low-carbon way is too expensive, people aren't going to opt out of the fossil fuel-intensive supermarket chains. You know, if we continue to mass-produce cheap goods endlessly, people will buy and buy them. So that has been the kind of con job of neoliberalism in this age to persuade us to try to fight climate change through our pocketbooks, not through power and politics. And I think the Green New Deal returns questions of power and politics to the arena of the climate crisis. And it says that, look, eco-consumerism may be good to absolve your guilt, but it's only mass movements that can actually alter the trajectory of the climate crisis. And that will require a comprehensive economic justice, social justice, environmental justice agenda that offers millions and millions of people the opportunity to fight for a much higher material standard of living. I think for so long, people posed climate change as a question of individual sacrifice. But what I think, and I think the oil companies were happy with that, if they thought, if they knew that people thought they had to sacrifice to deal with the climate crisis. But in fact, people's lives, if we fight climate change in the right way, can immeasurably improve. It can provide more livable communities with affordable housing that is interconnected through public transit, better food, more leisure time, more public luxuries that aren't dependent on individualized, highly fossil fuel intensive recreation. All of those are solutions, I think, that are woven into the Green New Deal. And I think they do what climate change solutions haven't done to this point, which is show that the 99% have everything to gain, and the only people who have something to lose aren't ordinary people, but the fossil fuel and corporate executives who have a stake in maintaining this destructive system. So to get him coming back to that point of collective action, Radhima, oops, you're back, okay. I hope that wasn't an environmental problem there. So this point of collective action, have you been undertaking climate activism together with others? Have you been trying to get in contact with others, movements and so on and so forth? Yeah, if I talk about such like I started this thing all alone, and I guess when I started there were not many people, you know, not many kids in general who were taking action because I started in 2017 and this whole global movement like Fridays for Future and everything came in 2018 and stuff like that. So at the very beginning I used to feel that I'm the only one taking action and the weird kid that my parents had that thinks about climate change while everyone else is just like they are busy in their own lives and busy in their own stuff and doesn't really care about the environment which is making them to sustain on this planet which I really felt was weird. But yeah, it's like actually as a different movement started to rise, not officially but I have Fridays for Future, I've been striking with them whenever I can and I've taken, you know, it's like I feel that somewhere awareness is really very missing among youth when it comes to climate change and especially in my country. So I took this thing that's like my very first climate strike that I attended was in New York, the global strike. So it's like after I had that strike I felt like there is something wrong in India, why aren't these many people coming out on the streets and fighting for their rights for themselves and for the whole entire ecosystem, why aren't they fighting against, you know, the decision makers, those who are doing things wrong. So I, you know, just felt like, you know, there's lack of awareness and I should do something with that. So I started making kids aware about their rights, about climate change, about how it's affecting them and so it's like basically I go to the schools and colleges and make them aware about things by having workshops or sessions with them and rather than that, it's like I've been, recently it's like not earlier but recently as things have started been online, I have gotten a more exposure, you know, to connect with different communities of people those who are working to drive a change and, you know, they are sort of working in a different perspective. Some are working for evolution, some are working for water pollution, some are working to preserve their biodiversity of their particular region. So it's like I've joined many people that supported many people and I have started joining different communities who are trying to drive a change but it's not something which I used to do earlier. It's more of a kind of recent thing that I've started doing. And you do these awareness programs at schools all alone or is this in some organization? So it's like this thing I do alone, it's like I just don't know why I just never find a perfect organization according to me, you know, who could truly help me out because most of the time most of the organizations look for their profits and stuff like that and to be honest, you know, it's a difficult thing to manage, you know, traveling all around and your expenses and, you know, going to schools and stuff like that and also, you know, getting a little help from them and, you know, paying them as well because most of the time if I ask people if they could help me out they want to join me, most straightforward, you know, most of the things come starts from money and ends on money to people. That's like I just felt like me and my dad felt like it's just good to do it alone and yeah, I'm just doing it with help of my parents and, you know, the lawyers who supported me through my petition against the government. So we can now also slowly move into the question and answer period so if there are any questions from the audience please put them forward. Until that's the case, I had one more question for you, Riddhima. Since you come from a country which historically shares quite a low small burden in creating the climate crisis and you're speaking with, you know, Europeans, someone from Canada what's your feeling with regard to this imbalance that's there since most of the emissions have been caused by, you know, Europe, North America so on and so forth. What's it like being from a country that's on the other side of this? It's like, it's a bad thing, I won't say that, you know, it's been, you know, kind of been not that bad, but yeah, it's bad, but see, it's like I feel like each and every country is responsible as to the destruction which is happening right now. It's like it was, you know, the developed countries or the ones who are, you know, emitting the most are the ones, you know somewhere destroying a lot more than, you know, my country is but still, my country is destroying a lot too, you know they're destroying their own biodiversity even being the one most impacted and, you know, not having that much privilege, you know, to change up the things because we have a lot bigger population than most of the other countries some of, you know, it's like just China is, I guess, the only one who has a larger population than India and next is India, you know having such a big population and then, you know, being a developing country you know, rather than conserving their biodiversity and, you know because mostly it's like there are many, so it's like the majority of poor people is very high in India and they being on the front line, they are the one most affected so it's like rather than thinking about them and thinking about the whole country and thinking about their biodiversity as we have a lot of biodiversity and nature all around us, in spite of, you know, just protecting it our policy makers are just, you know, busy in destroying that and giving forest clearance for airport expansion for coal mines, for diamond mines and, you know, they just want to gain more and more and more and this grief never stops and, you know, we have learned that, you know it's human nature to be greedy but I don't think so you can be this greedy that you can, you know, put lives of so many on stake and just to them you would be like, you know we are doing great and people would, you know, most of the people are believing that so I somewhere just to conclude that, you know, I've just feel like it's a bad thing that we are not, you know we are not the one, you know, who created, who were, you know that big contributors of this problem but still, what have we done, you know not being the one, you know, who emitted that much we are not teaching them the lesson but we are following their footsteps we are somewhere, you know, if they did it you know, it's just like a thing that, you know it's just like things that happen since siblings, you know that if my brother ate chocolate, I want that too it's just like that, you know, if they did it, we want that too, you know I'm saying that our country shouldn't get developed but, you know it shouldn't be happening at the cost of the life of the children you know, at the cost of, you know, oxygen at the cost of water, at the cost of, you know, our surroundings our environment, our biodiversity, yeah, that's how I feel it's kind of a mixed feeling, so I can't really explain it that way that's right A question from the audience maybe for you Martin The question is, do you think it might be a good idea to impose some kind of Tobin tax on the investors and speculators while making so much money from the green energy market if that's something I mean, undoubtedly yes like, and any and all taxes should be on the table, certainly the I mean, to me it's a question not of the more difficult question is not whether there should be a Tobin tax I mean people have been pushing for a Tobin tax for decades now the question really is, how do we build the popular power to impose it, right and but it goes without saying that if we want to have any chance of paying for the kind of green transition we know we need, we have to put our hands on the inordinate private wealth that exists whose existence puts to the lie the notion of austerity that we have been sold for during our entire generation like there is money there it just happens to be sloshing around in private accounts being funneled offshore or is just sitting dead in accounts in my country in Canada the corporate class holds $600 billion in accounts and the notion that this wealth would trickle down was of course a fraudulent lie and so now we have to go where the money is put our hands on it and use it to build a renewable energy post-carbon society by Sean Sein have you considered starting a go fund me I assume this is some kind of crowd funding platform for your court case and then building the organisation for fighting climate change that you want is it for me yes that's for you eventually not because it's just like just like you know I just don't know how to do these things and stuff like that so I do have an organisation I set the organisation up one year back but I just didn't got the perfect people as I always said I didn't get the perfect people you know that I wanted to work with and it's just like you know my dad didn't got the time I'm busy in my school work my mom is the government official so she's busy in a lot of other work my dad is busy in his own work so like me just doesn't get the proper time to start an organisation but rather than that I haven't really had this idea to start a crowdfunding that's a great idea so you're kind of still waiting and seeing with regard to this court case it's you're just waiting for a reaction from the jurisprudition yeah we're just just waiting it's like regarding my court case so it's like as my lawyers Ritbik Dutt and Rahul Chhotri were my dad's friends because they've been working for wildlife conservation and they are environmental lawyers so they were friends so eventually it's like my dad went so it's like my dad went to them to you know just tell them that my daughter is suddenly excited to do a petition and I don't know you know whom should I contact you know whom should we contact to be our lawyers and what are the things that we should do because he didn't did this kind of petition he used to do PILs and petitions on different mindings and fortunes that used to happen for the wildlife but he didn't did a certain kind of petition like that with a minor so he asked them if they could help us in a way so it's like at that time they were like that they will be our lawyers but you know my lawyer is taking costs and stuff like that it's not the case they are just helping me and my whole case has been going on without anything so it's like they take funds from organizations from abroad oh I guess so much wrong yeah so yeah so I was just telling that my lawyers take funds from abroad so they help them so they hasn't really took any money from me it's like that's why we didn't really have that crowdfunding of stuff for my petition sorry I just had a technical problem there so I didn't hear the last part of the answer maybe there's one last question maybe we can end with that maybe this one is one for Martin maybe Ritima you'd also like to say something about it can you say something about degrowth how do we escape the logic of perpetual economic growth when every polity seems to be aiming at growth well that's an easy one in a minute no that I mean that's that's an entire conversation in itself you know I undoubtedly like of course we have to get away from the the commitment of our market economy to endless growth which is you know pushing the the planet to its brink but I personally have a quibble with the language of degrowth because I find that I think the great challenge of our political moment is to have people feel that they have a positive stake in fighting climate change and winning a green transition and I think the language of the Green New Deal to my mind is much more compelling in that it like when I hear degrowth I think I think it tells people that they will have less less material well-being less luxury less pleasure and I think there are certainly some elements of the economy low-carbon no-carbon caring sectors for instance of health care and teaching caring for our elders caring for our children that need to massively expand and there are certainly some elements the fossil fuel intensive ones that need to contract but I think that we can do better in terms of how we frame the struggle and helping people understand how much their lives can benefit if they fight for a fossil fuel transition, come you're muted again I guess we'll end it there and thank you very much for being here both was a great discussion interesting different perspectives the activists side the journalistic world yeah and I hope these kind of conversations become more widespread and will take place more and more in the future so thanks for being here both and thank you Radima for inspiring us thank you guys it's really great talking to you yeah I'll just add as a last note there's another session coming up from 7 p.m. to 8 o'clock Central European time on cyber security so if you'd like to look at that I'm sure it will be an interesting topic and it will be moderated by my colleague Amir Kiayi from the task force for the alternative security conference so thanks for both being here and goodbye