 Hello, hello, hello, and welcome. I'm Meryl Killily. We are DM25, a radical political movement for Europe, and this is Cop Off, a different kind of climate conference with subversive ideas you won't hear anywhere else. It's the 20th of November, 2022, and Cop 27, the world's primary forum for governments, businesses, and environmental organisations to halt climate breakdown, has now concluded. And in what will be news to absolutely no one, it was largely a failure. The journalist, George Mombio, put it like this, our leaders had a choice, he said, to defend the habitable planet or appease their sponsors in the fossil fuel industry. And they went with their sponsors. There was no meaningful action agreed at COP 27 on tackling the carbon emissions that are battering poor countries today and putting the future of humanity in peril. But in this conversation, I'd like us to relax our cynicism a bit. Let's look beyond the fact that COP 27 was sponsored by one of the world's top plastics polluters, Coca-Cola. Let's put to one side the vastness of the climate challenge. And let's look instead at what has been achieved by regular people, activists, nonviolent movements. Let's examine what we can all do to push back against climate breakdown via the social movements in the global north and global south, with people of all ages who are working on this tirelessly every day. And let's look at what we should be doing concretely, how we should be going about it in ways that could have the most impact. And that's why I'm thrilled today to be joined by two esteemed activists, Varsha Gandhikota from India and Esteban Servat from Argentina. They're both, of course, from the global south. So they'll both have perspectives that our viewers in Europe might not be too familiar with and that I'm sure you'll find interesting. And you, out there, if you've got questions, thoughts, rants, concerns, ideas, comments, anything you want to throw at us, then please do. This is live. It's on YouTube. Put them in the YouTube chat and we'll put them to our guests. So I'd like to kick off by asking our guests to introduce themselves briefly, starting with Varsha. Varsha, who are you? And what do you do? Hi, Mara. Thanks for having me. My name is Varsha Gandhikota and I'm a coordinator at the Progressive International, which started in May 2020, so about two and a half years ago, to organize, mobilize and unite progressive forces around the world. I'm calling in today from Delhi in India and at the PI, I do a bunch of different things. I guess all things fund policy and politics, but mainly focused on building internationalism for the 21st century. Very happy to be here. Thank you, Varsha. Esteban, I'm afraid you're muted, Esteban. Good. Can you hear me now? Yeah, okay. Nice to be with both of you. I'm from Argentina. I'm a scientist. I spent much of my life in the U.S., working for some of the world's biggest corporations in the Silicon Valley, then headed back home to do an ecological project, and then we were confronted with the advancing fracking industry. We created ecolics and published some secret documents. The government was hiding the revealed contamination of the water tables in a strategic place in Vaca Muerta, a major fracking shale gas basin that led to building a huge movement, but also a lot of persecution. And three years ago, I had to come to Germany. I left Argentina and I've continued my fight from Europe, trying to bring together the climate movements to fight the advancing fracking gas fossil fuel industry. And more recently this past year, we put together a global campaign called Therefore Climate that is tackling the climate crisis from a different approach, which is tackling the financial colonialism behind it, and trying to build bridges between labor, social climate, indigenous movements to build the power that we need to be at the level to confront this kind of challenge. Nice to be with you. Thank you, Esteban. I'd like to ask you both, perhaps starting with you, Vaca. The climate change challenge, the climate challenge is so massive. It's this vast web of interlocking interests. If you could, like if there was somebody that came to you and activist for the first time and said, what is the area that I should be most active on? What is the weak spot on which I could make the most progress in the shortest amount of time given the urgency of all of this? What would you say? Well, that's a big question to start off on. I think the good answer is that there are several openings, partly because, exactly like you said, the climate crisis is essentially a war. If someone came up and told me what's happening right now, it would be the richest people on the planet waging a war on the poorest, the imperial centers of the world, extracting not just wealth, labor, and through it all life, really, because that's what it is, extracting life from the global south. For me, I think the biggest question is the fact that there are close to 2.7 billion people today that are hungry, who cannot find food that could nourish them to live. And this isn't just about some inevitable food shortage, because we can make enough food for the world. But still, there are billions who cannot access it, because the way we produce it, the way we make it scarce on purpose and price it in such a way that they can't afford it. This, of course, comes from the fact that I'm speaking to you today from India. And just last week, I was at a large farmer's gathering where thousands of farmers from around the country kind of came to meet to discuss the challenges facing them today. And as most of you would have read, this summer alone, we've had a scorching heatwaves, right? Insistently above 40 degree temperatures, which means that food is stunted, there's shortage of water. The water that does exist isn't something that's suitable for agriculture or for drinking. And it's the dire, dire situation of not just food production, but the people producing the food is so clear, which in India is something like 260 to around 70 million agricultural workers, who, by the way, if you look at the data, shows about 30 farmers in India commit suicide every single day because of shortage of food crops and not being able to make any returns really off of it and being stuck in poverty. So one, I would say if you're an activist and thinking about what is it that I can do, I think broadly speaking, if you're taking back control, I would think of activism maybe in three different ways. Perhaps the schema wouldn't make sense of making it up as I speak, but one, thinking about activism to expose, to educate, to really make common sense, what I think we in the room understand. And the food example is a good one, because if you think of the food crisis, we all talk about it, right? In a lot of these speeches, I usually come up and I say, it's stunning to me that more people aren't talking about this, but actually with the food crisis and with the climate crisis, everyone is talking about it. All of the front pages do carry it from the economists to the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal. Everyone talks about it, but it's this nebulous thing where they talk about it as though it's kind of dropped from the sky, right? Food vulnerable countries, communities that are susceptible to kind of famine, so on and so forth. Whereas we know that there are essentially about four companies, ABCD, as they're called, ABCDs of hunger really, which is ADM, Banjkar, Hill and Louis-Dreyfus that control 80% of agriculture production around the world, which again, no one knows about. They're not like an Amazon with a very evil-looking Jeff Bezos at the center, which is easier to kind of find that. So I think there's a real scope for still. I know that it must seem like there's overwhelming amounts of information out there that surely there isn't much more to kind of achieve through information and expertise, but there really does is kind of a whole state of activism that's yet to be done. I think there's a second piece of it, which is activism in the form of breaking corporate power, whether that's direct action through disrupting kind of everyday life, which we of course see through XR and just or violence, so on and so forth. But there's also workers who really are the fuel, who really are the blood supply for all of these companies across supply chains spreading across the global south, which if they were to coordinate and work together would completely bring the machine to a halt. And I want to speak a bit about that later on in the panel, hopefully, about a transnational movement called Make Amazon Pay, which I work with, which is doing some fantastic work on this. And then there's, I believe, a third piece, which it really is activism in the form of seizing state power, which we've seen at COP now, which I think there's a lot that we shouldn't be optimistic about what happened at COP now, the loss and damages result is somewhat optimistic and I'm excited about what might come of it. But I think the most exciting bit is not that specific policy, but the kind of the nascent block that's in formation, which it seems like small island countries, vulnerable countries, really countries of the global south, a lot of home in Latin America with socialist precedents, coming together to form a block and say we're going to negotiate together. Now that has huge potential all the way and of course has brings for me echoes of the non-aligned movement, the new international economic order of the 70s, and in a way, where you can wrestle kind of control back, if not at the national level, at least at the regional level. So there's an entire, I would say, kind of critical opening in terms of just electing more left government into power in certain parts. So I'll stop there as an introduction, but hoping we can chat a bit more about it. Thank you. So exposing and educating, breaking corporate power and seizing state power, running for elections. Interesting. Very small order then, easy things to do. Esteban, what's your take on this question, exposing climate, well, exposing some of the excesses of corporate power is something that you've been very active in. What's your take on what are the weak spots that activists should be focusing on? Yeah, I think that your question is the question that probably most climate activists are asking themselves. What is the weak point of the system? Where is where we should be focusing in? And that's why the climate movement globally, and especially in the global north, is at a crisis and at a crossroads, because a lot of the advances that we thought had been made were quickly rolled back during the Ukraine war. Many countries are going back to coal. Many countries are just going back altogether. Emissions are going up to record levels. So this is a question that goes really far and wide everywhere. And my take on this, well, I also agree with everything that Varsha said, and we must keep in mind that just recently, there was a new report from Oxfam that put together some numbers and they determined that 125 billionaires have the same carbon footprint as the entire country of France. Okay. So when we speak of rich people and also rich countries exploiting the poor, this is what we are facing. And we are facing a climate crisis that is the result of colonialism. It took the IPCC many, many years to even admit it, but happily, the latest report also finally acknowledges that colonialism is at the root of the climate crisis. So to address the climate crisis in terms of only emissions or only local emissions in Germany or any country in the global north, it's a very incomplete picture that will lead us nowhere. And this is much of what's still happening at COP, sadly, while we must celebrate that today, actually, there was a breakthrough in terms of funding, creating a fund for loss and damage, which is a campaign that we from the for climate strongly support and many of our comrades are involved in that. And it's a great success. But it's also not a complete success. It's also in the process to determine how much and so on. But also, it's not complete as long as everything else is continuing and abated, the emissions, the destruction, the colonization of the fossil fuel industry, the multinational companies that are blatantly just killing us. Coca Cola, as you said earlier, was the sponsor of COP until recently. And they're just taking us all as idiots, the biggest polluter of plastics in the world, sponsoring the climate, the biggest climate summit of the world. What do they think we are? And that's my answer to you is that we must take away the power from them. We must take away the control from them to determine the fate of the climate future and the climate crisis. And the only way we can do that is to come together from the bottom up, from the periphery, from the global south, from the most affected countries. And in order to do that, we really need to reach the working class. One of the things, and I don't want to go on forever either, but in Europe, especially the climate movements are criticized for being very white, very middle class privilege. And they're doing great work and they are doing their best. But this criticism to some extent is right. They haven't found a way to connect with the working class that both here in Europe and in the global south is the most affected, but not only is and will be the most affected by the climate crisis, but it's the only one that has the power to stop this. It's the only one that has been able to unionize and achieve many of the civil rights that we all enjoy, thanks to the workers of the world. So going back to internationalism, and to me, the only way forward is that the workers of the world take the lead and take the protocol that they need to take in a global coordination where striking and parallelizing these economies, we can actually force the governments to the table and force COP to actually implement transition guidelines and programs and commitments that are currently not fulfilling because as you said earlier from George Montbiard, this quote, they're just, you know, they're doing what their sponsors want, and they're just completely co-opted by the multinational companies and the fossil fuel industry. Thank you, Esteban. I mean, interesting point you make there about climate activism being very white and had perhaps still does in some areas a reputation for being kind of an elite concern in the global north, whereas in the global south it's quite the opposite, it's a question of survival. And I'd like to look at that and it's something that you also spoke to a bit, Varsha, when you talked about educating. I think we're all at the point now, I might be wrong, but I mean, I think we're all at the point where there is a consensus that this is a very extreme problem and that we all need to work on it ASAP. So I don't hear that term climate denialism quite as often as I used to. Of course, we've lost many years to this false debate, but there's also a criticism of climate movements that that there's too much alarmism, too much radicality. I'm referring here to the global north. I mean, I'm looking at extinction, rebellion, I think one of you just mentioned that the I think their approval rating in polls was something like 17% last year and there have been a couple of actions there to educate people, as you say, Varsha, about the extent of the climate crisis and the urgency and they've created the wrong impression and the tactics haven't been right and they've ended up being too disruptive and inconveniencing people etc. Now, I'm not passing any judgment on this, but I'm saying that there is a debate among climate activists at the moment that what we need is as a more moderate type of activism, a more moderate flank to complement or to work in parallel with this more radical, more disruptive flank of climate activists. What would you say Varsha and then Esteban to that? I think this is a short answer, absolutely not. I don't think we need a more moderate flank. If anything, I think we haven't been radical enough and I don't think we've been alarmist enough. If you think about the tipping point that the IPCC reports had won this above, that's already well in the rearview mirror and I know you say that we're all in this position where we do think the climate crisis is a serious one and yes, we're not hearing of climate change denialism maybe as much anymore but what we're certainly hearing is a lot of skepticism about the solutions that are proposed. So now if you look at all of the lobbying efforts made by the five big oil companies or you look at the hedge funds of whom many managers sit on these kind of prominent think tanks, especially in places like the UK and the US, what they do is spread this enormous amount of skepticism that something like a net zero for instance is absolutely not possible. That this is just an idealistic approach. If you look at degrowth, which talks about consuming less and degrowth has gotten such a terrible name over the last few weeks because last few years because people have talked about oh, this is terrible. They're asking us to live badly and poorly but it's really what they're saying is let's consume differently. Let's not produce clothes that for fast fashion that we throw out every single month and buy a fresh again. Let's produce clothes that last. Let's produce public transport that lasts and not have too many cars out there on the road. Let's build buildings that have proper insulation so we're not breaking them down and rebuilding them every decade so on and so forth. Except that I think there's been such a fueling of skepticism around all of these solutions and that's still going unabated. So if you look at the millions of dollars that's poured into those lobbying efforts that hasn't stopped at all. I think they've also just changed DAC having sense how the winds have shifted a bit if you look at the big fossil fuel companies. One other issue that I do see with, you've talked about polls responding poorly to XR's efforts. Of course, I'm not in Europe. I don't have as much of a pulse on these things but part of it is also because governments have responded to the climate crisis not by saying fine, we're going to tax billionaires like Esteban talked about, not by saying we'll put in a windfall tax or by saying let's have a cap on how much income a person can make. But instead they've come up with this really absolutely condescending but really cruel rhetoric of saying all right the response to the climate crisis means that maybe you guys can't heat your homes this winter. You guys should scale down how much you consume, eat lesser, eat differently. But I've been saying no, luxury goods as an entire sphere of production just need not exist. Advertising, right? Like need not exist as a sphere of production at all. That's incredibly energy consuming. So I think that's partly what kind of brings about this reaction to this because governments have also spun activism to make it seem like something that hurts the poor the most, hurts families are want heating for their homes in the winter which is absolutely not the case. Thank you Varsha, Esteban. Yeah, I think we need to overturn the entire paradigm of what we can do about the climate crisis. This is a crisis that is affecting us all and going a little bit along the lines of what both of you were saying. We are facing a very dangerous path forward where especially in Europe the populist government, right-wing governments are telling the people, the population that the climate activists are to be blamed for the recent, the cost of living and the crisis. We are quickly heading into a global financial crisis. Everyone is predicting a major recession coming, a major global debt crisis. And what's going to happen is that the workers and mainstream people are going to get affected by this and then more and more climate activists will be the scapegoats that governments will use to say these are the people why you cannot feed your family because they're blocking a pipeline, because they're blocking progress, they're blocking construction. So in terms of radicalizing, I am part of the climate movement. I work a lot with XR and the Gelenda in Germany, Fridays for Future and many, many other movements, Scientist Rebellion. And the talk actually in the climate movement is quite the opposite. They actually want to radicalize more, but they don't really know necessarily in which direction. And this is a dangerous thing because one thing the climate movement is lacking and globally we're all lacking is the good strategy and strategic thinking. So Varsha earlier said that we need education, we need politicization, we need to study strategy because we cannot, no war will ever be won without a strategy. And this is nothing short of a war because the fossil fuel industry and the rich 1% is waging war on life, is waging war on humanity and taking us down the tubes. So to answer to all of these things, we have built this campaign called Therefore Climate, which is trying to do the opposite of what's happening in Europe where the workers are getting alienated from the climate activists. We need to build bridges with the workers. And we found that when you tackle financial colonialism, which is the debt that is forcing the countries in the global south to extract more and more raw materials, oil and gas, especially, to be able to pay back just the interest on this loan, on these loans, which are usually extremely high interest, unpayable. Most of them are odious and illegitimate debts that have been acquired by dictators, they have been paid over many times already. And so if you can cancel this debt for the global south, which is in the trillions of dollars and which is mostly owned by the global north, by the G7 countries and the IMF and World Bank that are controlled by them, you could unleash an unprecedented level of climate action because those trillions of dollars could be used by these countries to mitigate the climate crisis to afford a self-determined just transition, self-determined. And this has to be done with the local forces of the labor unions. And what we found is when you talk to the workers about debt, they get it, especially in the global south. They get it because that's the knee on the neck that keeps them from being able to feed their families, to have a decent life. So we started doing this global campaign that brings together thousands of workers like in Argentina, labor unions, indigenous movements, climate and other movements of all kinds to be able to build a broad enough coalition that could build enough power to change the official narratives and make possible what today is impossible to have these discussions and to have that cancellation. Thanks, Esteban. Yes, I think that's a very important point. What you say is about, you said it earlier, about attracting the working class and including the working classes in the form of unions, in the form of activist tactics that everybody can do. I'm trying to brainstorm a little bit here, but I can't get away from what you just said, Varsha, that more radicality is necessary because on one hand I would agree with you. Certainly emotionally, on the other hand, the debate that I was referring to earlier in the climate movement, it was from some people that were very active in XR at a senior level that were talking about this, and that have sort of split away from it and now talk about the need for a more moderate flank. Their reaction is based not on what governments have said, but on the response from people, from polls, from people on the ground, and perhaps from workers as well. Just to give you a very concrete example, people trying to get to work and not able to get there because they're being blocked by activists who are trying to raise awareness of this very important cause. Now, I do understand at one level that if the goal of those movements at that point is to swell their ranks, maybe that's not a bad idea to show people that they're present and be able to get people to sign up, frankly. But if they're trying to persuade the wider public, it seems to be in some cases working against them. So I would like to explore this point a little bit more and play the devil's advocate. Varsha, what would you say to that? Yeah, I think it's certainly an important point about how is it that you win people over to your side who come from many different sources. And that is precisely the job of organizing to tell the story in a way that you look around the world, if I'm someone that has, say, a rising energy bills and rising electricity bills, it is the job of whether that's an XR organizer or a different climate organizer to say the reason you're getting much higher electricity bill right now is actually not because of the Russian war, but because of the kind of monopoly control that fossil fuel companies have, that energy companies have because of so-and-so legislation in your country. That could go in a number of ways. I mean, I think the job of making, say, me look at my neighborhood park being shut down and connecting that with a glacier melting somewhere else is precisely the job of an activist or an organizer to paint that picture of how it is in fact an interconnected struggle. And I think it's getting harder and harder because for a long time I think we kept saying, yeah, we're all in this together. This is the climate crisis, but we aren't really all in this together, right? Because we're already seeing, I mean, just from my part of the world, you know, forest fires and floods in Pakistan, heat waves in India, glacial lakes about to burst in Nepal, storms in Bangladesh were being battered. And we know we're bearing the ground of the climate crisis. So that narrative again of, you know, if we're all in this together is also kind of breaking down. So what's, but if you can articulate how, say, workers working in, you know, again, I think use the example of Amazon, right? Which is a huge, huge contributor to the climate crisis. I think Amazon's carbon footprint, it does all sorts of these kind of crazy manipulations and accounts for just 1% of its whole product sales. And even when it does that for carbon emissions, they've risen by 18 or 20% in just the last year. And that's after, remember, Jeff Bezos turned up at last year's COP and made this giant climate, whatever pledge of no more new emissions and is now donating a ton of billions of dollars to climate charity, so on and so forth. Their massive warehouses act as these kind of carbon sinks because of the way that they see soil. I mean, there's number of, there's a number of stories. But how do you then connect the different things? So if you look at the example of something like Ireland, it's not actually warehouses. It's not, you know, direct warehouse workers, but there are data centers that are being set up in Ireland that are huge carbon contributors. So we have, you know, for instance, in the Meek Amazon pay movement, we have activist groups in Ireland saying these two data centers that have been approved should not exist in Ireland anymore, talking to workers in say India, who have much more of what you'd think of as traditional union problems, who are delivery workers who aren't being paid wages, you know, who aren't being given overtime or allowed health benefits so on and so forth, who then again are also talking to workers in Turkey, workers in Germany, and other tech workers who are looking at no tech for apartheid and saying, yeah, Amazon's tech is being used to fuel, you know, oppressed Palestinians. And Amazon web services are being sold to a range of authoritarian governments around the world. So the client crisis doesn't have to be limited just to those specific instances where you can immediately see carbon emissions, right? You look at a company like Amazon and you see its tentacles spread across the world. And you see it squeezing community, it's squeezing the planet. It's squeezing workers. It's right after, especially after kind of two years of a terrible, terrible pandemic, and they were able to connect those dots very, very quickly. Once we have that narrative, I think the hard job is, is really make playing that switchboard role of really putting people in a room and make seeing if all of us are saying the same story, and if we're able to see the same story over and over again, and then coordinate and act in a coordinated fashion, because that's the only thing that can make a beast like Amazon or really like Exxon or Chevron, or any of these giant, giant machinery that that are devouring the planet's top or halt. Thanks Varsha. Esteban, I'd like to bring you in, but I would like to comment on something and then maybe Esteban, you can comment on that. I think in a way it comes, well, another, let's say criticism, and you'll notice that I'm trying to be self-critical here with, with all of this. And I think it's a very valuable exercise of climate activism is that there is not, there aren't, there isn't enough proposals. There's a lot of obstruction and not enough concrete suggestions about alternatives. And given that we're all in, in it together, I mean, let me give you an example. There was, I heard an interview with Bill McKibben recently, and he was talking about, I forget now, it was a, it was a mine for Cobalt or something. And climate activists were blocking, blocking the, blocking the digging for Cobalt in this mine, but Cobalt is something that's needed for the batteries for, for energy from renewable sources, wind turbines, solar panels and so on. What Bill McKibben was arguing, as I understood it, was climate activists need to say, okay, if you can't dig here, where are you going to dig? Because it was, sorry, important information, it was on indigenous land that this was, this was the issue. So he was arguing, well, climate activists should say, don't dig there, dig there instead. Or another example, a friend of mine, he, he's launched a campaign against, against wind turbines in protected areas to preserve the ecological habitat. But his campaign needs to also propose, where should those wind turbines go? If we all accept that we need renewable energy and we need to move to these sources as quickly as possible. So, so Esteban, I would like to run this past you, what would you say to that criticism of the, of the lack of proposals? Do you think that that is valid? Well, that's like the first question you made, that's the one that all climate activists are cracking their heads with, because that's the thing that everyone throws at people. And that's where I myself and many of our comrades have been trying to answer. And that's why, again, we are tackling debt, because that's a very concrete, and it's a concrete proposal that can lead forward to leaving trillions of dollars of fossil fuels in the ground and emancipating our countries from financial colonialism, which can lead towards system change. This is the key, when you talk about climate change, we say, you know, system change, not climate change, right? Everyone shans that, but few people really understand what it would take to really make system change. We know that the climate crisis is a symptom of the system that we live in, the greedy capitalism and everything that's going on, distracting communities, colonizing the global south, sacrificing areas for more oil, gas, minerals and so on. And it's just running out of places, running out of water, running out of resources. And so every, everywhere in the world is becoming a new front line, especially in the global south. They're even trying to do it in Europe, like in Portugal or Serbia for mining for lithium. And they actually blackmail Serbia that they wouldn't let them join the EU unless they could allow them to drill for lithium. So the answers to that are a lot more complex. And I think degrowth is something that needs to be taken very seriously for the global north, because this is where the emissions are the emissions of an average person in Germany or the UK or France or the US that consumes or emits nearly 25% of the world's emissions. They have nothing to do with the average emissions of a person in India or in most places or in Argentina or anywhere in Africa. So it's a trap. It's an ideological trap that we have to provide the answers when we are fighting for survival. And we should have a right that we shouldn't get mega mining or fracking or all of these destructive techniques that are usually banned in the global north, but they are exporting it and outsourcing it to us while they should just reduce their own consumption and not keep having two cars average in the US to Tesla per person. It just doesn't, none of these false solutions will lead us anywhere. We need degrowth in the global north and justice and decolonizing for the global south, beginning with cancelling their debt so that we can have a just transition that will be self-determined by each country and not by the IMF or the World Bank through this bullshit mechanism of swaps. I agree with the estimate. I mean, it is a trap on an individual level. But what I'm talking about is, you know, at a global level where these front lines exist with local groups that perhaps are not all connected together. But there may be many different battles, many different struggles, many different minds, or, and those, I think, at an individual level, wouldn't you say that it's, you know, that it's important to, it's important to know kind of what is important to have that that constructive approach? Or would you say, look, drop what you're doing, and let's all get together? Because debt is where it's at. That is the weak point and work in that way. Well, I think that nobody has the answers to this, Medan. The people on the other side, the public officials at Cobb, they're feeding down bullshit through our throats. And the climate activists of the world are doing their very best to stop the destruction at each place. We have tried to raise above that by thinking strategically and finding a weak point in the system by tackling the financial debt and holding the Global North accountable for their climate debt. To my knowledge, and this is why I'm in this campaign, there isn't much more on the table, but I'll be the first one to jump into any alternative that is going in the right direction. These are really hard questions to answers, but the answers are not coming from the billionaires that are profiting from the climate crisis and any of their greenwashing campaigns. Fair point. Okay. I'd like to just change gears a little bit and go back to something that you said, Varsha, which is that there's a lot of skepticism around the solution. Some of it manufactured around what are the actual solutions to this challenge. And something that I've noticed is that there is kind of an attention in the environmental movement, if you like, between people who would like to solve climate change using only renewable sources and those who would propose, I think it's been called an all of the above strategy, which would include nuclear, geothermal, natural gas with carbon capture, et cetera. Do you think that this is a false debate, or if not, which side would you fall on? I do think it's a bit of a strange dichotomy that people set up, because from where I'm sitting, which certainly is no space of expertise on which specific energy sources could be used for the just transition. But from where I'm sitting, it's not just about the energy source, but really about the system. And as Thaman talked about it, in your question earlier, you asked about wind turbines being built on protected land, so on and so forth. So I think the questions are the same as they were before, and as they have been throughout the kind of processes of extraction, which is who decides how extraction of particular energy source is done? Where does it then go? Because it's not like, for example, in a natural gas, there's this renewed focus on Africa. They've always had it. It's just, but I can't even remember, it's like 60% of the continent still struggles with electricity, not because they don't have it, because everything that's extracted there is then sent extracted only for export, and not actually for domestic production. So it's about who it benefits and who it profits. So now I think there's in the climate movement as well, a lot of conversation about extraction, yes, obviously within limits, but for the people not for corporations. I think it would be very hard for any climate activist to talk about completely clean, completely simple solutions, because all renewable sources, the option one that you set up, is not actually completely burdenless. I mean, to set up the kind of green infrastructure we need to produce the same amount of energy at that scale as we're producing, as we're consuming now, would require huge amounts of rare earth metals. So it's not coal, but it's copper, it's lithium, it's nickel, it's cobalt, all of which, by the way, still exist in a giant proportion, in portions just in the global south. So we're going back again to places like Chile, to places like Bolivia, to places like Argentina, and putting in place the same kind of processes of extraction, the same kind of labor supply chains, the same kind of uprooting of indigenous communities from their land without their consent, so on and so forth. So this really is, it is a real tension, I think in the climate movement. So I don't see it as much as option one versus the answer is not what or rather, it's not which of option one or two, but how do we set up a system where realizing that we need to make this just transition, how can we set one up where the control is put in the hands of the people, the control, the sovereignty of nations within which these resources exist, is not taken away from them. And we're seeing, and I do think we're seeing openings for that. For example, we have seen, for instance, Amlo, the president of Mexico, proposed this kind of group, regional group between Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Mexico to kind of talk about extraction of lithium together, kind of like a lithium association, precisely so that it can be done on their terms and not on the terms of cooperation, which are corporations, which is entirely extractivist in nature, and not respectful of indigenous rights. You'll remember that this is precisely actually what happened, if you think about nationalization of copper back in the 70s, which, Aende from Salvador Aende from Chile says he wants to nationalize copper, and then the Kennecott copper corporation in very much hand in hand with hand in glove with the US government ensures that the coup replaces him. And now, these many years later, we have of course seen this amazing constitution come out in Chile, which of course failed, but hopefully comes back in some renewed form, which talked once more about putting copper and other natural resources in the hands of the people. So I think that still is the central question, right? How is it the wealth in these countries, and what to do with it, and the natural resources in these countries, what to do with it, that decision rests with the people there, rather than with transnational corporations coming into extract and kind of export, also to just to feed luxuries in the global north, to make more fashionable clothes and luxury handbags and so on and so forth, which goes back to the kind of still need to consume less and reduce the size of the economies in the global north, that is the one talked about earlier. So I think both of these, both of those things are parallel key openings that need to happen, greater sovereignty for the global south, lesser consumption and a kind of reduction of the luxury economy in the global north. Thanks, Varsha. Staying on the kind of scientific solutions here, Esteban, what's your take on that debate, renewable sources only versus all of the above? Well, to give you an example that is very close to my heart, the official narrative by governments at COP and so on is that gas is a transition fuel. What they don't tell you is that gas is made up of methane and the emissions produced during the production cycle upstream and downstream of gas are even greater than coal. The LNG that is coming to Europe from the Americas and elsewhere, but especially from fracking, which is where I come from, from Vacamorta, from the front lines of struggling against this most destructive technique in the world contaminates the water, the soil, the air, kills people with cancer, leukemia, same for animals, causes earthquakes, anything like you couldn't, you couldn't put together a worse technique if you wanted to. And this is a clear example of to what extent greed, human greed is willing to go sacrificing entire communities to continue fueling this sick cycle of production in the centers of power. So gas is being sold as a transition fuel, but that gas that LNG, liquefied natural gas that comes to Europe has a carbon footprint that is 40 to 60 percent higher than coal itself. It's the worst fossil fuel of all and Germany and the EU and all the others are selling it to you as a transition energy that will help decarbonize the economy. Of course, because it doesn't have carbon, it's made up of methane, guys. So this is how much the media, the governments and COP26 in Glasgow was sponsored by the largest fracking gas importer of the UK, a multinational company called National Grid. Sounds like a state owned company. It's actually a multinational that is building fracked gas pipelines in New York, in the U.S. and so on and people are fighting it everywhere. So this is again why I think all of what we are discussing as long as we believe in the government push initiatives and so on, we will go nowhere. We need to build power from the bottom up and be prepared for what is coming. We are headed to disaster. This is not being alarmist. We are headed to disaster and the only thing that can balance this imbalance of power is a global movement of workers, climate, indigenous movements and so on that can build enough power to force the hand. We need to force the hand of governments to do the right thing because on the other side of the equation is the enormous concentrated power of financial and corporate wealth that is keeping the governments doing what they want. They have them completely in their back pocket. We need to change that. We can only change that in the streets and we can only change that with the workers and that's why it's a countdown. The sooner that we can get us all involved in this, before it's too late, the more hope we have that we can actually make some gains. Thank you, Estaman. A couple of comments from the chat here. Reattached says in the global north indigenous people are intimately involved in climate activism. I think global south, but they often don't have leadership positions in the wider movement. Smed Yakov says that in global north agriculture must change, but the mostly NGO led climate movement is urban and they have rejected rurality. We need to repoliticize it in a traditionally socialist way for farmers and workers. Tony Richardson says, why do you think Elon Musk wants to build on Mars? They know the planet earth is doomed. A bit cynical. Tim S, referring to the World Cup, which has just kicked off air conditioning in a stadium without a roof. Does that combat global warming? Is there anything you would like there that you would like to comment on, either of you? I would like to give the opportunity to respond to some of those if you'd like, or should we just leave that there? Okay. And likewise, we've got 10 more minutes, guys, out there. So if you have any questions for our panel, please do put them in the chat. I would like to ask you, maybe if I can just move a little bit to Estaban again and then we'll bring you in again, Varsha. Just to break down a little bit what it is that you're proposing. If I understand correctly, your way forward here is no more advocacy, no more or not, I'm not saying no more. But I mean, the emphasis should not be on lobbying. It should not be on awareness raising action. It needs to be a labor led movement with strikes to force governments to the table and change. Correct me if I'm wrong or clarify what you'd like. And then Yeah, let me ask you who are the champions of social change? Who are the champions of social struggles? It's the workers. And why do they have the power to do that? It's because they're unionized. The unions of workers are the powers that have been in many countries, dictatorships and so on have been unable to dismantle them. My country, Argentina is a good example of that. We've had decades of dictatorships, but they couldn't take away many of the most important social rights achieved by the worker movements. So we need to understand that the power to achieve the changes that we need, the only social actor that has that is the workers movements. The worker movements is only social actor that is on our side because on the other side you have the corporations, you have the banks and so on. So I think as a climate movement, our question should be less self reflective and self focused, but also trying to speak to those people that are outside the climate bubble. The climate movement can become a kind of sect, can become sectarian and self focused and all about itself. And I speak as part of it. I'm not criticizing, you know, I'm criticizing it as part of something that I'm also part of. But we need to understand that until and unless we find the right narratives of international solidarity and of social justice to bring on board the people that are actually the ones who will lead the revolution that we need to make the changes that we need, they will be the workers. Whether they will be in 2022 or 2032 depends on us. 2032 will be too late. We know the workers of the world will be mobilizing when their direct needs are completely impacted for water, for food, for jobs, they will be mobilizing for the climate crisis as everyone else. But we need to find ways to build that bridge before it's too late because by the time there's no more water, no more food, no more jobs, everyone is fucked. So how can we build ways that narratives that bring us together, global south and north workers to fight this together? I think this is something that Thomas Sankara who was assassinated 35 years ago in Burkina Faso, he was an anti-colonial leader who was calling for a united front against debt from the global south. And he was assassinated because of that, because he was challenging the debt. And this is why we found that this is the way that can bring us together by tackling, beginning with tackling debt, because the workers of the global south are just as exploited as the workers in the global north. And if we can find narratives and ways to bring together a front, I think we will be on course to build the power we need. The challenge that we have is not a scientific challenge only. It's not a challenge about the truth. We have science on our side. We know we have the truth about the climate crisis, but the people that make the decisions are not making the decisions based on science or the truth. They're making them based on interests. So likewise, we need to build power to force their hand to make decisions in this direction. And this will only be done through power, not through being right, not through telling the truth only, which I think many people are stuck with today without understanding how the world really works. Thank you. Esteban Varsha, what's your take? I, of course, absolutely agree with everything Esteban has said. And I would perhaps add to it one of the, you know, someone in the comments can also mentioned food and farmers and kind of going back to what you do organizing it. It is absolutely true that so much of I think the climate crisis conversation has been very focused on urban areas and partly true in the global south as well. But if you look at who's affected the most, it's, you know, it's the farmers first more than, more than anyone else. And it's the smaller towns that don't have as much access to all of the kind of all of the energy is that we are talking about. And there's so many interesting ways in which this kind of work up as interliance can come together, right? This is, of course, the kind of traditional Marxist dream, but whether you're looking at movements like La Via Campesina that have traditionally always done things like, you know, land occupations, and decided what they wanted, you know, how the land could be given away. You look at the Indian farmers protest from two years ago, which won a huge victory against big agribusinesses, essentially winning themselves the ability to decide what they would grow on the land. And in a way fighting off this kind of push towards producing cash intensive crops, which is so integral to the climate crisis that we're in today, which is, you know, kind of this high intensive production that forces people in the global south to starve to produce, you know, vanilla and for ice creams in Scotland, whatever, whatever the case might be. So this kind of, but if you think about the interesting ways in which this alliance can come together, sure, it's food being produced on land in some part of the world, but it's being transported through transport workers, it's being shipped by port workers, and we've seen such amazing strikes by dock workers, whether it's dock workers in Durban, you know, refusing to load arms onto a boat that was meant to go to Israel for arms being used against Palestinians, and they said in South Africa, they said we're not going to work here anymore. And you saw that similarly, you know, during this time in Chile under sanctions. So I think ports are really kind of an integral supply, an integral part of this kind of entire capitalist supply chain system on which the entire fossil fuel industry and the hedge fund industry, all of it depends. So that I think is one that the worker movement should focus on, should focus on some more. But you know, even with things like direct action that you've talked about, and we've talked about XRFAR a bit, I like what they do, but how can we do that in more of a sustained fashion? Why don't we just have them sitting in hedge fund offices in oil company office headquarters, you know, in a consistent fashion, it's not just about kind of spectacle for spectacles case where we're trying to win people over to our side, but what are the ways in which you can actually interrupt, you know, interrupt the machine in a way that it becomes hard to work, whether that's kind of tech worker unions hacking the systems, which has also happened, whether it's whistleblowers kind of, you know, letting out breaking patterns and letting out secrets that makes their shares fall in effects, you know, the system, there's I think many different ways in which you interrupt it just have we all have to get together to do it in a fashion where, you know, it's not disjointed and disjunctive, but kind of united that gives us power. Thanks, Varsha. And on that note, in terms of worker power, perhaps you could speak a little bit more about the Make Amazon Pay campaign, which is a global campaign to, well, for Amazon workers across the world to strike. Speak a little bit more about that and what the goals are there and how that ties into the discussion we're having here. Sure. You know, Amazon as a company, of course, is horrible. We've talked about it in many different ways. It's oppressive towards its workers, especially after the pandemic, we've talked about how it squeezes its workers, where real wages are going down, the corporation is kind of raking in, you know, record revenue, something like $121 billion for the second quarter of just 2022, but it continues to double down on union busing tactics. It had tried to kind of come up with this app where it was banning words like bathroom, bathroom breaks, because they talked because workers were discussing how they had to pee in water bottles in order to meet their delivery times and no longer wanted workers to discuss that. They were looking at, you know, made this list of words to ban, so on and so forth, absolutely horrible. But of course, it's also squeezing communities, right, by simply not paying taxes. I mean, in Europe alone, Amazon has not paid any income tax in 2021. And instead was actually in reverse paid something close to a billion dollars in tax credits on $55 billion sales. And of course, it's squeezing the planet. I mean, the number of ways in which it emits carbons and, you know, its data centers, its warehouses and the products and the delivery routes, the carbon emissions have just have been shooting through the roof despite all of the pledges of saving the planet and setting up this kind of climate fund and Bezos' earth fund, I think is something that he set up last year or this year. I can't remember. But then our question is very simple. Amazon, if you think of it as a representative of this kind of multinational, transnational corporation, which has, which is obviously far too big, and it has politicians within its pockets, it has lobbyists that work with different governments, it has far too much money to be affected by small dips in, you know, small dips in shares. It can't be shamed into doing something. How could we possibly halt this particular machine? And if you think about work of power being traditionally defined by, see, the ability to withdraw their labor, right, the strike, even that kind of fails coming up against 21st century capitalism in this form, because say workers in the deli warehouse where I am striking, even in a consistent fashion, Amazon could just up and leave and say, I'm actually moving to either a different city, to either a different country, because it's also hyper mobile and can do that. And so then we kind of thought, what about striking everywhere altogether all at once in a coordinated fashion in a way that it cannot escape that. And that's that's kind of what where the seeds for the make Amazon pay movement. And then of course, you know, organizations like Greenpeace, like XR, parliamentarians from around the world, like Yanis Varoufakis from Greece, Jeremy Corbyn from the UK, Rashida Tlaib el Anomar from the US, all of them kind of joined and said, actually, you know, we could all also potentially come up, regulate Amazon in each of our parliaments. So I think it's these different sectors coming together, workers striking together parliamentarians regulating Amazon together, you know, environmentalists kind of interrupting the different warehouses through direct action, saying we will show that even machines as powerful beasts as powerful as Amazon can be halted. So that's that's the kind of central theory of change. So to speak of the make Amazon be campaign, we're now in our third year and 25th of November, this Friday is Black Friday. And that's where we have actions. If you go on to the website, makeamazonpay.com, you'll see this map with actions all over the world. So if there's one happening in your country, absolutely please go join. If not, perhaps you could, you know, many of the viewers watching now, perhaps you can make one yourself and add a point to the map, which would be absolutely wonderful. Thanks for that, Varsha. We're actually at the top of the hour. So unfortunately, I think we'll have to be wrapping that up. But I'd like to give you both the floor just to summarize and also let us know where we can learn more about the campaigns that we've talked about today that you guys are both involved in. Esteban, and then Varsha. Well, thank you for the invite. The campaign that I was talking about is www.debtforclimate.org or on social media is just at debt for climate on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and also TikTok. Yeah. And yeah, I think this is a symphony where we need all kinds of actions. We need to work with parliamentarians. We need to work with progressive leaders as well. Gustavo Petro ushers in a new era, hopefully for Latin America of a new left, a new progressive that is trying to leave behind extractivism. At least that's what he's claiming and what we're all hoping he will do. Hopefully Lula will also follow in into this new wave. And Petro has also been talking about debt. And unfortunately, what he's talking about right now is the IMF swaps, which is nothing is not in the right direction because it's just more greenwashing to benefit the multinational companies. It's not a sovereign debt cancellation. But it's a good step that he's talking about debt. We're hoping that if we can build enough pressure and power globally, he will understand the need to create a global front against debt, which is what the legacy of Thomas and Cara is. And we have recently mobilized globally in his memory on the anniversary of his assassination. And that's what we need because unless and until we can create a global front of 20, 30, 40 countries that stand up to the IMF and the World Bank and other creditors, we will have, we will not have enough power to achieve any reconciliation or climate action in this regard. And that's in order to get there, why we need the workers, we need the Indigenous movements, we need to organize globally to put pressure on the streets and really build power. So happy to work with anyone, any progressive forces that want to go in that direction. And I hope we can build together enough power to make some of these changes happen on time before it's too late and build an alternative narrative to the dominant mainstream bullshit. So happy to be with you. Thanks, Mr. Ben Farsha. Thank you, Maheran. I, as I said, I work for something called the Progressive International. You can find us at progressive.international, along with the many different campaigns that I've spoken about already. One example that is perhaps interesting to people like very clear parallel for me with the climate crisis is the work that I was engaged in for the last two years, which was, of course, distressing in its own way. Similar to this one was during the pandemic of just getting vaccines to people where also you saw this narrative so often of we're all in this together and the pandemic affects everyone. No one country can defeat the pandemic alone, the virus alone, so on and so forth. And we saw very, very quickly how that wasn't true. And, you know, a few handful of countries in the global North kind of hold it all of their vaccines and made sure that that technology wasn't available to the rest of the global South, any of those countries and even prevented them from making their own vaccines to give to their people. And two years later, you see that they had set up something like called COVAX, which is run again by billionaire Bill Gates, which was essentially a system to donate doses to the global South. They never came to the global South for until many, many months later. So we were left in this position of charity where most countries were just arms outstretched waiting for doses from this institution. There was ostensibly meant to be a global institution, but it was basically charity yet again. And I think that's a huge warning for now as I'm looking at the results of COP as well and looking at the loss and damages fund where, you know, global North countries have not said they stopped the war against us. They still want to kind of put in as many emissions, continue to consume the same way, but throw a bit of money at the fund, which of course is a victory, but is still, you know, sets off a lot of warning bells, alarm bells for me. So both there and here, I think the answer is how can the global South band together to work as a block and build power on its own? One project that Progressive International is working on is renewed new international economic order, which will be kicking off next month in New York. Again, you can find that on our website, bringing together many of the energies that you would have seen both at the climate conference and otherwise, where socialist governments in power, progressive politicians around the world are looking to nationalize resources, work regionally as a block with other governments in order to resist corporations, make sure there are no sanctions, make sure that land belongs to the people, and the national resources that we're talking about belong in the people's commons. So that's that's a focus on the kind of political side where we're hoping to build this global South block. We'll see, we'll see where that goes, but we'd love to have your support and your involvement. You can sign up to get more updates on the site. Thank you, Varsha, and there are links in the chat now relating to what you just spoke about, Varsha and also you, Esteban, and they'll be in the description as well. And that's it. So allow me please to plug a couple of other quick things. dm25.org slash join is the address. If you would like to join dm25, the movement that is behind these kinds of these chats now to be part of the solution and to keep an eye on what we're doing. Also, we will be putting out some very interesting interviews, dare I say it, we've got, if you're an activist with looking for inspiration, I hope you found this chat inspirational, but there will be some others coming out this week. I have an interview with a member of the Don't Pay campaign against the cost of living crisis in the UK, a brilliant campaign coming up this week, that'll be out on the YouTube channel, and also an interview with a trade unionist for Amazon in Poland to give the front line view on what's actually happening and how they're getting involved in the campaign that Varsha just described. So please like and subscribe to this YouTube channel like 110,000 other brilliant results oriented people, and you'll get notified when those two interviews are out. Thank you to our panel. Thank you, Varsha. Thank you, Esteban. Thank you to all of you guys out there. I'm sorry we couldn't get to more of your questions. We were already eight minutes over time. There's so much more to discuss on this and the discussion will continue in the comments. And see you on Tuesday night at 6pm CET for our regular live debate with our coordinating collective at the m35 and Yanis Varoufakis and the rest of the crew, where we'll be discussing the Make Amazon Pay campaign in more detail. Good luck. Stay safe. Take care.