 Hello and welcome everyone. My name is Mae Bovee. I'm the Executive Director of 350.org. I'm so happy you're here and I'm here to officially welcome you to Off and On, the Climate Movement and the Road through Paris. And to welcome you to the beautiful Brooklyn Academy of Music where I'm a proud member. 350.org is based just down the road in Dumbo, so it's really nice to be here in New York City with all of you tonight. Before we officially begin the show, I'm here to make a few announcements. First, we have a lot of thank yous to make. An event like this is not possible without a lot of partners, so I want to recognize them all so you can applaud them all at the end. Solar One, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Jobs with Justice, the Hip Hop Caucus, Leap, the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, 350 NYC, 350 Brooklyn. This changes everything. MoveOn.org, the SANE Energy Project, the Working Families Party, Avaz, Oil Change International, the Responsible Endowments Coalition, NYSEC, Food and Water Watch, Credo, and if we possibly forgot you on that list, we deeply thank you anyway. These are just a few, thank you. Second announcement, we're going to be recording and live streaming tonight's event around the world. So as our live studio audience, you have a very important responsibility to be as loud and energetic as you possibly can. That was good, that was very good. Third announcement, this is usually the part of the show where someone says, turn off your cell phones, not this show. We want your cell phones on, but we want them on silent so you can be tweeting, Instagramming, Facebooking, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We just ask one thing, that you use the hashtag off and on and no flash photography please. And last announcement, this event tonight is all about action, but I want to highlight a few particular actions in this area, New York City, that you can be thinking about and planning towards in the weeks ahead. As many of you know, this September 24th, Pope Francis is coming to town. And there will be an interfaith vigil to support his call for climate action. It will be at 4.30 p.m. at Dog Harmer's Gold Plaza, and then later a 6.30 p.m. vigil called Under One Sky in support of the Sustainable Development Goals. If you live here in Brooklyn or in the New York City area, we strongly encourage you to join 350NYC and 350 Brooklyn. These are fantastic groups doing incredible work. There's also plenty of ways to take action throughout the year. One of the ways is you could right now commit to go 100% renewable yourselves, working with 350NYC and Ethical Electric, or you could learn to go solar with a solutions project. You have options. And finally, I want to highlight an event on October 14th with the People's Climate Movement Day of Action, and you can learn more at the tables outside. As you can tell, there is a lot going on. That's all you need to hear from me for now. I'll be back later. For now, let's do it. And just to make sure you're really fired up, I want to invite you to the stage, Malik Yusef, a Grammy Award-winning musician, and also the producer of Home, the People's Climate Music album. Please join me in welcoming Malik. Good evening, everybody. You look beautiful. You look fired up and prepared to win. I brought my lovely assistant, Cake. She's in the building. Thank you for purchasing and supporting the album Home. All the groups involved, Hip Hop Caucus, People's Climate Music. We're on the national tour right now about act on climate, educating people. And this is one of the ways we do it. We just play a little music and do a little poetry. So without further ado, Cake, would you please? The song says, I grew up in a junkyard and all my friends were rock hard. When it comes to good music, I write power lines. I wrote that. But I grew up around power lines and smokestacks. Daddy worked so hard today. Broke him down with a broke back. Holy Ghost Fire. Indeed, our spark writers. Sharkbiter, Biggs, Darklighter. We're the resistance. Ain't no rebels at your base. And you don't want no trouble. Your girl don't want no trouble because she all about that base, base. Flow so hands on. She all about that lace, lace, lace. Flow so out of this world. We all about a space, space, space. Stars we land on. We found the loophole. We're carbon neutral. I'm in that caramel ride, not let the drama slide. Keeping me and her far from the homicide. But sleep is the cousin of death on our mama's side. Flow so hard, kinda wish it were in her. Flow so organic, guess who's coming to dinner. It's a 911 with no ambulance. Fresh and salt water way out of balance. So stop with this goof ass ice water challenge. The ocean, the ocean ain't your trash can. Shout out Joss Fox, living in the gas land. Firewater flow straight out of my faucet but now firewater flow straight out of my faucet. Raping the planet, mother earth is accosted. So what the freak is cracking with all this freaking fracking. They gon' freak around and release the freaking cracking. Trouble in the water used to mean that a shark could eat ya. Now you got a better chance of bumpin' in a sharkisha. I'm far creature. Guerrilla monsoon tracks for yeezus to talk on but not disease through disease for Jesus to walk on. Heal our mother earth, cause she way too big for us to put chalk on. I grew up in the junkyard. Thank you so very much. Cake in the building y'all, believe yourself. This is Naomi Klein from Canada. This is Cynthia Ong from Borneo. This is the Reverend Lennox Urwood from Louisiana by way of our nation's capital. Here to work tonight. All of us up here, all of you out there. Two key words for tonight. Off and on. Our job as a movement is to turn off the world's supply of fossil fuel and to turn on the infinite power of renewable energy. Do it in a way that is rooted in justice. Economic justice, racial justice, gender justice in a way that brings affordable green power to a whole lot of people on this planet that don't have any power at all right now. And it's a whole lot of good jobs for people who don't have those either. We have this crazy idea that we can fight climate change and inequality at the same time. And we need to do it fast. Off and on, off and on. Let's set the scene. We gather here at a particular time. This is the ninth month of 2015 otherwise known as the hottest year since humans began keeping records. Now Bill, it's not like we haven't known about this before. We've just marked the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. In fact, we used the occasion to kick off the People's Climate Music Act on Climate Tour. Which is... which actually Bill is one against one around the country and tonight we are here in Brooklyn. Almost exactly three years ago, Hurricane Sandy turned much of this city into an ocean. But this year is even worse. Nations across the planet have said new all-time high-temperature marks and we've seen several of the deadliest heat waves ever recorded in India and a month later in Pakistan. Thousands of people simply died in the streets. Their bodies literally unable to cope with the heat and humidity. The pictures from California's drought are stark and horrible. These are cars caught on the freeway as wildfires sweep across Highway 5. Sometimes the drama is quieter. Kenya is now in year 10 of an epic drought which has helped destabilize the society and set the scene for violent conflict. Refugees are streaming out of Syria where, amongst all its other woes, drought forced millions of their land. Just today, a hundred thousand people had to be rescued from their homes in Japan after unprecedented rains sent rivers bursting through their banks. Now I'm a proud board member of 350.org and because 350 organizes all over the world we've got a better sense than many of the ongoing carnage of the way that every day, somewhere on the planet, some new record is being set and not the good kind. In March, for instance, our organizer, Isonime, was providing much of the news to the world from the Pacific Island of Vanuatu in the aftermath of Cyclone Pam. That storm brought some of the highest sustained wind speeds ever measured in the South Pacific. Dear friends, my name is Isonime. I was inside the meteorology building but even inside you could feel how strong the wind was. When we went outside to help, objects were flying through the air and waters searching through the doorways. This category 5 storm damaged 90% of the housing in Vanuatu. In some districts, all of the crops were wrecked. We've been working hard to rebuild but we're working just as hard with people all around the world to make sure that this doesn't become a regular thing. Vanuatu has never seen a category 5 storm before and we never want to see one again. I was just in Vanuatu last month and saw that firsthand. Since then, the Pacific has seen seven more of these super typhoons. We're on pace for a record year. But storms are not the only way Asia is affected by fossil fuels. India this year officially passed China as a most polluted country on Earth. Scientists said in January that one in six Indians dies from the effect of air pollution. In April, a study found that half the children in New Delhi have irreversible lung damage just from breathing the air. Here's Renuka Saroha in Delhi. This city for almost 28 years and a loveless city. It has so much to offer from historical significance to hope for future. But alas, Delhi's not a safe place anymore. It is the world's most polluted city. Even in summers, the visibility is reduced to only few blocks and there's always haze in the sky. I don't even remember the last time I saw clear blue sky in Delhi. And with training monsoons each year, the good quality air days is reducing. In 2015, it is estimated the good quality air would be limited to only 100 days. It's high time that India moves away from fossil fuels and starts adopting renewable at a faster pace. It's time India starts thinking about its future and its current population. And if you think that's just Delhi, think again. Here's New York City with our brother Eddie Batista. Give it up for Eddie, y'all. Y'all can make some noise for Eddie Batista, man. Y'all can make some noise for that. Who can talk first hand about the fight for climate justice in the richest city on the earth? Give it up, Eddie Batista. Good evening, folks. Are y'all doing? How many of y'all went to the People's Climate March last year? All right. By now, we know it was the largest climate march in history. What many people forget, it was also the largest climate justice mobilization in history. Over 40,000 people representing frontline communities from across the United States and indeed even across the world marched and many came to New York City and there were 2,000 actions across the world. Why? Why does climate justice resonate for our communities? Because we know that climate change will affect everyone, but its impacts are not going to be evenly felt. We know that low-income communities of color are in the crosshairs. What does this mean for New York City? If we look at before Sandy, 45% of New Yorkers, 2.7 million New Yorkers live in or near poverty. 75% of New York City's solid waste is handled in just four communities. In the Bronx, in 2009, NYU did a study that showed that death rates from asthma in the Bronx are three times the national average, hospitalization rates are five times higher. What does this mean after Sandy? We now know that over 20% of all public housing units in New York City, over 35,000 units in over 400 buildings were impacted by Sandy. What does this mean in the future? We're hearing that heat-related morbidity is expected to increase by 70% in New York City by 2050. The New York City panel on climate change estimates that by the 2050s, heat waves are going to triple or quadruple and the number of 90-degree days will double. And you guys have had a taste of it this year, the hottest year on record. What does this mean when you layer on these impacts on an unjust, inequitable system? For environmental justice communities, resiliency doesn't mean bouncing back to an inequitable, unjust system. For us, resiliency means bouncing forward to a just and sustainable future. Join us in that fight. Thank you. Brother. I'm going to cut you down now. Okay. When you hear... When you hear Eddie talk, you know why there were 400,000 people came out last year. That's the world we live in now. A world where coal and oil and gas are quickly making life impossible with the people who did the very least to cause it, getting hit first, and getting hit hardest. It's happening really fast, scary fast. 2015 is the hottest year ever measured. May was the hottest May. June was the hottest June. July was the hottest July. In fact, July was the hottest month ever recorded on this planet. You live through history this summer. Now, when the world first met in Rio in 1990 for the first global climate talks, that was quarter century ago, no one could have predicted how slowly our governments would move to meet the crisis that we're in. The opinion polling now around the world shows that for the planet as a whole, climate change is the number one worry that people have. But you would never know that from listening to our leaders. Look, scientists have told us exactly what would happen if we burned all that carbon. They've also told us how much worse it will get if we stay on this crazy road. In fact, those of you who helped us do the math three years ago will remember the numbers. Now, back in 2012, it was Bill over here who popularized those numbers, writing about it in Rolling Stone. And he wasn't even given the cover story. That belonged to Justin Bieber, okay? But thanks to you guys. Thanks to the way that story resonated and the way it was picked up by the climate justice movement. It is now the World Bank, Deutsche Bank, the Bank of England, and pretty much everyone else that is also doing the math. Now, for those of you who don't remember the math, here's a refresher course. Fossil fuel companies currently have five times more carbon in their proven reserves than is compatible with the two-degree temperature target that our government set when they went to Copenhagen. They said they wouldn't let temperatures increase by more than two degrees Celsius. And by the way, that is really dangerous. But fossil fuel companies have five times more than that. Keep that number in your head. That means that Exxon and Chevron and BP and Shell and Peabody, as well as the banks that finance them, are not normal lousy companies. I've written about those. But they're not just doing normal bad things in the name of profit. These are rogue companies who are careening past the planet's physical limits. And it is our job to turn them off. That's right. Now, Naomi, when you say turn them off, now I get excited when you say turn them off. Because I think that this crowd here and those watching from the world, that we can turn them off. When I say turn, you say off. Turn. Turn. Turn. When I say turn, you... Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I know it's... I know it's not that early yet, but let's try this one more time. When I say turn, you say off. Turn. Turn. When I say turn, you say off. Turn. Turn. And that's how you do that. That's right. So what do we have to do with Chevron? We have to turn them off. What do you do with Shell? Turn them off. The Koch brothers, turn them off. Oh, I like that. So do you remember... So do you remember the day of that great climate march in New York last September? You remember that? That was a great day. 400,000 of us marching down 6th Avenue to Times Square. Here's a video of every last one of us. No, I'm serious. I'm very serious. Who was there... Who was there marching? If you were there... If you were there marching, then stand up and make some... No! That's it. That's it. That's it. And it wasn't just in New York. One day, there were big marches around the globe, including the largest climate demonstration in India's history, and the demonstration in Africa's largest city, Lagos. 30,000 in Melbourne, 50,000 in London, Nepal, Kiribati, Jakarta, Istanbul. The world is waking up to climate change, which is great. The world is starting to understand that we can't let our leaders mimic the development model of the United States. For example, my leaders in Malaysia and many, many leaders in Southeast Asia, that's what they aspire to, to become the United States of America. So we can't let them do that. So it's good that you guys are starting to turn things off, because you use too much power. You use too much power, you use too much power, you use too much power. I use too much power, we all use too much power. And it's good that the rest of the planet is starting to figure out there are other models to follow. It's good, but it's not enough, because this is a race and we're behind. Naomi shows you one number, and I want to show you another. Even though we have five times as much carbon as we can burn already in our reserves, the world's fossil fuels company, fossil fuel companies spend $674 billion a year looking for more coal, oil, and gas. That's right. They spend over $600. You can bull on that, you can bull on that. And Sheryl's looking in the Arctic. Exxon is the number one fracker. And Adnan wants to build the planet's biggest coal mine in Australia. It's as if someone was deeply in debt and they spent all day looking for new credit cards to sign up for. That actually was a joke, too, actually. So this is not a normal industry, though. It's addicted to carbon profits, and it's our job to cut them. That's it. All right, now we're getting the hang of this. We can't actually count on anyone else. I mean, the world heads to Paris again in December for the 21st round of climate negotiations. It's an important meeting. We're pushing hard to improve the outcome, but we know already that the result is going to fall way short of what the scientists say is necessary. At the moment, the analysts are saying that the agreement currently on the table will let the planet's temperature rise about three and a half degrees Celsius, almost twice the theoretical red line. Paris can send a signal that the world is moving away from fossil fuels, but it's going to still be up to us to get the job done. You might ask yourself, why is this so hard? It's hard because we're up against the richest enterprise in human history. Look at North America. The richest man in the world is the two Koch brothers taken together. They're worth over $100 billion, mostly because of oil and gas. In fact, they're the largest leaseholders, and the tar sands up in Canada. And they've announced that they're going to spend $900 million on next year's presidential election. They'll spend more than the Republicans. They'll spend more than the Democrats, the Koch brothers, party of two. That's why this is so hard. The same thing happens all over the world. Look at the Adani group in India. When Prime Minister Modi was campaigning, he flew all over in their corporate jet. Now they want to build that giant Australian mine running roughshod over Aboriginal landowners and import the coal back to India. Let's talk about Exxon. Let's talk about Exxon a little. New documents that were leaked this summer shows that Exxon knew about climate change back in 1981, and yet they continue to fund climate change denying think tanks for three more decades. To this day, they keep funneling those super profits. This is the company that has earned more in profits than any other company on earth, and they are dumping those profits into the pockets of climate denying politicians. It just takes a little bit, actually. They finally admitted that global warming is real, unlike those politicians Exxon has, but it doesn't really matter, because it hasn't changed their business practices whatsoever. At their shareholder meeting this past May, they said that they would keep spending over 90 million a day looking for new hydrocarbons. Now, the CEO of Exxon, Rex Tillerson, used the occasion to mock renewable energy and say that if climate change caused some weather problems, well, quote, mankind has this enormous capacity to deal with adversity, which is easy to say if, like Rex, you earn $100,000 a day. But a whole lot of people who are on the front lines of that climate adversity earn around $1 a day. You know what, that makes me mad. Make you mad? Yeah! But you know what? We can beat these guys. That's it. That's it. Because that's right. Because truly organized people be organized money every single time. So first thing, first thing, Bill, is that we can cut off their money. Amen. A few minutes ago, I was talking about the big march last September, but that wasn't all that happened that day. Uptown that night, I watched as some members of the Rockefeller family, yes, Rockefeller family airs to the original fossil fuel fortune announced they were divesting their philanthropies from fossil fuel stocks. Divestment. Divestment is one way to turn these guys off, Naomi. It makes the fossil fuel companies into pariahs, spreads doubt into the market, and it makes it hard for them to raise new funds. Amen. It has been an absolutely remarkable year for the global fossil fuel divestment movement. Hundreds of universities, cities, towns, churches, and foundations have joined us. Everyone from Oxford University to Prince Charles to the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, which in case you don't know, is the second largest pool of money on planet Earth. Wow. They have all started down the divestment. In South Africa, where the divestment idea comes from and the fight against apartheid, there are big campaigns going on against fossil fuels. The divestment movement has reached Nepal, Vietnam, France, where the city of Paris has voted to divest. Nobel. Very timely. Very timely. Nobel Prize-winning economists have endorsed the idea. Even the former chairman, Chairman of Shell, declared, and I quote, that divestment is a rational approach. We like to think so. Last week, just last week, the California State Legislature voted to start divesting the retirement funds for public employees and for teachers. Those are two of the 20 largest pension funds on Earth worth half a trillion dollars. When this movement kicked off, a lot of people said, oh, it won't matter. You won't make a dent. But let me tell you something. It matters. When you combine this movement with the fact that fossil fuel prices are crashing at the moment, it matters. And Peabody Cole officially warned investors that divestment represents the future of the United States. Peabody Cole officially warned investors that divestment represents a, quote, material risk to their business. So, you know, we also divest because every time we try to convince someone else that this is a good idea, we are making the argument that profits earned in this way are immoral and therefore illegitimate. And that brings us, and this is important, because there's a next stage to that. If these profits are immoral and illegitimate, that brings us one step closer to a serious carbon tax to all of us getting a much bigger piece of those profits to fund, to fund the just transition away from fossil fuels towards a cleaner, fairer economy. Now, I've been an activist for a long time, long enough to have occupied my university president's office to demand divestment from South Africa. But I have never seen a movement spread this quickly or rack up so many successes so fast. Amen. And if you were listening to that news from California, that was those two pension funds, half a trillion dollars last week that started divesting. I hope that New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli is listening. We need... And if he isn't listening, we need you to tell him, because we need him to announce that New York is going to divest its pension funds from all fossil fuels, and we need him to do it before the Paris talks begin. One more piece of news from today about work that people are doing all over the world. Earlier today, we learned that the University of California system, the largest public university system in the world, had decided to divest from coal and tar sands. That's unbelievable. When we started three years ago, the first college to divest was a little college up in Maine. You remember, Unity College up in Maine, and we were so happy. We were going crazy that someone had stood up, stepped up. And they divested, I think their endowment was $3 million. The UC system is $98 billion in their portfolio. That's what you all have accomplished, okay? That's what you all as a movement have done. But divestment is just one front in this fight. Remember those numbers, okay? We've got five times as much carbon as we can burn, and yet the fossil fuel companies spend $600 billion a year looking for more. They spend $75 million every hour looking for more. While we're in here tonight, they'll spend $150 million looking for more coal and oil and gas. And that's in a world with another number, maybe the most important of all. As you know, scientists think $350 parts per million CO2 is the most carbon we can safely have in the atmosphere. This spring, we passed 400 parts per million, and we're going up two parts per million per year, which is why we have to stop every big new fossil fuel project that these companies have planned. Everyone, along with divestment, we're fighting every day to prevent the fossil fuel industry from developing the last big deposits of carbon on Earth, the 10 or so great carbon bombs. We need a de facto freeze on new fossil fuel development. Here's some of the top targets up there. Those are some of those places that have to be stopped, that have to stay underground. And here's the groundbreaking study from January that explains exactly why none of these things can ever be developed again. It's not like there's some doubt about this, or someone's fighting back with some other set of numbers. There's five times more carbon down there than we can ever burn. Well, Bill, here's the good news. We can win these fights. Not easily, but as we meet tonight, Shell, with the help of the Obama administration, is drilling exploratory wells in the Arctic. Even though, even though, yes, yes, sir, yes, that, even though that nature study says there's no, quote, no climate-friendly scenario in this process, that doesn't require leaving that gas and oil under the ice. But the kayaktivists, and that means activists in kayaks, are rallying Seattle in a dozen other places. And we're going to eventually win that fight. And I think we're way ahead in Australia, where coal companies are trying to build the biggest mine on Earth, but activists not only have blocked the site, they blocked the money that could pay for it as well, convincing most of the planet's banks to stay away from this carbon bomb. So we Skyped over yesterday to our friend Charlie Wood from 350.org's Aussie team to get the whole story. So six to 12 months ago, we were staring down the barrel of what would have been one of the world's largest coal projects in Northern Queensland, Northern Australia, the Galilee basin coal mines. These projects together would cook the climate, would wreck the reef, and construction was looking like it was imminent. But a movement banded together of farmers, fish of people, people in cities, students. And together we fought back this huge project through legal action, through taking on some of the world's largest banks, through community actions along the Great Barrier Reef Coast and in cities around Australia and indeed around the world. And in the last month, we're in a very different place. The banks have pulled out now 14 banks around the world have said no to funding the project. The proponents approvals have been rejected in the courts. Adani, who's trying to get this project up, has been laying off stuff right left and centre. And although our government is now swooping in to save Adani's bacon and try and get this project off the ground, it looks very, very unlikely that it will go ahead. And so for me as a campaigner, this really speaks to the power of movements, the power of communities coming together, working in a coordinated way. And it shows that when we do that, we can really fight back some of the world's largest fossil fuel projects. And indeed, you know, this is not an isolated case. This is going on right around the world. If we can do it here, we can do it in the Arctic. We can do it for the Keystone XL pipeline. And we can really win this fight. Have you excited right there? For Charlie, somebody needs to make some noise. That's right. And turning off the power of the fossil fuel industry means diffusing all these carbon bonds. For four years now, we've held the Keystone Pipeline at bay. That's right. Keeping 800,000 barrels a day of the dirtiest oil on the earth in the ground. Now, can we stop and give ourselves an applause for that? Now, I'm sorry. I'm not sure Jane Cleveland, Nebraska, heard you. Can we make some noise for that? Washington Insiders told us this project was a quote done deal. Well, guess what? For the moment, it's still undone. So we're turning Keystone. That's a huge victory. It's a big part of what's already forced investors to cancel tens of billions of dollars worth of planned expansion in the tar sands. Canadians to the north are fighting with vigor, creativity, and success against other tar sands pipelines. And it's led to what one gas executive has called the Keystoneization of thousands of other projects. So we're fighting and winning against cold ports on the west coast. And we're fighting and winning in North America and the Frack Wales in Scotland. Against the shale gas exploration in Holland. And we are winning against the oil trains in Oregon. So somebody make some noise. No kidding. No kidding. This is powerful. I mean, look, that one mine that Charlie was talking about. A year ago, we were pretty sure it was going to get built. And if it had been, it would have just that one valley put 5% of the carbon in the atmosphere necessary to take us past two degrees. One mine. But they have stopped it. Same thing all over the world. It's not as if any of us started this movement. Local people, often indigenous people, have been defending their land against intrusion for many years. More and more, more and more, more and more, they've been winning. Look, in India, fishermen, farmers in the village of Sampita, they waged a five-year battle to keep this giant coal mine from destroying their town. They won. They won at the cost of three activists being killed along the way, but they won. South Africa. Intense pressure in the last months from local activists persuaded big company, GDF Suez, to pull support for the new coal plant, the Taba Metzi. We're starting to win. This is also a movement. Yeah. As this movement grows and as we meet one another in these local struggles, it's also a movement that is deepening. Now, a year ago, when we marched through the streets of New York City, let's remember that we were led by block after block of indigenous people, many of them from the Tarasans region. And that march was so diverse. You know, what struck me about it so much was not just that it was big, although it was enormous. It was that it looked and felt like New York City. There were labor unions in huge numbers, faith communities, students. A lot of people who were part of that march came from the incredible fight against fracking for gas, and it was only a matter of months after that movement celebrated its historic victory here in New York State when your governor banned fracking. There were migrant rights groups. There were scientists. And the next day, thousands of us went to Flood Wall Street to expose the corporations and the economic logic, the economic logic that puts profit above all else that is driving this crisis. It's all a reminder that there's no single issue movements anymore. The fight for climate justice is a fight for social, racial, gender, and migrant justice. We're going to change everything. We need everyone. If we're going to change everything, we need everyone. Everyone. And so, Cynthia, we've invited just a few of the people actually making this change happen around the globe. Invited them here tonight to help us make this change happen around the globe. Invited them here tonight to help us symbolically unplug this industry. Turn it off, okay? We want you to see what the faces of this fossil fuel resistance look like around the world. Your brothers and your sisters in this fight. Come on, guys. Hi, all. My name is Iliana, and I'm here representing Columbia Divest for Climate Justice. I'm part of a global movement of students pushing for fossil fuel divestment at their universities. And there are many students here today who do just that. If you're a divestment student organizer, please stand up. Thank you so much. As of now, there are almost 400 commitments to fossil fuel divestment. We congratulate Columbia for being the first university in the U.S. to commit to divestment from the private prison industry. But now, it's time for Columbia to move money out of fossil fuels so we can pave the way to a brighter future. In addition to continuously strengthening our divestment campaigns through the Divestment Student Network, we are planting the seeds for a new movement. Students and grassroots partners across the nation are building a movement that does not just attack the injustices that we don't want, but rather creates the future we need. In fact, as we speak, dozens of, uh, sorry, in fact, as we speak, dozens of grassroots partners are being trained on how we can organize a just transition towards that new future. And this weekend, many of us fossil fuel divestment students will convene with prison divestment organizers to work on issues of racial justice, which is an integral component of climate justice. And that's all to say that we are organized, we are united, and we will turn on this industry. Good evening, everyone. My name is Juan Flores. I'm from California. In California, we live every day with a fossil fuel industry and a governor that claims that he's a climate leader. Every day, thousands, millions of gallons of clean water are being drained down the holes into the ground to bring up oil that would make things even worse. And this is on the midst of the greatest and the worst drought in California history. Many of our neighbors don't have water anymore. You turn the tap and nothing comes out. And what water we do have is polluted, just like the earth. We heard about the economic power that the oil and the fossil fuel industry have. But we have something that they don't have, and that is people's power. It is time that we turn off Chevron, Occidental, and all the others. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. My name is Thilmiza Hussain. I'm co-founder of Voice of Women from the Maldives. Maldives is a small nation of about 1200 islands of the coast of India on the equator. The highest point is six feet above sea level. Climate change is not a distant threat, but an existential threat for us. We Maldivians are feeling it right now. People are losing homes due to beach erosion. Coral reefs are being damaged. Water is being polluted. And we are having to divert resources from education and health sector to combat or to cope with this crisis. We've lived in these islands in harmony with nature for over 3,000 years, and we are definitely not giving up without a fight. We overthrew a 30-year-old dictatorship against all odds in 2008. And our first democratically elected president, President Mohammed Nasheed, put climate change on the forefront of our development agenda. He became a global voice on environmental issues, and he spoke with moral authority. Many powerful leaders across the world did not appreciate his outspokenness. And they stood by and watched when the old dictatorship overthrew President Nasheed's government by a coup d'etat. And now the oil industry is coming into our country trying to drill for oil. But we are going to turn them off. President Nasheed might be sitting in a jail cell today, but he has not given up hope. And we will not give up hope. We will fight till our last breath to restore democracy and to ensure our survival. Our slogan is Khurya Khurya Bar Khurya, which means forward, forward, faster, forward. Khurya Khurya Bar Khurya! Hello, my name is Thomas Insua. I'm from Argentina. I'm a co-founder of the Global Catholic Climate Movement. And I'm also a grad student and divestment activist at Divest Harvard. And I came here to share that also faith communities are also stepping up as never before to join this fight. And we're willing to join this fight and help solve this climate madness that we're getting into. And Pope Francis and so many other faith leaders are making these dramatic calls to change course. And people of faith are responding and are mobilizing and organizing us never before to join this fight of the wider climate movement. It's so exciting. And in the case of our Catholic community, we feel especially compelled by the Pope's call to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. And as we all know, climate change is a social justice issue. That's why we talk about climate justice. Climate change is a moral issue. And this is what makes it so compelling to join this fight for people of faith. And not surprisingly, given it's a social justice issue, we're seeing that in the case of our movement, we're seeing that Catholics in the global south are the ones who have been the quickest to respond to the Pope's call. We're seeing that Catholics in the Philippines, in Latin America, in Africa, in the Pacific Islands are mobilizing and organizing as never, I mean at an impressive scale. It's really amazing what it's going on. And so, yeah, we're seeing that those who contributed the least to this mess, to this climate-crazy mess that we're getting into are suffering the worst impacts and are urging us. They're really urging us to take action, to take bold action, to take dramatic action to turn off this madness, this industry. When a few folks make billions of dollars a year by filling the atmosphere with carbon, while billions who live on just one or two dollars a day are suffering from this carbon, that makes no sense. That's not okay. And the time has come to turn this industry off. So now, now we're where they always said we would be without the fossil fuel industry. We're sitting in the dark. This is one of the reasons that it's been hard to get people fully engaged in the climate fight. It was easy to prove that we had to stop spewing carbon, but it was hard to suggest an alternative, and it's the attitude that the fossil fuel industry has tried hard to drill into us that without them we would be back in the dark ages. But in fact, in fact, something remarkable is happening around the world. We've given you lots of depressing statistics tonight, but here's a profoundly hopeful one. The price of a solar panel has dropped 75% in the last six years. Across most of the planet, solar energy is now the cheapest way, not just the cleanest way, but the cheapest way of generating energy. Thanks to Nick Rizzo on guitar and to Antony Smith. Increasingly, increasingly, she's the voice of this new environmental movement. She's doing what in an earlier generation, Nina Simone or Mahalia Jackson, or people did. I tell you the truth. I asked her to learn that song six days ago. It sounds like she was born to sing it. She'll be back. She'll be back later on. Tonight, she comes to you with the help of a bunch of solar panels. If you were paying attention, you saw the truck parked outside on the way in, courtesy of our friends at Consolidated Solar. As of now, they're lighting these lights. They've got a battery in there. We're turning off fossil fuel, but we're turning on renewable power and we're doing it now. If you're at home watching the live stream of this show right now, hi mom, it's coming from YouTube server, which run on renewable energy. All over the world, the engineers are doing their job. Renewable energy gets cheaper and better every single day. So here's a chart that some financial analysts prepared for their fossil fuel clients. They called it Welcome to the Terror Dome because what it shows for the fossil fuel industry is completely terrifying. Look down there at the bottom. That's a price of coal and oil and gas, relatively steady and pretty cheap. But here's the important thing. This line out of nowhere from a couple of years ago, like some descending angel, that solar power plummeting to the point where it's already cheaper, cheaper than coal and oil and gas. For the fossil fuel industry, that's the definition of terrorism. The price is just going to keep going down because you're not really buying a fuel. You're buying technology. Think of a cell phone. It kept getting cheaper and it kept getting more powerful with each passing year. How do we know it works? Because in the few countries where people have tried hard to put renewable power to use, the numbers speak for themselves. There were days this past summer when Denmark generated far more power from its wind farms than it could itself use. So the rest went through the grid to Germany and to Sweden. In Germany, though it's far to the north, there are days when solar panels provide more than half the electricity. Denmark has no monopoly on wind, nor Germany on the sun. They just have more social movements and more political will. Germany has 15 times more solar panels per person than the U.S. But it's spreading. Beginning in 2013, the world installed more renewable generating capacity than fossil fuel. In 2014, the same. So you might be gathering that at 350 is a bit of a wonky bunch. I mean, after all, they named themselves or ourselves. That was before I got there. Over parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere. So here's another wonky chart. This one comes from what happened when various groups, like the International Energy Agency, tried to honestly predict how much solar we'd be using by this point. That's the black line you're seeing. The red line is what really happened. Not even green piece, guessed high enough. Now, can this happen everywhere? Can it happen fast enough? Yes. Because remember, guys, this is a race and we start way behind. We are way behind, but we know that it can happen everywhere. Mark Jacobson, professor at Stanford. He and his research team, they've spent the last few years figuring out how every state in the union could run entirely on renewable energy at a reasonable cost by 2030, creating millions of jobs along the way. They're now doing the same exercise for every country on Earth. Our friend Mark Ruffalo and his colleagues formed the Solutions Project to publicize that work, to take it global. It's not easy, it's not free, but it's possible and it's affordable. If we go after it with the vigor that we use to build a new deal in the depths of the depression or to fight fascism and the eve of World War II, as Naomi said, this is a race. In order to catch up with the physics of climate change, we have to move with incredible speed, and speed that that Stanford team describes. But the fossil fuel industry wants to go, and this is important to always remember, they want to go as slowly as possible to drag out this transition for decades, to squeeze out every last profitable quarter that they can. That's why we have to fight, we have to take them on. That's right, Bill, that's right. Around America, around America, for example, you see the Koch brothers in their sidekicks working to make sure that people don't put solar panels on their roofs. You want to know what money buys? In Arizona, the biggest utility used quote-unquote dark money to elect members of the board that oversees the state's utilities. Now, in much of Phoenix, utilities charge such a high fee for connecting new solar panels that homeowners have given up because they can't afford it. Can't afford something. They can't afford something that should save the money every month on their bill. But in the sunniest city in North America, the solar business has come to a standstill. That's right. The same thing in the Sun sign state in Florida where the Koch brothers are fighting to save its law, preventing solar leasing. Only 6,600 homes in Florida have solar panels. In Florida, only 6,000-plus homes have solar panels. Bavaria, with a smaller population, has three solar panels per residence. That's it. All across Africa, too many corrupt utilities are preventing people from adding renewable energy to the grid, which has limited solar development in the sunniest continent. Even in Spain, people are getting penalized for putting up solar. Such is the power of the dirty utilities. Now, Cynthia told you guys about the incredible energy transformation that's going on in Germany, and they are now in very short order getting 30% of their electricity from renewable energy. But there's something else that Germany teaches us. Much of that transition has been grounded in local ownership, local control, over renewable power. So the people who own, in great measure, the wind turbines and the solar arrays are small players. They're farmers, they're local councils, they are 900 new energy cooperatives, and this is a reminder that as we switch where we get our energy from, we also have to work towards moving to a different kind of world. This transformation... It's a transformation that has to be grounded in justice, as we've heard so many times this evening. Eroding the power of the richest people on Earth, the fossil fuel barons, that's a good first step, but it's not enough. Energy democracy needs to be one wedge towards transforming our economies. We need to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and we need to start investing in the public sphere, making it strong enough that we can truly take care of each other and thrive. So what does that mean concretely? It means affordable public transportation that binds together our communities instead of pipelines and exploding oil trains that divide us. It means making sure that the green jobs that we create are unionized jobs and pay a living wage. And it means that those jobs have to go to the people who need them most. They have to go to immigrants. They have to go to workers who are losing their jobs in dirty energy. And it also means food justice, producing healthy food using low-carbon methods that simultaneously take care of the soil, take care of the workers in the fields and take care of the far too many people out there who are hungry. Now, when we divest from fossil fuels, we can reinvest that money into community-led solutions that are on the front lines of fighting poverty, racism, and pollution. You know, one of the things I have learned in this fight is that it's kind of physics. The only way we are ever going to win against that small group of interests with a huge amount to lose, trillions of dollars to lose, is to build a massive global movement filled with people with a huge amount to gain. We can do this. The problem is not that renewable energy is unreliable. We've been hearing this for years. The problem is that too many of our politicians are unethical. That's right. Bought and paid for. The problem is too much corporate power. Absolutely. What Naomi is saying, I think, and you'd correct me if I'm wrong, is that it's time for the Koch brothers to feel a little austerity. It's time for the rest of people to have some kind of chance. One reason, that's one reason why a big task in Paris in December is to make sure that there's enough money to help the poorest nations leapfrog past the fossil fuel age to start, to something better. Don't have to go there. Don't have to go through 50 years of coal plants and gas plants, leapfrog into the future. And here's a place to start financing it. Stop the $10 million a minute of global fossil fuel subsidies that flow to the richest industry on Earth. We need to channel some of that money to climate solutions. That is not charity. That is justice. And it is also common sense. Because carbon emitted anywhere warms the planet everywhere. There are no boundaries. That's right. Now the long history of social change should give us some guidance and some optimism. Slavery, Jim Crow, apartheid, they seemed as mighty as the fossil fuel industry does right now. It seemed like they'd be with us forever. But as people changed by the zeitgeist, with similar disobedience, with divestment, with organizing, those old institutions began to crumble. As we can see from the huge inequalities that remain, which is why our climate solutions need to deliver racial justice also. Here I was wearing a hat that said Sandy Bee. I mean, you know that was an honor of Sandra Bland who was killed in Texas. And for Eric Garner to let folks know that racial justice and climate justice is the same thing. But let's be clear. It wasn't politicians that did the work. Politicians come along at the end once people have done the work. You, me, all of us were doing the work too. And the zeitgeist is starting to change around energy. Just as it did around race. I mean, the Rockefellers are divesting from fossil fuel. But we have to do it fast. This is our race for our survival. And we're behind, but we are coming on. Amen. Which is why, which is why we can't fixate on Paris. Look, that conference is going to matter a lot. We're going to need everyone helping out. We organize solidarity events around the world. We get oppressed for as much as we can get from those negotiations. But we already know that even at their most ambitious government's want to go too slowly. The G7 industrialized nations said earlier this year that they wanted to be off fossil fuel by 2100. Which is like announcing that you're going to go on a diet three summers from now. And in the meantime, you're going to be a frequent flyer at McDonald's. We've got to push them. We've got to push them. We're at the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel age. The question is how fast that end will come. Will it come fast enough? That's up to us. And it's the biggest challenge that humans have ever faced. And we're going to be engaged in it day after day, week after week, month after month, all of us. And it's going to be gritty and hard and face booking and petition signing and phone calling and marching and sometimes going to jail and all that. But one of the obligations of a movement, even while it's fighting, is to celebrate its victories. And we've got plenty to celebrate as renewable energy starts to surge around the planet. This transition is happening in some of the most neglected places. Places that our current economic system has written off as sacrifice zones. It's happening in Richmond, California, in the shadow of Chevron's huge refinery. Now, I want to show you a moment from my partner, Avi Lewis' new film, which has a lovely name. It's called This Changes Everything. And it's about to have its world premiere three days from now at the Toronto International Film Festival. And this is a small sneak preview. This scene shows what happened in Montana when the Northern Cheyenne decided not to dig up the huge deposit of coal under their land, their carbon bomb, and to turn on the sun instead. It's just a little glimpse of what climate justice looks like. Come on in. Welcome. Hey, Henry. Nice to meet you. Come on in. My hope, my dream, my vision is seeing first-nation communities becoming energy-independent before mainstream America. Today's going to be awesome. The spirit of the sun is out there giving warmth, bringing everything back to life. And we're just part of that. We're part of bringing our nation back to life. Solar power was always part of being on Native's way of life. Everything followed that, and it ties in with our culture, our ceremonies, our language, our songs. So we understand it. I'm just lost for words. You guys could probably tell that, but you all done really good this week. So, so impressed. I'm so happy for you guys. And our boys will offer you an honoring song. You think this is impossible? So I'm so proud to be here from Borneo today, where our government wanted to build a coal-fired power plant bordering a wild-dive reserve where some of the last Sumatran rhinos are found, last Sumatran rhinos on Earth and bordering one of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems on the planet. This is where they wanted to build a coal-fired power plant. So people told me it was impossible. Not to waste my time. And we took it from a done deal mandated by the Malaysian Prime Minister to canceled, canceled by a people's movement from Borneo all the way to California and back. It was an unprecedented win, and it rippled through the region in Southeast Asia and powered the Southeast Asia Renewable Energy People's Assembly. So 12 nations across Southeast Asia organizing against fossil fuel and innovating around renewable energy. And so in Sabah, where I'm from, where we drew the line on coal, we are now transitioning towards a diversified, equitable, circular economy with renewable energy at its core, as we talked about earlier, with food, along with waste, water, soil, along and renewable energies right there at the center. So I was just in Melanesias sharing this story with Papua New Guinyans. They're fighting major proposed coal mining there, and they are fired up. Amen. And in fact, there were these little shacks built in their traditional way. And on the shacks, on the roofs of the shacks were these little solar panels that lit up the shacks at night. So I'm clear that our issues are linked and it makes sense that our movements are also linked. That's right. Borneo or Papua New Guinea. One of the most remarkable stories right now on this planet is what's going on in Bangladesh. Yes, Bangladesh under siege from climate change. But like the Maldives, like everywhere, they're fighting. Every month, 60 or 70,000 solar arrays go up around the country. By 2021, the government predicts that every village in the country will have access to solar power. I remember 15 years ago, maybe, seeing what people said was the very first solar panel in Bangladesh on the roof of a rural school. It meant that people could read at night. It changed lives. But it's not always that serious. Our friend Wambui Gachobi Skyped in last night from Nairobi where the city's largest cultural festival is now gone, mostly solar. Hello Bill and everybody watching from Brooklyn and all over the world. This is Wambui. We are recording at the African Nouveau Festival in Nairobi where we are celebrating African music, African food and African culture. Now, what's amazing is 60% of all the energy that is being used here is coming from solar energy. Now, you see how they say that we have to be dependent on fossil fuels? Wrong. If we are able to get rid of fossil fuel 60% of it in this festival for two whole nights, then so can you, everybody from all over the world. It's very simple. It's on and off. We can do it. Back to you, Bill. Wambui is very cool. From Nairobi to New York City. There's a lot of work that needs to be done. We want everyone to leave here tonight. Everyone, when they turn off the live stream tonight, we want you to have a list of very specific things we need you to do. So, someone's going to come out and help us with that. It's Mae Boovey, who was one of the people that we founded 350.org with when she was just a college kid. And now she's the executive director of 350.org, and she has our marching orders. You guys did a great job with being loud during the showpiece. You're doing fantastic work. So, as Bill said, we've got big plans, and I hope you'll all join in with them and everyone else watching. I'm just going to lay them all out in order. First, the weekend of September 26th, coming right up, we're hosting Power Through Paris workshops. This will be a chance for people to come together in their communities and plan the mobilizations to come. Some people will be watching footage from this show tonight. Second, on November 28th and 29th, the weekend before the UN climate talks begin in Paris, we are going to mobilize mass actions around the world to demand that politicians keep fossil fuels in the ground and turn on a 100% renewable energy future. Right now, in Europe, our organizers and allies are working to make sure that there will be hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of Paris as well. So think of all of you who stood up in New York. You will be joined by people just like you marching in the streets of Paris. Then, for the next two weeks, during the climate talks, we will be working hard to make sure that the talks are seen as a referendum on the future of the fossil fuel industry and that the treaty sends a clear signal that the world is moving in a totally new direction. One way we do that is by making sure we collect as many commitments to divest in the lead-up to those talks as we possibly can. That means that any politician who goes to Paris, we're looking at you, Mayor de Blasio, comes with a divestment commitment in hand. Next up, on December 12th, the final weekend of the talks, we'll be organizing an escalated action in Paris to make sure that no matter what the politicians decide, the movement is moving forward on this path. And the reason we call it the path through Paris is this fight continues. There will be a major moment in April after Paris has ended when we're planning another worldwide mobilization. We are focusing on all of those carbon bomb projects you heard about earlier tonight. These have to be stopped and we'll be mobilizing to make sure that they do. September, November, December, April. It's an eighth month plan to supercharge our movement and take the fight right to the source of the problem. As we go, we're going to need to keep up the pressure to divest, to move our communities to 100% renewable energy, and keep challenging our politicians to take action. There's no better time to get involved in this movement if you're here tonight and wondering how. And for those of you, and I know there are many who've been fighting this fight for years, we thank you and we hope you will keep it up and we'll see you in the streets. Thank you. Does this... Does this fire you up? Yeah. No, no, no, no. I want to say this. One of my great heroes, you heard him earlier, five-time Grammy Award winner Malik Yusef was earlier. He's in the building. We have other celebs who are here. Lear de Caprio, my dear brothers up front here in the building. And I want y'all to make some noise. Does this fire you up? I need you, Bill, Bill, Bill, I need this, Bill. I need to do this, because, see, Bill, I know that there are folks right now who are at Shell and Chevron and BP and others who are watching this live stream, and they're like kicking over their desks mad because they see what's going on tonight. So we need to tell them about off and on. So this side will be off, and this side, Bill, so it'll be on. Are y'all ready? Yeah. Ready to stand to y'all feet. We are ready. We're ready to let them see this and feel this so they can really kick their chair over, kick over the desk, and make so when I go off and on. You got that? Yeah. So on the count of three, let's go. One, two, three, off. Rev, thank you. And, you know, we could not have built this movement in the last few years without you. You've been at the center of everything, and there's never anybody more ready to fight and more ready to inspire. And of course, my job is the kind of opposite. My job's sort of to bum you out. Not really. Look, we're ready to fight. We will fight. But one of the things we've been clear about from the beginning is that that doesn't guarantee that we're going to win. We're going to fight as hard as humans are fighting every other liberation movement to liberate ourselves from this threat of planetary destruction. But there are no guarantees, and it's a time test. Even if we do everything right, it won't be a complete victory. Climate change is already wreaking havoc. There are people tonight being rescued off their roofs in Japan by a helicopter as the flood water spread. It's wreaking havoc, and it's going to wreak more. But maybe we can keep it from getting completely out of control, and maybe we can build a society in which we treat one another decently so we never again see the kind of abandonment we saw during Hurricane Katrina. You're going to see some slides as we talk for the next few minutes. And that's why people from all over the world are fighting. If you're in this fight, then these people are your brothers and sisters. And that's important because there's one more word that really matters tonight. Off, on, and together. Together. Yes, Bill. Together. Look, our People's Climate Music Tour began in New Orleans on the 10th anniversary of Katrina. It went from there to Ferguson, Missouri, because we know there's no way to separate the fight from climate justice. So now we're here in Brooklyn, where there are people who are still displaced from Hurricane Sandy. We know that the same injustice happens around the world, and we know that moving forward means we all work together. Whenever we are, and whoever we are, we know that we can do it together. We're at the end of the evening now, and we're going to end with another song. It's not entirely happy because we can't be entirely happy. Too much damage has already been done, but it's perhaps the greatest environmental song ever written. And it came from the inner city of America in the middle of the struggle for civil rights. It didn't seem odd to anyone in 1970 that Marvin Gaye, one of the greatest poets America has ever produced, would be worried about the disappearing blue skies. So when you hear Antonique Smith sing it again, remember that history, and remember all that we have to do together. Thank you so much. I'm Antonique Smith, and I'm so honored to be here. This song I'm about to sing was written over 30 years ago by Marvin Gaye, and the words are even more real now than they ever were. Marvin was trying to make him listen. We gotta make him listen.