Notes:

At the end of this Bill Moyers interview, Naomi Klein believes climate change is "the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced.

(Unfortunately,) we've been kidding ourselves about what it's going to take to get our emissions down to the extent that they need to go down. I mean, you talk about 80 percent lowering emissions. I mean, that is such a huge shift."

Klein then addresses why public opinion is so shaky on this issue:

"It doesn't really add up to say to the public, 'this is a huge problem. It's Armageddon.' You know, you have "Inconvenient Truth." You scare the hell out of people. But then you say, 'Well, the solution can be very minor. You can change your light bulb. And we'll have this complicated piece of legislation called cap and trade that you don't really understand, but that basically means that companies here can keep on polluting, but they're going to trade their carbon emissions. And, you know, somebody else is going to plant trees on the other side of the planet and they'll get credits.'

As a result, Klein says the problem is people feel mislead.

"People look at that going, "Okay, if this was a crisis, wouldn't be we be responding more aggressively? So wouldn't we be responding in a way that you have, we've responded in the past during war times, where there's been, you know, that kind of a collective sense of shared responsibility?" Because I think when we really do feel that sense of urgency about an issue, and I believe we should feel it about climate change, we are willing to sacrifice. We have shown that in the past.

But when you hold up a supposed emergency and actually don't ask anything of people, anything major, they actually think you might be lying, that it might not really be an emergency after all."

If you are alarmed or concerned about climate change, Klein ends the interview with this call to action:

"So if is an emergency, we have to act like it. And yeah, it is a fundamental challenge. But the good news is, you know, we get to have a future for our kids."

Image Source: swindonclimate.org