For The Wild - TARA HOUSKA & RUTH BREECH on Divesting from Toxic Capitalism ⧸133

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00:00:17.080 Welcome to For the Wild podcast.

00:00:19.460 I'm Ayanna Young.

00:00:21.960 We're not talking about turning the lights off like today or tomorrow.

00:00:26.240 We're talking about one-stopping expansions.

00:00:29.100 So no additional fossil fuels.

00:00:31.840 What we have in reserves right now and was already in play is already going to push us back

00:00:35.800 on over two degrees Celsius for all three, four, five, even six degrees, which is uninhabitable.

00:00:42.080 So we need to stop any new infrastructure, any new expansion.

00:00:47.140 Like that's the first thing that banks need to do.

00:00:55.380 Today, we are speaking with Tara Houska and Ruth Breach.

00:00:59.100 Tara Houska is Anishinaabe from Kuchichang First Nation.

00:01:04.160 She's a tribal attorney, the National Campaigns Director of Honor the Earth,

00:01:08.840 and a former advisor on Native American affairs to Bernie Sanders.

00:01:12.920 She advocates on behalf of tribal nations at the local and federal levels

00:01:16.800 on a wide range of issues impacting indigenous peoples.

00:01:20.920 She spent six months on the front lines in North Dakota fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline

00:01:25.900 and has heavily engaged in the movement to defund fossil fuels

00:01:29.700 and a years-long struggle against Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline.

00:01:34.460 She is co-founder of Not Your Mascots,

00:01:36.840 a non-profit committed to educating the public about the harms of stereotyping

00:01:41.520 and promoting positive representation of Native Americans in the public sphere.

00:01:46.760 Ruth Breach is a senior campaigner with Rainforest Action Network's Climate and Energy team.

00:01:52.420 She is working to meet the scale of the global climate crisis

00:01:55.320 through corporate accountability campaigns focused on Chase Bank's financing of climate

00:02:00.240 change, supporting frontline communities impacted by fossil fuel projects, and racial justice within

00:02:06.500 the environmental movement. So Ruth and Tara, last week I spoke with Rachel Heaton and Roxanne

00:02:13.620 White about the disturbing links between the fossil fuel industry, man camps, and missing and

00:02:20.120 murdered indigenous women and girls. And I'm so grateful to be picking up this conversation

00:02:25.120 back with both of you today as we continue to deepen our understanding of these interconnected

00:02:30.560 issues and investigating the threads that weave between fossil fuel extraction, the banking sector,

00:02:36.600 and our own wallets. So I'd like to begin to provide our listeners with some information

00:02:43.220 from the 2019 Banking on Climate Change report card, co-published by Oil Change International,

00:02:49.900 Rainforest Action Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, Honor the Earth,

00:02:54.280 Sierra Club, and BankTrack. This comprehensive 100-page document measures and tracks 33 banks'

00:03:02.300 role in financing the fossil fuel industry. I'd like to name some of these staggering findings

00:03:07.500 from the report. Since the Paris Agreement was adopted, Canadian, Chinese, European, Japanese,

00:03:13.620 and U.S. banks have financed fossil fuels with a staggering of $1.9 trillion, revealing a larger

00:03:21.420 trend of rising financial support each year since 2015, with $600 billion just in the last three

00:03:29.560 years flowing to companies that are expanding fossil fuels. So this report card truly cuts

00:03:35.500 through any illusions we may have around the gross profit and financial investment is not only

00:03:40.840 sustaining, but expanding some of the worst methods of extractive industries and funding

00:03:46.240 climate catastrophe. So Ruth, beyond these numbers, can you share a bit more about the

00:03:52.020 larger trends and main takeaways this report card is telling us? Yeah, I think you hit the head

00:03:59.160 right on the nail. And then looking at kind of the really big picture, that the trend is going

00:04:04.740 upward. And where we are right now with the climate crisis and climate urgency, we had the

00:04:10.520 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report last fall saying that we had just a little

00:04:16.760 over a decade. So the urgency has increased. You also named the Paris Agreement. So out of the

00:04:22.960 Council of Parties in 2015, over 90 nations agreed that we needed to get to a 1.5 degrees scenario

00:04:30.280 for warming to have a livable climate. Island nations are already feeling the brunt, coastal

00:04:35.700 nations. So what we're seeing right now is the crisis is not happening. It's not something of

00:04:40.780 the future. It's something right now. So it's already happening in coastal communities,

00:04:44.900 fires up and down the West coast, hurricanes, we're seeing extreme weather events. So it's

00:04:49.660 already here. And we're looking at who's underpinning the fossil fuel industry. So we

00:04:54.940 know the Exxons and the BPs, we know that they're horrible actors. We know this, but they need,

00:05:02.180 they need money, they need permits, they need insurance to do fossil fuel projects. And

00:05:07.520 essentially, that's why we've been looking at the banks for over a decade. But that has come out

00:05:12.000 really more clearly, I think, since Standing Rock, the amount of accountability, public

00:05:15.680 accountability to the banks, because they've been very much kind of behind the scenes in the back

00:05:20.100 rooms. And now what we're seeing is that they're very much at the forefront that people are

00:05:24.360 understanding how complicit they are and being a pillar of support for the fossil fuel industry.

00:05:29.740 And essentially, Chase Bank is a key driver of fossil fuel expansion and fossil fuels is what is driving the climate change.

00:05:38.760 So it is very fair to say, you know, Chase Bank is a driver of climate change.

00:05:43.280 You know, one of the things Tara and I were recently at the Chase Bank shareholder meeting and one of the things we were looking at was expansions.

00:05:50.940 So first thing we need to do is stop the harm. There needs to be no additional fossil fuel expansion.

00:05:55.840 If we stopped right now and just played out with the fossil fuels that are already in existence and didn't have any additional projects, that would still put us out another decade.

00:06:06.940 And Chase specifically, so we're looking at all the different sectors, whether it's tar sands oil or liquefied natural gas, a fracking, they have a hand in all of them.

00:06:17.400 But one of the probably most critical areas that we're looking at is expansion projects like Enbridge's Line 3, like TransCanada's Keystone XL.

00:06:28.260 We recently heard the news around TransMountain Project up in Canada, Tech Frontier Resources Mine, LNG along the Gulf Coast.

00:06:36.940 This is happening right now and Chase is right there funding all of those companies.

00:06:41.620 So one of the other revealing stats coming out of the report was that they have put $67 billion in expansion specifically.

00:06:50.140 So we're beyond our carbon budget.

00:06:53.120 We're on a downward track.

00:06:54.840 And so that's part of our work right now is to really hold them accountable and shift them away from financing fossil fuel industry towards a different path.

00:07:04.760 And it's really going to take a huge scale to meet the need of what's happening here and to really shift this giant and wake them up and move them away and essentially would be shifting the entire economic sector for the U.S., if not the world.

00:07:19.140 it's really sickening to hear about the expansion and it kind of reminds me of justin trudeau's

00:07:27.940 declaring climate emergency and then just what days later allowing the trans mountain pipeline

00:07:35.240 to happen it's like speaking out of both sides of the mouth it's disgusting it's disturbing and

00:07:39.900 i'm so grateful that you both are shedding light to this and i also want to mention that this year's

00:07:44.920 report also flags banks' investment in companies that are active throughout the entire fossil fuel

00:07:50.360 life cycle, from exploration to extraction, transportation, storage, and the generation

00:07:56.100 of fossil fuel electricity. So I can't help but wonder, and this may be a lofty question,

00:08:02.220 but would the fossil fuel industry exist at all if it wasn't for banks' financial support?

00:08:08.780 You know, no. Some companies are large enough they can self-finance, but they initially had

00:08:13.640 to have that initial capital. So without banks, and we're also opening a area of work on insurance

00:08:19.880 companies, without money and without permits, they can't get these projects done. It's just

00:08:24.840 not in the realm of possibility in how they finance them. It just wouldn't be possible.

00:08:32.000 Well, beyond the numbers of resource extraction, the report also paints a clear picture of the

00:08:37.700 environmental destruction and human rights abuses wrought by the oil, gas, and coal industries,

00:08:42.840 particularly amongst indigenous communities from the surge of fracking in the permian basin in

00:08:49.180 texas and new mexico in the anadarko's liquefied natural gas projects in mozambique the case

00:08:55.780 studies reveal a truly dark story of banks utter complicity and active involvement in our current

00:09:01.420 path towards climate crisis and the calculated violence it took to get there so you both stood

00:09:08.160 on the front lines alongside indigenous communities and resistance to pipeline projects like dakota

00:09:13.520 access pipeline keystone excel the enbridge line three like what you're you know where you are

00:09:18.720 right now tara and in addition to continued direct action and embodied resistance to fossil fuel

00:09:24.420 expansion i'd like to hear from both of you about why you've chosen to focus on divestment as a

00:09:30.660 critical strategic tool to disrupt the partnership between banks and corporations and why is it

00:09:35.580 imperative that we learn to speak the language of money? In terms of the language of money,

00:09:41.720 I think a very pragmatic and important moment in time for us to look at our organizing and look at

00:09:48.660 our activism and our different channels of advocacy and determine what's most effective.

00:09:53.800 And in my experience so far, it has been learning throughout the industry that these private actors

00:10:01.240 who are the people that are most responsible

00:10:04.560 for the destruction of the planet

00:10:05.760 do not listen to morality, but they do listen to money.

00:10:09.300 It is the language that they operate in

00:10:10.820 and it is the language they understand best.

00:10:12.520 It is their assessment of our resistance.

00:10:15.420 You know, we are in situations like,

00:10:17.520 I mean, we are literally a byline

00:10:18.880 in an assessment of a risk portfolio.

00:10:21.600 Our litigation is a byline

00:10:23.220 in an assessment of a risk portfolio.

00:10:24.980 So they understand that we can cause significant damage

00:10:28.940 to one, their credibility, their reputational risk is actually quite important as banking

00:10:35.820 institutions, that we are costing the direct corporate actors themselves, like, you know,

00:10:41.980 they lose money when we're engaged in resistance through changing the court of public opinion,

00:10:47.500 through lawsuits, through the regulatory process, through all these different mechanisms.

00:10:51.800 But ultimately, I think, you know, when you look at who is weak in the chain, insurers in particular, they're the ones that are looking at climate change, understanding that they have to actually assess this as a risk, that they're the ones that have to pay out for this.

00:11:06.260 And with banking institutions, many of them are forward facing.

00:11:09.160 And so the consumers can play a direct role in their reputation, can play a direct role in what's actually held in the institution.

00:11:17.160 I mean, Wells Fargo is a perfect example that, you know, people were targeting Wells Fargo and still are all over the country and around the world looking at, you know, who can we, how do we help your situation here in North Dakota and Standing Rock?

00:11:32.260 And it was Wells Fargo is one of the biggest lenders of this project. Take your money out of Wells Fargo Bank. And then on top of it, they were having all these consumer practices that they were violating. And so it became a very easy target of, here's the corporate actor that's actually funding the company. The company can't operate without the money.

00:11:49.400 And so, you know, looking always to seeing what is most effective and what is actually landing within our movements is incredibly important.

00:11:58.660 I think in this moment, divestment is one that is certainly causing large ripples of change.

00:12:04.540 Yeah, I would 100% agree with everything Tara just said.

00:12:07.520 And I think just to add on to that is that we're looking at really hitting the fossil fuel industry's bottom line and who's protecting their bottom line.

00:12:18.340 that's the bank. So it really is kind of like a secondary look. But again, going back to kind of

00:12:23.240 the pillars of support, it is a banking industry that's there. And I think in any way, whether

00:12:29.200 any kind of situation where you're having to learn that language, I think we have some brilliant

00:12:34.100 researchers. We use some of the same tools that the banking industry does. That's how we track

00:12:38.520 and we can compile these numbers. And that is part of the work to really kind of understand

00:12:44.480 where they're vulnerable. Tara mentioned the risk and risk portfolios. That is hugely critical. We

00:12:50.160 know that these actions on the ground, Standing Rock is an incredible example, the work that's

00:12:55.520 happening at Enbridge, they want to avoid, that is a social risk for them, both in how it relates to

00:13:02.480 their clientele, how it relates to their customers, it relates to different people that they interact

00:13:08.300 with. And we know that that risk is there, especially when they have a consumer angle,

00:13:12.240 like a bank. People have a choice. They don't have to bank with case. They don't have to bank

00:13:16.360 with Wells Fargo. They can bank with other companies that aren't contributing to fossil

00:13:20.820 fuel destruction or indigenous rights abuses. So that's one key piece. And we're always looking

00:13:24.960 at vulnerabilities. And I think that's an important piece to bring to. Also, so the banks,

00:13:30.520 and even more so now, like the pension funds, it may be that the banks are somewhat short-sighted.

00:13:36.240 So they're only thinking about this next maybe three, five years.

00:13:41.160 Some of the credit loans that they give are actually only mature for a year.

00:13:45.620 The pension funds, they're looking out 30 years, 40 years.

00:13:49.140 So they're more sensitive to some of this institutional lending that's happening to

00:13:54.280 the fossil fuel industry.

00:13:55.540 We're also seeing that with investors.

00:13:57.460 People are saying that this is not acceptable anymore.

00:14:00.000 We actually have to address the climate crisis.

00:14:02.220 We can't continue with business as usual.

00:14:03.920 So there's a lot of reasons that banks is a primary target. It makes sense. If you follow

00:14:10.020 the money in any situation, there's a bank somewhere in this mix. So in the way that it

00:14:16.760 makes sense, but I think you're raising a great question about speaking the language of money,

00:14:21.560 because the language of capitalism, the language of the USD paper currency is really toxic.

00:14:28.460 You know, capitalism was built on genocide and slavery. And I think those things are always really present. And that is the business of those banks. And that is what they have carried through.

00:14:39.060 I think there's a lot of like historical understanding and then also how that plays out in today in Wall Street.

00:14:46.220 And there is an intensity, as I mentioned earlier, we were at the shareholder meeting and sitting amongst, you know, ExxonMobil's former CEO, Lee Raymond, that literally led the charge in climate denial in the 80s.

00:14:59.780 and some of the heavy hitter investors and board members and people who have probably some of the

00:15:05.820 most capital wealth, you know, in the country, literally sitting in that room with us. It's not

00:15:11.180 intimidating. It's sometimes unsettling. And I think there's a lot of things that we have to do

00:15:17.860 to kind of balance that out, both like being present in community, really holding a really

00:15:22.820 strong vision about what the world could be when these structures are transformed and really,

00:15:30.440 really being confident in that because these institutions are ugly and they've bred toxicity

00:15:37.480 since when they started and they continue to do that. So that is part of what we're up against.

00:15:44.020 And I think that is present every day. I can only imagine that you have to put on

00:15:50.640 some type of energetic shield in order to go into these spaces and be around these people and

00:15:56.520 I also you know for a long while I really wanted to run away from capitalism like I don't want to

00:16:04.880 be a part of it I don't you know these kind of idealistic visions of wanting separation

00:16:09.080 but really realizing this is what we're in and we have to face it we have to just face it direct on

00:16:15.880 and really learn how to speak the language of money.

00:16:18.620 So I'm so grateful to both of you

00:16:20.320 for being able to be so courageous

00:16:22.020 to go into these places.

00:16:23.460 Not like you're saying, not that it's scary,

00:16:25.960 but I can imagine it is unsettling. 1.00

00:16:28.600 And to look at these mostly men 0.98

00:16:30.900 who are doing this kind of work,

00:16:32.380 and I know I'm sure my heart would be racing

00:16:34.620 just out of anger and pain

00:16:37.080 looking at these people

00:16:38.100 who are making these huge decisions.

00:16:41.240 But if we look back to the No Doppel movement,

00:16:44.280 The call to divest from Dakota Access led to city governments divesting actually over $4.3 billion, and individual bank accounts holders amounting to $86 million.

00:16:56.340 After all of the delays, the company lost $7.5 billion, nearly double its original projected cost.

00:17:04.280 So Tara, from your perspective, how did divestment transform the movement and expand resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline?

00:17:11.740 A couple things.

00:17:13.100 You know, I would also want to at least explain to listeners, you know, what that feels like as far as going into some of these spaces with corporate actors, that just a handful of people can make such a huge impact.

00:17:27.600 the question that you're asking me is about it ties into some of the folks wondering how do I

00:17:34.640 help when I'm not physically there in that space how do I help when I'm not willing to chain myself

00:17:39.020 to a piece of equipment or I'm not able to get there because you're so remotely located and I

00:17:43.260 am bound with the system of capitalism to a job to you know a profession to rent to all these

00:17:50.540 different things to bills that have to be paid you know how do I how do I still support while

00:17:54.920 I'm stuck in those places. And it resulted with just handfuls of people going to some of their

00:18:00.900 city council meetings, handfuls of people that are approaching pension funds, handfuls of people

00:18:06.180 that are engaging in small actions of we're all going to pull our money out of the bank today,

00:18:09.880 and we're going to share the message of that. I think what the law enforcement and private

00:18:17.120 security, when they blockaded us in North Dakota and basically cut off our access to the direct

00:18:24.920 side of action of them building the pipeline in North Dakota and actually also cut off

00:18:30.260 like our direct access to hospitals and to, you know, emergency services, their intent

00:18:36.320 was to, you know, kill what was going on, kill the resistance that was happening and

00:18:41.340 subdue that.

00:18:42.100 But instead, what it ended up doing was fueling a bunch of people, you know, to look into,

00:18:47.760 well, how else can we do this?

00:18:48.980 You know, what else can we do?

00:18:50.080 And then I know myself and some others, we started going to different banking institutions

00:18:54.280 different branches we started shutting down bank branches people all over that like turned into

00:18:59.340 people in seattle taking up the call shutting down hundreds of banks at once that turned into

00:19:04.700 other folks looking at you know going to their san francisco city council meetings i know jackie

00:19:10.660 fielder and many others were engaged in you know well let's create a public banking institution if

00:19:15.400 that's what it takes because i don't want to be involved in this process anymore i don't want to

00:19:18.960 be contributing at such a large scale to the destruction of climate change and to the violation

00:19:24.400 of human rights of indigenous people and others on the ground you know i think it's an avenue of

00:19:30.260 advocacy that is very policy oriented and very you know you end up in these situations where

00:19:36.860 you're stuck in rooms of corporate actors and you're stuck in rooms of people that are

00:19:40.300 engaged in what i would say is some of the most evil and inhumane acts as far as you as a human

00:19:46.080 being pushed off liability while making decisions that impact literally millions of people that have

00:19:52.200 become so lost and so caught up in the system of capitalism. And it's not even capitalism at this

00:19:57.260 point. I mean, we're talking about oligarchy, you know, that, you know, it can be very hard on your

00:20:01.400 heart. But at the same time, like, we cannot pretend like these systems don't exist. We

00:20:07.260 cannot pretend like these systems do not present at least some efforts of change or some avenues

00:20:13.060 of change. And that's what divestment is about. That's what electoral politics are about. Also,

00:20:19.040 you know, you're looking at, here's this massive system that is based in slavery and genocide,

00:20:23.200 like Russo was saying, how do you find the trickles and streams of advocacy and change

00:20:28.380 within that? And that's what some of these people that are pushing back against that

00:20:32.620 narrative in a real way are doing.

00:20:43.060 You thought it'd pass when the seasons change

00:20:55.480 You thought you'd just get better and wiser with aid

00:21:07.180 Holding your hands up

00:21:13.420 Waiting on the wind to turn the cage

00:21:20.080 All the while

00:21:26.920 Blowing kisses from the stage

00:21:31.100 now i know following standing rock you continued on to a series of visits in europe with the

00:21:55.860 Indigenous Women's Divestment Delegations campaign called Invest, Divest, Protect. And

00:22:01.540 the delegation made the strategic choice to first visit banks in countries that have higher human

00:22:06.280 rights standards than the US, like Norway, Germany, and Switzerland in spring 2017. And I'm curious

00:22:13.660 about your visit to Norway in particular, when the delegation met with the DNB Bank, the Norwegian

00:22:20.340 parliament a delegation of sami indigenous peoples and with and with norway's sami president

00:22:25.480 ultimately persuading dnb to sell its 331 million dollar stake in the dakota access pipeline

00:22:32.820 so tara what was your experience sitting across the table from european leaders

00:22:38.140 and confronting them with your stories from the front lines how did they respond to your accounts

00:22:43.600 and take responsibility for their complicity in gross human rights abuses and the violence against

00:22:49.540 indigenous people? That particular campaign effort that is, you know, obviously still ongoing in

00:22:56.080 terms of targeting European actors was a perfect example of what can happen when you have solidarity

00:23:03.220 across impacted communities. You know, it was the Sami people who came to, um, at the Standing Rock

00:23:09.600 who were so inspired by what they saw there that went back home and said, how do we figure out what

00:23:15.640 our own institutions are doing and how do we support the folks out in North Dakota, how do

00:23:20.240 we support our Indigenous relatives, you know, and worked really hard on first pushing D&D to divest,

00:23:27.100 also creating room for us to visit some of the other banking institutions like ING, like

00:23:31.480 the Norwegian Oil Fund. Those meetings were incredibly, I think, impactful for Europeans.

00:23:37.680 In my experience of meeting with many different bank institutions, it was the first time they

00:23:42.600 heard the story of any indigenous people in north america canada was engaged in practices like that

00:23:47.680 towards its indigenous people they just presumed that as you know a westernized quote-unquote

00:23:53.320 civilized country that we had our own mechanisms of you know accountability for human rights abuses

00:24:00.460 they were appalled at learning about broken treaties and disparate criminal jurisdiction

00:24:07.780 systems and missing and murdered indigenous women and these epidemics of poverty and substance

00:24:15.020 abuse and extraction that happen in our communities every single day. They could not believe that was

00:24:21.260 the situation in North America. And so I think that it was important for them to hear those

00:24:26.740 stories, but it was also incredibly important as a understanding of an effective campaign

00:24:32.960 in the language of money, not just the language of morality. The language of money is we're

00:24:37.700 going to also bring our UN reports, we're going to bring our documentation, we're going to bring

00:24:41.340 lawsuits, and we're going to show them as banking institutions. This is what we're talking about

00:24:45.440 when we are bringing a risk situation to you, that this is actually substantive, that we are

00:24:51.180 right holders, and that this poses serious risk for you beyond just the feelings and your own

00:24:58.780 individualized sadness that you experience while you're sitting across the table from us listening

00:25:03.260 these stories because of course these stories were incredibly powerful and were something where

00:25:09.440 we had just experienced these things I mean when I went out in March of 2017 I had watched the

00:25:16.260 camps at Standing Rock burn at the end of February it was a very very difficult time for all of us

00:25:21.440 and for some of us that was the first time that we had come back together after being on the front

00:25:26.080 lines of in North Dakota for so many months together so it was difficult it wasn't it was

00:25:32.320 a moment where we were back together and we had, you know, essentially they had built a pipeline

00:25:36.320 into the river and so we had lost and we were all hurting, but we were using that, that hurt and

00:25:41.540 turning it into a point of advocacy and seeing what we could still do. Obviously for, for some

00:25:47.660 institutions that worked. I'm also curious. You know, I just, there's, yeah, please. I just want

00:25:54.100 to build on here and that, um, how much that that takes, whether, you know, the, the traveling

00:25:58.740 internationally in time zones and different cultures and issues that are going on. But I

00:26:03.160 think what Tara and the Divest, Invest, Protect, and whether we're at the shareholder meetings

00:26:09.640 here in North America, really, it's a lot about bringing humanity into the room. The banks are

00:26:16.420 making decisions, corporations are making decisions based on numbers, based on these risk

00:26:22.200 projections, things like that, credit ratings. And what Tara and this incredible group of women

00:26:29.640 have consistently done is really bring it back to kind of the human element and the impacts

00:26:35.220 on real people. And that often gets left out of the conversation. And Tara had mentioned that

00:26:40.720 earlier also that can happen in the environmental movement as well. People start thinking kind of

00:26:44.860 big picture strategy and where we really need to center those voices are those ones that are the

00:26:50.840 most impacted. And I just, I think it's such a critical piece of this, of sharing those stories,

00:26:55.960 because the reality is there are banking people that they have hearts, you know, there is kindness

00:27:05.100 there. I think sometimes they've forgotten it. They've forgotten to be human. And when we are

00:27:11.140 there, or there's a, you know, delegations of different kinds of people that it is that reminder

00:27:15.400 of their humanity and the impacts that their decisions make.

00:27:20.840 Wow. Thank you both for that. And I'm also curious what the delegation learned from this success and whether or not you think these lessons could be applied in an American context.

00:27:33.040 i definitely think and it's already been said that i certainly observe the power that

00:27:41.140 centering front lines voices can bring to those type of spaces those type of rooms which often

00:27:46.780 do not do not ever have our faces and our perspectives brought to them that was certainly

00:27:54.440 a lesson i hope not just for us but for the the broader movement you know since then i've actually

00:28:00.300 kind of seen a I would say a kind of intentional blind eye put to some of those efforts like

00:28:08.480 I observed several different articles and things written about this kind of

00:28:14.060 resurgence of divestment as an effective strategy and how no one really knew where it came from

00:28:19.540 which was really you know disappointing and upsetting to me as somebody like that recognized

00:28:24.040 And what it was, was this powerful moment on the ground of North Dakota of people wondering, what do we do next? And they were directed to do divestment. And so it was a groundswell that, you know, was started from a globalized movement. And it was very clear to me what the, you know, what the uptick was in terms of the timing of this attention on divestment.

00:28:46.660 And I think in terms of like the lessons that can be shared with that generally is definitely within our own movement spaces, recognizing that nobody can tell the story better than the people that are from that community.

00:28:59.180 Nobody can assert rights like the rights holders of that community.

00:29:04.620 You know, we bring forward these stories.

00:29:06.400 We don't have to tell somebody else's story for them.

00:29:08.360 They should be able to tell it themselves.

00:29:09.680 but also recognizing that you know i do agree with ruth that you know the the cold black parts

00:29:16.520 of bankers also are they are some of them are human beings you know i mean all of the member

00:29:21.520 all of them are but many have forgotten their own humanity and that there are there are people who

00:29:27.260 are in those roles in the sustainability roles or you know human rights roles at banking institutions

00:29:33.700 because they really do want to try to do the best they possibly can within those institutions and

00:29:39.020 And so I think, you know, even in the Chase shareholders meeting, it was the first time that I've experienced in a shareholders meeting over the past three years that when myself and another Native youth, Nina Rose from, she's Dakota from Minneapolis, when we stepped up to the podium, every single person in the room turned to look at us, which was surprising.

00:30:01.560 it was the entire room which one that they were wanting to show respect that they were listening

00:30:07.540 you know and therefore kind of doing their checks of you know consultation but two also

00:30:13.660 maybe genuinely feeling like they they should listen to these voices that have now started

00:30:18.460 to show up in their boardrooms that have now started to show up in their offices you know

00:30:22.820 that these are people who hold rights that are different than what they're used to these are

00:30:28.180 people that hold you know the power of treaty lands and territories that are frankly tired of

00:30:35.040 being run over the lessons that are there are are important for all of us to center the people who

00:30:43.660 are being hurt you know like we have to do that as people it forces us to think a different way

00:30:48.280 and to react a different way well watching back to the video footage from your visits around the

00:30:55.280 globe i'm struck by the rawness of the group stories and resilience in recounting these

00:31:02.580 horrific ongoing acts of violence in your communities michelle cook a dene human rights

00:31:08.380 lawyer reflected that the delegation quote provides a rare platform for victims of human

00:31:13.400 rights abuses to meet with decision makers of financial institutions and banks to ask for

00:31:19.320 accountability end quote and it also makes me think um ruth when how you've gone to great lengths

00:31:26.280 to confront banking leaders in person and once disrupted a talk with jamie diamond the ceo of

00:31:31.960 chase bank and in an article published by bloomberg you asserted that quote our goal was to get direct

00:31:37.400 access and direct engagement with jamie diamond see the whites of his eyes end quote and so i'm

00:31:43.940 wondering for both of you and other indigenous women perhaps who since you all have long since

00:31:51.020 bore the the brunt of colonial violence and i guess what i'm wondering is have these acts of

00:31:56.760 speaking truth to power and exercising your collective strength through the delegation and

00:32:01.680 otherwise felt like a source of potential healing amidst this unfolding struggle

00:32:06.440 um i guess i'll start i would say you know most certainly it is incredibly empowering to be able

00:32:13.640 to sit across from the people who made the decisions that are killing your community,

00:32:19.820 that are contaminating your drinking water, that are killing your way of life. In my case here,

00:32:26.560 when I'm talking about a pipeline project that could wipe out our cultural way of life,

00:32:30.980 our cultural identity with wild rice and to sit across the table from somebody who is financing

00:32:36.260 that you know there's that is a very powerful moment you are looking at the person who is

00:32:42.600 trying to kind of you know almost scuttle away and hide from their own accountability and their

00:32:49.280 own responsibility and their own role in it when they are the people who are responsible you know

00:32:54.140 they are just as responsible as the the company behind it that's doing the project they're the

00:32:59.040 ones who looked at that loan and looked at that credit facility looked at what that company was

00:33:03.220 doing and said yes we're going to finance this knowing what the fossil fuel industry does to

00:33:08.380 people on the ground knowing what happens to the drinking water knowing what it does to

00:33:11.720 millions of people you know and the risk they pose to the to the planet as a whole and so to sit just

00:33:18.020 to just to be in those rooms i think is incredibly empowering to be able to look at your destroyer

00:33:24.160 based on head on but it's also i think it can be a moment of healing to tell that story to somebody

00:33:31.700 to tell that story and watch how it lands on them but it's also you know powerful to be with each

00:33:37.820 other too and to sit in rooms of other communities other leaders other people who have this shared

00:33:45.340 narrative no matter what their language is no matter where they what corner of the world they

00:33:48.580 come from they're telling the same stories which is you continue in these ways you continue to

00:33:53.840 destroy the earth and you are destroying us this violence you're enacting against the earth is the

00:33:58.320 violence you're enacting against our women it's the violence you're enacting against our people

00:34:01.540 and so you know those are powerful moments of of both truth telling but also you know i think

00:34:09.300 a form of healing by getting to sit across from them and to share space with them you know we're

00:34:16.760 not out in the streets we're sitting in their boardrooms across from the table from them and

00:34:20.720 that's a very different experience and it also reflects the the power that we have that those

00:34:25.880 voices have that they're not out in the streets anymore they're sitting in their boardrooms they

00:34:29.120 know that they have to listen to us. I would totally agree with that. It is cathartic almost

00:34:35.120 to be able to have that direct access, whether it is a boardroom or an event. I really, really

00:34:42.520 enjoy the bird dogs of Jamie Dimon. We've not done one. We've done, I think, five in the last

00:34:47.860 few months. And they've even trained other people to do them to the point recently where he was in

00:34:52.760 Philadelphia and he was expecting us to be there. He's like, people have been following me. So I

00:34:57.260 think that was part of him realizing that one, he was accessible. So this is the top paid CEO,

00:35:04.980 the last one standing on Wall Street from the banking crisis, and somebody who is very arrogant

00:35:11.840 and is possibly a presidential candidate or nominee on that level and that he could be

00:35:19.140 accessible. I mean, there was multiple times where I could have just reached out to touch him or sat

00:35:23.080 next to a chair. So there's a certain amount of also self-control, um, in the, in really kind of

00:35:30.420 being grounded in nonviolence, but also having that access. And I think that's an important

00:35:35.820 thing to be thinking about, um, the, the privilege that we bring to those spaces. I think when I come

00:35:41.600 into those, you know, whether I'm setting up for a bird dog or training people, or we're getting

00:35:46.120 ready for an action, there is a certain amount of physical violence that we also may, you know,

00:35:51.260 happened, I've been carted out of, you know, the Plaza Hotel, somebody next to me, you know,

00:35:55.920 was thrown on the ground. I know Tara's been at actions on the ground and has seen, you know,

00:36:00.300 where it firsthand or it's actually happening to you. So I think there's a certain amount of just

00:36:05.580 safety and considerations that have to happen. And when you are in a community that you trust,

00:36:12.640 and you know, everybody there is looking out for each other, that feels really powerful.

00:36:16.720 or you know your role so well

00:36:21.000 that there's an intuitive understanding with each other

00:36:24.380 that you know what needs to be done.

00:36:26.860 And I think it's also like it can be fun and funny

00:36:30.180 to just see some of these folks' faces.

00:36:32.520 The arrogance there and they feel like

00:36:34.100 they're almost untouchable.

00:36:36.460 They're human, they're accessible.

00:36:39.340 We have found them, we will continue to find them.

00:36:41.320 And it does feel really powerful to shed a spotlight

00:36:43.660 if not for that moment

00:36:44.940 because the imbalance is so big in the way that corporate power works and people power.

00:36:50.160 And for that moment, we are able to balance things out a little bit and really shed that

00:36:56.980 spotlight. And so I think that is really, really powerful. I think the last piece I want to say

00:37:03.400 here is that there is almost like an adrenaline rush to it too. It is exciting, but really keeping

00:37:09.160 into context, like why we're doing it. So I also 100% agree with Tara and that, you know, frontline

00:37:15.360 and impacted communities should be speaking for themselves in that space. And when we do actions,

00:37:21.300 and if that's not possible, for whatever reason, then those that is the power that we bring there.

00:37:26.660 So all of the losses, there's been so many people that we've lost through these years, that whether

00:37:31.860 it was from environmental substance abuse that was part of a the loss of these systems like

00:37:39.320 these people come with us to these spaces of our own ancestors of our own people of so there's so

00:37:46.020 many people that we bring into these spaces that um that you know their voices that go unheard

00:37:53.480 that we get those glimpses of opportunities to hold huge corporate decision makers accountable

00:37:59.860 and that's all the voices that we're there to share.

00:38:03.340 So I think there is in channeling that power

00:38:05.880 of all those people

00:38:07.060 and knowing that the work you're doing is guided

00:38:09.380 and you're exactly right

00:38:11.340 where you need to be right at the right time

00:38:12.940 and that's how you got access into that meeting

00:38:16.140 or you got behind the stage

00:38:18.760 and were able to have a direct confrontation.

00:38:20.900 There's these just doors open, literally they open

00:38:23.680 and I think it's because the work is guided

00:38:26.240 and it's right and it's what's necessary.

00:38:29.860 now ruth i know you've called out chase ceo jamie diamond who we've been talking about for

00:38:35.960 his hypocrisy and expressing support for the paris agreement and his opposition to president

00:38:40.960 trump's attempt to withdraw from the accord when overseeing a bank that is funding climate change

00:38:47.080 more than any other in the world although chase touts its investments in renewable energy as

00:38:52.460 a quote a market leader in the financial or the financing of wind and solar generating capacity

00:38:57.960 end quote they have claimed no responsibility for dumping a total of 196 billion dollars since

00:39:05.000 2016 into some of the dirtiest sectors of the fossil fuel industry so how is chase part of a

00:39:11.160 larger campaign of greenwashing at a time when their practices and financial trails speak a

00:39:16.440 different truth and how are banks concealing business as usual behavior under a cloak of vague

00:39:21.740 future facing policies quote-unquote and trajectories and marginal investments in

00:39:26.760 renewable energy. Yeah, that's exactly what they're doing. Again, I think that that is

00:39:31.900 totally accurate. It is literally greenwashing to its fullest. Chase is a great example where

00:39:40.040 they have a policy of meeting, I think it's 200 billion in renewables by 2025. So that gives them

00:39:47.800 almost 10 years to meet that commitment, but they've already surpassed that 200 billion in

00:39:52.600 fossil fuel. So it's not even balancing each other out. And that's part of the campaign work

00:39:57.180 that we're doing is peeling away what it is, is like they're kind of a paper shield. And we're

00:40:04.060 cutting through that. We're like, this isn't acceptable anymore. That was part of what the

00:40:07.540 fossil fuel finance report card is about, is sharing that information that is accessible

00:40:12.120 to the public. This is really what's happening. That's part of why we're out there kind of

00:40:17.560 hollering down Jamie Dimon at different events. That was why we went to the Chase shareholder

00:40:22.360 meeting, you know, Seattle again has, you know, shut down dozens and dozens of branches on a

00:40:28.140 similar day. We've had days of action where over 20 cities, you know, went and shut down their

00:40:33.840 local Chase branches and it's only growing. So because this company is so big, Wells Fargo is

00:40:39.680 huge. These are behemoths and it's going to take time for the grassroots and the people power to

00:40:44.980 grow. And it is, it is doing that. And just as we have these litmus tests, like Enbridge's line

00:40:50.620 3, like TransCanada. What we're working for is the bank to step away from one of these toxic

00:40:55.640 projects, just cut ties with that company as an indicator that they're on the path to really,

00:41:01.680 really do the important work. We hear a lot of just like crap from Jamie Dimon about a carbon 0.96

00:41:07.280 tax. You know, he thinks that's going to fix everything, but yet has no policy or procedure 0.99

00:41:12.260 to actually do that internally. And then Tara and I have talked about this a fair amount is that

00:41:17.580 they have these paper policies, but they fall so short on implementation. And so there's a lot

00:41:23.280 of mechanisms that are coming up around human rights abuses, around climate change, that

00:41:29.320 business as usual is just not going to work anymore. The urgency that we're in right now

00:41:34.140 with the climate crisis, I'm based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I have people all around me that you

00:41:40.100 would never think of as radical environmentalists that are like, what are we going to do about

00:41:44.320 climate change. The temperature literally is shifting on so many levels and people are wanting

00:41:50.760 to respond to this. So this crap that the banks are putting out around greenwashing is just not 0.98

00:41:55.940 going to be enough. They're going to have to make systemic changes and they're going to have to be 0.99

00:41:59.920 real changes where we're seeing those shifts like literally on the ground. So whether that's climate

00:42:06.180 stability happening in coastal communities, whether that's stopping expansions of projects

00:42:13.420 and then stepping away from some of these most toxic ones.

00:42:16.380 Those are just some of those first few steps

00:42:18.360 that they're going to have to take

00:42:19.260 to really, really transform,

00:42:21.200 to really meet the needs of what our future,

00:42:24.100 our present and our future demands.

00:42:28.180 I've gone daily with a big idea

00:42:31.840 He went crazy just sitting there

00:42:36.420 How long?

00:42:38.860 How long

00:42:43.340 What's my number, what's my name

00:42:49.980 Bet I'm the next thing that time throws away

00:42:55.960 How long

00:43:03.540 That's easier said than done, pretty honey

00:43:08.240 i'm gonna flop and waste all the money how long how long will it take

00:43:22.960 now i'd like to go um a bit deeper into this conversation around divestment tactics and

00:43:36.280 strategies and while divestment pressure is being applied on an institutional scale at the end of

00:43:41.780 the day it's our money that banks are investing without our clear knowledge or consent and on the

00:43:46.780 flip side of that coin it's also our responsibility to become more vigilant so could you speak to the

00:43:52.240 role of the individual within this movement how much of an impact do we really have when we decide

00:43:58.580 to divest our personal funds and bank accounts and what would you say to those who dismiss divestment

00:44:03.680 as a distraction from the larger systemic problem

00:44:06.340 or fixate on the idea that divestment

00:44:08.560 is just a small drop in the bucket?

00:44:10.700 The amount of impact a individual can have

00:44:14.400 in a movement space is something that I think is,

00:44:19.220 we are too ready to dismiss within ourselves.

00:44:23.460 You know, when we're talking about a handful, 0.56

00:44:26.580 literally a handful, like five Native women

00:44:28.700 who are convincing the Norwegian oil fund

00:44:32.200 to withdraw from the Dakota Access Pipeline.

00:44:36.380 And then that same oil fund says

00:44:37.760 that it's thinking about pulling out of fossil fuels altogether.

00:44:41.280 And then you look at, you know,

00:44:43.600 a handful of people who were over in San Francisco

00:44:46.040 forcing the narrative of a public bank,

00:44:49.340 which has now become, it's in the process of becoming law.

00:44:52.480 I mean, those are individuals who are taking up this banner

00:44:56.500 of we have to do something.

00:44:57.900 you know the the complacency and willingness to just say this is too large of a problem

00:45:04.580 climate change is too much i don't know where to even begin so in lieu of you know trying to figure

00:45:12.280 out what that is i'm just not going to do anything you know that's too often the case and people i

00:45:17.940 completely understand that people feel the incredible overwhelming um nature of climate

00:45:24.780 change. It is overwhelming. We're talking about 10 years, mass extinctions of millions of species,

00:45:30.280 people who are already in migration patterns, you know, areas of the world that have already

00:45:34.340 run out of clean drinking water, potable water. That is a situation that is terrifying. You know,

00:45:40.600 it's absolutely correct that this is finally reaching every community that you could possibly

00:45:46.040 imagine, communities that are not who you would think would be the typical people. I was just at

00:45:50.480 a retreat with some folks and hearing that the number one issue for some of our black voters in

00:45:56.000 the country is climate change, you know, and how surprised the organizers were to learn that,

00:46:01.460 that they didn't think that that would be number one, but it was consistently number one, no matter

00:46:05.760 what the age range was, no matter where they were coming from, whether they're rural or urban,

00:46:10.000 people recognize it as a problem. And so, you know, the importance of the individual that's

00:46:14.500 saying, yes, I can pull my money out of this, that is huge. You're both recognizing your own

00:46:19.760 power within, you know, this capitalistic narrative that's all run off of our backs and our money and

00:46:24.700 our investment and our consumerism. And, you know, looking at what does my individual

00:46:30.940 impact create? So it's not just obviously your money, it's the individual choice that we can

00:46:36.460 make to, you know, change our food habits, change our, you know, trying to be as efficient as we

00:46:44.080 possibly can with our own carbon footprint but not falling not falling i would say victim to the

00:46:50.060 mentality of i'm just one person so what difference can one person make if millions of people bought

00:46:56.680 into and and agreed with the understanding that these banks and institutions cannot run off our

00:47:03.800 money that would make a huge difference the amount of of power that people have to say i want

00:47:10.780 something else you know the industry will respond to that that's what capitalism is that's what

00:47:15.140 consumerism is if we say i don't want to have single-use plastic covering every single piece

00:47:21.200 of fruit i buy and every single beverage that i'm consuming they will respond to that it's just a

00:47:26.600 matter of actually taking the initiative to do it and the power of organizing with each other i mean

00:47:31.680 getting an entire city to adopt a public banking banking model that is such huge change you know

00:47:39.400 you're you're then empowering people you're forcing the narrative of i don't want to be

00:47:44.360 directly invested in climate change i don't want my city to be directly invested in causing climate

00:47:48.500 change and all the other human rights abuses that are probably associated within our investment

00:47:52.380 portfolio you know those are the type of changes that we need because the if you left it to just

00:47:57.740 what the existing narrative is which is you've got some civil society that's gaining traction

00:48:03.920 in some spaces so we're gaining traction maybe in boardrooms some shareholder resolutions

00:48:08.520 you know we're making some changes changes with the equator principles with certain policy

00:48:13.380 but that in and of itself is not enough it should not be up to the the willpower and work of just a

00:48:19.960 handful of people really when you think about the billions of people on the planet to save ourselves

00:48:24.920 you know because that's what we're talking about we're not talking about saving the planet we're

00:48:27.600 talking about saving ourselves and so the power of the individual to realize that they are part

00:48:31.320 of a collective and that their individual identity can amount to so much more when they are empowered

00:48:37.080 with each other is I think you know what a lot of what organizing and movement is about you know

00:48:43.520 that we have to do this even if we are past the point of scientific no return we have to do this

00:48:48.720 as a people we have to at least do the best that we can and and do it as justly as we can

00:48:53.840 so this question I it's kind of weighing on my mind and it's going back to the boardrooms and

00:49:01.600 the people that are making these decisions and i guess you know towards the end of this report

00:49:11.880 card it reflects quote the growing cataclysmic climate disruptions that threaten the existence

00:49:17.040 of humanity itself appear to have have had little or no effect on many banks single-minded

00:49:22.740 concentration on their bottom lines those in charge of these corporations should be more

00:49:27.900 concerned about the well-being of future generations including their own children and

00:49:32.200 grandchildren which is so fundamentally tied to the well-being of our mother earth there is little

00:49:37.180 time or use for remorse end quote so this is a huge question but what do you think is at the

00:49:44.360 heart of this fundamental disconnect in seeing how all of our futures and that of our children

00:49:51.520 are incumbent on the protection of land climate and water is this about willful ignorance or

00:49:57.680 money or what do you think the root is that's causing this type of sheer insanity oftentimes

00:50:05.820 when I'm in spaces of folks and trying to push narrative shift and trying to reach their hearts

00:50:14.280 in a real way I push it how most people feel like something is wrong that there is a sense

00:50:23.580 that something is wrong and too often there's a moment in their lifetimes when they feel like

00:50:28.800 you know what is my purpose what is my you know what am I doing in life these things are not

00:50:35.300 making me happy like these things that I thought would make me happy like physical material things

00:50:43.020 are not making me happy like I was like I've thought my whole life because that's what we're

00:50:46.960 fed from the second we are born to whatever stage of life you're in right now listening to this it

00:50:52.480 it's almost feels like a betrayal, right? Or people get tired and they just keep

00:50:56.340 stuck in the same cycles. And then you see, you know, the explosion of opiates into our

00:51:02.560 society. You see the explosion of depression and suicide and all of these different ills 0.98

00:51:08.920 and sicknesses of people. And we've so fundamentally lost the most basic

00:51:15.380 understandings of who we are. The most basic understanding that, you know, you cannot

00:51:19.520 live without clean water you cannot live without clean air you cannot live without a healthy earth

00:51:25.140 that to destroy the earth is to destroy yourself and too many of the the population has grown so

00:51:33.560 numb to that when they are purchasing almost every single aspect of their lives from a store

00:51:39.000 that they are they're not thinking about the the chicken on the farm that's the appalling and the

00:51:45.080 trauma that they're consuming you know on the daily they're not thinking about that because

00:51:48.980 we haven't been we've we've almost convinced ourselves that we're above the the earth that

00:51:55.340 we are somehow greater than the most powerful than our home you know our home is and our home

00:52:02.500 is responding to that obviously you know as powerful as human beings are you know we're

00:52:07.520 not powerful enough to figure out how to survive and and stop hurricanes or to survive and completely

00:52:15.520 stop wildfires or to stop the the you know the rising seas and the the glacial melt that's

00:52:23.000 happening you know we're not powerful enough to do that and so i think at the core of it

00:52:28.100 people have just forgotten who they really are and we have a limited amount of time to try to

00:52:36.400 reinforce and stir those rememberings within people but you know I think it's upon all of

00:52:43.520 us to do the best that we possibly can to try to reach as many people as possible and you know

00:52:51.180 instill those values while we still can. Ruth I don't know if you have anything that you would

00:52:56.860 like to say speak to that or if there's anything that you feel hasn't been said in this interview

00:53:03.720 so far that you would like to bring attention to? Yeah, I think building on what Tara was just

00:53:09.460 saying, I think that we're sick as a society and we're socialized to be disconnected. And I think

00:53:16.360 that the bankers just really epitomize those positions in a way that they're removed and

00:53:23.660 disconnected, not only from the earth, from each other, but also from the projects that they're

00:53:30.180 actually funding. So it's just numbers on paper. And I think we touched on it earlier is just this

00:53:36.360 part of remembrance of humanity. I think that's the biggest part of this work, whether it's just

00:53:41.760 interactions between each other, but then also with the corporate bad actors, that that is

00:53:46.960 probably actually the real work that we're doing here and how important it is. I think the last

00:53:53.340 piece that I think I want to touch on, because it's so something, it's very prominent for me

00:53:57.840 right now is a self-care and community care. We do this work and it's so very hard. And so I think

00:54:04.040 I just maybe want to remind people to like check in on their people and to see how people are doing,

00:54:10.180 whether it's suffering from loss or trauma, if there's healing, overwork, you know, all these

00:54:15.400 things that can happen to people that, that take on these projects and to be able to, there's,

00:54:20.600 there's, so even if you're not on the front lines, it may be that, you know, you're a cook

00:54:25.220 or you can provide care, there's something that everybody can do to contribute, um, to support

00:54:30.100 and that, um, whatever it is that your gift and skill is that can be put to use to really,

00:54:35.660 really help out. So I think that that's another way that people can show up is doing some of that

00:54:40.700 broader care and, and support work and the community. And it's so, so important. And it's

00:54:45.540 so very needed. I absolutely agree with you, Ruth. And this has been such an incredible

00:54:51.700 conversation and as i was looking through my notes i have one last thing that i wanted to ask

00:54:56.040 just to get my own clarity on when it comes to supporting alternative energy the report notes

00:55:02.180 that quote a just transition for the workers and communities that are currently dependent on fossil

00:55:07.580 fuel extraction is far more likely under a managed decline of mining and drilling rather than allowing

00:55:14.020 these industries to face sudden closures due to policy changes market failures or climate

00:55:19.000 catastrophe, end quote. And I think it's really important that we understand the complexity of

00:55:24.560 what it would be to take down the fossil fuel industry. So I would really like if either of

00:55:30.000 you could further explain this importance of, quote, a managed decline of mining and drilling,

00:55:34.480 and what is necessary in terms of reinvestment for a just transition.

00:55:40.300 I think that's something that we hear pretty regularly in the boardrooms is that they're like,

00:55:43.880 you know we can't stop fossil fuels so hospitals need plastics and um you know they have all these

00:55:49.400 reasons why or the the plane that you took or the air conditioning that's in this room

00:55:53.600 we we hear these things pretty regularly you know from jamie diamond and all these other folks

00:55:58.360 we're not talking about turning the lights off like today or tomorrow we're talking about one

00:56:04.220 stopping expansions so no additional fossil fuels what we have in reserves right now and

00:56:09.960 was already in play is already going to push us back, but over two degrees Celsius, three, four,

00:56:15.260 five, even six degrees, which is uninhabitable. So we need to stop any new infrastructure,

00:56:22.420 any new expansion. Like that's the first thing that banks need to do. And then they need to look

00:56:26.880 at, again, as a series of five years, 10 years, that to the point where we're getting off fossil

00:56:34.220 fuels eventually. We already see coal on its way out, tar sands as well as completely vulnerable.

00:56:41.020 There's been a huge investments in liquefied natural gas and fracking. So gas. And so we

00:56:47.640 need to stop and curb some of those. But I think that's really, really important for understanding

00:56:53.020 is that we're looking at a downward trend over a series of years. We're not talking about

00:56:57.980 things happening literally tomorrow. So I just wanted to like make that super clear.

00:57:02.840 yeah I think and then Tara if you want to touch on just transition yeah and I also would say too

00:57:09.080 you know I saw this interview and I'm sure many of us had followed the environmental

00:57:13.140 you know coverage which is needs to be for far far more I saw this quote by Bill Nye the science

00:57:21.560 guy you know when he's talking and in a very very upfront way about what needs to happen

00:57:29.860 in terms of the climate, that you can't expect it to be easy. You know, that it's not going to be

00:57:38.020 just a simple matter where we're all great and everything continues on the way that it always

00:57:42.560 has. It's going to be painful because there's major, major, major change that's needed.

00:57:49.220 You know, and to pretend otherwise is to deny what basic science and fact is. You know,

00:57:55.680 if we want to save ourselves, which is what we were talking about, it has to be immediate. It

00:58:00.300 has to be urgent and it has to be the urgent level of response that's needed to the urgent

00:58:03.400 level of the problem. You know, it's not going to be this easy, no problem. Let's gradually phase

00:58:09.860 out till 2050, 2070. I mean, that's insanity. You know, when we're talking about 10 years and

00:58:17.080 from the IPCC report, when we're talking about mass extinctions of species, you know, millions

00:58:23.520 of species it is insane to even think about 2050 and 2070 as our goal markers you know as the fact

00:58:31.180 that we can't even get an enforceable Paris accord put out through the world you know that's that's

00:58:36.640 where we're at you know that's the best that we can do at this point or that's what they're saying

00:58:40.720 is the best that we can do from the world's leaders and so you know it's very incumbent on

00:58:45.540 those who are willing to make urgent change and engage in urgent response to do those things that

00:58:53.520 we recognize our own power and we recognize that a handful of people can make significant change,

00:59:00.400 far more significant than a policy that's adopted. And it is important for those policies to be

00:59:05.480 adopted. It's important to set international goals and talk about that and create a platform

00:59:10.480 for an agenda and, you know, aspirational language that we should all be already following.

00:59:16.240 But it also has to come from the people. It has to come from the people who are,

00:59:22.060 you know the system on which all this runs it ultimately all runs off of our power and so you

00:59:28.680 know in terms of a just transition you know just transition is referring to the fact that you know

00:59:34.320 we have to center justice as we make this difficult transition that we recognize that there are

00:59:41.160 sacrifice zones that my people and many others are treated as sacrifice zones currently that we are

00:59:47.460 not quote unquote important enough to matter that we are just merely a statistic or a you know a

00:59:55.040 risk assessment in someone's portfolio somewhere about a community that's going to experience these

01:00:00.360 things that you know when it comes to dakota access they didn't it they couldn't put it 1.00

01:00:05.460 through the drinking water of bismarck because it was 98 percent white but they could put it right

01:00:09.400 next to the reservation because of the you know environmental racism that exists you know that

01:00:15.280 is the opposite of what just transition is just transition is centering and recognizing that we

01:00:20.200 have to put justice in in all of our models of change that when we talk about green new deal

01:00:26.040 we talk about you know these policy changes that are needed towards shifting our economy away from

01:00:31.420 fossil fuels that unless we have justice at the center of that we're we're going to end up at the

01:00:36.760 exact same place that we already were that if we only have so much time left it better be the best

01:00:42.600 that we can probably do in that time, that we can at least treat each other as human

01:00:48.220 beings and have justice at the heart of all that we're doing, justice and equality, that

01:00:54.680 Black and brown folks are not expendable, and that, in fact, many of us are actually 0.98

01:00:59.440 holding off on the world's remaining biodiversity as the rest of the population is busily engaging 1.00

01:01:06.700 and destroying us, that Black and brown communities are experiencing the impact of decisions 0.96

01:01:12.160 made by other people and that that cannot continue to be the narrative as we move in 0.62

01:01:18.860 see this next phase of what climate climate disaster looks like so powerfully spoken both

01:01:25.840 of you and i just want to say on behalf of the for the wild team and the for the wild community

01:01:32.920 we are so very grateful for your courage all the work that it takes for you to do what you do and

01:01:39.240 ruth speaking about self-care and supporting community that that's doing this work that is

01:01:46.700 on the front lines that is in the boardrooms and that we all have a role whether it's being

01:01:52.140 a tender a cook anything to support the people like you both that are out there in the front and

01:02:00.440 if there's anything that you would like to say to the for the wild community in terms of what kind

01:02:05.440 support they can provide either of you or the organizations that you work with, please let us

01:02:13.140 know. And I think it's really important for us to be able to know what we can do if there is

01:02:17.660 anything at this moment. Yeah, I think there's a handful of things that folks can do. Look at who

01:02:24.680 your bank is. Who are you banking with? Where does your money go? If you were able to cut ties with

01:02:30.980 Chase with Wells Fargo. Look at some local credit unions and options and maybe a little bit closer

01:02:37.240 to you. If you're not able to do that, send your branch manager a letter and let them know

01:02:43.000 that or an email that you're not okay with the bank funding climate change. Have your voice be

01:02:49.740 within the system. Call a regional director. So participate in online actions. Financial support

01:02:56.800 is always needed. You know, this work takes money. It takes funds. If folks are able,

01:03:01.840 they can give money. Look at your local community. Are people doing actions? Are they organizing

01:03:07.740 events? You know, is there a local indigenous community there that is active? So there's all

01:03:13.700 different ways that people can show up. That's just a few like right off out of the gate. And

01:03:18.380 then as folks get more involved and deeper, there's always stuff to do.

01:03:26.800 hi everyone this is hannah one of the writers and researchers here at for the wild we'd love for

01:03:38.620 you to join us this week in taking action steps to support the divestment movement as well as

01:03:43.860 those on the front lines working to disrupt the flow of money from wall street to big oil

01:03:48.460 first visit mazoskatalks.org for an in-depth guide on how to divest your personal finances

01:03:54.920 your community, or institutions, and use their resources to spread the word.

01:04:00.340 You can also explore other banking alternatives such as credit unions and local banks at

01:04:04.900 DefundApple or DAPL.com.

01:04:08.520 Second, participate in hashtag shutdown chase or other actions happening in your local cities,

01:04:14.360 or start up a divestment campaign in your own community.

01:04:18.280 Third, make a pledge to tell leaders to stop global giveaways for oil, gas, and coal companies

01:04:23.560 by visiting stopfundingfossils.org.

01:04:27.080 We also encourage you to write letters

01:04:28.840 and phone your banking manager and regional director

01:04:31.320 to tell them to divest from these toxic, harmful projects.

01:04:35.380 For links and more information,

01:04:36.820 you can visit our website

01:04:37.900 or click on the details tab of this episode.

01:04:53.560 Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Wild podcast.

01:05:08.860 I'm Ayanna Young.

01:05:10.540 The music you heard today was from Jordan Moser and Lake Mary.

01:05:15.620 And our theme music is from the late and great Kate Wolfe.

01:05:18.880 I'd like to give a shout out to our team, podcast, production, and editing, Andrew Storrs, writing and lead research, Aidan McRae, outreach and research, Francesca Glassbell and Hannah Wilton, podcast music, Carter Lou McElroy, digital community organizing, Aaron Wise, graphic and web design, Erica Ekrem, and Melanie Younger with Partnerships and Media.

01:05:48.880 Concrete trails and wine

01:05:50.520 Through the canyons dark and white

For The Wild - August 21, 2019

TARA HOUSKA & RUTH BREECH on Divesting from Toxic Capitalism ⧸133

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