Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.
Naomi KleinRead
I think I would say that there is absolutely no way to reconcile an austerity agenda with climate action. Our political class needs to understand that the fight against austerity and the fight for climate action are the same fight.
Interpretation
Austerity measures and climate action are interconnected challenges that cannot be resolved separately.
Naomi Klein emphasizes that the fight against austerity is inseparable from the fight for climate action, advocating for a unified approach to address both issues. She argues that those in power must recognize that economic policies, particularly austerity, directly impact our ability to combat climate change, and therefore, a holistic perspective on these challenges is essential for creating sustainable solutions.
In practice
In a speech discussing economic reforms and environmental policies.
Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.
Because it is such a huge crisis, because it puts us on a firm science-based deadline, it's a once-in-a-century opportunity to build a better society and address raging inequality, create huge numbers of jobs, rebuild our public infrastructure. But, we can't do it unless we break every single rule in the free-market playbook. Which is why the worst people in the world all deny climate change.
Terrorism doesn't just blow up buildings; it blasts every other issue off the political map. The spectre of terrorism - real and exaggerated - has become a shield of impunity, protecting governments around the world from scrutiny for their human rights abuses.
Everybody that's trying to get anything progressive done in this country knows that the biggest barrier is getting money out of politics.
I think the fossil fuel industry is genuinely freaked out by the combination of the price collapse, the divestment movement, and that fact that renewable energy is getting so cheap so fast.
As I was writing 'The Shock Doctrine', I was covering the Iraq War and profiteering from the war, and I started to see these patterns repeat in the aftermath of natural disasters, like the Asian tsunami and then Hurricane Katrina.
Part of people's concern is just the sense that around the world the old order isn't holding and we're not quite yet to where we need to be in terms of a new order that's based on a different set of principles, that's based on a sense of common humanity, that's based on economies that work for all people.
I am willing to release old negative beliefs. They are only thoughts that stand in my way. My new thoughts are positive and fulfilling.
There came a time when you realized that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went.
'Hairspray' maybe did change people's minds, and that's how you get your political enemies to change their minds - by making them laugh and making them look at something in a way they haven't seen it. Not by preaching and cutting them off and being a separatist.
You are the world. When you transform yourself, the world you live in will also be transformed.
All destruction, by violent revolution or however it be, is but new creation on a wider scale.
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