Breaking Green

After Glasgow with Dr. Shannon Gibson

• Global Justice Ecology Project / Host Steve Taylor • Season 1 • Episode 6

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 The UN Conference of Parties in Glasgow is now behind us. 

Despite all the hype leading up to the meeting, did the Glasgow Pact provide results or did the nations of the world miss yet another opportunity for real change and hope for averting planet wide environmental disaster?

Is Climate Change even a problem that can be addressed by the Nations of the world or are certain interests too entrenched within those systems to allow meaningful action by these political entities?

In this episode of Breaking Green we will talk with Professor Shannon Gibson who studies the United Nation’s process to address climate change at USC.

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Steve Taylor  
Welcome to breaking green, a podcast by global justice ecology project. On breaking green, we will talk with activists and experts to examine the intertwined issues of social, ecological and economic injustice. We will also explore some of the more outrageous proposals to address climate and environmental crises that are falsely being sold as green. I am your host, Steve Taylor. The United Nations Conference of Parties in Glasgow is now behind us. Despite all the hype leading up to the meeting, did the Glassgow pact provide results? Or did the nations of the world miss yet another opportunity for real change and hope for averting planet wide environmental disaster? Is climate change even a problem that can be addressed by the nations of the world? Or are certain interests too entrenched within those systems to allow meaningful action by these political entities? In this episode of Breaking Green, we will talk with Professor Shannon Gibson, who studies the United Nation's process to address climate change. Dr. Gibson is an associate professor of International Relations and Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California, where she teaches courses and conducts research on global environmental politics, global public health and civil society. Dr. Gibson, welcome to breaking green.

Dr. Gibson  
Thanks, glad to be here.

Steve Taylor  
Before we get to the cop, in particular, this cop, I wanted to ask you, as an educator and college professor, why are you interested in global warming and the process of international agreements?

Dr. Gibson  
Well, I think for one thing, you know, as a professor, oftentimes, we're driven by what is interesting to our students and what they demand that we speak on. And right now, you know, global climate change is the defining issue of our time, because it links up with all sorts of other issues related to social justice, racial justice, economic justice, that are concerning, you know, for teens and people in their early 20s. Right now in college. And then in terms of looking at international agreements, historically, international law has been kind of problematic, you know, we have all of these different treaties, dealing with human rights, conflict, the environment. And they spend a lot of time writing these very long treaties. And unfortunately, when put into practice, there end up being huge loopholes. And it's very difficult to hold states accountable. And so I think in terms of a, an issue with an international law, climate change is a particularly interesting one to study.

Steve Taylor  
There seemed to be a lot of disappointment expressed by Antonio Guterres, the president of the UN, at the close of this Conference of Parties. And although he said that there was some progress, he said that nations needed to be more ambitious if the 1.5 degree limit of the Paris Accords were to be realized. So what was your take on on the hype versus what this conference actually produced?

Dr. Gibson  
I think it's important to put it in the context of what the actual targets are in the treaties that we have. So prior to the Paris agreement under the Kyoto Protocol, our target was this two degrees sort of threshold. And what that references is two degrees above pre industrial levels that we don't want to go over. Then in the Paris Agreement, they upped that ambition. When you look at the language, it's a little loose, it's what we kind of call an aspirational goal. But they upped that, that sort of goal to 1.5 degrees. And the reason for that is that there are a number of developing countries that came together and said, hey, you know, if we make it to a two degree world, yes, you in North America, in the US, Canada, Europe, you all will be okay. But for low lying island nations, Sub Saharan Africa, landlocked countries, 1.5 is still going to be a pretty difficult world. So going into cop 26, there was a big, like a lot of focus and talk about these targets, from a mitigation standpoint. And so if you looked at what all of the commitments that countries have put together, added up to going into cop 26. And I'm using references from the climate action tracker. It took us to about a 2.7 degree world. Then if you look at the movement in the two weeks because we had some important announcements, what you know, the United States, the Biden team up to their mitigation targets. India made a huge statement in the first week. That also improved the mitigation targets, but even in two weeks, that 2.7 drops down to about 2.4. You know, so in those two weeks yes, we did have some movement, but unfortunately the cops are really slowburn. It seems that, you know, we get a little bit of movement, but it's never as much as we need.

Steve Taylor  
Well, 2.7 and 2.4 would would be disastrous, would it not?

Dr. Gibson  
Absolutely. You know, and the other thing that came out, you know, this was timed purposefully, but we have the new assessment report that came out from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just prior to the cop. And I think that was good timing, because it kept the cop, you know, in, in the media, and had us talking about the science because unfortunately, especially in the US context, that gets buried a lot. And, you know, if you look at those reports on what's expected, the kind of the changing weather patterns, ecosystem changes at a 2.5 or higher world will absolutely be catastrophic.

Steve Taylor  
So, if we don't meet the 1.5, it's going to be catastrophic. And we're already seeing consequences, and there's certain poorer nations, is it not correct to say that they're actually bearing the greater brunt of some of the current manifestations of climate change?

Dr. Gibson  
Oh, absolutely. It's this kind of cruel irony, you know, that the countries that have done the least, to cause the climate change problem, are the ones that are suffering the first and worst. Right, so if you look at the Maldives, you know, other Tuvalu other island nations that are experiencing water insecurity, food insecurity, also losing their actual statehood, because of rising sea levels. This this current loss and damage is happening now. And you know, from someone who lives and works in the United States, I hear a lot of people talk about climate change, as if, though, it's something that will happen in the future. But that's because in the United States, most of us have the privilege of not experiencing climate change as it's happening, because we have air conditioning, we drive to work, you know, things like that. And so certainly climate changes is not something far out. It is happening now for sure.

Steve Taylor  
So I want to drill down on that a bit more. You know, a lot a lot has been said about the debt, that wealthier nations have to the poor ones, a climate debt. But allthough there's been a lot of talk about pledges, real actions seem to fall short of the rhetoric. What happened to the loss and damage fund that's been talked about so much to help to help these poor nations deal with the consequences of basically, what the wealthier nations are driving, which is climate change?

Dr. Gibson  
Yeah, so finance was a huge topic at COP 26. And I think it's important to know that there's different financial mechanisms for different things. So oftentimes, you'll hear in the media, but $100 billion, and you will leave that target that was set back in 2009. At cop 15. Most of that was meant for mitigation started, how do we help developing countries contribute to mitigating the climate problem in the future? Then we have an adaptation fund, which is how do we deal with, you know, kind of adapting to climatic change as it's occurring. And then this third is loss and damage. And this comes from the that's called the Warsaw mechanism, and this commitment to set up what's called the Santiago network, but basically saying, Okay, well, how do we compensate countries that have already experienced, you know, loss and damage from our changing climate. And we got some movement on mitigation, a little bit more clarity on adaptation, and unfortunately, loss and  damage, they kind of punted. They said, yes, we acknowledge this as an issue, and we, you know, hereby commit to continue working on it. But let's take this up at COP 27 in Egypt. And so they really didn't get to a specificity of, you know, really implementing and fleshing out how that funding mechanism will work, and how countries can then access that money. So, you know, unfortunately, it was not what a lot of developing countries had had hoped for.

Steve Taylor  
Well, you know, a lot of developing countries, I think we're pretty vocal about that. Just maybe you could correct me if I'm wrong, but but cop 15 2009 in Copenhagen, the world's wealthiest countries that were participating pledged to give poor nations yearly climate funding to reach 100 billion by the year 2020. Does that sound accurate?

Dr. Gibson  
Yes, that was the the the promise at the time and then also, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made this announcement that the US was going to do 10 billion and fast track funding. And unfortunately, what we've seen is that those promises that were made have not been fulfilled. They have not hit that target, and even missing that target, there have been other problems. So for example, one of the biggest claims that developing countries make is that that climate funding should be new and additional meaning we don't want developed countries taking funding from, say, female literacy programs or public health initiatives and shifting it to climate. And a lot of countries have done that European countries, the United States, etc. So not only we missed the target, but even the specifics of that funding. There's there's a lot of ways that countries are getting around putting forth the, you know, the full commitment that they promised. 

Steve Taylor  
I mean, it just seems like there's always a lot of promises. But then very little follow through. I mean, would someone really not be would be, would someone really be missing the point? If they were looking at this and saying, I'm not sure if anything's going to happen? I'm not sure if this is really something that's tractable, you know, within the wheelhouse of the political class?

Dr. Gibson  
Yeah, I think this is one of the broader criticisms that's been made of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in the system of annual cops is that they've almost become a stage for countries, right? So world leaders, the presidents, the prime ministers come. And they make these great pronouncements. And they get a lot of PR and media coverage for it. And they all clap each other on the back and say, look, what wonderful leaders we are. And then they go home, and they do about 60% of what they said they would do. And so I think that's why they're rightfully should be a focus on some of the more, you know, bottom up approaches, the grassroots movements, what people are doing in their own communities, because we certainly need to bridge the divide between what's happening on the ground. And then what's happening at these more exclusive negotiations,

Steve Taylor  
Climate justice movements, have you have you watched any of that? Do you have a take on any of that the climate, climate justice movements and protests and, and self help, let's say citizens self help?

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, um, as a scholar activist, you know, I've been involved with the climate justice movement for over a decade. Starting back in Copenhagen, I've been to climate and other protests at the G 20. Summit, attending World Social forums, attending protests in Los Angeles, where I'm based. And I think one thing we've seen is that the climate justice movement has grown so much has grown so large in the last decade, and the other thing that's been really amazing to watch is sort of called social movements spillover. So that climate is no longer just an environmental issue. Right. So that there, we're pulling in people that see the connections between, again, issues relating to gender, immigration, race, economic issues, that climate justice is just not a singular, you know, kind of tree hugging type of issue. T hat it's going to affect all people in different ways, of course. But so seeing that movement become more vibrant, over the last decade has been wonderful. It's also become much more inclusive. And it used to be that the environmental movement kind of we tended to see the big, the big NGOs take the lead the ones that came from North America, Europe, that didn't maybe feature as much diversity, as we would like to see. And now we're seeing grassroots movements that are taking, you know, they're moving their emphasis and their campaigns to the global level. And that's helping to broaden the discussion within the environmental movement. And I think the other thing that we've seen is really been youth involvement. And that's, I would say, in the last couple of years, that has really expanded, especially throughout 2020. And so seeing some of those youth voices in the climate talks has been very welcomed, and the UN has had to respond to that they are setting up separately, separate youth forums in future cops. Because again, you have to look at and think about representation. But having been to, you know, four cops in person, the average age of people that are they're doing the high level negotiations are in their 40s and 50s or older. And when we think about who's going to be dealing with the ramifications of future climatic change, it's obviously the younger generation. And so they should have a voice in this process.

Steve Taylor  
Right. I mean, it's, they have no real future, if we are, or at least they have a very challenging one, if we're looking at some of these more dramatic or drastic consequences if we can't get climate change under control. But let me ask you a little bit more about access. I mean, I've seen that too. We we have our, you know, at the cops, you have the the youth events, and that's great. And it's great to have that voice at the same time, w hat about access overall? I mean, some people have criticized this last conference for being a bit exclusive and set up for those of privilege.

Dr. Gibson  
Yes, I would say that access was very limited for for cop 26, for a couple of reasons. First, you know, having the the presidents and prime ministers come at the beginning of the cop, as opposed to the end like they used to. Oftentimes, the United Nations will say, you know, for security reasons, we have to limit the amount of people that are in the conference center. And when they make their choices about who to limit, obviously, they're not going to cut state delegations. They're not going to tell other organizations, you know, governmental organizations, what they do is they tend to start cutting among civil society. And so we saw that that happened, which has been happening more and more. Also COVID played a huge part. Right. So in terms of being able to travel to Scotland, and be able to get to Glasgow, there were vaccine requirements, there were requirements for quarantining if you didn't have maybe the correct vaccine, and all these things, you know, when you look at vaccine distribution globally, it's well known right, that a number of our developing countries are countries in the Global South, that are begging for vaccines are not getting them. In addition to that, being able to quarantine, it's incredibly cost prohibitive. And then even when you look at the cost to stay in Glasgow, hotels were four to $500 a night, the food, they were price gouging, all sorts of things that just made it incredibly difficult for people who don't have enormous amounts of resources to be able to attend in person. And then you mentioned also some of these other, you know, what we call the side events that the United Nations hosts. So they do have spaces for civil society for youth, voices or indigenous groups. However, not just sort of metaphorically or on the, on the fringes, they actually oftentimes, logistically are on the fringes of the talks. So where the civil society spaces is often physically disconnected from the official negotiations. So for example, I can recall at COP 16, when we were in Cancun and cop 23, which was in Bonn, if you wanted to get from a civil society space to the official negotiations, it would sometimes take you 15 to 30 minutes to go by bike or by bus. And if you're trying to attend multiple meetings, because civil society again tends to be a bit more resource strapped you one person doing lots of things you physically couldn't attend, the the things that maybe you were tasked with being a part of. So there were a lot of barriers that I think and  some really did contribute to this being you know, the one of the whitest most exclusive most privileged cops we've seen in recent history.

Steve Taylor  
This is your host, Steve Taylor, and we will be back right after this.

Theresa Church  
Global Justice Ecology Project partners with small nonprofits when a group or organization whose nonprofit work closely aligns with our mission by becoming a fiscal sponsor. This helps them minimize bureaucracy so they can focus on their crucial work for ecological and social justice, force protection and human rights. GJEP is proud to sponsor the third international conference, Paulo Freire re the global legacy. The conference celebrates the world renowned Brazilian educator, philosopher, social justice advocate, and one of the most preeminent educators of the 20th century. The Paulo Freire conference brings together educators, academics, students, researchers, and practitioners to reflect on the current status of his pedagogical thought, and its application across a wide variety of academic disciplines.

Steve Taylor  
Welcome back to breaking green. Current estimates are that there needs to be an annual reduction of 27 metric tons of co2 to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, but current pledges get us only a quarter of the way there. And we've heard all the hype leading up to Copenhagen, I'm sorry, leading up to Glasgow and and how global warming is an extinction level event for humankind. We saw all of this hype, we've saw more emphasis placed on youth, which is a good thing. But given that gap of what we're doing and what is needed to be done, what is one to make of this? Did cop 26 bring what was needed?

Dr. Gibson  
I think in looking at all the different aspects, you know, mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage finance. We had small progress in certain areas, but it certainly did not deliver on what the world requires at this point in time. And I think that a lot of those bigger movements perhaps will have to take place more sort of locally at municipal state levels. Because just the the movement and the traction of the UN it's just really slow right now. I think one other thing that contributed to that is countries were lacking a little bit of leadership. You know, in Copenhagen, we had the Obama administration come in and make a lot of promises, and that did actually get some other countries on board. I think one thing that I saw that was quite clear at this cop was the amount of soft power that the United States has lost in the last four years. And a lot of countries kind of are have the mentality of, alright, well, they say they're leading now. But what's going to happen after the next election, right. And so now you have China and India and some other countries that are trying to take on this leadership role, but they have their own challenges and economic development, and things like that. So I think we're seeing a loss of sort of political guidance at this very high level. And hopefully, you know, moving forward, we can get more traction, and more political will over time. But the process itself is complicated, and clearly too slow.

Steve Taylor  
Um, I wanted to ask you about some of the solutions that are being proposed. So there's been a lot of criticism regarding geoengineering, new green revolutions, the pushing of GMOs, this over reliance on offsets? Are we just being too critical? What's what's How do you view that? Are interests using this crisis, more to promote market solutions that benefit them than actually addressing emissions?

Dr. Gibson  
Absolutely, I think offsetting is something that's particularly worrisome. So under our previous climate treaties, developed countries argued quite strenuously that they couldn't be expected, you know, to bear all these mitigation costs within their own country. I t would be too politically and economically costly. So they argued for what became known as flexible mechanisms. And within this umbrella of flexible mechanisms, that includes things like carbon trading, which is something that, for example, the European Union has embraced quite heavily, and a series of offset schemes. And I think you can just look at the European Union and what happened in their first, you know, the first two or three rounds of them trying to implement that training scheme. And it was pretty bad. The first thing they did was ask, you know, different sectors, how much they thought they would pollute, in the upcoming years as a way to divvy out carbon credits, which are more or less permits to pollute. They said, How much do you think you're going to pollute. Of course, because business interests prevailed they all overestimated. So then the European Union gave out those credits, and they gave them out for free. And then what happens when you have too much supply and not enough demand, right, the carbon credit prices bounced all over the place, and remained very low for a long time. Some other issues with trading and offsetting, you know, the devil is certainly in the details of a lot of these things. So let's take for example, someone you know, a country invests in what we call reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, what's known as REDD within the climate talks. So you could have a country like Norway that may be partnered up with an oil company, to then pay the government of Brazil to preserve some a part of the, you know, Amazon, right, the rainforest. And then for that they can get carbon credits. The problem with that, though, is we've now created a permanent financial instrument tied to something that lives and dies in nature, right. And so then we have all these problems with the accounting, Greenpeace has done some pretty good investigative work on looking at the accounting problems of some of these projects. We have enormous amounts of leakage. And so the problem with this is that with these offsets, and they're not being managed, or overseen very well, you have countries that can claim that they've reduced, you know, however, many metric tons of co2, but in the real world that doesn't add up. And so we could think collectively that, oh, we're reaching a two degree target. But if everyone is making these small mistakes, either purposefully or accidentally, there's lots of leakage. And I'm not even getting to the social concerns about some of these offset projects and other things like nature based solutions. But we could collectively think, Oh, we've hit the target. But what if we're off by point five degrees, right? And so some of these projects are kind of still allowing developed countries to pursue business as usual. They don't have to make the hard changes they need at home to start transitioning into greener, cleaner economies renewables and things like that. And basically just prolonging the timeline, as we use some of these solutions that might not maybe shouldn't be term solutions. Maybe they they're necessary in the short to mid term, but they're certainly long term never going to get us to where we need to be.

Steve Taylor  
We talked about limited access that it was, you know, it's harder for for certain groups or interests to participate fully. Is their access, do you think or at least influence by Oh, corporations or market interests in these negotiations? 

Dr. Gibson  
Oh, yes, this cop, there was a bit of media coverage that that said, you know that the largest delegation wasn't actually a state delegation. But if you took all of the representatives from coal, oil and gas, and put them together, it was some 500 participants. There's huge amount of access to what, but they get called bingos, or business and industry NGOs, which, again, kind of dubious, I don't know that we should be calling businesses and companies, nongovernmental organizations, the same that we would call an environmental advocacy group or, you know, indigenous peoples organization. They do get classified as part of civil society in this process. So they have enormous access inside the cop. But outside informally, they buy a lot of access, right. So whether they're paying to be a corporate sponsor, like Unilever did, then they get to go to all the private dinners, and they get to meet with people privately in the halls and at the bars, right. And so they do have this another extra level of added influence that, again, the everyday environmentalist, or frontline community member would not have.

Steve Taylor  
So it's been said, on this program, by a guest. And probably more than one, that any real change is not going to happen within the current system. So if I say to you, system change, what do you have to say to that?

Dr. Gibson  
I think that that's a critical component, right? Unfortunately, and we've seen this through the cops, but also some of the, what we call the mega conferences, right, like so the the Earth Summit in Rio, then Rio plus 20. back in 2012. One of the major themes, one was looking at sort of like organizations for sustainable development, the other was looking at the the green prospects for the green economy. And I think that what we see is that no matter what issue we deal with the pervasiveness of capitalist logic, and thinking in terms of problem solving, is incredibly, it's seen throughout every corner of these talks. And so when we're talking about climate change, we're not just talking about environmental or scientific or technical solutions, we really have to rethink how society, our economy, those major systems are set up and who the winners and losers are in those systems, and who gets a voice at the table. So I think system change is critical to this discussion.

Steve Taylor  
So Professor Gibson, you you have students and I suspect at the at the institution you teach, a lot of them are traditional students, so younger youth, what's their take on this?

Dr. Gibson  
 So in my course, in the semester, I was teaching my class on the politics of the global environment. And I had my own small research team that was following cop 26. And I think kind of the the collective, there's sort of two things that stand out. From what what they have told me. The first is that students are in addition to dealing with the troubles of COVID-19, and the return to in person, you know, classes, they're also battling eco depression. Right? That is, as we watch, these talks proceed year after year. And as you've mentioned, you know, that the wins if we get any seem relatively small, that that's added to their sort of collective anxiety for this generation. The second thing, and I thought this was interesting, because I sat with four of my students when they watched President Obama, because former President Obama made sort of a surprise speech at COP 26. They were a little ticked off by some of his comments. A lot of them felt like some of the comments being made by politicians right now that say what we need is the youth to stand up and you need to take the charge and lead the way. They found somewhat condescending that you know, that they are willing to try and do those things, but they also want older generations to take responsibility for their failures to act on these issues. And they've also made comments you know, like, well, we'd be we would love to lead. But if you're getting a degree in the social sciences, or if you're attending a four year university, we also have to pay off are enormous student debt when we get out, right. So there's only so many so much that that younger people can do in the context of the world that we live in now. And so I think that they're also getting a little frustrated with some of the standard speeches, whether it's conservative liberal, doesn't matter, that come from politicians. And that's why I think we see more of our youth kind of leaning towards the grassroots organizations and level of action, as opposed to maybe go into more like formalized political route.

Steve Taylor  
Is there anything that I have not asked you about this cop or global warming in general that you'd like to discuss?

Dr. Gibson  
I think there was an interesting political development related to the mention of fossil fuels and coal in the treaty, that I think is interesting to consider, because the sort of mainstream media coverage of it, I think, misses a bit of the backstory or what's between the lines. So in the because we I was following the iterations of the of the treaty as they were developing each each day. Basically, they negotiate during the day, and during night, they work on the text, and the new one comes out very early in the morning. And so first, we were really excited to see this language about the phase out of coal and fossil fuel subsidies, because, surprisingly, not enough coal and fossil fuel, those words have not been in a previous treaty on climate change, if you can believe that. But then what happened was over the course of about 72 hours, that very small changes to that language had a huge impact. So in the next iteration, instead of saying phase out of coal and fossil fuel subsidies, it then red phase out of unabated coal, and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. And so what unabated coal is basically, codeword for is carbon capture and storage technology, right? So some of these, you know, geoengineering types of technologies, which a lot of us are quite concerned about. And then inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, I would love to know who gets to make that determination of what is an efficient versus inefficient, fossil fuel subsidy. And then by the end, that the word phase out, was then changed to phase down. Right. So what started as some fairly strong language got watered down. But I think the other thing to point out is that in the media, a lot of people are saying that this was China in India that made this change. And I just wanted to point out two things. The first is, why wasn't oil or natural gas included, and only coal? And if you think about that, it's because it's largely developed countries trying to put the impetus on the developing countries who are still more dependent on coal. The second thing is, we didn't hear anybody from the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, jumping up and down saying no, no, no, we don't want this watered down language. So I think it might be perhaps a bit unfair to  hang this completely on China and India and other developing countries. So I think that's that's also an interesting and still somewhat saddening development. 

Steve Taylor  
That's a very interesting observation. It brings to mind that there was a lot of daylight between what President Biden, United States President Biden was saying, and what the United States delegation was committing to. Am I right about that?

Dr. Gibson  
Yes, this happens quite a bit. As a professor in international relations, we often refer to this as two level games, right. So you have what a country is doing domestically, and everyone new internationally what was happening at home, in the US and for my home, in the US about the reconciliation bill, and all of these other challenges, with Biden trying to create this coalition on funding and finance and climate was tied up in that. And then you have the at the international level, where oftentimes, again, much more progressive or flowery statements might be made. And this happened also back at in Copenhagen and cop 15, right, where President Obama went to Copenhagen and made all of these commitments and pronouncements for the Paris Agreement, and then back home could not get a coalition willing to support a lot of that. So we see this happen quite a bit, not just in the United States, it can happen in other countries as well, where there seem to be kind of two sets of talking points, and then you just kind of hope that they'll meet in the middle somewhere in the next year.

Steve Taylor  
For those who may be a little disappointed in the cop, do you have any suggestions where they might turn to some organizations or forums that they might feel are a little bit more Oh, I don't know, realistic or  sincere in their approach? 

Dr. Gibson  
Yeah, I think there's a lot of great organizations out there, I think as an activist, you know, it's important to find the organization that speaks to you in terms of kind of your, your ideology, your level of action that you want to engage in, but some of the groups that I've seen that have have a really good sort of outline of how people can get involved, you know, like the sunrise movement, also the Indigenous Environmental Network, grassroots global justice, there's a lot of organizations out there that have very specific programs in mind, right, like what system change would actually look like? And they're having that conversation with folks in politics that are focusing on the green New Deal. Of course, their take is a little bit different. But whether you know, you want to get into campaigning, fundraising, social media, you know, some of these a lot of these organizations have spaces so that any young person or older person, you know, given your own your own skillset and talents would be able to plug effectively into the climate justice movement.

Steve Taylor  
And let's not forget global justice ecology. 

Dr. Gibson  
Exactly. 

Steve Taylor  
Thank you, Professor Gibson for joining us.

Dr. Gibson  
Thanks for having me.

Steve Taylor  
You have been listening to breaking green, a global justice Ecology Project podcast. Find us at Global Justice ecology project dot org. Visit to find more interviews, podcast organizations, and ideas for addressing climate change.