00:00As world leaders gather in Turkey for COP31, the climate movement faces an uncomfortable truth.
00:07Global emissions remain stubbornly high, fossil fuels continue to dominate,
00:12and political resistance to green policies is growing.
00:16Have climate activists failed to turn public pressure into real political action,
00:20or is the problem that governments simply refuse to listen?
00:24Joining me now in our studio is social environmental activist Chloe Mikulaychuk.
00:28Good morning and welcome.
00:30Good morning, thanks.
00:31So, Chloe, I want to be blunt.
00:33After decades of climate marches, protests and campaigning, global emissions are still rising.
00:40Has climate activism actually failed?
00:44No, it hasn't failed.
00:45I think we just, we know, you know, the climate science is very clear and we're seeing it with our
00:50own eyes.
00:51This summer has been absolutely terrible.
00:53There's been 50,000 deaths linked to extreme weather events and two-thirds can be attributed to climate breakdown.
00:58If we're talking about the economics, it's 180 billion euros that, you know, just went up in flames because of
01:05climate breakdown.
01:06We know all of that.
01:07What we're currently missing is the political willingness to act.
01:11And we see that in some countries, the political willingness is there.
01:15And I'm sorry to say, but most of these countries actually have progressive leaders.
01:19So, we have hope based on the election of Lula a few days ago.
01:24We have hope from the midterm results in the U.S. as well.
01:28We just need to have decision makers that actually do want to act.
01:32And I think this is extremely difficult until we're not really serious about the influence of the fossil fuel industry.
01:38We're not willing to uncouple, basically, our dependency on fossil fuels.
01:43And we need to stop putting billions every year into fossil fuel subsidies.
01:47So, when activists block roads, disrupt public events or target works of art, as in the past,
01:55are they winning converts or simply reinforcing the perception that climate activists are out of touch?
02:02No, we're not out of touch, once again.
02:03I mean, being out of touch is denying what has happened this summer.
02:08Europe is the fastest warming continent on the planet.
02:11And you would have to be extremely blind to miss that.
02:15So, I think everyone who presents themselves as reasonable, you know, or very smart,
02:20such as what we're seeing in our conservative politicians that are in power most of Europe today,
02:25is that they're actually just very stupid and foolish in what they're pushing for.
02:30In Europe, we were sort of on a good path.
02:34It wasn't a perfect path, but we were sort of on a good path, right?
02:36We still fall short of the targets that we have established.
02:39But now what we're seeing is that there's a massive sort of rollback on a lot of environmental and climate
02:45policies that we committed to,
02:46whether it's on the methane regulation, whether it's on ETS, on the car regulation.
02:52We're being lobbied by certain countries, such as the US and the fossil fuel industry,
02:57but also just from internal Europe.
02:59There is a strong push, notably from conservative politicians and certain industries, to roll back.
03:04Have you been surprised by the power of that backlash?
03:09Surprised, I would say yes and no, because we always knew that these forces were very strong
03:14and they were very organized and they're really well funded.
03:17I think what we're seeing now is that people are also willing to stand up against these forces.
03:24What we're seeing in a lot of the protests across Europe these days,
03:28obviously it's mainly about cost of living.
03:30It's led by the youth.
03:31But there is in some of them a very strong environmental component as well.
03:36People are willing to make efforts.
03:38They just need these efforts to appear as fair.
03:42And until these efforts are not fair,
03:44until we keep continuing to subsidize the fossil fuel industry with billions
03:48and polluting industry with billions,
03:49and we're letting billionaires of the hook and all of that,
03:53it's going to be very difficult for people to make efforts on that front.
03:56So we need the decision makers to actually take decisions that are ambitious,
04:01but that appear as fair as well.
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