Billie Eilish and 8 Climate Activists Get Real About Our Planet — Vogue

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: - And you don't seem to notice I'm not here. [00:00:06] Speaker 2: - The word eco comes from the Greek meaning home, but how disconnected we are from our home. You know, this is where we live. [00:00:15] Speaker 1: - I spent all alone, I had to go home. [00:00:22] Speaker 3: Can't you hear me alone? - The climate anxiety that I feel is really strong. I'm really curious to know because you guys are really going and doing this all the time and spending your time doing it. I want to know how are you guys just okay? [00:00:44] Speaker 2: - As I said before, community holds you in your darkest days and being part of a movement where you are with people who are experiencing exactly the same thing. [00:00:54] Speaker 4: People don't know how to help because they're hurting. How can you help others and help the community when you're hurting yourself, when you can't even help yourself? And it's all about healing. Healing the earth heals ourselves. Healing ourselves heals the earth. [00:01:14] Speaker 3: People just so much of the time can't see things unless they specifically experience them. And so it's just hard when life seems perfect. [00:01:24] Speaker 4: Well, how bad can it be? As someone that is like, you know, gone into the Capitol, been in Congress, that has done a lot of lobbying on protecting our sacred lands from fossil fuel extraction, and, you know, everything that's going on with the climate crisis in Alaska and in my homelands. You know, knowing what was going on, I couldn't just sit back and like let that sit inside of me. I had to be a part of this movement. [00:01:52] Speaker 5: Yeah, so I see myself as a scholar activist, navigating academia and also navigating the activist realm, and specifically trying to use my proximity to these institutions of power, like Oxford and the Rhodes Program. I have an organization, nonprofit called Black Girl Environmentalists, that is meant to celebrate the unique contributions that Black women, Black girls, and Black non-binary environmentalists have had in the environmental space. [00:02:19] Speaker 6: In my personal experience, at the age of nine, I started getting really sick from nosebleeds, stomach pains, asthma, and at the age of 19, I was diagnosed with cancer. People Not Full Sources is really a grassroots campaign in my community of South Los Angeles, and it's an intergenerational grassroots campaign. You know, it had youth and elders involved and it was us demanding that the city listen to us, us demanding that we have the right to breathe clean air, the right to open our windows in our own homes. It's environmental racism where these wells are placed. Black and brown, indigenous, low-income people are suffering these impacts at a greater rate than the rest. [00:03:03] Speaker 2: I often think the word climate in and of itself is a very whitewashed perception of what this is. If it were to be accurately named to me, I would call it the result of all systems of oppression crisis. But that doesn't have a ring to it, does it? Like, no one's gonna, you know, use that. [00:03:20] Speaker 5: I felt as though environmentalism sat in this high tower of privilege, whiteness, and wealth. And I said, that's not a movement for me and the issues that I feel like are so prevalent to my life. Racial justice, gender justice, and it's been in actually seeing the environment as an opportunity, and the environmental movement as an opportunity that is going to allow us in solving the climate crisis, to essentially restructure our world. [00:03:46] Speaker 7: We've always been here. Our ancestors have always been here doing this work before sustainability was even a word, you know, like the way that we know of it today. I'm born and raised in Georgia, which is the heart of the civil rights movement. And there's so much overlap between civil rights and social justice activism and environmental activism. [00:04:16] Speaker 8: And something that I really try to strive away from is that not looking at these big technocratic solutions, but actually looking within local solutions that are actually rooted in evidence-based hope. You know, foraging, going around Los Angeles and looking for fresh fruits and vegetables that are growing outside or growing your microgreens in your apartment, like, these are radical acts to actually share and showcase how food is actually used as a tool to oppress us, or it can nourish us and challenge us to be better. [00:04:46] Speaker 7: We know all environmental issues are human rights issues. So even when you look at sustainable fashion and the impact that the fashion industry has on our planet, on our climate, you also look at the impact that it has on people. So how it's mostly women of color that are, you know, put in these dangerous work environments and their, you know, rights are not being fought for on a larger scale. [00:05:14] Speaker 1: I remember, like, learning about what the meat and the dairy industry was doing to our planet. And that's when I was like, "What?!" [00:05:23] Speaker 8: To me, veganism kind of led me to that compassionate lens rather than this, like, absolute lens of, like, this is about perfectionism. It's more about understanding. [00:05:31] Speaker 9: But at least for me, there's always this pressure to be the perfect activist and fit this exact model of what an activist should be. And I love your work as bat activist. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yes. [00:05:44] Speaker 2: We are a group of people who were in the climate justice space who felt so perhaps held back and also weighed down by the expectation of others to the point where, like, it really hinders people from taking action. Because it's like, if you're not good enough, then what's the point? [00:06:02] Speaker 6: We don't know everything either. You know, we're doing our part. We know what our bodies have been through. We know what our families and our communities have lived. But at the end of the day, I don't know all of the legal terms. I don't know all of the scientific facts. But that's why we work as a team with the people who do. [00:06:17] Speaker 7: We share each other's knowledge and experience. [00:06:19] Speaker 6: Because together, we know everything. [00:06:21] Speaker 2: For me as well, like, climate deniers and climate doomers are on that safe wavelength, you know? Because, like, what does that do for us? What does that do to generate and inspire us, right? To generate hope and inspire us to build a better future. And I'm, like, very curious as well about indigenous wisdom. You work very closely with your family. What have you learned from them about this concept of stubborn optimism? [00:06:46] Speaker 10: The realities are so different from people who are learning about the climate crisis in the global north versus people who are experiencing it in the global south. The reason why it's stubborn and not just optimism is because the stubbornness comes from the resilience. The stubbornness comes from the "I'm not going to give up." Think about it. If the people who have suffered are the ones being optimistic, you don't have the choice. You cannot have the choice to not also follow that. [00:07:24] Speaker 3: I just really want to hear your experiences of just, like, feeling like the only person that cares at all. [00:07:31] Speaker 6: I mean, I think everyone has a very important part to play when it comes to the climate crisis. I think of it like we're all a symphony. You know, whether you're playing a small instrument like the flute or a big one like the bassoon, you're instrumental. You're critical to this movement and you do hear when an instrument falls out. Like, at least for me getting into the climate [00:07:49] Speaker 9: movement of feeling alone and, like, that you're the only one that recognizes this. And then with connecting with people my age that are experiencing a similar thing, that bond is really special. [00:08:00] Speaker 2: And so the concept of radical imagination for me is, like, super important for everyone to imagine what things could look like. [00:08:20] Speaker 3: Oh, okay. Right. This is that thing. Right. This is that thing I've been trying to say and I haven't [00:08:25] Speaker 10: been able to say it. Activism is a practice of imagination because activism is about questioning what is wrong in this space and how can we make it better. It is the goal of oppressive systems [00:08:38] Speaker 7: to make us feel hopeless, to take away our joy, to take away, you know. To steal our imagination. Absolutely, to steal our imagination. And imagination is such a powerful tool. It's not something that's that's childish or irrelevant. It is actually one of our greatest solutions to imagining a more sustainable and equitable future. Can't you hear me? I'm not going to move. [00:09:07] Speaker 1: Do you understand? I've changed my plans. Do you understand? I've changed my plans. Cause I, I'm in love with my future. Can't wait to meet her. And I, I'm in love with anybody else. [00:09:37] Speaker ?: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.