Rebecca Solnit on Climate Change, Resistance, Misogyny and "The Mother of All Questions"

President Trump is expected to sign an executive order Tuesday to dismantle a slew of climate rules put in place by President Obama. The executive order marks the first step to undo President Obama’s Clean Power Plan to limit power plant emissions. The rule was seen as a critical element of the U.S. pledge to cut emissions as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement. Trump’s executive order is also expected to scrap regulations limiting methane emissions and open up the door for more coal mining and fracking on federal lands. For more, we speak with Rebecca Solnit, one of the nation’s most celebrated writers, who has spent years writing about climate change. She’s the author of more than 20 books, including, most recently, "The Mother of All Questions." 

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: President Trump is expected to sign an executive order today to dismantle a slew of climate rules put in place by President Obama. The executive order marks the first step to undo Obama’s Clean Power Plan to limit power plant emissions. The rule was seen as a critical element of the U.S. pledge to cut emissions as part of the 2015 Paris accord. Trump’s executive order is also expected to scrap regulations limiting methane emissions and open up the door for more coal mining and fracking on federal lands. In addition, the executive order is expected to end entirely President Obama’s 2013 Climate Action Plan, which outlined the federal government’s approach to curbing climate change. 

 

AMY GOODMAN: We spend the rest of the hour with one of the nation’s most celebrated writers, Rebecca Solnit, who has written about climate change for years, including one widely read essay headlined "Call climate change what it is: violence." She wrote, "Climate change is global-scale violence, against places and species as well as against human beings. Once we call it by name, we can start having a real conversation about our priorities and values. Because the revolt against brutality begins with a revolt against the language that hides that brutality."

Rebecca Solnit is author of more than 20 books, most recently, The Mother of All Questions. She’s also a columnist at Harper’s magazine.

It’s nice to have you back, Rebecca. Can you start off by talking about climate change and this dismantling of legislation, that so many found wanting even during the Obama years, but President Trump dismantling that?

REBECCA SOLNIT: First of all, anybody who’s surprised wasn’t paying attention even before the election. But I know Bill McKibben talked about it a little bit yesterday, that the dropping price of renewables is inexorable. Natural gas has sort of aced out coal for a while, but which doesn’t mean that it isn’t terrible. And it is really painful for me this morning to hear this news. But, you know, we’ll fight. And one of the things, speaking as a Californian, during the Bush administration, a lot of decision-making about climate devolved to the states. And, you know, California had to fight the Bush administration on setting emissions standards for cars. Even more than we were in that era, we’re going to fight. We’re going to set emissions standards. We’re going to lead on moving away from fossil fuel. And there’s a lot of different scales—there’s an international scale, local scales, state scales—people can continue to work on while resisting this administration, but knowing that, at best, we can prevent them from doing things, not get them to do great climate work, so—or maybe, at best, that we can topple them soon, to jump ahead a little.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, you’ve written a lot about what resistance can look like under President Trump. What’s your message for a lot of people who continue to feel demoralized as they see the news, day by day, of new initiatives of this administration?

REBECCA SOLNIT: You know, I think the resistance that arose immediately after the election, and that continues to be active on immigration and human rights and climate and everything else, is extraordinary and powerful and like nothing I’ve ever seen. What concerns me, after 30 years of activism, is that a lot of people will think, "Well, we did something today, and we didn’t see results tomorrow." So one of the things I’ve been writing about for The Guardian and elsewhere is just trying to remind people that this is a long process, that we may be in, you know, the early stages of really redefining what democracy is going to mean in this nation, reforming the systems that were already moribund and stagnant before—you know, Trump is a consequence of a dysfunctional system, not a cause of it. So we have enormous transformative work to do. And people are actually doing it. If we keep at it, if we’re smart, if we’re skillful, if we’re more passionate about solidarity than the kind of perfectionism of nitpicking small differences, I think that extraordinary things could happen, not that they’re guaranteed. It depends on what we do. But it’s an exciting and even exhilarating moment, as well as a heart-rending and terrifying one. And those things can coexist.

Please continue this transcript, and for the video interview, please go here: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/28/rebecca_solnit_on_climate_change_resistance