Dec 9, 2025 · 1 hr 7 min · 13 segments
“Your eco-anxiety is a sign your humanity is intact. You’re reacting rationally to an irrational world.” In this episode of Power, People & Planet, Kumi Naidoo sits down with climate justice…
Tori TsuiGuest
Kumi NaidooHost
Because right now you would be sitting in an institution, assuming you were at the BBC.
Which, sadly to say, has become, you know, complicit in genocide and misinformation on the scale that many people around the world thought that the BBC would be a little more subtle.
The silence has been deafening, but more than that, the way they continue to, you know, propagate false ideas.
Now, I want to make a statement and ask you whether you agree with this or not, right? Based on what you said about that connection between societal issues, if you want, and environmental justice in itself.
I have said on multiple occasions for a long time now that one of the most grievous errors we have made in the movement to work for climate solutions has been framing the threat of climate change as an environmental issue.
I think that was the most grievous area because climate change, in my judgment, happens as a result of a failure of our economic system, our energy system, our transport system, our food system, and so on.
So we should have always framed climate action and climate justice as a cross-cutting issue.
And there's actually a little bit of a preamble in my book that says that the word climate... does a disservice in and of itself to the sort of breadth and depth of this issue.
Because while climate is the sort of rhetoric that we roll with and how we have come to communicate a lot of these ideas and these issues, it kind of detracts from, as you mentioned, just how broad and how all-encompassing this issue is, to the point that in my book I actually write about it would be more aptly named the result of all systems of oppression crisis.
But I would even go so far as to say climate has become a word that is falling on deaf ears a lot of the time.
And so I would even beg, is it as effective as people think, as a term to communicate the multiplicity of crises that we're living through.
Because it has a tendency to alienate a lot of people, at least from my experience of working with different campaigners from different intersections of society.
But of course, when you start to peel back the layers, you realize everything is connected.
And, you know, this is obviously something that is deeply entrenched in the fight for climate justice.
Because right now you would be sitting in an institution, assuming you were at the BBC.
Which, sadly to say, has become, you know, complicit in genocide and misinformation on the scale that many people around the world thought that the BBC would be a little more subtle.
The silence has been deafening, but more than that, the way they continue to, you know, propagate false ideas.
Now, I want to make a statement and ask you whether you agree with this or not, right? Based on what you said about that connection between societal issues, if you want, and environmental justice in itself.
I have said on multiple occasions for a long time now that one of the most grievous errors we have made in the movement to work for climate solutions has been framing the threat of climate change as an environmental issue.
I think that was the most grievous area because climate change, in my judgment, happens as a result of a failure of our economic system, our energy system, our transport system, our food system, and so on.
So we should have always framed climate action and climate justice as a cross-cutting issue.
And there's actually a little bit of a preamble in my book that says that the word climate... does a disservice in and of itself to the sort of breadth and depth of this issue.
Because while climate is the sort of rhetoric that we roll with and how we have come to communicate a lot of these ideas and these issues, it kind of detracts from, as you mentioned, just how broad and how all-encompassing this issue is, to the point that in my book I actually write about it would be more aptly named the result of all systems of oppression crisis.
But I would even go so far as to say climate has become a word that is falling on deaf ears a lot of the time.
And so I would even beg, is it as effective as people think, as a term to communicate the multiplicity of crises that we're living through.
Because it has a tendency to alienate a lot of people, at least from my experience of working with different campaigners from different intersections of society.
But of course, when you start to peel back the layers, you realize everything is connected.
And, you know, this is obviously something that is deeply entrenched in the fight for climate justice.
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