I'm currently 20 meters off the ground in a tree canopy, and I'm here in Coast Salish territory in British Columbia.
The reason I'm here is to protest the expansion of a pipeline called Trans Mountain.
And that's why I'm up here, this is day 5, video 5. Yesterday was the hottest day of the year here.
It was actually so hot that I sweat so much that my fingers became wrinkly.
I didn't even know that was possible, but apparently that's a thing.
But, the heat was a reminder to me that 2020, this year, is one of the hottest years ever on the record.
And it was also a reminder that I've been very lucky.
I've been very privileged, very fortunate to be able to escape the heat when I need to.
When it gets hot normally, when I'm not in a tent in the air,
I can just turn on the air conditioning, or I can go to a nearby lake. But a lot of people are not that fortunate.
Being up here yesterday during that intense heat was a reminder that
climate change does not, and will not, affect everyone equally. We are all in this together, except some of us
have air conditioning, and some of us don't. And while that's partly a metaphor for climate more generally
There are also very literally billions of people that will soon be, or are already experiencing deadly heat.
And those people can't afford air conditioners.
In the climate movement, we often talk about "climate migrants".
These are people that already, or will soon live, in locations that are unlivable, due to heat or fires or floods or famine.
And the thing is that I think that that term is somewhat of a euphemism because a lot of those people
Aren't able to simply migrate; they can't afford to buy a plane ticket and go somewhere and buy a new home.
Many people are already dying due to climate change and many more will.
In the face of climate change, we must now more than ever open our borders rather than building walls.
And that is especially true when you consider that most of the carbon that we've added to the atmosphere,
has been added by the Global North: the richest countries in the world.
And those are the same countries that are the least affected by the climate crisis.
We're already seeing how environmental disasters disproportionately affect people of colour and people living in poverty.
And one tragic example of that is that during Hurricane Katrina,
Most of the deaths in the United States were black people.
The simple fact is that we can't have climate justice without social justice.
So while I'm up here to stop a pipeline, the Trans Mountain Expansion,
The climate movement is not just fighting for a transition to renewable energy,
but it's fighting for a transition that is equitable
A transition that doesn't leave anyone behind.
Here comes the heat again...
We have a lot of work to do.
We need to create a society that recognizes people's basic human rights and values them.
That means one that recognizes that black lives matter.
and one that works to end centuries of systematic racial injustice and colonial oppression.
We need to create free healthcare and education and help people that are currently working in fossil fuel intensive industries
To transition to a green renewable economy.
And I recognize that by being up here
I am preventing some of those very people from doing their jobs and I'm truly sorry for that inconvenience.
But the fact is that there's a lot more than our jobs that are at stake here:
We're talking about the end of our civilization.
We're talking about the end of millions or billions of people's lives.
And that's why I'm up here risking my personal safety and risking being arrested, I do take this seriously.
And in order for all of this to be possible we're going to need some sort of universal basic income:
A cheque from the government to its citizens that makes sure that everyone has access to basic needs
like shelter and food. Now doing all of that might sound prohibitively expensive.
So I want to share some statistics with you, in order to help put everything into some context.
And I will be leaving my sources as numbers in the video description as we go along.
Sorry, things don't look really great right now on this channel. I'm trying to edit everything here, on my laptop.
But anyway, here we go: I'm currently 30 years old,
which means that when I was born the richest person in the United States was worth 11 billion dollars.
But adjusted for inflation, the richest man today, Jeff Bezos, is worth 18 times that.
However at the same time, the typical American, after you adjust for inflation, is now making less than they were when I was born.
Experts estimate that it would cost around 175 billion dollars per year to eradicate poverty in the United States,
And while that might sound like a very big number, I certainly don't have 100 billion dollars, it's really not.
To put that even further into perspective, Jeff Bezos could pull America out of poverty by himself, for an entire year.
And he would still have enough money left over that if you stacked all of it as one dollar bills and put that stack
On its side it would stretch from any one of his mansions in Los Angeles to his mansion in Seattle.
No one needs that kind of money.
The wealthiest people in the world, the 2153 billionaires on the planet, own 60 percent of the wealth in the world.
They're also the same people that are causing the most harm to the environment, and I've covered that in a previous video.
They're also the same people that are calling the shots, and our governments, and our corporations.
And at the same time they are the people that are the least affected by climate change and while Bezos may--
It's hard to film with all this traffic.
To be completely clear, I am really not expecting that Jeff Bezos is going to have a sudden change of heart
and donate all of his wealth to end poverty.
But I think it is very clear that we need a major redistribution of wealth, one that is equitable, and we need it now.
While I'm up here in these trees I'm asking you to do three things:
Number one, call your local representative in parliament or in congress and let them know that you don't support
oil and gas infrastructure and that if they don't push for climate action, they won't have your vote in the next election
And speaking of elections, if you're in Canada, you should know that there is currently a
leadership contest for the Green Party of Canada.
And I personally think that the Green Party is our best way forward politically, and I've been working,
volunteering with Amita Kuttner for their campaign. I think that they're our best option.
In case you don't already know who they are,
they're a scientist, a young person, a non-binary person, and a very gifted public speaker.
And I think they take climate action and climate justice more seriously than the other candidates.
And so I'm voting for them and I hope that you will too.
You can find a link to their campaign in the description.
Secondly, please get involved in a climate action organization near you,
I'll leave some links in the description to that as well.
And thirdly, share this video and share this message, and start a conversation about climate change today.
We need to be talking about this more.
And thanks for watching