“Naomi Klein’s work has always moved and guided me. She is the great chronicler of our age of climate emergency, an inspirer of generations” – Greta Thunberg
Young people are fighting for their right to a future on a really basic level. That is at the heart of the climate strikes: the right to a future that is more than fleeing from a series of disasters. The right to a future is also what young people are fighting for when they stand up for Black lives and against police violence. And they are also fighting for their right to a future when they call for gun control that will protect them from shootings at their schools. The right to a future free from violence and unending disasters connects all of these movements. Young activists are demanding large-scale, systemic changes in how we live, work, consume resources, and interact with the natural world and with each other. When it comes to working for a cause, young activists are ready and willing to use all the tools they can get their hands on, from voting (for those who are old enough) and civil lawsuits to art and gardening. This book is a celebration of their creativity and courage.
November 14, 2022
By Naomi Klein and Mohammed Rafi Arefin
The hunger strike of Egypt’s Alaa Abd El Fattah overshadows Sisi’s attempt to whitewash his regime’s human rights record at COP27.
MANY OF THE tens of thousands of delegates attending the United Nations climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, go to these gatherings year after year on a kind of autopilot. They update their PowerPoint presentations, pack their organizational banners, and brush up their talking points. Next come the same warnings from the scientists and activists. The slightly tweaked technical solutions from the entrepreneurs. The same pledges and promises from the political leaders. Every year, the expectations for what all of this can accomplish dip lower and lower.
So far, however, this year’s summit, known as COP27, has been anything but routine. That is less because of its content than its location. It is taking place under the most repressive regime in the history of the modern Egyptian state.
October 7, 2022
By Naomi Klein
Holding the COP 27 Summit in Egypt’s Police State Creates a Moral Crisis for the Climate Movement
No one knows what happened to the lost climate letter. All that is known is this: Alaa Abd El Fattah, arguably Egypt’s highest profile political prisoner, wrote it while on a hunger strike in his Cairo prison cell last month. It was, he explained later, “about global warming because of the news from Pakistan.” He was concerned about the epic floods that displaced 33 million people at their peak, and what that cataclysm foretold about climate hardships and paltry state responses to come.
A visionary technologist and searching intellectual, Abd El Fattah’s first name — along with the hashtag #FreeAlaa — have become synonymous with the 2011 pro-democracy revolution that turned Cairo’s Tahrir Square into a surging sea of young people that ended the three-decade rule of Egypt’s dictator Hosni Mubarak.