Moyers & Company; 238; Saving the Earth from Ourselves

You You You You

This week on Warriors & Company Greenpeace International Executive Director, Krumina Du, is boarding the leaf Erickson as part of a peaceful protest If there's an injustice in the world, those of us that have the ability to witness it and to record it, document it and tell the world what is happening, have a moral responsibility to do that Funding is provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, celebrating 100 years of philanthropy and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world The Colberg Foundation Independent Production Fund, with support from the Partridge Foundation, a John and PolyGuth Charitable Fund, the Clemens Foundation Park Foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues, the Herbalpert Foundation, supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society The Bernard and Audrey Rapaport Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world, more information at macfound.org Ann Gummowitz, the Betsy and Jesse Fink Foundation, the HKH Foundation, Barbara G. Flashman, and by our sole corporate sponsor, Mutual of America

Designing customized individual and group retirement products, that's why we're your retirement company Welcome, we begin with drama on the high seas. Several days ago, environmental activists from Greenpeace International tried to climb a Russian oil platform in the Arctic They were there to protest drilling for fossil fuels in this fragile ecology at the top of the world But they were confronted by gun-carrying members of the Russian Coast Guard who fired warning shots dangerously close to the protesters and their inflatable boats The next day, a Russian helicopter dropped armed troops onto the deck of the Arctic Sunrise, that's the Greenpeace Command ship She was seized and towed to the port of Murmansk and the crew held for questioning and possible charges of piracy Greenpeace has often dared to confront governments and corporations head on, and this wasn't the first act of civil disobedience against the drilling rigs

Here is their leader, Kumi Nidu, climbing a platform off the coast of Greenland, braving rough seas and high-pressure fire hoses deliberately pounding him in his boarding party with freezing water For that action, Kumi Nidu spent four days in jail, not the first time he seen the inside of a prison cell Born and raised in South Africa, by his teenage years he was a vocal and prominent opponent of the racist policy of apartheid He was incarcerated and beaten so often by the white regime that he finally had to escape to Britain, where he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford With the end of apartheid, Kumi Nidu went back home and became a prominent human rights activist in 2009 He was named head of Greenpeace International, bringing his negotiating and advocacy skills to a worldwide organization of three million members Welcome

Thank you very much, good to be with you What's the worst case scenario for you there with the Arctic Sunrise? Well, you know, the important thing is this Teti activist on the ship Thirty Teti, yeah, and interestingly the captain of the ship was an American citizen, was the captain when the French intelligence service bombed our ship the Rainbowaria in Auckland more than 25 years ago Yeah, 27 years ago That was your flagship The Rainbowaria and we have the Rainbowaria still, the third version of it So our first and foremost concern are for our volunteers and activists on board We hope, best case scenario, is that there will simply be released and sent back to their countries, even if they are deported The ship is sailed under a Dutch flag, the Dutch government has been very sympathetic and have been in touch with the Russian authorities seeking clarity as to why the ship was boarded And we expect that the Dutch, again on the most positive side, the ship will be released and will sail to its next mission

On the most negative side, there will be a protracted struggle to get the ship back Is it illegal for your activists to board or try to board that oil rig out there? Yes, it is Illegal against international law? A Russian law I would say it is an act of non-violent peaceful civil disobedience against international matter time law It was an international water What was it doing there? Basically, wind is a rig at sea, the government that is responsible for putting that rig there determines a 500 meter exclusion zone around the rig And you are not allowed to enter So we keep our ship outside of that zone And when our activists are going to take action, so the last year when I was involved, we would go in through an inflatable boat But you see, I will tell you the way we do it

The moment an inflatable leaves the ship to enter the zone towards the rig Our captain contacts the captain of the rig because the rig is actually considered to be a ship at sea And says, captain of the platform, this is Greenpeace We are engaged in a peaceful protest This is why we are doing it because the Arctic is the refrigerator and the air condition of the planet And what happens in the Arctic as impact globally And this is crazy, what is happening and for these reasons we are taking this action Please be assured that we are peaceful and there is no threat to property or to people We communicate that very quickly So it is always very clear and I myself participated in an action a year ago protesting against that very same rig And I understand that drilling in the Arctic has not yet started and this could be the first place And therefore we have done everything to actually try to stop the production there And I make no apologies by the way, the fact that we are morally and ethically having to break the law

And the history teaches us whether it was slavery, whether it was civil rights in the United States, a woman's right to choose, a pathway All of these major challenges and injustice that humanity has faced over history Those struggles only move forward when decent men and women said enough is enough and no more We prepared to put our lives on the line if necessary, we prepared to go to prison if necessary Many people know that Greenpeace owes some of its heritage and DNA to the Quakers I think some people know but that is a very very important legacy of Greenpeace Because what people don't know is that the founders of Greenpeace were largely American and Canadian It was Quakers from the United States who left the US to go to Canada during the Vietnam War These were people who had kids mainly boys who would be eligible for draft for the Vietnam War

And they were peace-oriented activists and it was out of Vancouver where it was actually started And the most important thing that we take from Quakers and Quakers is the commitment to peace, the commitment to justice And a notion that Quakers call bearing witness and the bearing witness is a very simple but very powerful idea It says that if there's an injustice in the world, those of us that have the ability to witness it And to record it, document it and tell the world what is happening, have a moral responsibility to do that Then of course it's left up to those that are receiving that knowledge to make the moral choice about whether they want to stand up against injustice or observe it When you made that choice a year ago when you actually put yourself in that inflatable and went toward that ship and started climbing up the rig Did you realize that your life was in danger that they would respond violently if they wanted to?

Yes, one of the things we have to do is before we execute the action, we have a legal briefing Where the lawyers will say, as you prepare to take this action, you need to understand what the risks are We could have had earlier briefings, but there's like two or three days before the actual action, there's a final conversation where they will tell you the worst case scenario, the best case scenario And they always say, so many things can go wrong, especially in the Arctic And that is why drilling in the Arctic is such a crazy idea And to be honest, I'm not a great climber, I did a one day crash course in the climbing sector before I jumped on the ship And on five days of sailing from Norway to the rig every day I was in the hole of the ship practising so to be honest to you

And I'm not a good swimmer I brought some video of you actually participating in a civil disobedience act in Greenland in 2011 And here it is All of us who care about the future of our children and grandchildren, we have to draw a line somewhere And I say that we draw that line here today in the Arctic Lee Ferrickson, this is Esperanza, Greenpeace International Executive Director, Kumi Nadu, is boarding the Lee Ferrickson as part of a peaceful protest He's seeking a meeting with the captain of the rig where he will present a petition signed by 50,000 supporters who demand to see Ken's oil store response plans Tell me why you decided to board a rig and put yourself in harm's way I feel that on a daily basis Greenpeace activists and other environmental and social activists standing up for a more just, equitable and sustainable world

are putting the lives on the line on a regular basis I mean at any given time Greenpeace is taking some action to protect the environment somewhere in the world And I believe that one of the important things about leadership is that if you are leading a movement or an organisation Leaders must periodically lead from the front It's not as if given the complexity of my job, I can be taking part in actions every other month or week But from time to time, it's important for leaders to say, I am no important than you are My life is no more important than you are And if you as a young person are taking risks, then I'm also prepared to take that risk And just to be clear, what happens if you fall into the ocean? If you fall into the Arctic Ocean with normal clothes or even if you had a decent swimsuit or even a bodysuit Which was not specifically prepared, you'll be dead in about three or four minutes

That's how cold the water is We have some protective gear which will allow you to survive for maybe about two hours So last year, when we were on the gas pump rig, the same rig where my colleagues who have been arrested now They were people who were spraying us directly And I was in a little sort of what's called a portal ledge, which is a little tent on the outside With a 25-year-old amazing American young man called Basil and with a 64-year-old Canadian Three of us were in this and for close to 20 hours we were being sprayed And I have to say that was extremely scary because if we fell, we would have a hit fallen about 50 meters down And we would have hit the concrete that is at the bottom of the rig

And in fact, the captain of our rig is saying to the captain of our ship is saying to the captain Please stop their lives at danger, they're going to fall This will be the consequences and so on And then the captain of the rig is saying we've stopped those They better get off in five minutes Otherwise we are going to start spraying and yes, we expect they will fall And it's going to be very dangerous for them What wasn't recorded was what you were thinking, what was going through your head at that time You know what to be honest, I was extremely scared I was thinking a lot actually of my little daughter My daughter was, well I say little but she just don't really want But you know because I'm at Greenpeace partly because of her Because when Greenpeace approached me to consider this position I was in the middle of a hunger strike Actually it was 19 days only on water It was a campaign to put pressure on my government in South Africa

Not to protect the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe And to stand up against the human rights violations that were happening to the Zimbabwe people And Greenpeace calls me on the 19th day to say, you know, will you consider being a candidate And I said, you know, thank you very much But I can't make such a big decision in the state that I read at the moment every beat audio Hungry Yeah, just on water for 19 days And then, you know, my daughter, she said, what did Greenpeace want? I said, I told her And then she said, Dad, I won't talk to you If you don't seriously consider this position when you finish your stupid understrike And I said, why? And then she said, Greenpeace is about my future And that is being destroyed And Greenpeace is not like some other organizations that talk too much and don't act At least Greenpeace is about to put their lives on the line And so that was a major, major motivation And I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, well, my darling, if I fall and break my neck and die

I hope you remember you told me to do it Interesting, because I brought with me a very recent report from UNICEF Just out, the studies title, Climate Change, Children's Challenge And the report argues that children bear the brunt of climate change Even though they are the least responsible for it And that they are passionate and vocal, as your daughter was, about the need for action Absolutely right, everywhere in the world I go from the United States to China Young people get it, they're concerned, they understand that we are running out of time And they believe more and more that the current adult leadership of the world is betraying the future But I want to believe that there is enough humanity in all of us That even the CEO of a coal company, an oil company or a gas company can actually fossil fuel companies Have children and grandchildren, and I'm constantly in my conversations with the leaders of the fossil fuel companies

As well as other polluting companies, I'm saying to them, listen Put your children and your grandchildren's future in the middle of this conversation And I think history is going to judge this generation of adult leaders Extremely harshly, because maybe 10 years ago you could say we didn't know the climate science was not so clear Today there is no excuse for not taking bold, urgent action And to do it in a creative way that gives us a win for the climate, but also gives us a win for example on jobs and unaddressing things like economic development In that context, take the Arctic, you have said that it's insane to drill in the Arctic Why? Well the very fact that drilling in the Arctic is even a possibility today in the parts where they're going It's precisely as a result of the burning of fossil fuels, of burning coal, oil and gas And it wouldn't have been possible that the Arctic is melting in the summer months

And last year when I was there in the Arctic, the day that the world record for the lowest minimum ice level Ever recorded in human history was last year August Now, you know, I say to my American friends always, you know how Americans have this saying which says what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas I say unfortunately what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic Because the Arctic serves as a refrigerated air conditioner for the planet It helps regulate global temperature and the climate and you're by reflecting the ash rays of the sunlight away Now, so the whole climate system in the world is related to the level of the Arctic sea ice That's one. Secondly, when we look at the melting of glaciers in places like Greenland, for example, that melting has already contributed sea level rise around the world And there are glaciers that are at risk, massive glaciers, the size of countries that could easily, with further melting, move off the land and end up in the sea again causing further sea level rise

If we continue as we are, if we continue as we are, essentially we are signing a death warrant for the future generation It's a good question because I got asked recently there are some people who say it's too late, what is your view? And I say they ask do you agree? I say I agree and I disagree I agree because for some people in the world it's already too late For those people who are losing their lives from climate impacts now, let's be very clear, it's too late for them For parts of Africa, it's too late, let me give you an example, and one of the problems is our leaders don't connect the different issues and challenges that we face Because if you take the genocide in Darfur, in Sudan, the media largely reported it as an ethnic, quasi-religious sort of conflict and so on

That is your first major resource war brought about by climate impacts because Darfur neighbors Lake Chad Lake Chad used to be one of the largest inland seas in the world And the climate science won us decades ago that as a result of a warming planet, the Lake Chad was under us As the current Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon puts it, Lake Chad is now shrunk to a size of a pond So water scarcity, land scarcity, and food scarcity as a result of an absence of water and land was the toxic mix that created conditions for identity manipulation by opportunistic politicians that saw that horrific events happened Now, so for some people, it's going to be too late, however, we are still in a small window of opportunity

And that's where I disagree with people who say, give it up, it's all over There is a small window of opportunity in terms of time, I would say no more than five to ten years, and that actually is being optimistic That if we can take the courageous bold steps that we need to take to shift our planet in an energy revolution that takes us to bring down carbon pollution but bring it in a way that also generates millions of new jobs in inclusive green economy of the future If we were to do that, still the majority of people on this planet can be secure, so yes, for some people it's too late, but for the majority of the planet, there is still time, but that time is shrinking very, very fast And based on current practice and of governments, if we continue like that over the next coming years, then sadly I think it will be too late You know what you're up against, what you see as potential destruction happening faster and faster in the Arctic, the oil companies see as opportunity for drilling even deeper, because there is reportedly a great deal of fossil fuel down there

Well, let me give you a picture, think about the Gulf of Mexico, oil spill, EP, the BP oil spill, that oil spill required 6,000 vessels and thousands of people to actually lead up You know how long it took, you know the consequences that the people of those coastlines faced in terms of the restaurant business, the fishing business and so on Now imagine there's an oil spill in the Arctic, and the oil spill happens towards the end of the Arctic summer, right? Just as the ice in the ocean is beginning to form again, the oil will be locked into the ocean for at least 6 months until the season changes again So the consequences here are far too devastating, and you know people might think Greenpeace is being a bit romantic because we are calling for the upper Arctic to be declared a sanctuary

No trespassing, yeah But 20 years plus ago Greenpeace and other organizations lobbied for the Antarctic to be declared a global public good All countries in the world have sort of almost a sense of shared ownership, and we succeeded, the Antarctic is protected and is treated as a place for no industrial activity because of the environmental sensitivity So you know for people like myself and many people around the world when President Obama was running for election There were three phrases that resonated with us which used multiple times in all these regular stumped speeches, right? Yes we can, the fierce urgency of now which is the phrase from Martin Luther King and a planet in peril Yeah, we understood a planet in peril was an understanding that climate change was actually trickling this life on this planet as we know it

Something like Hurricane Sandy, right? Hurricane Sandy would have happened, hurricanes happened But you have to look at the intensity, the height of the waves and so on which is compounded by the impacts of climate change with regard to already, you know, the sea level rise that we've seen, a warming ocean and so on So we must be very clear, we are playing political poker and commercial poker with the future of the planet and when you say a future of the planet, we talk about the future of children You know the one thing I jokingly say, sometimes we would say save the planet, save the planet and so on I say the planet actually does not need any saving The planet is going to be there and actually the reality is if all of us warm this planet and destroy it and we all cannot survive it anymore, the planet will replenish We will come back

What is its stake is humanity's ability to live in coexistence with nature for centuries to come And there can be no more important ethical imperative for any political or business leader than saying I have a responsibility to act in a way that does not imperil my children and grandchildren's future I remember very well the speeches that President Obama made during the campaign that still resonate with you, you just quoted three memorable phrases And I also brought with me an excerpt from another speech that President Obama, not candidate Obama made, here it is For the first time in 18 years America's poised to produce more of our own oil than we buy from other nations And today we produce more natural gas than anybody else So we're producing energy And these advances have grown our economy, they've created new jobs, they can't be shipped overseas And by the way, they've also helped drive our carbon pollution to its lowest levels in nearly 20 years

Since 2006, no country on earth has reduced its total carbon pollution by as much as the United States of America Now the irony is this was part of a speech, a larger speech where he also laid out the plans to cut greenhouse emissions You've got this paradox, this cutter diction, this irony at the heart, you say you were hopefully inspired by the President What's happened since then to make you less inspired? Well, a lot of his behavior has been acquiescence to the political logic of how money pollutes politics in the United States and also in the world So if you ask yourself, why is it you would say something there? If you fact-checked what he said, I can guarantee you will find just that small clip you will find holes We are the country that does the most in terms of reduction in the last couple years, that's false

And so, why? Why? Why is it? It's very simple actually Which here are for every member of Congress in the United States, including all the members of President Obama's own party The fossil fuel industry, the oil, coal and gas companies fund full-time lobbyists to make sure that in fact no progressive urgent climate legislation goes through And if you look at how President Obama used the considerable political capital that he had coming into office to push the out-care reform And how much he used to push climate change, which by the way, healthcare reform is going to be meaningless if you don't have climate change Because climate change is already generating new diseases, already reintroducing all ones that we thought we had defeated and so on So, we are disappointed, deeply disappointed about how slowly it has moved

But let's be very clear, investing today, one fresh scent in new oil, coal and gas projects must be understood as an investment in the death of our children and their children That's the implication of it, that the... But we are realistic, we don't think we can switch off oil, coal and gas tomorrow We have to have a phased-out approach of how do you do that? And therefore, what we say is that we need two approaches We need a serious energy efficiency approach and we need serious investment in clean renewable energy options All of which are growing, if you look at the amount of jobs that potentially could be created, if our governments engaged in a serious energy revolution Which, if we are to prevent climate catastrophe, has to be in a similar scale like the industrial revolution was, where we really reconfigure our societies Where we begin to value more the importance of clean water, which is a life-saving resource

We bear in mind all of these industries suck up huge amounts of water but also ever polluting effect as fracking is doing to underground water, for example You published a report this year in which you identified 14 of the biggest fossil fuel projects in the world that you say, Greenpeace says, must be stopped to avoid quoting you, catastrophic climate change And you called this report the point of no return, why? That's very alarming, yes, well, speaking the truth is always a good thing to do And sometimes speaking the truth, when people are suffering from a bad case of cognitive dissonance, which is where all the facts are there Just for people who might not understand the jargon of cognitive dissonance, I always say a good simple example is, you know, that moment when the US troops finally got to Baghdad And Saddam Hussein's communications minister was still in power and, well, it's hanging on

And he was still doing press conferences and the journalists were asking him, so how long are you going to withstand this US military force? And how long do you think you can deal with the war? And he was saying, what war? What are you talking? We are completely under control and behind him the bombs falling, buildings burning and so on That is our politicians are engaging with the climate question that they are in denial about how we are running out of time And so, see, the sign says we have to keep warming below two degrees based on pre-industrial levels This is what you call the new math of global warming, right? Exactly. And then there's a thing called the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere So my good friend, Bill McKibben, was a founder of 350.org It's called 350.org because 350 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere was understood 20 years ago to be something we shouldn't breach This year we've just breached 400 parts per million, right?

So when you have a situation like that, if these projects, particularly the Canadian tar sands, some of the Arctic projects and so on that I envisaged, if we go after them and if we succeed to actually get those projects going, we will accelerate to 600 parts per million in a very short time So the rate of acceleration of carbon accumulation is very, very fast And then basically it's a point of no return, that's what the science is, it's not Greenpeace that is saying that, but that is what the science is saying But quoting that new math, you say that we must ride off 80% of fossil fuel reserves completely In other words, 80% of all the bananza that's still out there, you're saying just cover up, walk away, forget about it You've got to leave the coal in the hole and the oil in the soil if we want to ensure that this planet exists But you know what I mean, I do that

Well, this is why I was struggling so difficult This is why when you ask me the question, how do you make that personal decision to go and risk your life by taking part in an action in a very remote place in the Arctic? This is why we're doing it, the stakes are very high here, we are running out of time Many of all the things that you're saying Greenpeace has said, it's not just Greenpeace is saying it No, I'm just saying, it is a, you know, the World Bank for example is not a particularly radical organization The World Bank last year came up with a report called Turnum the Heat, right? Basically we were saying we have to actually, all these reports that are coming out are saying we have to let these known fossil fuel reserves stay where they are And instead take that same amount of money, right? That you would invest, they take Shelf for example just in terms of what they're doing in Alaska Shelf oil Shelf oil, right? They've already blown five billion dollars of the investor's money in risky, badly planned, incompetently executed attempts to try to go drill in the Alaskan Arctic Right? That five billion, right? And that's not in oil, in oil companies terms five billion is not a humongous amount of money

But it's a significant amount of money, that five billion didn't deliver zero unit of energy Right? That amount of money could be put into research and development could actually ramp up solar, ramp up geothermal, wind and biomass and a range of other options But yeah, but there's a problem, why you say if it is an option we don't because the amount of money to be made through solar is very different from the amount of money you can make from an oil or a gas field If you're an oil company, you get an exclusive right to a particular sort of allotment if you want with this oil or gas or coal And then you have the ability to pull it out and make huge amounts of profit because you have almost a monopoly then on that oil field or gas field or whatever Nobody is going to get an exclusive license for the Sun

Right You have yourself acknowledged the head of Greenpeace has acknowledged that the environmental movement including Greenpeace is losing the fight to save the planet Not just in the Arctic, but worldwide Yeah, so what I've said is while Greenpeace is winning some important and big battles if we are brutally honest we are losing the war and losing the planet I believe that good leadership must be about being straight with people It's about saying yes, we are making progress here but that progress is just insufficient And within Greenpeace we acknowledge that we have to up our efforts and that is what we are doing right now We are trying to campaign more with people like say on the Arctic we've got 4 million people that are campaigning with us Secondly, we are campaigning together with other organisations so for example with the trade union movement where in the past people used to talk about red-green tensions between labour and environment Now the global leadership of the trade union movement is talking about a just transition to a green inclusive economy

where of course they are concerned about protecting and transitioning people jobs from dirty energy jobs to clean energy jobs and I hope the changes that we are making will enable us to win bigger battles in a faster timeframe For the past 12 years you've attended the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland where the world's most powerful leaders gather Some of the same people responsible for the very problems you are fighting against I mean these are not your kindred spirits, they are the masters of the universe, why do you attend? You know as a 22-year-old I fled South Africa into exile I was very lucky to have got a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford In fact I got it while I was in the run from the police, my interview was while I was a fugitive And when I got to Oxford I learnt a very important thing, not from the university but suddenly I was in a context where I was with people who didn't have the same views that I had Because being a young activist in the anti-apartheid struggle you mainly were with people who all wanted to bring down the apartheid regime

So you were a tactical differences but no big philosophical difference Suddenly I was in a situation where there was such a diversity of opinion and one of the things I learnt is that if you just talk to people all the time who agree with you You feel good with yourself, you feel maybe you can dilute yourself, you're winning That activism is about in my judgment, if you believe in the political correctness of what you are trying to do you must believe that you can go into any forum However conservative it might be backward in the thinking that it might be if they are talking and making and influencing decisions that affect the future of our planet I feel I should go So now I'll be honest with you, it's not the favorite place in the world before I went as a green piece I went as a human rights gender equity And at that time I could never get a single business CEO to agree for a sit-down meeting

In fact I used to like have to follow them in the corridors and the best lobbying I did was usually in the men's toilet And I actually lobbied President Clinton about signing off the landmine treaty while we were both in the toilet alongside each other doing our business But when I go as as green piece when I went at green piece for the first time in 2010 before I even arrived there there was so many CEOs of big companies that wrote to me saying we want meetings And by the time I got there I couldn't attend any sessions because I was like fully booked from one CEO to the other and I was late getting to one CEO And I said I'm so sorry I'm late but I'm in this new situation in my previous roles and I wanted to speak to me now I come as a green piece and you folks all want to speak to me And then the CEO tells me welcome you understand what's happening right I said well many of the CEOs of the big companies are desperate to get green piece to the table because they hope that way they won't be on your menu But well you've had some success negotiating with these multinational corporations instead of confronting them

Unilever and Coca-Cola agreed to stop using HFC guesses which can actually do more damage than carbon dioxide You got Nestle to stop buying palm oil from Samatra where clear cutting was disrupting tiger habitats and other environmental matters And now you're pressuring Facebook to unfriend coal At the last count 600 million of us are your friends together you're changing the world But the internet you're at the center of now uses more power than entire nations combined What powers you? Coal the number one contributor to climate change Facebook unfriend coal and help lead an energy revolution Let's keep our world a world worth changing What's that all about? Well over the next decade the cloud computing companies like Yahoo Facebook and so on

Their energy electricity needs are going to increase by fourfold now they have a choice They can source that energy through traditional dirty energy through coal oil and gas Or they can invest in renewable energy or insist on the people that are providing them with energy to provide it through wind solar and other clean methods So we are in a campaign on Facebook and I'm happy to say that Mark Zuckerberg if you come to the Greenpeace office now in Amsterdam The headquarters there's a big post of it where it says Facebook agrees to be a clean energy champion We will ensure that our data centers are sourced from clean energy and so on and it's signed by Mark Zuckerberg So to all their companies like Google and Facebook and so on we are saying you have a responsibility to also use the innovation of your new technologies to help other companies Think about how they source the energy for the business and I'm pleased to say that most of the IT companies are talking to us

We are working with them and hopefully they will increase the commitment to reduce their footprint in terms of how they source the energy I read that some of your allies within Greenpeace are uncomfortable with your negotiating and your willingness to compromise One of them I saw even says you're trying to move the organization in the direction of the Red Cross instead of Greenpeace How do you respond to that kind of internal criticism that you're going soft? I've never, even as a 15-year-old activist against a party regime, I've never believed in militancy for militancy sake I believe that a good activist is one that has a menu of different tools in their toolbox Sometimes sitting down, having a dialogue, being persuasive can deliver the same result than doing a mass protest and so on However, if you look at what we are doing at Greenpeace is that we are still strongly maintaining peaceful civil disobedience or nonviolent direct action as Martin Luther King used to call it as a key part of our strategy

However, I believe strongly that the leaders of the business community, before they are leaders of the business community or a politician, before they are politicians, they are citizens, they are human beings I believe that we have to, the moral pressurization of argument is on our side and I believe it's up to us to exercise the skill, creativity and innovation in our conversations and engagement to shift these human beings who might be in government, might be in business, might be an oil company and so on in a direction that says that we can meet our energy needs by clean energy means and I think I've seen positive return I'm respectful, by the way, I'm respectful of the criticisms, I'm totally respectful because I don't know where it's coming from People who are saying, these are the people who caused the problem in the first place, they are the ones that are perpetuating the problem and by you going there, you are legitimizing the world economic forum by just being there

And capitalism, you're legitimating capitalism, some of your colleagues say is incompatible with sustainability But the current nature of capitalism is completely incompatible and by the way, the banking crisis here in this country is a very good example of political world Political world? If the leaders of the United States and other countries were able to mobilize, not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars overnight to bail out the banks, the bankers and the bonuses, surely they can mobilize even less than that Would be good to get us going to bail out the planet and adult leaders really need to ask the self the question, what is their sense of intergenerational solidarity? We cannot live on this planet as if we don't have children and gradual coming after us and that's what our current leaders are doing

Are you really just me? I'm a deeply spiritual person, my mom committed suicide when I was 15, there was a catastrophic event in my life And when that happened, I went through a very deep struggle of trying to make sense of life and so on And my mom, though before she died, taught me I think the most important things in life, she always used to say very simple things like it is much better to try and fail than fail to try And I can tell you that one line is of great source of hope and inspiration as I do the work that I'm currently doing And we have an option to be part of the problem and part of the solution but on religion, she taught me the most important things, she said The most important thing about religion is to have this approach and that is see God in the eyes of every human being that you meet If you can have that as your view, don't worry about what you actually worship and where you go

God's the eye in the world, they will all say that's a great thing that you did because all religion actually tells you not to go and spend thousands and thousands of hours sitting in a religious institution worshipping But then going and living a life that is ungodly and is not community oriented The best thing you can do is love your life where you see the humanity and everybody and that's why when I see our religion is being distorted because most, you know, in Hindus and one of the things you learn is when you finish praying you say Om Shanti Shanti Shanti and Shanti is the word for peace All of our religions are geared up to encouraging us to embrace a life of peace, sadly too many of our religious leaders have allowed our religions to be manipulated and have moved us away from the original essence of what religious teachings tells us which is to care for the poor, care for the planet because don't forget, I mean, you know, if you believe in God, God created the oceans, the forests, the mountains and so on

And we have an obligation to actually draw on that and I think, yeah, in North America some of the historical traditions of spirituality from the Native American people are exceptionally revealing, you know, the Kri people said centuries ago, they said, only when the last tree has been cut, the last river has been polluted, the last river has been contaminated and will humanity realize that you cannot eat money We should draw on the traditions of wisdom that exist and you know how we ship the rainbow warrior, why it's called the rainbow warrior is there was a prophecy of a Kri woman called Eyes of Fire who said a century plus ago that they will come a time in the world The trees will disappear, the fish will be dead in the sea, the rivers will turn black, when these things happen a group of people from around the world irrespective of race, color, religion or creed will come together to try to heal and protect the planet and they will be known as the warriors of the rainbow

And I think where we are now, we need people to step forward to be peaceful warriors for our children and grandchildren's future Thank you very much for being here today and thank you very much for your work Thank you very much for fighting in this show When Kumi Nairu's mother urged him to seek God in the eyes of every human being that you meet, she was echoing a sentiment once expressed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola who told the devout to seek and find God in all things You may recall that Ignatius founded the Jesuits and now there's a Jesuit Pope, the first in Catholic Church history

Last weekend Pope Francis visited Sardinia, the Mediterranean island known for its white sand beaches and deluxe vacation homes owned by the rich and famous Now Sardinia is blinded by clothes, factories and mines operating at low capacity, thousands are out of work, including 50% of its young people Last year, in an effort to keep their jobs, workers in Sardinia barricaded themselves in front of a mine packed with almost 700 kilograms of explosives One miner told the cameras, we cannot take it anymore, we cannot, we cannot, is this what we have to do and slit his wrist on our TV The Pope met with some of those unemployed workers including Francesco Matana, 45 years old, married, father of free children, unemployed now for four years after losing his job with an alternative energy company Matana told Pope Francis how unemployment oppresses you and wears you out to the depths of your soul

Where there's no work, there's no dignity, the consequence the Pope said of a system that has as its center an idol called money The crowd of 20,000 cheered and when the Pope told them you must fight for work they cheered again and broken to a chant that the Pope heard as a prayer for work, work, work At that moment Pope Francis was not just ahead of the Catholic Church, rather he embodied the heart of a Catholic cry for justice, small sea Catholic A universal aspiration expressed in our country by the promise that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the birthright of every citizen

Surely that's not hard to understand what the richest parents won't for their children is what the poorest parents won't for theirs Measure that aspiration however, against the fact that more than 21 million Americans are still in need of full-time work, many of them running out of jobless benefits The richest 400 Americans are now worth a combined $2 trillion while new figures from the Census Bureau show that the typical middle-class family makes less, less than it did in 1989 with roughly 46 million people living at or below the poverty line With the exception of Romania, no developed country has a higher percentage of kids in poverty than we do Yet the House of Representatives has just cut food stamps for people who don't have enough money to feed themselves Listen, that sound you hear is the shredding of the social contract

And look at this heading above a piece in the current Columbia Journalism review, the line between democracy and a darker social order is thinner than you think If that doesn't send a shiver down the spine, I don't know what it will take to wake us up So Pope Francis and Kumi Naidu speak the truth in different accents and with different metaphors, but their message boils down to this Capitalism is like fire, a good servant, but a bad master If we don't dethrone our present system of financial capitalism that rewards those at the top who then use it to rig the rules against even the most reasonable check on their excesses We'll consume us in that fragile thin line between democracy and a darker social order will be extinguished Music

Coming up on Morgan Company, a rare television interview with the noted writer and environmental visionary, Wendell Berry Wendell Berry's mission, in word and deed, is the defense of the earth. This quiet poet lives and works on a family farm in Kentucky far from the center of power The urgency of his message crosses the distance He is one of, if not the great writer at work in American letters right now He understood what was happening on this planet a long time before anybody else. He's, you might say, a prophet of responsibility As he nears 80 years of age, this outspoken sometimes angry advocate of the land is moving beyond words to action We're here to make our grievances and our petition heard

I've been talking for a long time about leadership from the bottom and I'm convinced perfectly that it's happening That leadership consists of people who simply see something that needs to be done and they start doing it We don't have a right to ask whether we're going to succeed or not The only question we have a right to ask is, what's the right thing to do? At our website, BillMoyers.com, there are ideas from Coomi Nidu and others about what you can do to help curb climate change and secure future for generations to come That's at BillMoyers.com. I'll see you there and I'll see you here next time Don't wait a week to get more moyers. Visit BillMoyers.com for exclusive blogs, essays and video features This episode of Moyers & Company is available on DVD for 1995

To order, call 1-800-336-1917 or write to the address on your screen Funding is provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, celebrating 100 years of philanthropy and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world The Coalburg Foundation, independent production fund with support from the Partridge Foundation, a John and Pauli Guth charitable fund, the Clemens Foundation Park Foundation dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues The Herb Alpert Foundation, supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society The Bernard and Audrey Rappaport Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world, more information at Macfound.org and Gunowitz The Betsy and Jesse Fink Foundation, the HKH Foundation, Barbara G. Flashman, and by our sole corporate sponsor, Mutual of America

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