Season 2 episode 8 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we interview Nell, Martha and Naomi from Youth 4 Climate Leeds. We talk about shifting tactics from just strikes, working in solidarity with other groups, “de-diversification”, and navigating being a group during a pandemic!

“Both the cause and the effects of climate change is interlinked with racial justice”

- Nell

“There is sometimes an ethic within activist circles like, ‘I can change the world by myself.’ And then you end up just taking on so much work and it just becomes ridiculous. Like, I remember like, it must have been early 2020 and I was going to three meetings a week all in different places”

- Martha

Show notes, links

Youth 4 Climate Leeds Twitter (@yleedsuk), Instagram (@youth4climate_leeds) and Facebook. You can find links to school strike groups across the country on the UK Student Climate Network website.

We now have a Patreon! Please help keep the podcast going, at patreon.com/resistrenew. If not, there's always the classic ways to support: like, share, and subscribe!

Transcript

ALI

This is Resist Renew,

KATHERINE

the UK based podcast about social movements,

SAMI

what we're fighting for, why and how it all happens.

ALI

The hosts of the show are

KATHERINE

Me, Kat.

SAMI

Me, Sami,

ALI

and me, Ali.

SAMI

I'm recording this now, baby!

ALI

Shit, it's a podcast!

SAMI

Welcome, everybody to the Resist + Renew podcast.

We are here today with a number of people from Youth 4 Climate Leeds. Youth 4 Climate Leeds was a group that was founded in early 2019 as part of the Global Youth Strike for Climate, and Fridays For the Future movement, and is run by young people.

And why don't you introduce yourselves? Martha, do you want to go first?

MARTHA

Hi, I'm Martha. I'm part of Youth 4 Climate Leeds. I've been part of this group since 2019. And obviously, we're all incredibly passionate about climate justice and social justice as part of the group.

SAMI

Great: Naomi?

NAOMI

Yeah, so. Hi, I'm Naomi. I'm part of Youth 4 Climate Leeds as well. So I've been kind of involved with the climate movement more formally with like different organisations and companies for a while. And then in like, early March 2021, I've become more involved with like the organising. So ever since then, I've been organising weekly.

SAMI

Amazing, good stuff. And Nell.

NELL

Yeah, I'm Nell. I've been involved in Youth 4 Climate Leeds since March 2019. So early days, and and it's been a big part of my life ever since.

SAMI

Great! Okay, so starting us off. What is the political context that you're organising in? Could you tell us a little bit about that?

MARTHA

So Youth 4 Climate Leeds is basically part of this global reaction to governments’ lack of lack of policymaking towards this incredible crisis that we face at the moment. And specifically, the strikes are obviously, they're inspired by the wider Fridays For Future movement that began with Greta Thunberg. So it's all inspirational from that.

And we, we strike about every few months, and we tried to put pressure on the government to make policy that deals with climate change, and to empower young people within Leeds within that context as well.

SAMI

Great, thank you. And so could you maybe say a little bit about - You said, I can't remember exactly the wording but something around like resistance to like government inaction, or whatever. Could you say a little bit about, like, that, and how you understand that? Like, what, what do you think, what do you think's going on? Like, why do you feel like this, the kind of stuff you're doing is a good, a good tactic?

MARTHA

So our kind of ways that we organise are through civil disobedience. And we encourage young people to strike from education in a kind of disturbance, but a self inflicted disturbance. So a lot of the criticisms that can come to nonviolent, like nonviolent direct action is that you're inflicting it on other people. But this is a self sacrificing move, because we are so frustrated with the government and how climate change just doesn't seem to be at the top of their priority, no matter how much talking they do.

I mean, if you look at the facts in terms of climate change, and where we are now, I mean, we are currently in the sixth mass extinction, a third of coral reefs have have died out already. It’s an incredibly important issue. And our lives depend on it. So we'll strike and we'll carry on striking until the government decide to really take it seriously.

And that's in the context also of COP26 happening later this year. And with wanting to really get something material out of that, because the agreements made so far like the Paris 2015 Accord, they didn't go far enough. So we'll keep on pushing until we get what we want.

ALI

Absolutely. Yeah. You mentioned, like, some of the scale of the crisis around climate, the sixth mass extinction that's happening that’s obviously, with the latest IPCC reports, it's becoming more and more clear that we're heading in a really bad direction. And anyone feel free to come in on this one, like, what do you see as the cause of the crisis? Like, is it just like you said that governments aren't doing anything? Or what, what else is like, underlying the climate crisis for for you all in your group?

NELL

Firstly, I think it's like this idea of like the selfishness and greed that's been perpetuated. Like, the wealth, I don't know the wealth, like greedy. And everyone's, I think there's a lot of selfishness going on, like even people in like, first world in inverted commas or like Western countries talk about the climate crisis, and then still expect so much like material goods and digital goods. Without realising that, like, if we, if we, like, in this ideal world that we're fighting for, we wouldn't have all this stuff, we wouldn't have, like, I don't think we’d have a laptop each, we wouldn't have all this equipment that we're doing this podcast with, I wouldn't be in this, like, nice University room with all these nice amenities.

But, you know, in the, in an ideal world, we would, we'd still be happy and healthy and have the things that we need, we just have less of these luxuries that we have today because they should be given to people who don't have anything to sort of, like, even at the playing field.

And the other thing I think is - I can’t remember what the question was. I was gonna go on about the media, though. Like how, like a cause of the climate crisis, I think, is that people are being kind of, I don't know, people don't believe it. Because, like, I don't know, like tabloid media, controlled by I dunno Rupert Murdoch and stuff like that, and also Facebook. Have part, they've invested like billions in sort of, like, sort of, you know, creating questions and quite, you know, creating phrasing and wording that makes people question the climate crisis. And so they could, you know, they, I think they came up with the term ‘global warming’, because warming's like a nice word has nice connotations, they put a lot of money into sort of psychological stuff. And using wording that makes people question its legitimacy as a scientific fact. So even today, people think, you know, they think there's a scientific debate. I've thought that people who think, Oh, well, it's not proven, you know, scientists or, you know, they don't they don't agree on it. And it's like, no, they do, like 99% of them agree. So those are the two things, I think: the media, and then just like this sort of selfish attitude that we have.

MARTHA

Yeah, I would just adding on to the next point, that the reason a lot of the reason we're here, because we're all of the country's economies, well, the vast majority of them are based on neoliberalism, which has just this constant desire for growth, and to be, to build more and to make more money. And it prioritises, as Boris Johnson said the other day, wage growth over life expectancy, and and cancer and cancer recovery rates. It's it's this whole system, which is completely rigged to keep on making tonnes of money and, and ruin the environment.

Because the environment: you cannot put a price on it. But that is the that's the exact issue, that you can't put a price on cutting down the tree, but you can make a profit from it. So when you're when you're in this economy that rewards irresponsible behaviour, you're going to end up in a climate crisis and here, and here we are. And we've been, and then they talk about how they can balance solving the climate crisis with, with neoliberalism, as if we haven't been trying to do that for the last 30 years and completely failed. We've com-, we've completely failed, our emissions are set to rise by 12% in the next 10 years. So this, this, you cannot have solving the climate crisis and, and capitalism, unfortunately. Because if it has a constant desire for growth on a lim- on a planet with limited resources, then you can't balance the two. So it's, the issue is based around around an economic system that just does not coincide with ecological justice, unfortunately.

SAMI

Yeah, I think that's, I think those are all some really good points. I think the thing that economists talk about is perverse incentives, right? Like living in a structure which basically encourages behaviour, which is ecocidal, and doesn't encourage the kind of behaviours and ways of relating to each other, which would lead to a life, which is like still good and happy, but maybe with less stuff, like you were saying before. Or at least for some of us, probably we don't need as much stuff as we have. Amazing, thank you.

ALI

Yeah, great. Thank you for that background. You've already mentioned a bit about like, what, what Youth 4 Climate group does in Leeds, but Naomi do you want to expand on that and tell us like, yeah, what,