AActress Jane Fonda plans to dedicate the rest of her life to fighting for climate justice, because she knows exactly what we have to lose.
“I grew up hearing the sounds of coyotes, nightingales and mourning doves. I swam and dived in the Great Barrier Reef and the Galapagos, looked sea turtles right in the eye,” she said after receiving the Earth Award from TIME CEO Jessica Sibley on Wednesday night. “One of the big problems is that we have become alienated from nature.”
In recent years, Fonda has become known as an advocate for environmental activism – notably founding Fire Drill Fridays with Greenpeace USA in 2019 to demand legislative action on the climate crisis.
Fonda said the movement’s target audience is not politicians, but ordinary people.
“We knew that most Americans are really concerned about the climate crisis,” Fonda said. But despite their concerns, she said, most have not participated in the kind of civil disobedience that has historically paved the way for change.
“When they ask them, ‘Well, why didn’t you do it?’ they said, ‘Well, nobody asked us.’ Therefore, Fire Drill Fridays was aimed at the greats who were not asked.
Fonda notes that despite the size of the movement, it is often still difficult to translate energy into legislative change. “I realized that with all the protests and arrests and lobbying for decades… we still can’t get the legislation we need that is proportionate to what the science says we have to have,” she said. “Why is that? Well, it’s because many elected officials, both Democrats and Republicans, receive money from the fossil fuel industry.”
That’s why she emphasizes the need to make politicians care by getting people to focus on the climate crisis at the ballot box. “What happens in November in this country will play a huge role in whether or not we have a livable future,” Fonda said. “While most Americans really care about the climate, I don’t think they necessarily take that with them to the voting booth.”
The TIME Earth Awards were presented by Galvanize Climate Solutions, Amazon, Deloitte, Delta Air Lines.
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