Kick-starting the environmental movement: An interview with Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Dan Mossip-Balkwill

BRIARPATCH MAGAZINE, July/August 2009 / Reposted 27 April 2010 [print_link]

IMAGE: In a short time, Pres. Evo Morales has become a trusted leader for the Earth defense movement.

Capitalism is correctly denounced as the enemy of nature.

Briarpatch: Any observations about the current state of the environmental movement?

Briarpatch: How do we bridge these divides?

Briarpatch: How do people break out of that?

Briarpatch: So what sorts of actions can help take us to the next level?

Take the antiwar movement again. When I got started giving talks in the early 1960s, I was talking to small groups of people in somebody’s living room or maybe a church basement. Or we’d have to set up a meeting at the university with 20 different issues just to get people out to hear about the Vietnam War.

Briarpatch: Could the environmental movement reach the same scale as the other movements you mentioned?

Briarpatch: So where is the hope in all of this?

Given those choices, it’s not a choice. You have hope, of course.