Talking about the stars whilst standing in the mud
Rhiannon Osborne in conversation with Mikaela Loach
The timing of Mikaela's book It's Not That Radical comes at a crossroads for the climate movement. More and more corporations, think-tanks, NGOs, politicians and elites are starting to support green capitalist ‘climate action’, often utilising endorsements from ‘climate activists’.
Mikaela tells me: “We are going to have climate action, but not all climate action is good. We need to recognise that we are either going to get ecosocialism or ecofascism. But if we concede to green capitalism we will compromise the possibility of a justice-based future.”
It’s Not That Radical: Climate Action to Transform Our World by Mikaela Loach
One of the core demands of It’s Not That Radical is to challenge white environmentalism – a kind of ‘climate activism’ which fails to recognise the systems of oppression which the climate crisis has arisen from and exacerbates.
“The climate justice movement as a whole has always been led by Black, Indigenous and other global majority communities for generations, before it was ever called ‘climate activism’. What people think of as the mainstream ‘climate movement’ are the whitest parts of it, often focused solely on emissions.”
Talking about the stars whilst standing in the mud
Rhiannon Osborne in conversation with Mikaela Loach