Baroness Natalie Bennett – Now is the time to CHANGE EVERYTHING! [Book]

In this Climate.Genn Episode I am speaking with Baroness Natalie Bennett about her book ‘Change Everything’. Natalie makes a fascinating case as to why the centre of politics can no longer deal with the critical challenges we collectively face, from the economic to the social and environmental – we are living in a moment of both energising and frightening changes!

In Change Everything Natalie details her Green Philosophy to rethink, repair and rebuild society.

The ClimateGenn podcast is also on all major podcast channels including Spotify, Apple – become a member on Patreon or Youtube.

Full transcript of Nick Breeze interview with Baroness Natalie Bennett:

Baroness Natalie Bennett – Change Everything (Order Change Everything)

[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]

Natalie, it’s great to see you. Thank you very much for taking the time to discuss your book,

Change Everything. If we consider the themes of the book, and there’s a few sort of elements to

all of this, there’s universal basic income, there’s free education, healthcare and so on, is now a

time, do you think, to change everything?

I mean, is now a feasible time as opposed to 10 years ago, for example?

[Baroness Natalie Bennett]

Very much so. And I would say that Change Everything is an inevitability. Where we are now is

profoundly unstable, economically, environmentally, politically, educationally.

The focus of the book is the UK, but that’s true around the world. So the one certainty of the

next 5-10 years is we’re going to see enormous change. What we have to do is make sure that

change is in the right kind of directions.

And one of the things the book says, it’s very much a call to action. It says that history is not

pre-written. History is made by the actions of people.

So as we go into COP 30 in Brazil, for example, we don’t know how it’s going to come out at the

end of it. We don’t know where we’ll be. Individual people will take action.

And one of the other messages of the book is that, yes, history is not pre-written. It’s made by

the actions of people. You can make history.

We want a world where everyone makes politics what they do not have done to them. And

doing politics might be organising a litter pick. It might be running for election.

It might be campaigning to change your school canteen and get less plastic in it. All of those

things, people can get together, make history and change the world in the right direction.

[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]

OK, you mentioned the COP. We’ll come back to that in a bit. But on this side of people, and let’s

just take the UK as a good example, is that, you know, there are many people who will say yes

to so many things in the book and just be it’ll resonate with them of how society should be.

But there’s another side that have been kind of polarised against any kind of progressive

thinking whatsoever. How do we deal with polarisation that is really there seems to be a great

barrier to moving forward at the moment to change?

[Baroness Natalie Bennett]Well, I think we have to be realistic about this in that there’s two potential visions of the future

at the moment. There’s the green vision, the green vision that understands there’s enough

resources on this planet for everyone to have a decent life for us to look after climate and

nature if we share them out fairly. And the far right vision of the Reform Party of Marine Le Pen

in France and many other people around the world that says, oh, it’s a difficult, dangerous

world.

We’ve got to grab what we can for us and ours and shove those others other way, build walls to

keep them out. So those are the two visions. And there’s two emotions attached to those.

Ours is a hopeful vision. Yes, human beings are creative, innovative. We’ve been on this planet

for 300,000 years as a species.

We’ve survived lots of different things. We can work this through and get out the other side.

The other side, the far right, is a message of fear.

It’s just, you know, hunker down and try and survive. And it’s all going to be terribly miserable.

And I’m positive because I think hope is a more useful, more effective emotion than fear.

But I think some people, you can’t expect everyone to come with us. What’s very clear is the

centre is dead because centrist politics means leaving things much as they are now. If you’re a

centrist politician, you just want to twiddle the dial here, move the odd lever a little bit there,

but not deliver real change.

And you look at what’s happening in politics around the world. People will not vote for status

quo politicians who offer more of the same for good reason. And they also won’t look to people

who look backwards.

There’s a lot of people, perhaps I run into a lot of social democrat type people who go, well, you

know, it was all going so well in the 1990s. And now it’s Russian bots and social media has led

people astray. And like, no, what we have now is a product of the 1990s.

You know, we can’t, we shouldn’t even think of going back to that. It was a deeply unequal,

deeply damaging to nature and climate world. We need to build something much, much better.

[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]

Yeah. And it’s interesting that in the 1990s was when we had the real power to act on things like

the environment, which would have averted many of the crisis that we’re sort of committed to

today in these respects.

[Baroness Natalie Bennett]

But we didn’t, we didn’t have the political space. And one of the things you I would say is, I

mean, I joined the Green Party on the 1st of January 2006. And that was about when Gordon

Brown was promising that he’d abolished boom and bust.And we were going to ride as a nation on the back of the financial sector into a golden future.

Since then, of course, we’ve had the financial crash and we’ve had the COVID pandemic. So we

now have a much more realistic view as a species on this planet, that we are operating within

systems that are not within our control, that we have to work with nature.

You know, I talk a lot about in the book about agroecology, working with nature rather than

trying to caution into submission. We know that we need to create much healthier

environments for people. And one of the things that ties to is not burning fossil fuels, because

that’s really bad for people’s health as well as bad for the climate and the natural environment.

So all of these things, we’ve come to a point now where we’re ready to take these things on that

we just weren’t ready to do in the 1990s. And I don’t believe in perfect political cycles, but we

had 40 years after the Second World War of a social democratic consensus. We’ve had 40 years

of neoliberalism, which has been built on inequality.

Greed is good. We can keep trashing the planet. We’re now in a situation to create the politics

for the new age.

[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]

Okay. And your book really is about this green political philosophy that is, you know, trying to

define what all of these new age, you know, what does it tangibly look like and what are the

ideas? And yet, as you were just saying, you know, we are up against this sort of cynicism and

divisiveness of reform, which emotionally charges people and in quite a bad way, but it does

charge them up.

Do you think that there’s a way to overcome that with these ideas, with these sort of visions for

a future, if you like?

[Baroness Natalie Bennett]

Well, I think we have to acknowledge that I’m not primarily interested in walking up to the most

committed reform voter, you know, with a side serving of conspiracy theories and in one

conversation on the doorstep to turn them around. What I want to do is energise the vast

majority of people who were totally not convinced by reform. And, you know, you look at the

British public survey show, British public are totally unconvinced by Donald Trump, really do not

like Donald Trump at all.

If you look at the support for reform, there’s also very, very strong resistance to reform. You

look at some figures on young people, there’s been a lot of talk about young people,

apparently, particularly young men, apparently being attracted by reform, but you actually look

at the statistics and it’s a very, very, very much a minority. What the job is to do is to unite and

present a positive vision and energising vision to the people who innately react against reform,

the people who are totally not convinced by reform, but they’re also, I’m totally not convinced

by Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour government.And key question is to make sure that the people who don’t turn away and give up and say it’s

all hopeless. That’s why I think hope as a mission is so important. The majority is on our side.

We just have to make sure that they can see that they can, with their vote, with their decision to

organise a litter pick, with their decision to set up a community garden, whatever it might be,

whatever floats their boat, getting involved, getting engaged, not feeling like you just have to

hunker down and try and survive. Optimism is really crucial.

[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]

Okay, and in the book, you do talk about how we got here in terms of things like colonialism,

how the City of London, the financial sector plays an outsized power role. Do you think that, you

know, Zak Polanski is the new leader of the Green Party, he’s getting a lot of traction, probably

because of this sort of polarisation, he’s able to find a lot of, you know, traction with ideas and

voices and stuff. Is that something you feel that he could change if there was more presence

after the next election?

Do you think that there’s room now for the Green Party to actually expand and be a much more

sort of powerhouse of ideas in government?

[Baroness Natalie Bennett]

Absolutely. And I’ve always said that I’m preparing for the first Green government. And that’s,

you know, people used to raise their eyebrows when I said that.

People don’t raise their eyebrows at that now. And I actually start hearing people saying it

before I’ve said it myself. The future of politics doesn’t look like the past.

That’s something I was saying since I was elected leader of the Green Party in 2012. And again,

back then, you know, it didn’t look like, well, we’ve had Labour and Tory as the two largest

parties in the UK for a century. But there’s nothing written in stone that says that’s going to stay

that way.

And of course, now that very much looks like something that is likely to change very fast. We

don’t have an electoral system that delivers democracy. The UK is not a democracy.

That’s one of our underlying problems. You look back to the Brexit referendum, and what won

that referendum for leave was the take back control. That’s because we don’t have a democratic

political system.

But what we saw, for example, just in the by-election for the Senate in Wales, for example, in

Carefilly, voters are far more engaged, far more involved, far fewer voters now are wedded to

one party and say they’re just going to vote for that party until they die. So people are going to

make political decisions, are going to say we want change, how’s the best way to deliver that

change? And that engagement and that involvement is going to deliver results unlike anythingwe’ve ever seen before.

[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]

You’re talking about this sort of lack of democracy. In some quarters, and we’ll use reform as an

example, they seem to be implying that we need more authoritarian and less democracy. But

there’s an argument for more democracy.

Can you give some ideas of how you would improve democracy in the UK?

[Baroness Natalie Bennett]

Absolutely. I mean, many people listening to this, I’m sure will be aware of the arguments for a

proportional representation election system. The not at all radical desire to have a parliament

that reflects the views of the people.

But that’s just one element of this. One of the other key elements is that the UK is the most

concentrated polity in Western Europe. Power, resources and money are concentrated in

Westminster in a way that looks absolutely shocking to people from the outside.

And local government now, there’s lots of talk from the government of devolution, which is

what Westminster society, it’s going to do to the rest of England. But those councils, whoever

they are, will be spending nearly all of the money they have on the priorities decided by

Westminster, statutory priorities, things that obviously need doing like social care, children’s

care, etc. But nonetheless, there is no local power and democracy.

And so a fundamental principle of the Green Party is that power should be held locally,

decisions made by the people affected, and only moved up when absolutely necessary. So we

need a transformation of the British political system, the English political system in particular.

But also what we’re seeing is that from the grassroots upwards, lots of really exciting cases of

different forms of people’s assemblies, deliberative democracy.

The Guardian just ran a really fascinating report about a arts centre in Nottingham, that’s being

run by a citizens assembly. So what’s happening is there is a real drive for that decision making.

And that’s a foundation of green political thought is to listen to the people.

This is the difference between eco-populism and right-wing populism. Right-wing populism is

essentially, here’s a man possibly sitting on a white horse, possibly in a military uniform, don’t

worry your little head about this, just walk after him and do what he tells you. Whereas we say,

we want to listen to you, we want you to be empowered, to be engaged, to be making decisions

for yourself and your community.

This is something where everybody has an import. And that’s one of the fundamental

differences of the two sides of politics.

[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]Okay, and you talked about, you know, the budget side of it and how money is managed, and

also these days, how tight it is for so many people. Environmentally, everything gets pushed

down the agenda because of these other issues. And in the book, you do mention several times

about the consumption in the UK is very high in terms of how much we consume, it’s more

than, it’s about three planets worth.

And historically, we have a huge burden of our contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, so

on and so forth. How could we start to reduce emissions in the UK, increase climate resilience,

climate security for the population in a way that doesn’t hurt people, that actually marries the

sort of progressive agenda on a social level?

[Baroness Natalie Bennett]

Well, it’s worth laying it out to the start, inequality is a huge climate issue. The people who

consume most of the resources among the UK are the people who are getting very large

incomes, often unearned incomes, and using that for high climate consumption. If you look

around the world, as the book makes clear, Green parties sit in the same political space around

the world, and there’s a reason for that.

It’s a redistributive space, a word that I’m afraid our Labour government won’t even use the R

word, we have to redistribute the resources in our society. As you said, we’ve got three-planet

living. To get back to one-planet living, you cannot say anything like, right, everyone cut back by

two-thirds, that literally leaves lots of people dead.

People who are already skipping meals because they can’t afford to buy them, or eating

horrible, unhealthy food because that’s all they can afford. People who are switching off the

heating in winter and shivering because they can’t afford the bill. What you have to do is the

people who have to give up a lot more are the people who are consuming the most, who are

the wealthy, so rebalancing wealth across our society.

This is true both for the UK and the globe. There’s enough resources on this planet for

everyone to have a decent life, for us to look after climate and nature, if we share those

resources out fairly. The other thing to say about that is a book that’s quite old now, but is

always worth pointing to, The Spirit Level, which points out that actually even the wealthiest in

society do better, have better health, better well-being in more equal societies.

This inequality is bad for the climate, it’s bad for everybody in society, and it’s not acceptable. I

was talking about democracy, a society where people don’t have to fear putting food on the

table, keeping a roof over their head. That’s why I think Universal Basic Income, the first

chapter of the book, everything is about Universal Basic Income, because it’s a fundamental

transformation of giving people security.

Everybody has enough without worry. The other side of that, and one of the big things about

the book, is we really have to change the idea at the moment. We still have the largest politicalparties going, we’ve got to create jobs, but we have a huge shortage of nurses and care

workers and so many other roles.

We have to turn this around and say, human resources, human time, energy and talents, that’s

a scarce resource, and it all has to be used well. How do we get it using well? Let the people

decide for themselves how to use it.

They know far better than the government, they know better than a boss how to use their time,

energy and talents well.

[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]

Okay. We were talking about this idea of a much fairer society in terms of how we operate. To

get into this one planet living, we were hoping that the cops would deliver more than they

have.

We’ve gone through a really bad spate of cops, where they’ve all been in authoritarian, oil-

producing, gas-producing countries. We’re going to Brazil, which has just signed off oil drilling

licences in the entrance to the Amazon. You talk a little bit about this in the book in terms of

one thing that I’ve noticed when going to quite a few cops is this coalition of vulnerable nations

that are able to develop voices by coming together.

I think there’s something we can all learn from that, especially in Britain, in its post-Europe

phase. How do you feel about COP30 in terms of potential? There’s a lot of noise about America

stepping back, but China’s stepping up.

What do you feel about COP30 in terms of good, bad, ugly, etc.?

[Baroness Natalie Bennett]

Well, I think this is something that again runs right through the book. Politics is a process, not

an event. I think in the past, there’s been we do this one thing, and we have this one decision,

and then we fix things.

That’s just not how the world, or politics, or society, or geopolitics works. You’re in a continual

process of change, of evolution, of development. There are lots of positive things happening.

The crucial thing here, the top level has to be focussing on fossil fuels and stopping burning

fossil fuels. In terms of the UK context, that’s one of the key asks. The Green MPs wrote to Zakir

Starmer before he set off for COP, very much focused on that, but also focused on the idea of a

just transition.

Carla Denya, the Green Party MP, has a private members bill focused on how do we get the jobs

so that people who work in high carbon jobs now can transition have the time, and the space,

and the support, something like a furlough scheme, to shift over to low carbon. They’ve got a

lot of the skills they need, they just need a little bit of help to shift over into the new industries. Ithink what’s going to happen at COP is we will all be both excited and disappointed, as we are

at every COP, but focussing on what you were saying about leadership, particularly, I mean this

is one of my pet things, is in previous COPs we’ve seen, Barbados, in geopolitical, military

terms, a nation of no global significance whatsoever, but has been an absolute leader.

We’ve seen the small island states be an absolute leader. I’ve just been looking at, I mean a COP

that’s happening before this COP is actually the Minamata Treaty COP, which is about mercury

pollution, and African states who are being affected by mercury pollution from gold mining are

actually the global leaders. I’m afraid Britain is trailing far behind, and is one of the very few

countries saying, oh we’re going too fast, we need to go slower, which is very disappointing,

but nonetheless the leadership here is coming from small African states who have a real issue,

and so we have to shift to, you know, there’s a lot of negative stuff said about the idea of a

multipolar world, but again this is using the resources, the skills, the knowledge of all sorts of

different countries with their different issues, bringing them all together, and my position in

terms of Britain is we have to stop marching into the room going, right we’re here and we’ll fix

things. What we need to do instead is say, okay we’re here to support you, what are you trying

to achieve, how can we assist with that, we’ve got resources, we’re a wealthy country, we have

the English language, which you’re probably all speaking in, how can we help you and support

you and take things in the direction you want to go, and that learning is absolutely crucial.

[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]

Okay, and at the same time we’re living now in this era of real-time climate impacts, I saw this

huge typhoon hit the Philippines yesterday, we’ve seen these, you know, you can look

anywhere basically and there are catastrophic events at every turn. Is that making it harder for

us to implement these kinds of green political philosophy or is it an opportunity for us to do it?

Because in some respects we can become so obsessed with our own potential problems that

we sort of don’t recognise what’s going on around the world.

[Baroness Natalie Bennett]

Well I think first of all, you know, in terms of the UK context we are of course seeing this as well.

Floods, droughts, farmers have just had the most awful year and food security is an issue I’ve

long been talking about and I talk about quite a lot in the book Change Everything, about how

we need to think about our own security. So this is not just something that’s happening over

there, but it is something that the reality around the world is most of the people being worst

hit, whether it’s the Philippines, whether it’s Jamaica, have done almost nothing to contribute to

the climate emergency, yet they’re the people who are suffering.

Bangladesh is the other obvious, very clear example, Pakistan as well. And so we have

responsibility to support and help, but the fact is people are going to have to rebuild and in

another context, I was recently in Ukraine and I gave a speech in the House talking about how

Ukraine, under the most difficult, conceivable circumstances, is actually looking to build back

better, is showing real climate leadership, even under the difficult circumstances that they’retrying to run a country in under regular missile attack. And so resilience adaptation, these are

things that actually make things better for people, as well as make them better for the planet.

So we are in a time of making sure, you know, one of the crucial things is to make sure we don’t

build back better, both in terms of adapting so people have safe, secure places to live that

aren’t going to be flooded out, that the roof’s not going to be blown away, whatever you need

to do.

But we also can give people a better life while we’re doing that. What we’re doing now is really

not working out very well. That’s why the message that change is going to happen is a really

positive message.

[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]

Okay, and really just to end on, change everything, it is a sort of textbook for change and ideas

and so on. How would you sort of suggest people get involved with those ideas? What’s the role

of for every sort of citizen picking up the book?

[Baroness Natalie Bennett]

Well, first of all, textbook makes it sound a bit dry. And I want to stress that I don’t think it is

dry. There’s 12 chapters, word tells me it takes you 20 minutes to read a chapter.

And it is very much a call to action. I say at the start of the introduction, you don’t necessarily

have to sit down and read all of this book, grab a bit that really, really floats your boat and go

off and go out and do something. So it is very much a call for everyone to make politics what

they do not have done to them.

And a demonstration that once people do something, and one of the things that I record in the

book is this essentially reflects what I’ve been saying at public meetings over a dozen years,

quite a few of the voices in the book are actually other people at those of those meetings,

things they’ve said to me. So even just talking to your classmates, your friends, your colleagues,

your family, and saying, hey, I read this really interesting idea. What do you think about this?

And how could we do that? And how could we how can we make our street nicer? You know,

how could we get some nice wildflowers growing in spring?

Whatever you can do, whatever possibility action you can take, all of these accumulatively,

change doesn’t happen slowly and gradually. Change happens in big jumps. The last real political change in Britain was the election of Margaret Thatcher.

Blair was the child of Thatcher. Cameron was the child of Blair. Don’t quite know what Boris Johnson was, we’ll park that one.

But Sir Keir Starmer is very clearly the child of Blair. We’re ready for the new age and the wave is building and you can be part of that wave, making it bigger and making sure it’s going in theright direction. So make politics what you do.

That’s the top line message.

[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]

That’s great. Thank you very much. It’s been great to speak to you.

[Baroness Natalie Bennett]

Thank you very much. I’ve really enjoyed our discussion.