WORLD ON FIRE (ENG)
A conversation with Melissa Kowara of Extinction Rebellion.
K: Ok, I’ll start with introducing Green Drinks Jakarta, if you guys haven’t heard of it. Green Drinks Jakarta is a global gathering for anyone who considers themselves green, whether they work in energy, conservation, policy, or entrepreneurship. So, everyone is welcome with Green Drinks, and it is actually, a global organization, with lots of different branches.in different cities that anyone can start (or join). Our team is made up of volunteers working in various sectors, and have previously held events at WeWork and Greenhouse coworking spaces. For more info, you can check out the website, greendrinks.org, again pinned in the comment, and you can find our city there, Jakarta. If you live somewhere else, there might be some other chapters in your area as well, and of course you can always start your own. For more info on Green Drinks Jakarta and our events, you can check out our Eventbank page, again the link is on the pinned comment. If you’d like to use our platform to share about anything feel free to email us at greendrinks.jkt@gmail.com. My name is Karina Kusumadewi and I will your host today. Today we’ll be joined by our guest Melisa Kowara of Extinction Rebellion Indonesia. So I’ll just invite her right now.
M: Hi since its called Green Drinks I thought we should drink!
K: .. drinking theme i also have my water bottle here, not an exciting drink i know but there you go. So I’ll introduce you guys to our speaker, this is Melissa. She is a toymaker, a restaurateur and she is also an activist and one of the coordinators for Extinction Rebellion Indonesia. So Melissa can you give us a bit of intro for Extinction Rebellion, especially the chapter here in Indonesia?
M: Sure! I’m not sure if any of you guys here heard of Extinction Rebellion. Extinction Rebellion itself actually started in the UK, in 2018. It’s not an organization, it’s not a company or anything like that, it’s just a movement. So what it means is that it’s completely decentralized. There is no owner, in fact, the coordinators, we have this thing called the Culture, in which, the coordinator actually has to switch around every 3 months. So there’s no leader per se, it’s just a movement. Just like Black Lives Matter for example at the moment, it’s a movement. The movement’s goal, is just one, which is to rebel against the very concept of going extinct, because of the system’s fault. We live in a toxic world where everything — we were born into this, we didn’t choose it, and yet we are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction. Why? It’s because of some elites have decided that they want to make the world this way. Again it’s not the individual’s fault or anything, it’s just the system, right. So what this movement is about is speaking up on exactly that: we want the system to change, we want things to change so that we don’t die. Basically it’s that. Again, the movement itself is actually already in 120 countries now, it’s quite widespread. ER Indonesia just started August of last year, but we are a growing movement! Hopefully everyone listening will agree and join, because it really is not like a company or anything, it’s just really a statement that we don’t wanna die, because of a taxi system.
K: Cool, yeah from what I understand, ER is all about people power, right? It’s about just amplifying our voices, uniting our voices against extinction, and demanding change from our leaders.
M: Correct. That’s why everywhere around the world ER only has 3 demands. That’s actually the only reason why we join under the same brand, so to speak, or the same logo. Actually I have the logo right here, this one is a bit altered to fit Indonesia. See the colours of the flag, but essentially what it is, it’s a clock, jam pasir, sand clock? What’s the English word for that?
K: I don’t know, I can’t think of it actually. We know what you mean.
M: You know what I mean, so it’s time, and the circle represents the Earth, and it really just signifies that we are running out of time, because there is this report called the IPCC report, and it’s basically made by the UN. A group of scientists within the UN, that declared, that we only have 12 years left, to change things — this was done in 2018 — so we have had two years so now its 10 years. Thank you Bianca, she just wrote hourglass, yes it’s an hourglass.
K: Someone else said egg timer.
M: So we only have 10 years left now, before sh** is irreversible. What would happen when sh** goes bad, it’s basically what we call The Point of No Return, because one disaster will lead to another, which will exacerbate another, and nothing you can do will stop the warming of the planet. That’s when you start thinking, ‘aight, we’re really gonna go extinct, or maybe some of us will survive in a bunker somewhere’, but yeah, it’s pretty critical. Sorry, I’m a bit rambling. Three demands!
K: I guess I just wanna add to that. You know, when things are reversible, and even now, when things are about to change, qlimatewise we already can see that people who are most disadvantaged who are less privileged, are usually the people who are most affected by climate change. This is also very much a social and equality issue as well.
M: It is exactly that. This is why i’m not a fan of people saying the word climate, because, what is ‘climate’? It kinda makes it as a distant issue. Environment, like its an animal rights thing, it’s like a forest thing, but what’s actually being threatened is our very existence. It’s your family is the environment. It’s my baby nephew is the climate, it’s all connected. So by using the word climate and environment, it always makes it feel so not personal, but it is! As you correctly pointed out, the people who are most affected are those who are marginalized to begin with, and those guys are not even contributing much to the carbon emissions to begin with! It’s just a complete sh**show really. That’s why you see everywhere, ‘social just is climate justice’, because it is. Climate justice means human rights justice, it means health crisis, it means everything, it’s all connected. We should really abandon the use of the word environment, but anyway, here we are. It’s what it is.
K: Speaking of that issue as well i wanna introduce the general topic of today. Everyone can see that in the past few years, we’ve seen an upsurge of people all over the world, just like what Melisa said, demanding for concrete action from our governments to take this climate crisis seriously and to declare that there is indeed a climate crisis. Today, we’re gonna talk about how the Indonesian government is reacting because voices in Indonesia, shouting for climate justice is being amplified here. A lot of organizations are popping up like ER, Bye Bye Plastic Bags, and so many others, that a decade ago didn’t get that much exposure in mainstream media, now is highlighted by our own TV screens, in the radio. It’s being talked about everywhere, and so how has the Indonesian government reacted to this and with the current situation of a pandemic and people all being quarantined in their homes, how has that changed the government’s reaction to the climate policies and initiatives that they’re doing? Is the pandemic retracting the attention away from climate issues? We also wanna talk about how the world has changed, during the pandemic and whether it has affected the Earth and the environment — positively, negatively, both? How has it changed? We also would like to explore what the government is likely to do, post-pandemic. So we’ll just get straight into that. Melissa, what do you think people—how do you think society has changed during the pandemic compared to before? How has people being quarantined, people traveling less, being out and about less, how has that affected the environment or emissions?
M: Well, it’s easy to think that because of the pandemic, everyone is at home, everyone is not traveling and whatnot, you would think that, it affects the world in a big way in terms of global carbon emissions, but the numbers are really pretty much speaks for itself. I think there is a reduction globally by 14% in carbon emissions. If you think about it, the amount of flights you don’t take and whatnot, it really should decrease by a lot more, right? If you really think about it, really dig deeper on why has this not decreased further, you’ll notice that the biggest carbon emissions to begin with, are not necessarily individual decisions, or individual consumptions and whatnot. The biggest carbon emissions come from fossil fuel in terms of energy generation, so you’ll have your coal power plants that are still going on, regardless of the need of energy, by the way. So they’ll just keep on running it anyway because they wanna burn it. This is an interesting fact. In Java alone, we have more than 40% extra, surplus electricity, in reserve, and yet, they are still building new power plants. For what? Who knows! Well, we do know, but, not blaming! That’s one aspect, right. Then other things, like mining. Mining is one of the industries that in the PSBB (quarantine, lockdown, isolation, confinement) moment, that is allowed to keep going. This is seen everywhere around the world. It’s actually really sad, so if you look into places like Brazil, there are more deforestations happening right now that pre-pandemic. It’s because the people who were demonstrating before, can’t physically demonstrate right now. So they’re just slashing and burning. This is also happening in Indonesia. It also happened. Recently the government passed a law called Undang Undang MINERBA. MINERBA is Minerals, Mine..basically its Mining and Coal, and this particular UU, was a problematic legislation to begin with, that President Jokowi actually said that they were gonna stop making this legal, before the pandemic. And then when the pandemic hit, all of a sudden, they just declared that “OK, we’re gonna do a finalization of this law.” Then the next day, “OK this is stamped,” done! We’re like, WTF?
K: So as soon as eyes weren’t on them, they just kind of just did whatever they wanted to do.
M: It’s so sad! It’s not just Indonesia, Australia as well. Australia has a lot of mines, that were just newly opened for the past two months, that were never allowed before. Again, because people weren’t able to protest and whatnot, they’re just like “OK, f** it,” and, yeah. That’s a bit sad. OK, actually, sorry, let me just give a little positive note on that. On the other hand, though, I actually am very hopeful, in terms of the human side, it’s because when you are home, and we’re seeing a lot of people are being home, well, forget the home part. We see from the pandemic tragedy that humanity is inherently good. I’m sure a lot of people who are listening now thought that Indonesia would be so much in more sh* than it is now, from the pandemic, and the only reason why we have kinda been okay till now, is because the civilians have really stepped up, and joined each other and whatnot. I think this is a very positive takeaway, because it really shows that if humanity really comes together, we really can solve problems, and we are able to put aside individual agendas and whatnot for a greater good. Again, inherently, humans are good. The fact that they are all home, these types of talks will not be possible, pre-pandemic, for example. right?
K: Definitely. We wouldn’t be able to reach out to everyone because everyone would be in different cities..
M: Exactly. So these types of things, that are a positive takeaway I guess from the pandemic, because the people are able to be
educated. We learn everyday, how much facts are we learning? Black Lives Matter, Papuan Lives Matter, I didn’t know Papuans were being racist against? Things like this, we are getting smarter. Even though the governments are doing dodgy stuff, here and there, I think the people power will kinda overthrow the sh**y, dodgy things that are going on, on the side at some point, hopefully sooner or later.
K: Especially now in this quarantine condition, we can see that some of the things were necessary for our lives, aren’t necessary after all. Hopefully people can be more mindful about what they spend their money on. What they do, how they live their lives, and really shuffle up those priorities that they have, and start thinking about how they impact the world. Right now, coz we’re in quarantine — what can we do to keep our eyes on the government? We can’t physically go to the streets, go protest — what can we do to let the government know that we’re watching?
M: I think, more important than before letting the government know is educating yourself. Really try to educate yourself all the time. Read up more news about this, follow it up. One of the things I always go to is the Guardian, one of the more independent journalists out there, and they do cover a lot of the climate crisis. Really just try to be more aware, look up all these things, but the key, after you know all these things, even before you know everything, you really should just keep b****ing online, and really spread the word. Really raise awareness amongst your own circle, and then grow it. Really the more people talk about this, the more mainstream it gets, the more the movement will be stronger right? Just like Black Lives Matter, I think somebody just commented “Do you think it also happened, after the pandemic?” I mean definitely — it’s been a problem for so long, and yet it’s never been exposed at this level. Having everyone stay at home has definitely helped in this explosion of exposure. This is the exactly the same exposure that we need to bring for the climate crisis, because it is a crisis. It doesn’t just affect one community, it affects everyone. So educate yourself, keep spreading it. With XR, we actually believe that change will happen, when a certain threshold is achieved. We believe in this thing called, theory of change. This is based on history. The Theory of Change is that anywhere in the world, throughout history, if you have three and a half percent of the population, standing and demanding the same thing, through methods of non-violent direct action — which means, basically, peaceful protests that are disruptive, because protests are generally disruptive, you’re blocking the path..
K: They’re disruptive in nature, of course.
M: Correct. It has to be disruptive, because if it is not disruptive, people would be like, “sure, you’re just hanging out in the streets, go ahead.” Nobody is going to change anything, the government will not listen, but when it is done in a disruptive way, and every movement int he whole world, once you pass the three and a half percent, threshold, change always happens. We’ve seen this happen in history, in the Philippines..
K: Only three and a half percent? That’s all it takes?
M: That’s all it takes.
K: That doesn’t seem too unachievable. We can definitely achieve three point five percent, right?
M: Exactly! It’s so achievable! And the biggest hope out of this is that once you demand change, the solutions are all there. The
only issue, the reason why we haven’t done all these changes, and all these solution-based things that will actually take us out of this sh**, is because the government has no intent to do it. But it’s there. Pick any problem that we have that is contributing to the climate crisis, and I guarantee you there is already a solution.
K: Yeah, of course. I think there is an action with the government because maybe they haven’t seen that, this is what people want. In the end, we are a democracy, our voices have power, and if we show them enough that, “Hey you’re not gonna be elected if you’re gonna be all shady regarding the environment,” then I think they’ll be forced to pay attention to what we really want. So that’s why initiatives like XR is so important in amplifying and uniting these voices to push the agenda forward to the government. So I wanna ask about the Indonesian government. What have they done for..what strides have they made for the environment to reverse the climate crisis? Have they made any, and how has it changed during the pandemic?
M: Well. Some people are gonna get really pissed off hearing this — out of frustration of course. So the Indonesian government — and a lot of governments out there that has done the same — they have been really focusing on economic growth, which to a certain extent I understand the general logic of it. Our country is still backwards, we still have a lot of poverty, so we need people to grow, we need more money so that we can reinvest in welfare. But, the fact is, economic growth which is measured by one thing, which is the GDP — for those who don’t know, GDP is Gross Domestic Product, which is basically the measure of how much money, how much value is made through products that are made or bought, depending on which way you count it, by your country. So it really is how much value, again in terms of money term is generated within he economy. It doesn’t say anything about who owns what, it’s just literally, the amount of richness of a country. You can have one person opening up a gold mine and he just earned a ten billion dollar mine, and that’s “whoop, we have reached economic growth!” But it doesn’t really say anything about what a country should achieve which is, the good of the people.
K: Right, and how it’s distributed.
M: Yup, nothing at all. So that’s the problem. From the very beginning, the country is already focusing on that, which is a wrong metric to begin with, so much, that this goal, is their priority, over anything else, which includes, the environment. so that’s why we see a lot of burning of the forest, that’s why we see a lot of coal mines and removal of the indigenous people and whatnot because it’s not part of the economic growth scheme. See and still happening because they just submitted this thing called the NDC — sorry i’m just about to open my cheat note on the NDC — so it’s the Nationally Determined Contribution. As part of the IPCC, maybe you’ve heard of the Paris Climate Agreement, as part of this ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ type thing, every country has to submit an NDC which basically outlines their policies for the next ten to twenty years, until 2050, about things that will mitigate the climate crisis.
K: Right, so the NDC we should expect to see them to get rid of non-renewable sources of energy right?
M: Supposedly, right? The IPCC is very clear, that if we don’t want sh** to go irreversible, to the really really bad situation, we need to cut all emissions by 45% by 2030, which means no coal. You have to cut, we’re not talking about like “oh, not increase” we’re talking about cutting! So we really need to get rid of all coal.
K: Right, and we only have 10 years, that’s barely enough.
M: Bear in mind, those 10 years, is not set in stone, because all these numbers are based on some sort of computer models. It is impossible for us to incorporate everything single variable in the whole wide world, in the whole of the earth, to be able to get hundred percent accuracy level. What we see these days is when a scientist comes up with a new model, they always say “Oh we didn’t factor this in, oh we didn’t factor this in, oh actually this is gonna be faster,” Maybe the 10 years is more like 5 or 3? We don’t know. It’s pretty scary.
K: I see, things are being updated, always. So that’s very very worrying. Has their policies changed? How do you think he government will act regarding the climate post quarantine?
M: Actually, during the quarantine, they have released this just when the quarantine started. Their NDC is actually setting..a little backtrack. At the moment, the world is at about 1.1 degree celsius hotter than the pre-industrial revolution times. That’s the benchmark, because that’s when we started bringing all the carbon into the world. 1.1 above, right now. If we stop, all the carbon
emissions in the whole world, the Earth will still get warmer, because there’s a lot of carbon and greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere that hasn’t taken effect. If we stopped everything, I think it’s setting us for a warming of 1.4 already. If we stopped everything now in the whole world, the earth will still get hotter, which means the banjir (floods) we’ll still get more, the typhoons we’ll still get more. There will be still be more fires, things are gonna get more sh** still. That’s still happening. What we want to do, is to not make that sh** even worse. Based on the NDC that Indonesia has submitted, we are pretty set for a 4 degree warming relative to the pre-industrial revolution. Which is the irreversible…
M: Pfft, irreversible is at 2 point something. Two…the world is gonna end. This is 4, we are set for 4, which is, insane. If you look further into the NDC itself, it outlines different ambitions for energy sector, waste sector, toxic waste whatever — if you just pick the easiest one to see which is the energy sector, you would expect them to say “zero coal by 2050,” which is what Germany is doing. I think it’s 2050, but it turns out, what Indonesia had written, is by 2050, we, Indonesia, will have coal, minimum 25%, which means they have ZERO intent, of getting coal out completely.
K: Right. That’s crazy, because I mean, we’re so rich in natural resources, and renewable energy, like geothermal, we have the sun all year round. I mean even countries in Europe who are really big on solar like Germany, they don’t even have summer all-year round, they have winter. and it’s crazy to me, the fact that we have 12 hours of sun all year round (daily) and we’re not making use of it. It’s basically free energy, free money. That’s crazy. What do you think is gonna happen post-pandemic? I’ve heard that with some countries like China, they are intent on accelerating economic growth “to make up for lost time”. What do you think Indonesia is going to do?
M: I think there are already talks about that. I have no doubt that if it was up to..if nobody speaks up, that is definitely the direction that is going to happen. That’s exactly why I think it’s a very critical point for us citizens to speak up. Again if it’s up to them, money is everything right? How to get this growth and what not, what I think will happen? Im actually a hopeful and optimistic person regardless of what I’m talking about. I believe in the people, I believe in the humans, I think we are getting smarter all the time. As you said before, 3.5 % is not much, we’re not talking about moving an entire country here, especially because its completely understandable that it’s impossible to move an entire country to protest this, especially because 60% of us are still kinda threatened by the poverty line in Indonesia. It’s not even reasonable to expect us to protest, but change is coming. Either way change is coming whether we like it or not, because at some point, the banjir (flooding) will get really bad, or the water crisis will really hit Java at the same time, and the food crisis will just exacerbate at some point. At some point, people will realize, and people will complain, people will demonstrate. It’s just a matter of — demand — otherwise, they will die!
K: Like you said, it only takes 3.5 % of us, right?
M: Yeah. So I think it will happen, I don’t know for sure how much damage the economy and the economic growth scenario the government’s been pushing will damage the environment as a whole, before it’s stopped. I know it will be stopped, that’s our homework right? We really gotta stop it before sh** hits the fan.
K: So obviously so many people are stressed out and even eco-anxiety has become a coined term, I know that you can relate with that term a lot. What can people do to take action? Because people are doing very little work inside, we’re paying attention to things that matter, how can people take to the streets without taking to the streets, because obviously we’re stuck inside?M:Yeah, don’t get me wrong, at some point we will be safe enough to go out, and we should be in the streets, even if it is social distancing and whatnot. In the meantime, use your voice. Use your voice online, use your voice to your direct community, make them find out. With this, there’s always two approaches to this. One is, you really gotta demand to the government and to get that, you need people. So spreading awareness is still priority at this point, because again you can’t go out into the streets. The goal is to spread awareness so when we are able to go to the street, you have enough people to go with you to go to the streets. Really, join movements online, just keep b***ing, you never know who’s listening. Don’t think that “oh because I still use straws, or take long baths” or whatever, that you don’t have the right to speak up even. Everybody has the right to speak up! It’s about your existence! It doesn’t matter what we do, even if we still go shopping or whatever, who cares? Even if you eat beef, so what? You were born in a society where beef is available and you can afford it, it’s not your fault McDonald’s is f*ing good — I’m sorry, McDonald’s is f**ing good.
K: I feel like, I just wanna add, I think a lot of corporations have done this thing that are actually pretty sneaky because they’ve been telling the consumers: mineral water companies “hey, here’s some water, buy it, but it’s your responsibility to recycle this, because if the world is on fire, it’s your fault, because you didn’t recycle!” How sneaky is that? They’re the ones that produced the water bottles. This applies to so many other things, like especially with energy, and I think that’s why, obviously us consumers, we can’t really be super effective in policing these corporations. It takes a lot of us. So that’s why having systemic change is really important, from the government, and focusing our protests on the government to do some systemic change would be really really important. Do you think paying attention to what the government is doing would be really crucial then?
M: If you wanna really track what the government is doing one by one, it’s quite straining. It’s really really stressful. You raise a really interesting point, to which that I think the corporations and whatnot have been so geared towards individual change, that it’s somewhat distracting from the real issues here. Again, coming back to carbon emissions — that’s what they keep saying, I don’t even like the word ‘carbon emissions’, WTF is carbon emissions, it’s not even so clear, it should really be, “products that kill people” — anyway, side note. The key is that if you look at individual change, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying individual change is not crucial, I think it’s very necessary. I think in the New World that we want to live in, the resilient world where we are living in harmony with nature, these individual change, will be the way of life. Do i think these individual change will save us from climate emergency, alone? No. That is very clear. It will not. It doesn’t even matter, that if the world is to stop using plastic straws, we will still burn. It doesn’t matter if the whole world stops single-use plastic, we will still burn. But, are these single-use plastics, is there space for single-use plastic in the world we are envisioning? No. I think the key is..
K: It takes too long, doesn’t it? We’re running out of time.
M: Correct. We still have to do it, but it’s not enough. Again as you said, we’re pressed for time. As you said it’s really tricky what they do. If you trace back — there’s a lot of documentaries on this actually. Netflix actually does quite good documentaries, so people can just go through and check it out. The recycling industry for example, it was created by the Virgin plastic manufacturing. They knew full on from the beginning, that only a small fraction of the plastics they produce are able to be recycled, and yet, knowing this, they purposely made it big — the whole recycling aspect — and they pumped billions and billions of dollars to tell the world that you an recycle, so that they have more excuse to make the Virgin plastic to begin with. So this is the very tactic that they’ve been using for everything. it just spurs the consumerism, it further ties in with the story of growth. The fact is there is no infinite growth in a finite planet, it just doesn’t exist. It doesn’t work. That’s why we’re in this sh** to begin with.
K: Right, in keeping with us needing to keep track of what our governments are doing, do you have any resources that people here and every one of us can look to to keep track of what’s going on climate-wise?
M: Well, Indonesia specifically, there’s actually a lot of organizations that follow these things, XR of course, we will post random things here and there, but the other NGOs, the old, longer-standing NGOs like Greenpeace, 350, they actually do raise quite a lot of local issues. This particular Undang Undang will com up, this particular law will be enacted. All those organizations are actually very good, a very good way to learn about these things, but the more — this is what I said before as well, technology has gone, so great that the more you look for things like these on Google, and Instagram, they will suggest it to you anyway, more than you could see coz of the algorithm. I think it’s a brilliant thing, and this is how awareness just rises up, we’ll get smarter, and we won’t take for this bull sh*, I really believe that the world will change for a better way. Just start, educate yourself on the climate crisis. Actually, you can follow hashtags on instagram. You can start following the hashtag #krisisiklim or #climateemergency, because honestly, it’s gotten the point that it’s so bad, that every week, there is at least two new news, that is “WTF is that?” “Record heat in Antarctica” or “Siberia having 26 degrees in Siberia, in winter,” WTF is happening? Places like France, will no longer have vineyards because all the crops will die, coz it’s too hot! Ski resorts, will have to make fake snow? These might sound small, actually the big sh* is in Africa where they’re gonna have a huge famine, because of locust invasion. It’s like Biblical sh** !
K: Oh, climate change! Anyway, to keep it lighter, what can people do? So we need to educate ourselves, what was that link that you mentioned? Was it climate watch? Climate tracker?
M: If you wanna know the numbers, the actual numbers: the projection versus the policies of each country, there is a website called climateactiontracker.org. What it does is it tracks the carbon emissions of individual countries, per time frame. So for example for Indonesia, you can see where they stand, 2011, 2012, 2013 onwards until now. How they do this, is they look into the actual economy, the different policies, how the GDP is actually built in terms of what industries and whatnot. They also track the policies to sort of model what it looks like next year, and the year after, and the year after, until 2050, and based on this, you can really see where each country stands. Where Indonesia stands is really really bad. It’s not bad relative to other countries per se, it is, but it’s unfair to compare Indonesia to other countries, right. You can really just compare Indonesia now with Indonesia before, and you’ll see that Indonesia’s commitment towards keeping destruction of the earth to a minimal point, has actually decreased! So our policies were less destructive a few years ago than it is now. Which really shows the intent of the government. I keep coming back to this but it is really so crucial for us to speak up because if we leave it to the government to do whatever, pfft, I’m definitely not having kids, let’s put it that way.
K: So, we need to keep education ourselves and to keep track with what’s happening in the world, we need to join movements to amplify our voices. Can you recommend some movements to follow?
M: Well, XR! The thing with the movement, for me, XR, I’m not saying this because I like it or whatever. Personally speaking I have been suffering from eco-anxiety for more than a year and a bit now. It’s not even that long right, but since then I have tried, absolutely everything. For those who know me, you guys have probably realized that I’m a f**ing crazy sh* extremist in the past year. To the point that I even shower with my baby nephew’s bath water, i don’t use any other water anymore for showering [technical difficulties]
K: I’m not sure, do you mind repeating what you said because our connection was cut off.
M: Yeah I really tried everything, so as you introduced me before, I’m a toymaker, and I actually rented a place near my house for the toy workshop so I don’t need to take a car to go to work. I actually take an “autoped” the non-electric ones, but my point is, that I've tried everything, and through my extensive research, the most, the biggest hope i think humanity has to solve this extinction issue, is actually through movements like XR where it is non-political.
K: You have a hashtag right? Called #baweluntukbumi (incessant nagging for the earth)
M: I mean, it’s that, #rebelforlife, because you are actually rebelling to stay alive. It’s just so great, because it’s not political, solutions are very clear — oh, that’s what I forgot to say, the three demands.
K: That’s okay! So what are the three demands of XR? Unfortunately we do need to wrap up soon. I guess we can check out the three demands on @extinctionrebellion.id instagram. It should be on the website as well, linked here on the comments extinctonrebellion.id
M: It is. Essentially, in any change that you want with this particular thing, the main issue you’ve been seeing everywhere, is to demand the government to declare that there is a problem. We need to tell the truth about the issue. Then once you have declared that there is an issue of climate emergency, change all the policies with this in mind. So your education: put climate as your classes, curriculum; energy: stop using sh**y energy; water treatment: stop having bad water sucking up [from places] that are already running out of water. That’s the second demand, to act and really do policies. The third one is to have a citizen’s assembly. This is actually quite long so maybe you should just check it out. Basically what it is is having a non-governmental group of people that are selected out in random that really represent the people. Give them the information, the full information about what the problem is, and the options on what to do, so that they can make the decision that is completely fair, and that is for the people, because that’s the biggest issue. The decisions right now are not being made for the people, it is made for economic growth, which only benefits the select elites, which, again, doesn’t mean jack sh* for the welfare of the people.
K: Right. Thank you Mel for that and for the three demands of XR Indonesia. For more info you guys can check out instagram.
Again, some actions that you guys can do is to educate yourself, we talked about XR Indonesia and you can always follow them. They always post news. You can also check out climate news on the Guardian or any kind of independent news agency out there, and also join some movements! It’s cheap, you’ll gain some friends, and it’s actually proven to be the most effective way to make change, you need to amplify your voice with other people around you who believe in the same thing. Only with 3.5% of people in agreement, you can make change, and its been proven, it’s been proven by history. Thank you so much Mel for being our guest for today. We’ll try to include Bahasa Indonesia transcript for this, unfortunately Green Drinks Jakarta have always been in English, this is why our format is like this, so we’ll try to post important information from this lifestream in Indonesian as well. Thank you all so much for tuning in, and check out Extinction Rebellion Indonesia. Bye everyone!
Thanks for watching! For more updates on the next Green Drinks, click here.
Watch, read, and listen to more
Green Drinks Jakarta podcasts.