By Dan Mossip-Balkwill
Briarpatch Magazine
July/August 2009
Briarpatch: Any observations about the current state of the environmental movement?
Noam Chomsky: I don’t think there is an organized, centralized movement. There’s a general range of agreement, including from scientists, that the problem is extremely serious, and while there are a lot of uncertainties with regards to what could happen, there’s a consensus that the longer we wait, the greater the cost to future generations.
Some serious socio-economic changes have to be made. We’ve got this unsustainable way of life, particularly in the Western world, particularly in North America. The atomization of the population and the drive towards unwarranted consumerism and indebtedness have created very serious social, economic and cultural problems which have to be overcome. There are no structures around where people can integrate and begin to organize themselves; those have to be rebuilt anew. There are many people involved in environmental issues but they are very separate from one another. People in one corner of town don’t know what’s happening in the other corner, and that has to be overcome.
