Varshini Prakash on Climate Activism

VARSHINI PRAKASH, CO-FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, “SUNRISE MOVEMENT” :We have been on this road to the Green New Deal tour right now. I am actually in California. Senator Feinstein and also Nancy Pelosi’s state at the moment. Just yesterday, we met with dozens of people in Paradise, California, a place that has been reduced to rubble and metal and melted plastic because of the fires of last year. If you can imagine, people were quite literally fleeing with fires on both sides in their car, their cars melting from the heat as they were trying to get to sanctuary and they could not get out of the car because of the danger of the fire. So, it’s a place that is ground zero for climate change, and we are seeing that in the midst of that young people are recognizing the political failures of our politicians over the last 30 years and stepping up to take action.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: I just want to go back to your own personal story because I think your grandparents were affected very, very traumatically by climate change in India, right?

PRAKASH: Yes. So, my family is from Southern India. They weren’t directly impacted by the floods. But a few years ago, there were these terrible monsoon seasons that went all throughout Southern India and I saw these images of people walking miles to sanctuary in chest deep water, seeing how people in my community who looked like me, families and friends lost electricity for weeks, weren’t able to have food or water. And it just sort of made me realize that this crisis is not 30, 40, 50 years in the future like they say. It’s impacting people in this moment. And we’re seeing that not only in India but we see it all across the domestic United States with the fires, but also the hurricanes that have devastated Maria — that have devastated Puerto Rico like Hurricane Maria, 3,000 people who have perished who still lack access to clean water and more.

So, we’re really seeing the impacts all over. And that — those floods in India were — was one of the key moments that made me step up and want to create Sunrise Movement to form a political vehicle for the millions of young people who are terrified right now about what our future holds.

AMANPOUR: Well, certainly, the young people are showing all us previous generations up by their dedication and their activism and their single-minded political endeavors here.