AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Kumi Naidoo, longtime South African human rights and environmental justice activist, former head of Greenpeace International, also former head of Amnesty International, now the president of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative.

Can you lay out what this Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty is all about and what you’re doing, Kumi?

KUMI NAIDOO: So, the first time I met you, Amy, was at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, where you’ll remember we were calling for a FAB deal — not a fabulous deal, but a fair, ambitious and binding deal — in 2009. What we got was a FLAB deal, full of loopholes and BS. And what we have seen is, important though the COP is to get us in the right direction, that when you have the kind of domination by fossil fuel lobbyists and so on in the COP way, they’ve managed to somehow keep the term “fossil fuels” off any COP declaration and so on.

We have to now recognize that we need something complementary. And I think the effort made by Tzeporah Berman, the founder of the treaty, and the wonderful team that she’s assembled is exactly what we need, which is we need to have a legal instrument that ensures that governments can comply. Right now it’s sort of voluntary, right? They can agree things in COP, and they can walk away on it the next day. So we are starting a process. There’s already 13 countries involved. The exciting thing is already Colombia and Timor-Leste, two fossil fuel-exporting countries, are already on board. And we feel quite confident that as more and more extreme weather events happen on a day-to-day basis virtually around the world, that citizens are rising in a way that we will push our leaders to actually come together and get a global agreement to phase out completely and eradicate fossil fuels from our economic system.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Kumi, you mentioned Colombia. Could you talk about what is going on in terms of movements in Latin America and Colombia becoming the first nation to join the coalition?

KUMI NAIDOO: So, what we are seeing is that the most vulnerable countries in the world and those that are in the frontline of climate impacts are the ones that actually are the first movers. And basically, once we have a critical mass, we can start the conversations towards the content of the treaty. Just to be clear to all governments, a treaty does not exist. This is about creating a process that will give us the binding outcome where, hopefully, we can hold our leaders account.

So, with Colombia, we applaud their leadership, and we hope that other fossil fuel-producing countries in the Global South will also see that it’s in their long-term interests not to continue their addiction to a poison, which is oil, coal and gas, that is killing our children and their children’s futures.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you name names, talk about some of the nations and corporations that are profiting the most from fossil fuel extraction now, even while their words may say something differently?

KUMI NAIDOO: Oh, that list, sadly, Juan, is very long. So, let me just say that there’s doublespeak here, right? Because the thing is, we have won the argument, and we won the argument several years ago, in the sense that not a single nation in the world says that the climate science is not urgent and real. Not a single fossil fuel company in the world denies the climate science, as they were doing in the past and putting a lot of hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in lies and misinformation, confusing people.

Where the big difference is, about the pace of the phaseout. Fossil fuel companies and some of the governments that they dominate would like to drag it out, it would seem, right ’til the end of the century, when the science says we are running out of time and we need to do it now. So the fight is for the urgency and the fastest withdrawal. And, of course, the most powerful nations in the world — Russia, China, United States and so on — say one thing about the urgency, but in actual practice are actually nowhere near what the science tells us we need to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Kumi Naidoo, in a press briefing yesterday, you compared the fossil fuel industry with the industry of slavery. Explain.

KUMI NAIDOO: So, firstly, both industries were legal, right? The fossil fuel industry is legal. The slave industry was legal. Secondly, both are absolutely morally repugnant, right? Slavery was one of the worst atrocities committed by human beings on human beings. Fossil fuel addiction, its impact threatens the very existence of our children’s future. So the scale of the immorality of our dependence on oil, coal and gas, when we have alternatives and we can move decisively over the next decades to get off it.

But the commonality is also that they have exceptional arrogance. They have exceptional — both industries, they have exceptional control over political decision-makers in several countries. And both industries behave with absolute impunity. Do you know that as we sit here today, slave owners in the U.K. still get compensation? Their families still get compensation for the loss of their slaves, right? No compensation to the people under slavery, who suffered under slavery.

So, bottom line is, both the industries are immoral, unethical and so on. And we need to start treating the CEOs of fossil fuel companies as slaveowners, with the same kind of resistance that we saw to bring an end to slavery.

AMY GOODMAN: The COP, the U.N. climate summit, will be in Baku, Azerbaijan, yet another petrostate. Last year, it was the UAE. Can you talk about the significance of this? And also, talk about the role of the United States. We’re in a historic election year. What difference what the U.S. does makes?

KUMI NAIDOO: So, firstly, you know, if the COP, which you and I have been through multiple times, didn’t exist, we would have to create it. But let’s be very clear that it’s not the best, most equitable, most inclusive negotiating forum. One of the reasons we have had the term “fossil fuels,” which is the most direct impact on climate change, the most devastating impact, kept off the agenda is because, consistently, the largest delegations to the COPs is actually the fossil fuel industry. So, if you take Glasgow, for example, U.K., because it was in the U.K., had about 300 delegates. When you combine the fossil fuel lobbyists, they’re about 5,000. I mean, just try to imagine that. That is like Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization that does immensely good work and supports people around the world, having their national conference, and the largest delegation to that conference is the alcohol industry. Right? The absurdity of it must be addressed.

So, then, when you ask about the U.S., obviously, in the U.S., we’ve got a stark choice. You’ve got the Republican Party, which basically — in fact, it’s about the only political party I know in the world right now that actually denies the science and whose leader actually, you know, in a blatant way, says, “We’re going to drive fossil fuel production. Drill, baby! Drill!” So, I guess it’s not to say that the Democrats are anywhere near what we need them to be, because they say the right things, but we still see they are open to fossil fuel infrastructure being built and so on. So, from an activism point of view, whoever gets elected, obviously, the Democrats would be an easier fight for us, because while they’re not where we need them to be, they are much closer to what we actually need from our politicians right now.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have like 30 seconds, but we just played a clip of Greta Thunberg, who was making a link between Chevron and Gaza. When she was just a climate activist — I won’t say “just a” — a just climate activist, she was covered all over the world and in the United States. In the United States, you almost never see her now talking about Gaza. You’re a South African. South Africa has brought that case to the International Court of Justice of genocide against Israel. Your quick comments linking the antiwar movement and the climate justice movement?

KUMI NAIDOO: We have to recognize many of the struggles we face are very intersecting and very connected. The fact that Greta and other voices who see no contradiction between standing up against genocide, on the one hand, and standing up for ecocide that we are experiencing as a result of climate change, there shouldn’t be a contradiction between the two. And it is sad that, in fact, the media environment, which in the United States, for example, claims to be democratic and open and so on, engages in such censorship around the contradictions that exist. Because, you know, occupation in Ukraine is completely accepted. Occupation in Palestine is treated in completely different ways by the media. And that should change.

AMY GOODMAN: Kumi Naidoo, South African human rights and environmental justice activist, president of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative.

Next up, unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, Missouri is set to kill Marcellus Williams tonight, despite the fact that the jurors, the prosecutor and the murder victim’s family all oppose his execution. Back in 15 seconds.