Josh Fox

I realized our climate change movement in the West was not seeing a giant crisis on the horizon of climate displacement. We think a lot about climate change in terms of weather, extreme storms, or fires, but the human element is that people are going to lose their homes — one out of every three people on the planet. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report says one third less of the planet will be habitable in 2070. That’s going to cause the largest mass migration in history. There are already millions of displaced people.

We are way beyond our climate targets from ten or fifteen years ago, and we’re going to experience an enormous upheaval. I wanted to focus on welcoming, an extremely important virtue at a time when all we see are walls. What is the opposite of the wall, which symbolizes xenophobia, racism, militarization, incarceration, hate? The welcome table is solidarity, sharing, generosity, a place where everybody has a seat and can find a new home.

Josh Fox

Previously, a refugee was defined as someone in danger because of their ethnicity, economic status, political status, but one cannot say you’re a refugee because of climate change now, which is a big problem. This needs to be rectified. We want the broadest definition possible of climate refugees, because, in the Global South, that should be a reason to declare asylum. These problems are the result of the Global North, of the First World’s economies. The people facing the worst impacts of climate change are those who caused the problem least and have the least resources to deal with it.

The question I get asked most is: “Where will I be safe?” And there is no geographical answer to that question.

Josh Fox

These private space programs are the most irresponsible thing we could be doing in respect to climate now. Billionaires’ private space programs can raise the temperature by two extra degrees, because they emit black carbon directly into the stratosphere.

Josh Fox

Donald Trump and other fascists are talking about border walls, dehumanizing immigrants. After World War II, there were so many displaced people, including my father, an infant survivor of the Holocaust, who came to the United States when he was eight. At that time, when the world had experienced this enormous upheaval, which I believe we’ll suffer due to climate change, the people rebuilding the world after fascism’s defeat decided to create a whole new Magna Carta for the human race. And the era of human rights and of nation states were born. Two hundred nations now, many who declared independence after World War II and the colonial era.

Then the empires never gave up their power and created a system of border checks, visas and walls, exclusion, and economic and military hegemony similar to the colonialism of the past, keeping the Global South down.

One of our Universal Human Rights is the right to move. There is no such thing as an “illegal border crossing.” You could argue climate, economics, race, religion, any type of oppression, which most people in the Global South face at the hands of the Global North, is a reason to cross a border legally and declare asylum. No one is illegal. The Trump administration and fascist governments of the world are in constant violation of our inalienable human rights. Freedom of movement now depends on how much money you have, and that’s against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by almost every nation — including the United States!

Josh Fox

I was keen to go there because it’s where my family left due to economic hardship. So many of these places are trying to exclude migrants, even though lots of the houses are empty, because so many left a hundred years ago. It’s right on the Mediterranean, across from Libya. Up to forty thousand people have drowned trying to make the treacherous journey to Italy. Mimmo, the mayor of Riace, Calabria, decided immigrants are not threats to Italy — they’re a resource. His town had so few children born to Italians that they were going to lose their school funding. Meanwhile, boats were arriving from Africa and the Middle East daily.

So, Mimmo created an immigrant economy. He gave migrants houses, jobs. And Riace, which was a ghost town, flourished. Mimmo said, “We’re now a global village.” There are refugees from all over Africa, Afghanistan, Eastern Europe. Forbes called Mimmo one of the world’s policy and thought leaders. But the Italian government, which blames immigration for every problem, prosecuted him for misusing public funds. Everyone knew these were trumped-up charges and Mimmo was the symbol of a new Europe. He was not allowed to travel to the United States to attend the celebrations at the end of our film.

In that section, we point out Italians were not treated very well in America when we first arrived; we were portrayed as rats. Can you imagine New York without pizza?

Josh Fox

I don’t believe that coal, oil, and gas are the causes of climate change — they are a symptom of a global system that starts with colonialism, the root cause of climate change. The attitude that a place can be exploited, monetized, and the resources extracted. The engine of capitalism and colonialism, the blood of that is coal, oil, and gas. You can’t own the sun or wind — it’s not a commodity capitalism can exploit. I’m trying to tie together the long history of the transition from colonialism to nation states and looking ahead to a moment of international collaboration and equality. But if the oil barons are in control and continue to push coal, oil, and gas, and colonial domination, we are going to tank the climate.

Josh Fox

The Achuar federation. There’s a vast difference between the philosophies of the Global North and the capitalist economies and their political structures and the indigenous people in those regions suffering the impact of climate change. The Achuar are living in harmony with nature and have an incredible seven-thousand-year-old culture and are trying to protect it. Without the Amazon we all perish. Pointing toward the indigenous philosophy and customs there is very important. Welcoming is an indigenous value; not necessarily in our cultures . . . 

Scientists campaigned that this is “man-made” climate change, but that’s not true. It is made by this system of extractivism and capitalism. The indigenous people in Africa and Peru did not make climate change. It is the fossil fuel industry, their political enablers and the billionaire class that are causing climate change. Looking at colonialism and the long arc of history, what came before it and where it has led us to is this climate catastrophe. How do we learn how to welcome each other again? We are all brothers and sisters on this planet and we have to start sharing.

Josh Fox

Undoubtedly. We cannot continue to live in a society where there are billionaires. Every billionaire is a policy failure, a moral failure, a human failure. It should be illegal to have that much wealth and power. I’ll point to the great socialist institution, the National Basketball Association — there is revenue sharing among all the teams at the highest level.

If we did the same thing, we’d have all our problems solved now. If we taxed every billionaire, then we’d have the global resources to take on these problems, fix climate change, move to renewable energy, have health care, schools, a better life for everybody!

Additionally, look at what Zohran Mamdani’s doing in New York. Look at Bernie Sanders’s amazing legacy. I have always been a democratic socialist. Of course, the solution is to have generosity, sharing.

Josh Fox

In the film, there’s a thousand-foot-long table atop the same levee that sank New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as a symbolic place to be. The table is that metaphor I want people to think about when we think of walls. When we worked on fracking, we saw people light their water on fire and that image defined that struggle. When we think about migration, I want people to think about the table, and to sing that song, “The Welcome Table.” There’s so much music in this movie. A wall on its side can be a table.