Page 193 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

CHAPTER 15

An Interview with Alan Rusbridger:

Keep it in the Ground

Alan Rusbridger and Benedetta Brevini

As former editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger put the threat of
climate change front and centre. He believes that real change can only
follow from citizens informing themselves and applying pressure on
politicians and corporations.
BB: Many recent interventions, from the interview with Greenpeace
CEO David Ritter in this volume to Klein’s book, indicate that the
current climate crisis has a lot to do with how capitalism operates. Do
you agree with this view?
AR: Well yes, I think it’s clearly all to do with capitalism and consumption
and whether they’re sustainable and whether companies care enough about
sustainability as an ethical or environment[al] or… commercial part of their
thinking. A lot of people think that… the patterns of consumptions in the
Western world are incredibly destructive, so yes.

BB: Developing countries are also following a very similar pattern.
I thought that the launch of the campaign [‘Keep it in the Ground’]
was also linked to this idea, that actually the way in which big corpo-

A. Rusbridger
London, UK
B. Brevini (&)
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
e-mail: benedetta.brevini@sydney.edu.au

© The Author(s) 2017 187
B. Brevini and G. Murdock (eds.), Carbon Capitalism and Communication,
Palgrave Studies in Media and Environmental Communication,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57876-7_15