It was a long Friday for the media covering the climate protests around the world and over the course of the day they have chosen to highlight some of their favorite activists. From the school skippers to the morbid suicide depictions, the media applauded every step of the way. On CNN Newsroom, two more activists were highlighted: one 17-year-old who traveled a great distance to the protest and another who wished her employer didn't exist.
Guest host Erica Hill began with CNN climate correspondent Bill Weir in New York to talk about the protests in that city. Weir lauded the teenagers who have led these protests and had one of them, Jamie Margolin, on with him. Margolin, who currently attends a high school in Seattle, testified in front of Congress on Wednesday. Weir's interview was a microcosm of the whole day where the adult made the teenager a spokesperson for an entire movement in an attempt to bring it added legitimacy, only to have the teen offered nothing more than generic doomsday prophecies and radical progressive boilerplate talking points about how she is going "to solve life on Earth."
Despite Margolin's desire to play in the political big leagues, Weir did not ask her the simple question of how much carbon was emitted to get her from Seattle to DC to New York and then presumably back to Seattle, which is becoming a recurring theme for these activists, for a protest that isn't going to change anybody's minds.
Speaking of Seattle, Hill then went to CNN's Scott McLean who was covering the protests in the Emerald City. Instead of coving people skipping class, McLean went for an even more radical, if not confusing anecdote. McLean chose to mainstream an Amazon employee who was one of, what he reported to be, an estimated 1,700 Amazon employees who walked out in protest of company practices. According to McLean this employee wishes her employer didn't exist: "One employee told me that she believes that the planet would be better off without Amazon in it."
As if wanting to rid the country of e-commerce, (and one would think by logical extension most if not all cross-country commercial activity,) wasn't radical enough, McLean added they "want the company to stop donating to politicians who deny the climate science and they also want the company to stop using their technology to help oil and gas companies, something that CEO Jeff Bezos said flat out he will not do."
In the span of less than five minutes, CNN showed what Friday was really about: using ill-informed children who think that passion alone should be sufficient to persuade skeptical lawmakers and who have been scared out of their wits by adults in order to advance radical left-wing policies. that have nothing to do with the enviornment.
Here is a transcript for the September 20 show:
CNN
CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin
3:27
ERICA HILL: The climate crisis marches happening across the U.S. as well. CNN's Scott McLean is in Seattle and here in New York, CNN’s chief climate correspondent Bill Weir. Bill let’s begin with you, quite the day out there, a lot of folks making their way into the city.
BILL WEIR: Way more than NYPD anticipated, that’s for sure. They had to shut down all of lower Manhattan. They’re now estimating in the hundreds of thousands which is pretty amazing considering this thing started with such, well, grass roots from a few teenagers here and there. I want to bring in one of the voices behind this. This is Jamie Margolin. Good to see you.
JAMIE MARGOLIN: Good to see you, too, thanks you so much for having me.
WEIR: I saw you on Capitol Hill—MARGOLIN: Yes, yes
WEIR:-- testifying in front of the Senate there and frustrated in moments.
MARGOLIN: I was very frustrated.
WEIR: Tell me about that. What frustrates you the way grown-ups in power think about this issue and what these kids are saying?
MARGOLIN: They think about it as a competition of whether we’re going to have an economy or whether we’re going to solve life on Earth and they talk about solving all life on earth as being “insensible.” A lot of the things these politicians were talking about is “Oh, it's not sensible. We have to have sensible solutions” as if -- as if it was sensible to destroy a life on Earth. It is insanity. I'm defying the definition of insanity as trying to solve an issue with the same thinking that caused it sitting in the hearing room all of these politicians talking how they're going to buy and sell and use greed to get out of the problem caused by buying and selling and greed. It didn't make any sense and was frustrating because there was, sitting behind me a delegation of indigenous Amazon protectors being so -- they didn't -- talked like they didn't actually care about the people affected, just wanted to see how can I hold on to as much money as possible.
WEIR: Fired you up more? Fueled more of this?
MARGOLIN: It did fuel more of this and after the testimony, I saw so much amazing responses on social media and more people turned to the strike because of it. They were telling me I saw your testimony and now I'm coming to strike. It's amazing to be able to turn, to turn a situation of -- of frustration into one of hope and action.
WEIR: Thank you, Jamie. Thanks for stopping.
MARGOLIN: Thank you.
WEIR: That's the thing, Erica. Greta Thunberg the Swedish girl who inspired so much. She said she was in a deep depression when she understood the warnings of science, but turned that depression into action. You see the result here today.
HILL: Quite the number of folks, Bill appreciate it. In Seattle as we mentioned, Scott McLean is out there on the west coast, what are you seeing there? What are you hearing from folks on the ground there?
SCOTT MCLEAN: Hey Erica, I’ll let you have a look at the crowd here. Organizers say there are 1,700 Amazon employees here at minimum. A lot of these folks don't work for Amazon, so the number is procedure higher than that. I was talking to some folks in the crowd, some people have the blessing of their boss to be here, many have taken vacation days and some say they’re just taking a really long lunch. There’s one sign over there that says, "Amazon: big footprint equals big responsibility" and the reality, Amazon is a massive polluter, it takes a lot of carbon to move things all across the country. One employee told me that she believes that the planet would be better off without Amazon in it. That said, the company just announced a pretty ambitious climate plan yesterday involving buying 100,000 electric delivery vans to try to become carbon neutral by the year 2040 but some employees especially the folks here say that's not good enough. They want the company to stop donating to politicians who deny the climate science and they also want the company to stop using their technology to help oil and gas companies, something that CEO Jeff Bezos said flat out he will not do, Erica.
HILL: Alright, Scott McLean, live for us in Seattle. Thank you, both.
