The book and the film [This Changes Everything] fed into each other in ways that were compounding and very exciting. The pain was shared.

We're dealing with a crisis of inequality, of joblessness, of underemployment.

If you spend a lot of time with activists, as I have, they're just ordinary people who instead of Netflix are getting together in church basements and making posters or making phone calls doing organizing work. It really is about finding a community of other people.

I think that kind of urgency is what makes this stage of the climate movement really different from what it was even a few years ago when it was much more of the professionalized NGOs lobbying behind closed doors and maybe having a march now and then.

I think people are losing that sense of security pretty fast, frankly.

I personally feel very strongly that what it will take is not more disasters, it's that what it will take is a vision of the future that is better than our present.

Catastrophic damage from climate-driven extreme weather is now an annual reality. The cost of not dealing with it will be much greater than if we try to pre-empt some of those disaster cleanups by actually investing in the shift now.

One of the things that could be exciting about this next phase of Canadian politics is if we could maybe have co-leaders.

I think Canada deserves a forthrightly left electoral alternative. I don't see the advantage for our democracy in having a number of parties crowded in the centre. The Liberals are experts at co-opting left language and framings during campaigns, and historically, we know they don't govern like that.

The thing that our system is designed to do is keep us alone and isolated in our little consumer bubble. And the most revolutionary act of all might be finding a community of like-minded people where you can talk about these issues and figure out what to do together.

I've always kind of hated films about climate change.

Once you feel the desire to engage, think about what you're good at and what you can contribute. It's about breaking down the idea that there are activists and ordinary people.