The Fossil Fuel Endgame: Inside The Non-Proliferation Treaty — Ep197: Kumi Naidoo

How can climate activists be more successful in 2025? And where
have they gone wrong? 


Kumi Naidoo has a storied career as an activist. At just 15 years
old, he started out as an anti-apartheid campaigner and organiser
in South Africa, before fleeing the country and attending Oxford
University as a Rhodes Scholar, where he received a PhD for his
research into the resistance movement in South Africa. 


After Nelson Mandela was freed, he returned home to help organise
Mandela’s campaign to become President, and later became the head
of both Greenpeace and Amnesty International. 


Naidoo has turned his energy to a new campaign, one that focuses
specifically on the phase out of fossil fuels: the Fossil Fuel
Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. The Initiative, founded by
former Cleaning Up guest Tzeporah Berman, seeks to establish a
binding agreement amongst the most ambitious nations to phase out
fossil fuels. So far, it has been endorsed by 16 nation states
and 131 subnational governments and cities. 


Naidoo joins Bryony Worthington to talk about what he's learned
from 45 years of campaigning, from hunger strikes to occupying
oil rigs in the Arctic, where he thinks activism needs to go from
here, and why he believes the Fossil Fuel Fuel Non-Proliferation
Treaty Initiative is the path forward. 


Leadership Circle


Cleaning Up is supported by the Leadership Circle, and its
founding members: Actis, Alcazar Energy, Davidson Kempner,
EcoPragma Capital, EDP of Portugal, Eurelectric, the Gilardini
Foundation, KKR, National Grid, Octopus Energy, Quadrature
Climate Foundation, SDCL and Wärtsilä. For more information on
the Leadership Circle, please visit
https://www.cleaningup.live. 


Links and more:


Canada's Controversial Queen of Green

The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty