As part of our Dazed Texts series, the actor delivers a passionate plea to save the climate, using the words of the 2019 bill put forward by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
“I want children of my own in the future, but it scares me that the world they will live in could be unsafe,” Maisie Williams told Dazed last year. “I don’t want to be denied the right to have a child because the world is burning.”
Known to many as Arya Stark in Game of Thrones, and for her roles in the recent TV series, Two Weeks to Live, and upcoming film, The New Mutants, Williams is also a keen climate activist; part of a generation that’s mobilising for action. As well as being an ambassador for WaterAid and a spokesperson for Greenpeace and the Dolphin Project, the actor is currently working on a documentary about salmon fishing and protecting endangered whales, titled Searching for Chinook.
Having first learned about the climate crisis at school, Williams has since expressed her dismay at those in “really powerful places who still seem to refuse the science”. Now, in the latest episode of Dazed Texts, the actor addresses this inaction, and makes a passionate plea about the urgency of change. Reciting the Green New Deal – put forward by New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019 – Williams reflects on the damage caused by the crisis and outlines the steps we need to take to protect the planet and young people’s future.
“This is a resolution,” she cries, “recognising the duty of governments (and all of us little people) to create a Green New Deal.”
Williams goes on to list the aims of the deal, including achieving “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions”, creating “millions of good, high-wage jobs”, and securing “clean air and water, healthy food, and a sustainable environment” for all. “I mean, yeah,” she adds, “we want all those things.”
“The duty is to promote justice and equity,” concludes Williams, “by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of colour, migrant communities, deindustrialised communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.”
The Green New Deal is a package of US legislation which aims to address climate change and economic equality. As explained in a 2019 Dazed op-ed, the plan was first proposed in 2007, but the idea saw an enormous surge in support last year, after AOC unveiled her radical vision for a just transition. It’s an ambitious ten-year national action plan to tackle climate breakdown in a way that improves peoples’ lives and builds a fairer, more democratic society and economy.
Williams’ rendition is part of Dazed’s partnership with #TOGETHERBAND, a campaign raising awareness for the UN’s crucial global goals, 17 targets that range from promoting gender equality to working toward greater sustainability, with the aim to make the world a better place by 2030. This edition of Dazed Texts focuses on ‘affordable and clean energy’, an aim which will encourage growth and help the environment by ensuring universal access to affordable electricity by 2030.
Previous Dazed Texts have featured Simran Randhawa considering love and consumerism as she recites an extract from bell hooks’ seminal book, All About Love, and Rose McGowan, who took on the behemoth that is Facebook by offering her magnetic take on Mark Zuckerberg’s congress testimony.
