The dire news in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has probably rendered a lot of people sleepless this week, but Mary Robinson has been up at night worrying about climate change for more than a decade. The former president of Ireland and UN commissioner of human rights has spent the last 15 years advocating for those on the front lines of climate change, and as president of the Mary Robinson Foundation, she’s argued tirelessly that climate change is fundamentally a human rights issue. Now she has written a new book, Climate Justice (out this September from Bloomsbury Publishing), which details the stories of activists working in frontline communities around the globe. She also just completed the first season of her podcast Mothers of Invention. Sierra spoke with her by phone about the book, the podcast, and her plans for a healthier future for all. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Sierra: Why did you write the book Climate Justice? 

Mary Robinson: I wanted to bring home the human dimension of climate change—the injustice of it, but also the way people were coping and being resilient. Storytelling is a really good way to get the message out. It doesn't scare people; it doesn't make the whole thing so immense that people don't know what to do about it. 

Who do you hope will read your book?   

I want to reach those who haven't thought much about climate change but like the stories and begin to identify with them, because the stories are quite varied. But I also hope it will influence policymakers. We need to hear the voices of frontline defenders.  

What do you think the average American might get out of reading the book? 

I hope the story of Sharon Hanshaw and Hurricane Katrina will appeal as well as the one about Patricia Cochran and what's happening in Alaska. Climate change is not something in the future. It's happening now in all countries, but in more vulnerable parts of countries and for reasons that the stories try to bring out. 

I noticed that you highlight how different Indigenous communities rely on their traditional knowledge both to inform them that climate change is happening and to help them cope with its effects.  

Yes, I'm really struck by how close Indigenous people are to the ecosystems that sustain us. They do know how to cope. They are the guardians of the seeds. They understand the forest. They know what's happening with the ice. We should be getting more financial support to the communities that are already saving their own forest.  

You also clearly make an effort to portray people from different walks of life. Why is that?  

Well, for example, I am very keen on the idea of a just transition and wanted to include Ken Smith, the miner who got a standing ovation at the Paris COP. I think you have to feel his story. Instead of demonizing those who work in coal or oil or gas, we need them to absolutely be a part of the solution with a fair and fully funded just transition, and I mean fully funded.  

Then there’s Natalie Isaacs, who has obviously struck a chord with quite a lot of middle class women as a professional in the cosmetics industry. She was ambitious enough to start her One Million Women project. More power to her. But the story also tells how hard it has been to do. I think there's a real lesson there.

In one chapter, you talk about how in 1847 the Choctaw people in Oklahoma raised $173 for famine victims in Ireland. Why did you include this in a book about climate justice?

That story is pretty well known in Ireland, certainly in the west of Ireland. In Tristan, there’s an annual event to celebrate it. When I was president, I went to Oklahoma to thank the Choctaw people. What they did was pure humanitarian empathy and support for an island far away, for people they didn't know and had no connection to. We won't be able to address the climate problem unless we have that kind of solidarity. Without it, we'll have runaway climate change that will affect everybody. That story helped me greatly when I served as high commissioner for human rights. I was given an impossible speech to deliver at a big gathering on a draft declaration, which eventually got adopted—the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—but I couldn't even understand the speech that I was handed to go in and open this session. It was full of acronyms and I wasn't used to UN-speak at that stage, so I just told the story about the Choctaw people helping the Irish. It gave me a much better relationship with Indigenous communities. I’m very conscious of how stories can help get a point across.

You have also recorded a podcast, Mothers of Invention. What made you decide to start a podcast? 

I had an idea to do a documentary. I went to Docsociety and they said, “Why don't you do a podcast?” I said, “What’s a podcast?" This was just over a year ago. They found Maeve Higgins, an Irish comedian based in New York, to do it with me. I was a little bit iffy when I heard “comedian”—you know, as a former president. But after the first 15 minutes together, they said, “This is perfect; this works.” It’s because of the empathy between us and the fun. Maeve’s got such a sense of humor. It's a lesson I've learned late in life—it's extraordinarily important to use humor to communicate a really serious point. I think the audience learns through her.

Do you see the podcast as having a different audience from your book?  

It seems to have a much wider audience for a start. It’s a generational thing. The younger people—my goodness, they have really got onto the podcast. We're deliberately a bit provocative. The byline is “Climate change is a man-made problem that requires a feminist solution.” I explain that "man-made" is a generic term and includes women, and then that the feminist solution definitely includes men. But I have no doubt that it puts some people off, particularly probably some men, but so be it. We want the focus to be on inclusion, justice, equality, and in particular that the voices of the women and the occasional man that come on flesh out what we mean by a feminist solution.  

You were just in New York for the UN General Assembly at the end of September. What was that like? 

I think it has become quite divisive, unfortunately, particularly because of President Trump. Within the UN obviously there is a disruption, but it's wider than that. There are autocratic leaders who are more populist in what they say, and there has been slippage in meeting the Paris commitments. But outside that, states and cities and business are desperately trying to claw back and say, “No, we have to be more ambitious.” 

The B Team [a group of business leaders] met in New York during that same week. For me, the B Team shows real leadership on climate change because they have committed to a just transition and to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in their companies and in their supply chains. And they do it the climate justice way. They have put together a letter addressed to presidents and prime ministers of the European Union to step up the ambition for the 2030 and 2050 targets and expressly to say that net zero by 2050 should be in the EU's long-term strategy. Remember that Hilda Heine, the president of the Marshall Islands, said on the podcast that the Marshall Islands have committed to net-zero by 2050. Come on, European Union! You have the capacity to do it. It just requires the political will to make the necessary tough decisions now. They will be a lot tougher if we don't make them sooner rather than later.  

You’ve worked hard to promote the idea that climate change is a human rights issue. Do you think that idea is gaining mainstream traction?  

We did an assessment through the Mary Robinson Foundation in 2011. We found that climate justice was very much a niche idea and not very spoken about in the UN or by governments. After the Paris Agreement, we did a second assessment. It was amazing how many heads of state at the summit talked about climate justice. Since then, there's been some slippage in the language again. But I think the climate marches and grassroots groups have helped to bring home that we have to address this as a human problem.  

I read that the Mary Robinson Foundation in its current formation is winding down at the end of 2018. How do you see your work continuing over the next several years? 

It was a tough decision, but we have achieved the objectives that we set out to do, which was to bring human rights and gender into the conversation about climate change and to bring the issue of climate change to the Human Rights Council. Now our last effort as a foundation is to get the UN to focus more on future generations. I'll be working to get women leaders to take climate change more seriously—both top-down leaders and bottom-up. African women leaders get it that climate change is deeply serious, and it's top of their priority. Asian women on the whole get it. It's women in Europe and the United States who talk about very serious issues—#MeToo, equal pay, empowerment generally—but climate change tends to be quite far down the list. Secondly, I've been working with some foundations to increase funding for communities, and in particular, women's groups that are building resilience at the grassroots but don't get any financial support. And finally, I’m very keen to encourage universities to become beacons of sustainability—divest and hopefully as more are doing, create centers for climate justice.  

It sounds like you will be busy.  

My passion seems to get stronger every morning when I wake up. I talk a lot about my grandchildren when I’m speaking, but it’s true that we’re not building a safe world for future generations. We really have to have the courage to believe that we can have a much safer, healthier, fairer world. That is the essence of climate justice.

Read Sierra’s review of Mary Robinson’s book Climate Justice: Hope, Resilience, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future.