Jane Fonda is a name that one often associates with cult film classics such as 9 to 5 and Barbarella however, the 85-year-old is utilising her platform at the Cannes Film Festival to campaign for climate action.
Fonda attends the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
(Image: Getty)Speaking on her Rendez-vous with… Jane Fonda panel, the two-time Academy Award winner used her platform to convey a sense of urgency in relation to minimising the catastrophic impact of climate change, telling her audience, “We’ve got about seven, eight years to cut ourselves in half of what we use of fossil fuels.”
Fonda was also quick to discuss the social and cultural impacts of climate change, arguing that the groups least responsible for the drastic shift in climate, such as remote island communities, developing nations, and disadvantaged people of colour, will be the groups most impacted by the drastic change in climate.
The actor also touched on the relationship between racism, patriarchy, and the climate crisis, arguing, “It’s good for us all to realise [that] there would be no climate crisis if there was no racism. There would be no climate crisis if there was no patriarchy”
“White men are the things that matter and then everything else at the bottom,” she continued.
WATCH: Jane Fonda speaks at climate protest. Article continues after video.
This is not the first time Fonda has spoken out strongly against the climate crisis, with the actor launching Fire Drill Fridays, a series of weekly protests in Washington DC, in partnership with Greenpeace in 2019.
“I had been inspired by the global rising of Extinction Rebellion, the Sunrise Movement, and Greta Thunberg,” Fonda wrote about the movement in The Guardian.
“It made sense to me: why should the burden of fixing this problem be on those who didn’t create it?,” she continued.
Fonda was arrested four times while campaigning for climate action in 2019 however, this did not deter the activist, launching the Jane Fonda Climate PAC (Political Action Committee) in 2022.
Fonda was arrested four times in 2019 while campaigning for climate action.
(Image: Getty)Fonda’s activism is not a recent phenomenon, with the actor playing a prominent role in the Civil Rights Movement and Anti-Vietnam War Movement throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Throughout the 1970s, Fonda rallied at college campuses across the U.S. to raise funds for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), with the actor famously travelling to Hanoi in 1972 to witness the conflict first-hand.
Speaking about her anti-Vietnam War activism at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Fonda stated, “They told me about what was really happening over there [in Vietnam]. I returned to the U.S. and got in touch with unions. I wanted to stop my career but a communist activist told me, “Mrs Fonda, we have a lot of members in our movement for peace, but there isn’t an actress like you. Keep making films, but choose your films based on your convictions.”
Fonda speaking at an anti-Vietnam War protest in May, 1970.
(Image: Getty)