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Jane Fonda on her climate activism journey and the stakes in the 2024 election: “We can’t lose another 4 years”
She may be an actor on screen, but she’s an activist at heart. Between calling for an end to the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, rallying with the women’s movement, and fighting for Indigenous rights, Jane Fonda has marched and protested nearly her entire life.
But five years ago, as she walked under a hazy orange sky filled with wildfire smoke, she felt like she still hadn’t done enough. This was not the bucolic and smog-free California she experienced growing up at the end of a dirt road in the Santa Monica Mountains.
“This is way beyond what I thought it was,” she told CBS News. “This isn’t just about the environment. This is about the whole planet.”
A switch went off — what Fonda describes as a “lightning bolt right into my solar plexus.” She’d always had a fondness for nature, but had never been vocal about protecting it. She realized in that moment that she needed to use her platform to draw attention to the climate crisis.
The now 86-year-old Hollywood star traded her “Grace and Frankie” script for “On Fire,” by Naomi Klein and picked up the phone to call the then-head of Greenpeace, Annie Leonard, to tell her she was moving to D.C. “I’m gonna raise a ruckus. Can you help?” she said.
This is just one of many moments Fonda shared about her climate activism journey in an interview with CBS News national environmental correspondent David Schechter.
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In the candid conversation, Fonda details why she joined the fight to save our planet and why she’s urging others to join the cause, especially with the 2024 presidential election less than two months away. “We can’t lose another four years,” she said.
On why 2024 is so pivotal
The stakes of this election are so high in Fonda’s mind that she told her agent that she couldn’t take on any acting work this year.
“When the election is happening that’s going to determine the future, I couldn’t do it,” she told CBS News.
Fonda is supporting Vice President Kamala Harris, believing the Harris-Walz ticket would fight for climate solutions and make progress on ambitious targets like cutting our fossil fuel emissions in half by the end of the decade.
“I am really involved this time because of the climate emergency,” Fonda said.
A Trump-Vance win, she believes, would send the country in the wrong direction by increasing our reliance on fossil fuels. (One of Trump’s slogans is “Drill, baby, drill.”) “We can’t allow this to happen in the United States,” Fonda said, “not when the future of the planet is at stake.”
Andri Tambunan for The Washington Post via Getty Images
She recognizes that young people may be tempted to sit the election out, especially if they’re frustrated or hurt by what’s happening in Gaza. But her message is clear: “Show us your power! Vote!”
“Do not sit this election out, no matter how angry you are,” she urged young voters.
On the role of celebrity endorsements
Fonda isn’t the only celebrity using her voice to rally political support. After the presidential debate on Sept. 10, Taylor Swift announced her endorsement of Harris on Instagram, signing the post “Childless Cat Lady,” a jab at Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance.
“I thought it was really smart of her to choose to do it after the debate,” said Fonda. “I think it’s going to have a big impact.”
According to vote.org data, from 9 p.m. to midnight the night of the debate, the website saw a 585% spike in people using their register/verify tool, compared to that same time frame the previous eight days. And vote.gov said it received 405,999 visitors through a link Taylor Swift shared in the 24 hours after she posted it. The site includes information about how to register to vote and cast a ballot, and directs users to state sites where they can register.
Whether it’s knocking on doors or posting on Instagram, Fonda believes celebrities can have enormous sway. They act as “repeaters,” she said, referring to the electronic devices that help amplify and expand the reach of signals. “They pick up signals from the valley that are weak, and they distribute them so they have a larger audience,” she said. “That’s what celebrities do, like me.”
On empowering climate candidates across the country
Outside of the presidential race, Fonda is also focusing on mayoral, city council and state races. Getting climate champions elected to those offices is the main mission of Jane Fonda Climate PAC. Founded in 2022, the group’s informal motto, promulgated by Fonda, is: “If we can’t change the minds of the people in power, we need to change the people in power.”
“There’s this disconnect between what science is saying and what elected officials will allow to become policy,” she told CBS News. “That has to change.”
Down-ballot candidates may seem like a drop in the bucket in the larger battle to combat climate change, but Fonda says the goal is to develop leaders who can rise up into larger positions. They also have the power to challenge projects in their own backyards, like Line 5, a pipeline that runs through Michigan and Wisconsin, backed by Canadian oil company Enbridge, said Fonda.
“We need local people there that will stop it.”
In its first year, Jane Fonda Climate PAC raised $2 million and helped get 42 “climate champions” elected to office. This year, the PAC is looking to make an even bigger splash by backing 100 candidates across multiple states, including the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona.
On how a climate crisis calls for collective solution
Fonda is a firm believer that the power not only rests inside the halls of government, but outside in the streets. It’s a sort of symbiotic relationship, in her eyes: get people elected to government and then make them take action.
“Nonviolent civil disobedience and protests historically have changed history,” she told CBS News. “But you need people in the halls of power with ears and a heart to hear the protests, to hear the demands.”
Fonda is no stranger to civil disobedience. In 2019, she was arrested five times during Fire Drill Fridays, a protest series she started in Washington, D.C. that was designed to draw attention to global warming. Fonda even spent the night of her 82nd birthday behind bars. “I knew that would have an impact,” she told CBS News.
Mark Wilson / Getty Images
Before that, the last time Fonda spent the night in jail was in 1970, when she was 32, while on a speaking tour protesting the Vietnam War. She was known as an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War and made a controversial trip to the embattled country in 1972.
Kypros / Getty Images
Fonda says she started Fire Drill Fridays because she realized you can get a lot more done when you join forces with other people fighting for the same cause. A collective crisis demands a collective solution, she says.
Asked about her advice for young people joining the cause, she echoed this sentiment: “If you want to go fast, go alone,” she said. “If you want to go far, go together.”
JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
After nearly 60 years of acting, dozens of movies, three marriages and six arrests, Fonda feels like she’s right where she belongs.
“I think a lot about being on my deathbed, and I know that when you’re on your deathbed you want to feel that it’s been worthwhile,” she told CBS News. “For the first time I felt my life has value.”
She may be in her final act, but she has no intention of slowing down. She’s currently traveling nationwide to visit down-ballot candidates endorsed by the Jane Fonda Climate PAC and support the Harris-Waltz ticket. Just last week, she was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, knocking on doors for the campaign.
“If celebrity is a currency, which it seems to be, why are you spending it this way?” Schecter asked Fonda during the interview.
After a brief pause, Fonda responded, “What other way would there be to spend it?”
The interview with Jane Fonda was coordinated by Covering Climate Now and done in partnership with The Guardian and Rolling Stone.
David Schechter and
contributed to this report.
CBS News
Israeli soccer fans attacked in Amsterdam, with five reportedly hospitalized and dozens of suspects arrested
Amsterdam — Antisemitic rioters “actively sought out Israeli supporters to attack and assault them” after a soccer match in Amsterdam, authorities in the Netherlands said Friday, with police reporting five people hospitalized and 62 detained after a night of violence between. The police did not mention the nationality of any of those injured or arrested after the scenes of chaos in the Dutch capital.
Israel’s government said it was helping coordinate flights home for Israeli fans caught up in the violence.
Israel was “doing everything to ensure the safety and security of our citizens who were brutally attacked in the horrific anti-Semitic incident in Amsterdam,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. “It was decided that it was not necessary to send a professional rescue mission to the Netherlands. Instead, the effort will be focused on providing civil aviation solutions for the recovery of our citizens.”
Israel’s airports authority said the first of two planes being sent to bring citizens of the country home had departed from Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv and was expected to arrive in Amsterdam within a few hours.
X/ iAnnet via REUTERS.
Dutch leaders also condemned the violence against the Israeli fans as antisemitic.
The attacks on fans of soccer club Maccabi Tel Aviv came after a Europa League soccer match between their team and the local Amsterdam team Ajax, but there had been clashes between the Israeli fans and locals before the game, too.
The violence erupted despite a ban on a pro-Palestinian demonstration near the soccer stadium imposed by Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema, who’d feared clashes would break out between protesters and supporters of the Israeli club.
The violent clashes reportedly occurred around midnight local time, with numerous fights and acts of vandalism in central Amsterdam.
There were clashes before the game, too, as Maccabi fans were among hundreds to march through central Amsterdam in a pro-Israel demonstration, during which flares were lit and Palestinian flags hung on some streets were reportedly torn down amid chants of “death to the Arabs.”
Mouneb Taim/Anadolu/Getty
In an earlier statement, Netanyahu’s office had said that the prime minister ordered two “rescue planes” to be sent to Amseterdam to evacuate Israeli citizens, but that decision was later reversed. Netanyahu’s office also barred any members of the country’s military from flying to the Netherlands for an indefinite period.
“The harsh pictures of the assault on our citizens in Amsterdam will not be overlooked,” Netanyahu’s office said, adding that Israel’s government “views the premeditated antisemitic attack against Israeli citizens with utmost gravity.”
Netanyahu’s office demanded the Dutch government take “vigorous and swift action” against those involved.
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said on social media that he followed reports of the violence “with horror.”
“Completely unacceptable antisemitic attacks on Israelis. I am in close contact with everyone involved,” he added, saying he’d spoken with Netanyahu and “emphasized that the perpetrators will be tracked down and prosecuted. It is now quiet in the capital.”
In a post on the social media platform X, Israeli President Isaac Herzog Israel denounced the attacks as a “pogrom,” referring to the historic racist attacks on Jews in Russia and eastern Europe, and said they were reminiscent of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel that sparked Israel’s ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
The Israeli Embassy in Washington said on X that “hundreds” of Maccabi fans were “ambushed and attacked in Amsterdam tonight as they left the stadium following a game,” according to AFP. The embassy blamed the violence on a “mob who targeted innocent Israelis.”
Geert Wilders, the far-right nationalist lawmaker whose Party for Freedom won elections in the Netherlands last year and who’s a staunch ally of Israel, reacted to a video apparently showing a Maccabi fan being surrounded by several men.
“Looks like a Jew hunt in the streets of Amsterdam. Arrest and deport the multicultural scum that attacked Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters in our streets. Ashamed that this can happen in The Netherlands. Totally unacceptable,” Wilders said.
A Qantas plane made an emergency landing Friday due to what the airline said was a “contained engine failure” soon after taking off from Sydney Airport, sparking a grassfire on a nearby runway and causing several flights to be diverted.
The Qantas flight, QF520, was bound for Brisbane and was circling for a “short period of time” before landing safely back at Sydney Airport, Qantas Chief Pilot Captain Richard Tobiano said in the statement.
There was no initial word on the number of people on board.
DAVID GRAY / AFP via Getty Images
“Qantas engineers have conducted a preliminary inspection of the engine and confirmed it was a contained engine failure,” the airline said. “While customers would have heard a loud bang, there was not an explosion.”
The Reuters news agency explains that in a contained engine failure, the engine’s parts stay inside the protective housing meant to keep them from flying out. If they do, they could cause severe damage to the main body of a plane.
Airservices Australia, the government’s aviation regulator, said the engine failure caused “a grass area adjacent to the runway to catch fire” that was swiftly extinguished by firefighters.
DAVID GRAY / AFP via Getty Images
The Airservices’ National Operations Management Centre enacted a 47-minute ground stop at Sydney Airport to ensure the plane could land as quickly as possible, the regulator said in a statement, adding that no one was hurt.
Reuters reports that the airport said all its runways had re-opened by Friday afternoon after the parallel runway had been closed for inspection because of the fire.
The aircraft is a 19-year-old Boeing 737-800, Reuters said, citing Flightradar24. That type of twin-engine passenger plane is designed to be able to fly using only one engine in an emergency, Reuters noted.
Passenger Georgina Lewis said she heard a “bang.”
“One of the engines appeared to have gone. The pilot came on 10 minutes later to explain that they had a problem with a right-hand engine on takeoff,” she told local outlet Channel Nine.
Another passenger, Mark Willacy, a journalist with Australia’s national broadcaster ABC, said the plane struggled to get airborne following the “loud bang” noise.
“That big bang as the wheels were leaving the ground and the shudder, that was like nothing I have ever felt,” he told ABC. “When we landed, there was a lot of applause and cheering amongst the passengers.”
Tobiano said his staff members were “highly trained” to respond to such emergency situations.
“We understand this would have been a distressing experience for customers and we will be contacting all customers this afternoon to provide support,” he said in the statement. “We will also be conducting an investigation into what caused the engine issue.”
Customers were being moved to alternate flights, Qantas said.
Eleven domestic flights were cancelled and four diverted to other airports, a Sydney Airport spokesperson said.
CBS News
Netanyahu sends 2 planes to Netherlands to bring out Israeli soccer fans after violence surrounding match in Amsterdam
Amsterdam — Leaders of Israel and the Netherlands on Friday condemned what they called antisemitic attacks on fans of soccer club Maccabi Tel Aviv before and after a Europa League soccer match between their team and Ajax, and Israel said it was sending planes to fly supporters home from the Dutch capital.
The violence erupted Thursday despite a ban on a pro-Palestinian demonstration near the soccer stadium imposed by Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema, who’d feared clashes would break out between protesters and supporters of the Israeli soccer club.
Amsterdam police had no immediate comment on the violence or numbers of arrests and injuries.
But Halsema said supporters of the Israeli team were hurt and the extent of the violence and number of arrests were still being sorted out, according to the Reuters news agency.
Agence France-Presse reported that a Dutch police spokesperson told the Dutch ANP news agency 57 people had been arrested.
AFP said social media platforms were inundated with unverified images supposedly showing the violence, but authorities offered few confirmed details.
AFP said AT5 reported that the clashes occurred around midnight with numerous fights and acts of vandalism in the center of Amsterdam. “A large number of mobile unit vehicles are present and reinforcements have also been called in,” AT5 said.
X/ iAnnet via REUTERS.
Details were unclear, but Israel ordered that two planes be sent to the Dutch capital to bring the Israelis home.
“The Prime Minister has directed that two rescue planes be sent immediately to assist our citizens,” said a statement from Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
It added that “the harsh pictures of the assault on our citizens in Amsterdam will not be overlooked,” and that Netanyahu “views the premeditated antisemitic attack against Israeli citizens with utmost gravity.” He demanded that the Dutch government take “vigorous and swift action” against those involved.
Netanyahu’s office added that he had called for increased security for the Jewish community in the Netherlands.
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said on X that he followed reports of the violence “with horror.”
“Completely unacceptable antisemitic attacks on Israelis. I am in close contact with everyone involved,” he added, saying that he had spoken to Netanyahu and “emphasized that the perpetrators will be tracked down and prosecuted. It is now quiet in the capital.”
The Israeli Embassy in Washington said on the social media platform X that “hundreds” of Maccabi fans were “ambushed and attacked in Amsterdam tonight as they left the stadium following a game,” according to AFP. The embassy blamed the violence on a “mob who targeted innocent Israelis.”
Geert Wilders, the hard right nationalist lawmaker whose Party for Freedom won elections in the Netherlands last year and who is a staunch ally of Israel, reacted to a video apparently showing a Maccabi fan being surrounded by several men.
“Looks like a Jew hunt in the streets of Amsterdam. Arrest and deport the multicultural scum that attacked Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters in our streets. Ashamed that this can happen in The Netherlands. Totally unacceptable,” Wilders said.
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, also condemned the violence in a post on the social media platform X.
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Israeli soccer fans attacked in Amsterdam, with five reportedly hospitalized and dozens of suspects arrested