Jane Fonda spoke with CBS News about why she joined the fight: «This isn’t just about the environment. This is about the whole planet.»
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 , 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 .
The now 86-year-old Hollywood star traded her 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.
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 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.
