JANE FIGHTS ON
O
N A RECENT winter day, Jane Fonda
pops out of a side room, looking
every bit the Hollywood celebrity-
activist that Trumpistas hate. The
blond hair someone once described
as needing its own agent is perfect,
and her white blouse is stylish. She
cradles her lapdog Tulea in her arms.
We are at the Wing, a women’s workplace in
West Hollywood, for a talk on the climate crisis.
It doesn’t seem like Tulea has a speaking role.
Instead, Fonda hands her to a friend and sits
on a stool near a microphone with climate activ-
ist Lauren Davis. The 500 or so women and four
men give her an ovation. Fonda smiles and then
does something contrary to the movie-star ste-
reotype: She drops serious knowledge.
“I’m more scared because, on a granular level,
things are starting to unravel,” says Fonda, a two-
time Oscar winner. She then makes a persuasive
argument for cutting emissions by 50 percent in
the next 10 years because, well, we really have
no choice.
And if we don’t?
“There will be 200 million climate refugees.”
She pauses for a moment. “And we now have a
migration program that says nobody can come
in. When you go home tonight, just lie in bed
and imagine what this means.”
Fonda has been an activist for 50 years, start-
ing with the anti-war movement. Along the
way she has advocated for female reproductive
rights, opposed the Iraq War, and stood in soli-
darity with Native Americans at Standing Rock.
Her journey began while she was living in Paris
in the 1960s, dissatisfied with her life as wife
to libertine French director Roger Vadim. Sheknew next to nothing about the Vietnam War,
but what she saw horrified her. So she read Jon-
athan Schell’s The Village of Ben Suc, an account
of the erasing of a Vietnamese village by Ameri-
can troops. That led to full-time activism involv-
ing Fonda being smuggled into American bases
to meet with anti-war soldiers and then travel-
ing to North Vietnam, where two weeks of pro-
ductive work was reduced to her being labeled
Hanoi Jane when she was photographed smiling
while sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft
gun. Fonda was labeled a traitor, with conserva-
tives calling for her to be charged with treason.
Her path to environmentalism has been sim-
ilar. She says she was rejuvenated by her friend
Naomi Klein’s On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a
Green New Deal and was, once again, horrified.
“There aren’t two sides to this story anymore,”
says Fonda as the women sit silent. “Ninety-
seven percent of the climate scientists agree that
we are facing a potential catastrophe. But there’s
hope that we can do something about it.”
Fonda is fond of the grand gesture — e.g., her
Hanoi trip — so she called her friend Annie Leon-
ard, the director of Greenpeace. Now 82, Fonda
offered to camp for a year in front of the White
House. Leonard politely declined, and Fonda
went in a different direction. Inspired by Greta
Thunberg’s School Strike for Climate Fridays,
Fonda came up with the idea of Fire Drill
Fridays, where activists would protest against a
different climate calamity — whether it be new
fossil-fuel licenses or the proliferation of plastics
in our oceans — that would end with civil disobe-
dience. Fonda went out and bought a stylish red
coat so she could serve as the beacon of the fire
drills. “It’s the last new item of clothing I’m everCLIMATE CRISIS
going to buy,” Fonda tells me. “Well, except for
maybe underwear.”
What started as a small protest transformed
into a minor phenomenon in a few months.
She told newbies to eat a good meal before ar-
rest because there was no telling how long they
might be held. Fonda was arrested five times —
“The plastic handcuffs are much less comfort-
able than the old kind” — and found herself in
holding cells with Americans a third her age,
from every background. Soon, Fonda had stars
like Joaquin Phoenix asking to join. It also broke
Fonda out of a psychological funk.
“The minute that I got to D.C. and started
meeting with all of these activists, and some of
them were 13 years old, the depression and the
anxiety went away,” Fonda says. “I never really
realized so directly how much that affects me.”
After the talk, Fonda strokes Tulea and sits in
a plush white chair with a view of Santa Mon-
ica Boulevard. I want to give her a moment to
catch her breath, but she jumps right in. I can’t
tell if Fonda is joking when she mentions ask-
ing Netflix exec Ted Sarandos if they could delay
shooting the last season of Grace and Frankie,
her comedy with Lily Tomlin, for more activism.
“He said the contracts had already been
signed,” Fonda deadpans. Then she smiles.
“I’m back here now in L.A., and it’s business as
usual, and I’m going to work. But I’m still doing
marches, so I haven’t sunk back into depression.”
Fonda’s activism isn’t generic; she is work-
ing for specific changes. She was scheduled later
in the week to meet with California Gov. Gavin
Newsom to push for the banning of fracking and
closing oil wells that are within 2,500 feet of
residences. She is also advocating for CaliforniaBY STEPHEN RODRICK
She’s been an activist for five decades, and
even at 82, Jane Fonda is still willing to put
her body on the line for the sake of the planet60 ROLLING STONE