An Interview with Climate Activist Manuel Salazar
Thank you for joining me for this interview. I'd like to start by asking you to say a bit about your background.
I’m forty-six years old, and I was born in Colombia, but I grew up in Venezuela. As you may know, Venezuela is an oil state. Their whole economy is based around oil. So activism is something I came to at quite a young age. I've seen what big corporations do to nature. I’m from South America, from the Global South, and 22 years ago, I decided to leave the country to see the world. I've lived in a number of places around the world: India, Israel, the UK, Germany, Italy, and in all my trips, I've done a bit of activism, and also worked on my career. I'm a Technology Strategist, meaning that I know about a lot of technologies, and I do integration between all of them. I've been here in Ireland for 16 years now, and I became Irish in 2012. Since then, I'm mostly here working, but I still travel as much as I can.
Apart from activism, I'm really into sports. I play a lot of tennis, and I like running, hiking, and cycling. I take part in a lot of protests, as well. I know this is part of my activism, but it's a way of life, as well. I research technology, too, not just for climate change activism, but also to learn about how we can tackle the problem.