Former Climate Activist's WARNING: The Movement is Harming Young People and Silencing Skeptics

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Lucy Biggers, head of social media at the Free Press and former climate activist, thank you for being here today. We're going to talk about why you joined the climate movement, why you left, and what gave you the courage to do so. Thank you so much for having me. Today, we're going to talk about how you went from being a leader, really, in the climate movement to now being one of its most outspoken critics. So before I knew the Free Press, Lucy, you were fighting to ban plastic straws, and you were, you know, homies with AOC. Hey, Lucy, I hear you're doing a video on the Green New Deal, and I'm thrilled. What happened to you? How did you [00:00:34] Speaker 2: get into that movement in the first place? Yeah, so I spent half of my 20s, really, in the climate movement, and it started about when I was 25. I'm 35 now, so I know I look younger, right? You do [00:00:47] Speaker 1: really give a lot of Gen Z energy, which we're going to talk about. Yeah, I cosplay as Gen Z, [00:00:52] Speaker 2: but I'm actually 35, so that's important to know the timing. So in 2015, I was 25, and I worked at this newsroom called Now This News, and I was a video producer there, so I was scrolling all the time on Facebook, and sort of the beginning of, like, the scrolling that we know now, and my algorithm was just feeding me up environmental stories, and I just kind of got bought into the climate movement narrative. Some of the things that first got me into it were just documentaries, Before the Flood, which is a Leonardo DiCaprio film, which now, it's, why do I trust Leonardo DiCaprio on this topic? But I watched that. Josh Fox is a big climate activist who's done films like Gasland, which now I know are very biased. So it was the documentaries, and then even in my feed seeing this thing called the Dakota Access Pipeline protest, which was really big in 2016, and activists would comment, cover Dakota Access Pipeline, cover Dakota Access Pipeline, and so I started covering this protest against a pipeline that was being built in North Dakota. The whole year of 2016, I did that, and that was really, like, when I first got into the movement, and then over the years after that, I built up my social media following on Instagram, covering things like the Green New Deal, interviewing Greta. What are the personal choices that you make to be more environmentally friendly? Always, like, being down on single-use plastics, all the normal ideas that you think of when it comes to, like, the climate movement, that is what I was pushing. And at the peak of it, I had 50,000 followers on Instagram, which I say is like follower inflation, because that's not that much now, but in 2016, or this is like maybe not 2018, that was a lot. And yeah, so I kind of just gained a persona. I got a lot of support for that, and next thing you know, I'm just, like, a gung-ho climate activist pushing all these ideas. [00:02:37] Speaker 1: So part of being, as you know, an influencer, especially in political spaces, is that it kind of becomes your identity. Right. I wonder why you're absorbing this information, you're reporting on it. What kind of led you to say, you know what, I'm going to, like, make this my life, really, and attach my face, my reputation to kind of pushing this movement forward? [00:02:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, so in the 20-teens, climate change was not a topic that was covered by the news a lot. It was a very undercovered story. And so I saw an opening where I could really be of service to these other activists who were talking and raising the alarm bells about this and cover it. And so I felt like I was on the side of justice, where, you know, the scientists are saying the world's going to end in 10 years. Why is nobody talking about this? Like, I'm going to start talking about it. And also, I will say, at that time, I was very, very left-wing. And so I was very progressive. And my whole newsroom was like that, too. So we were all, like, Bernie supporters. And, like, this is why the 20-teens, it's, like, really important to put yourself in that mindset of what that ideology was like at the time. And now when I reflect on it, I think it was this desire to, like, do good in the world. Like, I wanted to make an impact. And I thought I could be of service. And at the same time, a lot of this ideology that we know now really well, like, kind of the woke stuff and the oppressor versus oppressed mindset was coming into my newsroom. So now it was not just, like, oh, I'm a Bernie supporter and I want free college. It was like, oh, if you have white privilege, you need to sit down. Like, if you're a cis person, you need to sit down. And so in my, I'm in my mid-20s looking around the newsroom going, well, I've got a lot of, like, privilege. Yeah. And so when I'm seeing at the same time, these Native Americans saying, there's a Dakota Access Pipeline going on our reservation, and it's evil, and we need help fighting it, I'm like, great, I can be a really great ally. And so psychologically, in retrospect, looking back, I think it was this desire to, like, atone for my privileged position that I had in the world. And the way I could atone was by propping up these narratives. So it was very emotional, emotional driven as well, and, like, psychologically driven. And then black and white thinking, where it was, like, the Native Americans in this, fighting this pipeline are the good guys. And the fossil fuels, and the American government, and just capitalism in general are the bad guys. And so a lot of that was happening at a subconscious level. But that is, I think, what first drew me to it. And I kind of, like, took it on as an armor. And it gave me a lot of accolades within the group of my colleagues and in the movement, where it was like, wow, she's such a [00:05:05] Speaker 1: great ally. She's doing so good. I wonder, in addition to the social rewards, which we'll talk more about, and I think is really common, what were kind of, like, in that time for you, the biggest wins? Like, whether there were policy changes, or people you got to meet, or reforms that were made in that moment, what were the things that you were like, wow, I helped make this happen, and I'm so [00:05:24] Speaker 2: happy I did? I mean, I, so I keep talking about Dakota Access Pipeline, and I don't know if people watching this would know what it is, but it was, like, the topic of the time. I remember it. Yeah, it was right before Trump got elected. Yeah, you were, like, six. But it was right before Trump got elected. So, like, this was, like, the beginning of, kind of, the modern era that I think we think about now, with the Trump derangement syndrome and everything. And so, this was actually happening Obama's last year. And I guess I keep bringing that up, because that was a huge win for me, because I got that issue to have 100 million views on Facebook, the videos that I did. So, like, there were activist Facebook groups that were getting, like, zero views, and I would put them on the Now This page, and they would get 100 million views. And there was a point when, like, Shailene Woodley went up at an environmental rewards show, and she said, go to Standing Rock. Don't just tweet about it. Don't just feed off of me getting arrested. Go to Standing Rock. I made that go viral. It got tens of millions of views, like, in a day. And, like, people went to Standing Rock, which was insane. I went to Standing Rock. There was a snowstorm. It's on a reservation. Like, I slept on the floor of a, of a casino when I was there, because, like, it was insane. But, like, we all went, and it, like, it was just, like, anything that we've now seen these movements many times, pro-Palestine, BLM, this sort of very emotionally driven, black and white thinking movement. And that's what the climate movement was in the 20-teens, and the way that we saw it with BLM in 2020, and then, like, pro-Palestine since 2023. And so, yeah, that was, like, the example of it. And I just got swept up into it, [00:06:52] Speaker 1: and it became part of my identity. At the peak of this movement, I wonder if you can just tell us [00:06:57] Speaker 2: what, like, the core tenets of thinking were. Yeah. So, the core tenets would be that the world's going to end in 10 years unless we basically keep fossil fuels on the ground. It's American imperialist capitalism's fault. And all of the politicians who aren't doing anything, they don't care, they're bought out by fossil fuel industry. Anyone who raises a question of questioning the narrative, they're a fossil fuel shill, or they're paid off. And so, it's not just, like, we have to save the planet, but it's that the systems that we operate in now are inherently evil. And if we just got rid of them, we could live in a utopia where everyone would be living peacefully off of the land, and we would have harmony. And, you know, so it's, again, like, very weird. It's a warmth of collectivism. Yeah, there's, like, a lot of, like, communist and Marxist undertones, which I think is intentional by the people who are organizing it. But I am just a useful idiot at the time, and kind of just going along with it. And again, like, when you get pulled into a movement like this, you start off by being like, yeah, I don't want plastic in a turtle's nose, to next thing being like, down with the West! And you're like, how did I get here? I don't know. But, like, I was drawn in by the emotions of it. And now, two years later, I'm, like, pushing the Green New Deal with AOC that says, like, every American deserves a job, and we need no more fossil fuels, and things that, if they actually got enacted, would be devastating. [00:08:20] Speaker 1: Like you referenced with Israel-Palestine, like with BLM, a kind of defining feature of all of these movements is, one, a sense of, like, nihilism, but also a lack of questioning. And people who question things are often demonized. And I wonder if you can first talk about, like, if there were people when you were kind of on the in crowd that started to question things that were maybe ostracized, or if you ever had a moment where you said, this is starting to get a little bit freaky for me. [00:08:49] Speaker 2: I don't think I ever saw other people questioning it. I think that every time I would step out of line, if I would say something like, well, this doesn't really make sense, you know, when you say it among people who are true believers, I would then go home and spiral. My anxiety would spiral, and they go, oh my god, I would think, am I not a good ally? Because I said that plastic has a lower carbon footprint than glass, you know, which is a fact, you know? And so it would be inconvenient facts, and if they were brought up in certain contexts, I would just feel so insecure, leaving that like a situation where I might have said something outside of the party line. And mind you, everyone was like, actually lovely and nice. And this was like a self inflicted thing. It's not like people were like putting under my head being like push climate stuff, you know, it was literally a self imposed thing and ideology. And I look back on it. And I think that my sense of self was sitting on sand. And so it was just so would go with the winds of the group. And so I didn't have a solidness inside of myself of what are my core tenant beliefs. And so I just was told, well, you know, capitalism is evil, and we're all going to die from climate change unless we do something now. And I'm like, okay, like, I'm going to buy this. And and I didn't have the the confidence in myself to question it and go against the group. And so whenever, whenever I came up with an idea that was [00:10:09] Speaker 1: contradictory, I would just dismiss it. At this time, there were people who even quietly were saying like, hey, like, I actually am not so sure if this is true. The science maybe points to other things. How were those people talked about within the movement? I don't think those people are even [00:10:25] Speaker 2: acknowledged or talked about that stuff never broke through. And even now in my research that I do continually and reading books, I'll learn about something and go, oh, that study that I thought was true, you know, 97% of scientists agree that climate change is a problem like that has been so thoroughly discredited, but it never broke through to me. Because again, like anyone who questioned it is like a white privileged nut, like the white privilege thing is like, you can't kind of separate it. Because again, if like, there was a scientist who say their identity is like a white man, classic white man, like trying to hold up the system. So it really wasn't even though it's a [00:10:58] Speaker 1: scientific movement. Yeah, it really was completely divorced. Yeah, science at all. I never looked up [00:11:04] Speaker 2: the science of it, which is so embarrassing. I didn't know what percentage of the atmosphere was CO2 until like 2019. And it's point oh four percent, by the way, which is like not a lot, which I think is like a good thing you should know. And again, like all these people that I followed were activists, documentary films. And I would just watch that one thing and take it as fact, you know, and then never question it until years and years later. [00:11:30] Speaker 1: You're deeply ensconced in this. And then when is the first time? Yeah, that you you kind of look around and think something is going on here and I need to learn more. Yeah. And then really, how do you make the the quite courageous decision, especially as your kind of identity, public identity is tied to this thing to start questioning? [00:11:51] Speaker 2: Yeah. So I think that the whole time I was part of the movement, I always had doubts. And again, because I'm saying my internal sense of self is like built on sand. So I would get really triggered or have anxiety when someone would bring something up that might like make me question the foundations of these beliefs around the climate. So I always would have doubts. And even like we're talking about Dakota Access Pipeline, a few months after that happened, I remember, you know, having a few glasses of wine with people like at my apartment and kind of being like, it's kind of bullshit. I think I felt when I was covering the Dakota Access Pipeline that I was in the role of an advocate for the climate activists and the Native American activists perspective. And so I pushed that message, which was that this pipeline is invasive on our land and it's going to destroy our drinking water and that it can't go through because of climate change. It was just the party line of the activists, even though inside I could see that there was a lot of problems with the argument. For one, the fact that when you transport oil over a pipeline, it's actually safer and better for the environment than doing it over trains because trains can crash. They have a carbon footprint themselves. And I would go onto the website of like the pipeline website and I could see they would like drew a graph and explained how it was going to go under the river and it would not leak into the drinking water. And so I would see the nuance, but I almost felt like that wasn't my role to show it. I have a forward facing persona. This is what I meant to say and do. And even if I see counter information, it's too much of a headache to even include that. Like, right. So why would I even go down that line? Because then I'm going to, people are going to be questioning me of my loyalty to the cause. [00:13:35] Speaker 1: Was there a moment before, though, when you really did think all of this was true? [00:13:39] Speaker 2: I could tell even the way I was covering stories when I wasn't covering them honestly or fully. Like, it would almost be like an iceberg and I would show the tip of the iceberg and below the iceberg there'd be nuance and complexity or maybe part of it that would throw cold water on the theory that I was pushing around this stuff. And I would just ignore it. And I remember always kind of feeling like my coverage is so one sided and it and it kind of hurt my heart a little bit. But again, the cost of going against the group and trying to think of standing on my own, I was like, whoa, that's too much to bear. So I'm just going to put my trust in the group, even though I'm seeing these contradictions. Other people know more than me. So like, I'll just go with the calculus. [00:14:14] Speaker 1: Like I'm a vehicle for this movement and therefore I can only show the tip of the iceberg that they deem acceptable because doing otherwise would would ostracize me. Or did you still fundamentally believe that like, yes, there's all this other stuff that I'm not portraying and what I'm putting out there, but it's kind of a distraction from the ultimate end, which is like creating an awareness [00:14:35] Speaker 2: or momentum behind this. I think that's what it is. And I think that activists still do this, right? It's like, we can't, we don't have time for nuance. We just have to push for the most extreme narrative because this is a fire alarm situation and the planet is going to be destroyed. So like, we don't have time to think about the downsides of solar and wind. Like we have to just keep pushing forward because this is existential. And so I didn't, so I subscribed to that where I'm like, you know, this is an existential threat and we don't have time to like, look at the details. Like, you know, we just have to get people to care and to be afraid. And because if they're afraid, they're going to change their habits. But again, like the logical thinking was not there. Psychologically, I was in such an insecure place with the group think and being in that, my work environment, the activist environment that I didn't use my logical thinking to the end. Like I would always stop thinking and then give up my autonomy to the group, which was saying, this is, this is a existential thing. Don't ask questions. [00:15:28] Speaker 1: So when does this small hint of doubt, are you slipping something at like a drunk wine night turn into you this complete breakup? [00:15:35] Speaker 2: So the timeline is that I was at now this from 2015 to 2021. And so I was there through the COVID stuff too. And so, and I was visible. I was an on-camera person the whole time I was there. So the whole world shut down at the peak of COVID. It was something like 17%. We saw a 17% reduction in our carbon emissions, the peak of COVID. So that's like just like those two weeks. Over the year, it ends up being something like 5% reduction. And I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute, the climate movement wants 100% reduction in our carbon emissions. What is it going to expect of our society? Yeah. We're literally locked in our homes, not doing anything. And we still have carbon emissions. And so that was the first moment where I go, hold, hold on. I don't know if I want to live in a world where we have zero carbon emissions because I'm kind of depressed right now at home. Like this sucks and we have no freedoms. And so what does the climate movement, if you take it to its logical conclusion, it's not going to be no big deal. Like it's going to require people to give up their freedoms to like lower carbon emissions. And so that was one thing. And then the other thing was I was very anti-plastic and all of a sudden like the PPEs everywhere, the masks, the plastic barriers between every table at a restaurant. And when you're checking out your food at the grocery store and I'm like, wait a minute, I've been sweating about a single use plastic straw for the last five years. And now we've proliferated more plastic in the last few months than I've seen in my lifetime. And also looking around, we seem like we're fine. It looks like our society was able to absorb that plastic and the world has not ended. And so that was 2020. And then I left in 2021, I left my job. And so I didn't really say anything publicly while I was still there because I was in a public role. Then I was at a nonprofit for a year in another behind the scenes role before I came to the Free Press. And then I came to the Free Press end of 2022. I'm behind the scenes now, two and a half years. And I just started making content this past May. And that was the reason why I went from being behind the scenes that whole time was I was like, I'm too afraid. And then my younger son turned one in April. And that was when it coincided where I kind of had a light bulb come back on. And I was like, wait a minute, like, let me reconsider this. Do I really want to go to my grave never talking about the climate stuff that I have issues with? And like what and weighing the cost analysis of like, does this actually need to be said? And I just sort of made a decision inside myself in May that I was going to make content. And so I started making daily content on TikTok in May. And then in June, I was when I went back to my Instagram where I'd had the following. So that was scarier. I made content there. And then from there, I've just continued to go all year. [00:18:05] Speaker 1: You kind of internally before you go public with this, depart from this way of thinking. Yeah. I wonder if there was any personal confusion or loss of identity. You had attached yourself in a public way to something. And then even though it was quiet at first, walked away. Right. [00:18:23] Speaker 2: Did you have like an identity crisis of sorts? Yes, I did. Because I think when I was in the climate movement, I got my identity from being a good person and from being on the right side of history. And so I identified with that. And so good people don't question the climate movement. You know, good people don't listen to fossil fuel shills or defend fossil fuels. Good people don't question the climate narrative. And so this identity of being good. And I talked a little bit about this idea of atoning. Right. Because everyone's obsessed with the white privilege and everything. And I'm realizing like, oh, my gosh, I'm an oppressor by being a white woman in from America. And so I need to atone for my sins by pushing and being part of this movement. And that is what makes me good. And so if I'm going to leave this, I'm no longer going to be seen as good and I'm no longer a good person. And so who am I? And then that's when you have to start doing the work of building up yourself, your sense of self and identity in that internal world, which again, it took me again, five years between questioning like and leaving that job and like posting this past year. [00:19:32] Speaker 1: One thing I think about is like when you're speaking about COVID and you're saying we're producing all this plastic in the world is fine. Yeah. Where does like the the agreement on scientific fact kind of end and conspiracy begin? Or in other words, like is there an actual downside to producing that much plastic? And even if the world will be OK and we can innovate and adapt from it, like is that a good thing for us to do? Should we still be trying to limit it? Like, yeah. Where is the what are the facts that we should be operating under? [00:20:06] Speaker 2: Where I come down on this now is that the traditional environmental movement that was founded in conservation and protecting animals and getting pollution out of our environment is still very solid. But that's not what the climate movement is. The climate movement is trying to change our energy system from reliable fossil fuels to unreliable solar and taxing us to do it and getting us to worry about our carbon emissions and all these things. So it's very like convoluted. It's like the demon spawn of environmentalism, honestly. So obviously we should always reduce, reuse, recycle is like the classic thing we learned in third grade. But that's not really what the climate movement is saying. The climate movement is like guilting you for living a modern life. The climate movement is taxing and overregulating reliable forms of energy and trying to get us to be dependent on solar and wind, which we import those materials from China or, you know, like the EU now has like an energy crisis because of the green movement. And so there are so many negatives about the climate movement that go beyond just conservation. And don't even get me started on the mental health [00:21:04] Speaker 1: stuff of the young people. Well, that's actually what I wanted to ask you about. But first, what I want to say is it also seems like a core tenant is kind of anti, it actually goes kind of against like solutions or innovation. Like I think about the people that the movement idolizes, and that's maybe AOC or Greta Thunberg, but they're very much opposed to someone like Elon Musk, for instance, who in the creation of EVs has probably done, has made something that's affordable for people to, you know, lower their carbon footprint, whereas most people cannot afford to put solar panels on the top of their house. Right. So like, is part of it that it's actually anti-innovation? [00:21:44] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very anti-innovation, anti-human. And just like, I mean, the fact that the 14-year-old Greta became the symbol of this movement should have been a red flag for me back in 2018. Like, why are we idolizing a 14-year-old? Which shows you it's not a rational movement. It's an emotional movement. It has spiritual undertones. They're kind of putting her up as this prophet. And I think ultimately what I realized from being in the movement for so many years is that it's an anti-human movement. And what they would say is, well, we can't just innovate our ways out of this. Like, we need to, you need to be doing like, consuming less. And we need to not be using so much energy. We can't innovate our way out of this. And you're kind of like, well, we've innovated our way out of every other thing. Like, there used to be, you know, piles of horse manure in New York City. And now we have cars. Like, right. It's kind of what humans do. Like, we, we innovate our way out of everything. But again, this movement and like a lot of groupthink, it's like they always have like, something to like, keep you in and keep you depressed about the state of the world. And I think that will, I will say another thing that sort of woke me up from it is I, it naturally, I mean, we work together, you know, I'm a very like, positive, optimistic person. And I have a lot of energy and enthusiasm for a life. And this is a very negative movement that basically makes you feel guilty for being alive and living a human life, a modern life, as if we can choose when we're born, as if we can like, be like, oh, I had a choice over being born in a modern time. And so that, I think, was another thing of like, self-preservation for me, where my natural, like nature was coming up against a very nihilistic movement. And I had to get out for self-preservation. One of the things that we've kind of touched on that I want to ask [00:23:22] Speaker 1: you about is like the way this doomerism has affected young people, especially like the building where my grocery store is, there's like a climate clock above it. And it says there's a countdown until when everything's going to implode. And I think it's like one in five young people doesn't want to have kids because of climate fears. I wonder if, one, if like the nihilism is core to the movement and how you've seen this affect young people, especially because it kind of feels like this very convenient thing where you can feel like a good person for speaking out about it, but there's not really anything that you can do because at the end of the day, the clock is counting down and [00:23:58] Speaker 2: like, that's what it is. Yeah, it's so nihilistic. And that is the thing I think that pushed me to start talking about this because I realized the young people, the wasted human capital that is happening because of how they're taught this. And you probably were taught it more than I was in school. And when I was in school in high school in 2006, we watched Inconvenient Truth, like as a, like Al Gore's movie. And that one day was enough for me to like be freaked out. But I know now it's like really part of her curriculum more. Oh yeah, for sure. Actually, one of our co-workers, Sasha, said to me after I saw one of my videos, she was like, oh my god, I loved your video. Like if I didn't even know you, I would have loved seeing one of your videos because even when my friends and I are having a good time, we'll then like pause and someone will go, but the planet's burning. And I'm like, wow, like that, you're not even activists going anywhere. You just like have a subconsciously held belief that you do not question, that is like law, that the world is burning. Yeah, I think that's true for most young people. Yes, people just assume that the world is burning and that is like common knowledge among younger generations. I don't think older generations [00:24:57] Speaker 1: really realize that. No, it's actually really random, but I was reporting a story about why young people were getting tattoos so much. And the most common thing people said to me, these are all Gen Z people, was they were like, the world is burning. My, my, like, I'm going away. I may as well just get the tattoo I want because like nothing lasts forever. And like, [00:25:17] Speaker 2: that was their answer. Yeah. And these aren't people who are, you know, gluing their hands to a highway or covering themselves in paint. These are just normal people. And that is the cohort that I really care about because it's just so sad that people, when they walk through the world, they believe the world is going to end because of this when it's so not true. [00:25:39] Speaker 1: So what do you think of Greta AOC? They're still kind of on this soapbox about, you know, maximalist climate humorism. Why? And what do we make of that? [00:25:54] Speaker 2: I actually think they've fallen off of it a bit, honestly. Like AOC doesn't talk about it as much. Like she was pushing the Green New Deal in like 2019. And it was all about just transitioning our electricity to 100% renewable within 10 years and guaranteeing a job for every American, which is hilarious. And then Greta's gone for the pro-Palestine. So even they've blocked, they've backed off of it without having like a maya culpa saying, um, I was wrong. And I think that's the problem. And that was the like life I lived for many years where I had changed all my opinions, but I never like corrected the record. So I just kind of like faded away. And I think that is also a thing. It's like, I have a responsibility to set the record straight and to counter this fear because I played a part in pushing it. And we're seeing the impacts now with also just these really poorly thought out green policies where it's like, even in New York, we know like it's like electrify the heating here, um, by 2030. And that's going to cost these small business owners like millions of dollars to electrify apartment buildings or whatever it may be. Like that's real world now, working class, middle class people who are now going to be on this bill, like, or be like left to foot the bill for this climate ideology. And it's really, really destructive. Even in Africa, the World Bank up until a few years ago, wasn't lending to natural gas projects, even though natural gas is the honestly cleanest other than nuclear, like cleanest and best way to get people out of poverty, get them reliable energy. Like you want to give them natural gas and the World Bank wouldn't fund those projects because of climate change. Speaking of people that like you who have said [00:27:26] Speaker 1: they were wrong. Yeah. I'm really astonished, like by the delta of time between someone saying one thing and another, especially in the case, I think of Bill Gates, who with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was funding immense amount of research on climate change. She was very outspoken about it. And then I think it was even a few months ago, basically said in the New York Times, actually, it's all fine. Yeah, this isn't a real threat. Like, it's okay, everyone. [00:27:51] Speaker 2: Like, it's going to be an impact, but it's not deadly. Like, it's not world ending. It's like [00:27:55] Speaker 1: the is what he said. Yeah, right. And so I wonder, this is someone who is untouchable, who, whose personal and public life will not really be affected by him changing his mind in the way that it was for you. Why is someone like Bill Gates taking so long after we know the science of what is what is more true now? Why does it take him a decade, basically? Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. [00:28:20] Speaker 2: This whole climate system and the in the nonprofits and the business models and all like you're there's so many people make money off of this now. And so how do you like turn that ship? It's really, really hard. And then you're around people that the the consensus is that it's world ending. And so to go against that, it just takes a lot of courage just to say, like, for people don't know, like I on my Instagram now make content that says things like climate change is not dangerous, like deaths from natural disasters are down 95% over the last 100 years. So like, where's where's the emergency here, people? Like just stuff that's sort of against this common knowledge. And you I get people in my comments being like, you're a fossil fuel shill. Like this is fake news. And just being able to not take every comment so seriously that it like throws me off. Because I'm in the end of the day making the content for the mom who just had a kid and is like really freaked out for their future. And like, those are the messages that I get that are like, thank you for making your content. Like I was actually really freaked out about this. But like, I'm not going to worry about this anymore. Again, they're not activists, they're just normal people. And I'm just like giving them sort of like signal amongst the noise where they like don't know what to believe. And I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna lay out the facts. [00:29:33] Speaker 1: Well, it's something we write a lot about the free press, which is like how certain fields, academia, medicine, science, the list goes on has kind of things that are really meant to be rooted in fact have completely departed from that. And it's been taken over by an ideology. But I really do think and maybe it's naive or too optimistic that each of those things kind of has a breaking point. Yeah. Where at some point someone will say, no, like this is not true. This is not right. This is not what I signed up for. Do you see what that breaking point might be within the climate movement? Has it [00:30:06] Speaker 2: already happened? So the climate realist climate skeptic community has been saying this message since the year 2000. Like there are so many amazing scientists who have been pushed out of their jobs, censored, deplatformed, like literally like cases against them have been brought up at the universities where they work to like push them out for just saying, you know, climate is not world ending. So I'm not the first person to say this. That movement has been sort of trying to say this for so long. But before Elon bought Twitter and before Mark Zuckerberg became like based and like opened up censorship on real, like they're less harsh now. These people would just be deplatformed as climate deniers. Yeah. And so those people have already existed. Like there's been scandals for 25 years. And so I think that they are kind of like, when is the breaking point? Like we've been trying to say this forever and we are getting ostracized. But the difference is now and like why I think my voice is important in this is that the censorship has now gone down a bit. So like my videos actually do not get censored on Instagram or Twitter, which they would have five years ago. Right. And also the scientists who have been saying all this stuff and I read their books, there's like Patrick Moore, who is the head of the Greenpeace. He founded Greenpeace. Right. And he's now like a huge climate skeptic. There's just so many people to name. But I basically am translating their work that they've been saying for years to the online like TikTok generation. And so I think I think when I talk to them, they say they're more hopeful than they've ever been. Because of Bill Gates, the censorship is going down. And then you have Trump and Chris Wright, who is the Department of Energy, who are just saying like, we're not dealing with this stuff anymore. We've withdrawn from a lot of climate organizations like the IPCC and all these different things. Like we're just not in them anymore because the science has been so corrupted. And so everyone's like, oh my gosh, thank God this is like finally happening. So I think there is a huge turning point. But I do think that there's like a lack of breaking through to like the everyday person who's not like up on it. And again, and then you come across my content and you might just immediately trick like flag. She's a climate change denier. She's a fossil fuel show. Right. Because if you're still in that group thing. Right. You're you're dismissing what I'm saying because you just come up with a reason not to trust what I'm saying. What do the the climate [00:32:25] Speaker 1: skeptic experts say is actually happening? Yeah. And therefore how how we should live live our lives accordingly? Like would they say buy all the plastic you want? Doesn't matter. Like [00:32:39] Speaker 2: what are they saying? So I actually spoke to Steve Coonan, who is a former energy secretary for President Obama. So this is not like some right wing person. So I think that's a really important person to quote. And he wrote the book Unsettled in that came out in 2022. That just goes into like what we know and what is unsettled. Yeah. So the climate science and what he said was we know the planet has warmed 1.3 degrees since 1850. So we know that that is a fact. We are going through a warming period. We also know that we have released CO2 into the atmosphere by burning oil and gas and coal. Now, how much of that warming is naturally occurring and how much of it is because of the CO2? That's when you now have this debate. And that's OK. There isn't actually a consensus. Obviously, alarmists are like it's our fault. Everything's our fault. We're heading to doom. But that is not a commonly held belief, even among scientists who are still in the space. And that's like a media narrative. Someone like Coonan might say it's warming. [00:33:37] Speaker 1: However, that's not necessarily a factor that would lead to our demise. Right. And I will say [00:33:44] Speaker 2: that warming periods historically, which I've just learned this in doing more research on this, historically humans flourish during warming periods because you have longer growing seasons. So you can you can support a population in a city. And the term for this is climate optimum. So that's what actually geologists and archaeologists and historians would call [00:34:03] Speaker 1: these periods. Well, you did one reporting video where you spoke to young people who were at a climate protest, which I loved. And it was quite startling how little they knew about the facts you presented them. But I wonder what you would say to them or really to the young people who are saying, I don't want to have kids. I don't want I feel really nihilistic about the future because of [00:34:23] Speaker 2: this. What do you say to them? The number one fact I like to share, because it's just unequivocally true, is that deaths from natural disasters have gone down 99 percent in the past 100 years. So even with climate change, even let's say the planet is warming. It's so scary. Deaths have gone down 99 percent. So we're safer than ever, even with climate change. Like we've we've seen 1.3 degrees of warming and we've seen at the exact same time. It's almost the exact same chart. Temperatures have gone up, human prosperity, literacy, women's rights, all of the things. We know this has happened the past 150 years, right? We've had this huge boom of prosperity that's happened during 1.3 degrees of warming. So if climate change was really so dangerous, shouldn't we see some negative impacts? Why is humanity still thriving so much? Right. Even in the midst of climate change. And I will also say don't look at the climate models that say we in 10 years, the planet's going to be this in 30 years, it's going to be that. Those are models that are just computer models. You can put any bit of data in there to get any outcome that you want to prove there's an apocalypse. And the scientists who do those models are incentivized to find that outcome. And so they're not solid science. And so I would never base having kids or your future and your [00:35:34] Speaker 1: outlook on life, never base it on a computer model. Lucy, thank you so much for joining me. I learn something new from every day. So thank you. Thank you for having me. It was so much fun.