Take people back to what that atmosphere was like and what it felt like.

Yeah.

So 2015, I had just come off of a local news job where I was in Greenville, Mississippi.

So The world's different.

I'm in New York City.

I'm from Connecticut, so it's sort of like going back to where I'm from, but obviously every 25-year-old wants to be in the city.

And I went from a place that was like older people in my old workplace to all these young, cool people.

Yeah.

after Keystone.

And I started covering this story as a journalist, but my assumption... based on my education was why are we even building fossil fuel infrastructure? Like, why do we even need this? This is an outdated technology.

It's ruining the planet.

So like, why is this pipeline being built? You know, these are greedy capitalists, fossil fuel shills.

Like I was just so misinformed.

And so I was able to act out this subconscious desire to do good and be an ally for, you through my activism.

And at the same time, I got so many professional accolades.

And when I say, especially I would call progressive left the mommies, right? How do you, what kind of language do we use? How do you talk to them? Or is it just a lost cause and they'll eventually come around? Yeah.

When you heard things like that and that it turned out never to come true, it never happened, all the predictions were wrong, were you in such a place that you rationalized it? Okay, they were wrong about that, but it's going to happen eventually? Or was that really what woke you up?

I didn't think about it.

I think I, I don't, I just didn't know that the predictions were wrong, I guess, because I would turn on the news and you know, like what's happening with this heat wave and you'd hear this heat's unprecedented and it's, it's America's fault.

It's global warming.

And so I kind of just bought that surface level.

understanding that was reinforced sort of passively by the news, right? You can always find an article that says this heating is unprecedented and it's our fault, or this hurricane was unprecedented and our fault.

There's so much information out there that reiterates that point.

Why did that not stick, do you think? Because the media is on his side? I mean, what is that?

It's so interesting, because if anybody knew your story, I'm just thinking about 10 years ago, what you would think about, or even five years ago, or even four years ago, when you had this eye-opening experience of, I was on this side, now I'm on this side, and I watch your videos on Instagram, I urge people to, of you watching your old interviews when you were... a climate influencer when you watch those old interviews back and you see yourself in that position asking people like Greta Thunberg those questions and AOC like what goes through your mind when you're watching them because I wrote you a message that was like your eyes on one of them were crazy you're like watching you're like I can't believe that's

I mean, I think I knew very little and I was just really in a big part of the group think of the climate movement.

And so I just knew my ideas were approved by the group.

And so I never really went super deep.

And I was really motivated off of emotion and feeling like I was a good person and good people support the climate movement.

Good people don't like fossil fuels.

And so that was sort of the extent of my motivation.

Where does this fall on the line of importance on people understanding the climate agenda?

Has anybody ever said, "If we do this, fact-- science has shown this will happen"? 'Cause I haven't seen it.

They don't know.

It's so emotional.

I don't think they're thinking that far ahead.

They almost can't see past their noses because they're in such emotion and fear about this stuff, so the rational thinking is turned off.

It's really not a scientific movement.

It's a political movement.

Right

Where, where did that start for you?

Yeah, so I graduated from college in 2012.

I ha- actually had my first job with a local news station in the South here in Mississippi, and then after two years of doing that, I got a job in New York at a news startup called NowThis News, which was really cool because we were publishing all of our videos on social media, which was very cutting edge for 2015.

Uh, we were kind of the first company to do that, and so I was there as a video producer for six years, and that was when I also fell into the climate movement because I was scrolling every day on my Facebook feed looking for stories.

This is before the word algorithm was in my, uh, like lexicon, before doom scrolling.

And so I just learned about climate topics, climate protests.

Um, at the time, the big one in 2016 was the Dakota Access Pipeline protest.

Oh.

And can you just break it down for people, that sentence that you said that spawned me to have you back on?

Well, it's so crazy because I think the climate movement can be wrong again and again, and they just get away with murder and nobody cares.

There's no scandal, right? If this was a different political leaning, I think this would be such a huge backlash because they were just so wrong.

And in the act of being so wrong, they scared the bejesus out of a generation of people.

But basically, so the RCP 8.5, which sounds very jargony, was a climate model.

It's a sexy name.

Brandy.

And what's the measurable data of how much our emissions have dropped?

Mm-hmm.

But that was where I first got exposed to this modern climate movement, um, in the form of actually this Dakota Access Pipeline protest that happened in 2016, which was very viral, uh, where there was Native Americans protesting a pipeline going in.

And, um, all these people commenting would say, "Cover DAPL," D-A-P-L for Dakota Access Pipeline.

And so I just started covering that as a 25-year-old, kind of bought it hook, line, and sinker that there was this narrative that these evil fossil fuel companies were building a pipeline on indigenous land, and I started covering it, and all the videos that I made went really viral.

And so there was a feedback loop of I'm getting a lot of professional success from this.

And so I just made climate change my kind of whole personality and beat for my 20s, um, eventually growing my following to 50,000 on Instagram by, like, 2019.

I interviewed Greta Thunberg.

Mm

wanting to do this.

Yeah.

I think I was just primed for it.

I think I was ready for it.

Cause I think even at that time I was seeing like, I pushed plastic straw bands and I was like, wait a minute, now everyone's using metal straws and these mushy paper straws.

And it's sort of like this like path of unseen consequences where you're not thinking about what the reality is of these policies.

And so I had a lot of those, like the, like just even those examples, like there were many, many more.

Do you worry about speaking in an echo chamber? Like you're just speaking to the people who are the same ilk as you and that really, it's not really having an impact.

Were they really the greater evil? Were we really killing sea life? Tell the audience about that if you don't mind.

It's so funny because it is so idiotic.

I'm just laughing the whole time you're describing it because I'm like, it's so, it's so embarrassing.

And now I look at the left and the things that they fall for and I'm like, this is so embarrassing.

Who's falling for this? But yeah, so I really, there was a viral video in the day of a straw on a turtle's nose that went very viral in like 2015.

And I remember seeing that again on my newsroom computer scrolling Facebook at the time and And that kicked off this virtue signaling movement.

We have to ban plastic straws in New York City.

Well, I would add this and I don't know you that well, but but hearing your story and watching your videos I don't think it was just insecurity I think they propped you up and made you feel really really important to the movement and because of you we're gonna save the earth Lucy and when you I mean, yeah, it sounds like you had this massive responsibility on your shoulders Do you agree with that?

Number one, do you agree with that? Number two, why is that? What are young people seeing in AOC or Zoramamdani?

Yeah, so having been on the left for m- a number of years, I can speak from my experience f- m- my experience, which for me, it was a motivation to be seen and feel like I was a good person.

And the left tells you, you know, you have to believe these certain ideas.

You know, you have to condemn Israel and support Hamas.

Uh, you have to say you want free college, you wanna have less inequality, all of these different things.

And it's very, um, entrenched in this, uh, ideology, which maybe this is, like, too heady to say, but the cultural Marxism of the oppressed versus oppressor mindset.

And so everything goes through that lens, right? So they say, "Capitalists are bad," you know, "Millionaires are bad.

... a 17-year-old politically until you're 40, that may be enough to get somebody like AOC into the presidency.

So how did you first get into the climate movement?

Yeah, so I...

Well, thank you for having me.

Lovely intro, and I love that we have all those connections.

It's so much fun.

Uh, Fairfield's the best.

Uh, but I worked for a digital news company for seven years called Now This News back in the 2010s.

And I know that my perspective on a lot of things will change.