[00:00:13] Welcome to Hot Take, where we talk about talking about climate is very matter. You're gonna love it. I'm Mary Annaise Heglar.

[00:00:21] And I'm Amy Westervelt. In this podcast. We're going to take an intersectional crack at media criticism for the climate era because it is the story of our time.

[00:00:30] Right. But we felt first there's a lot of base setting to do because we don't really give ourselves enough time to think about it. But climate storytelling has changed dramatically in the past few years.

[00:00:42] It really has, especially in the Trump era. So our next couple of episodes are going to take a look back at 2016 to 2019 in review. I've been going back and reading some of those articles and it's fascinating how much has changed in just a couple of years. So I can't wait to talk about it.

[00:00:58] Well, I can wait because I have a lot of reading to catch up on. But I'm excited, too.

[00:01:04] On this episode, though, we wanted to take a minute to talk through our own work. So Amy and I are friends now, but we met a few months ago as fans of each other, actually.

[00:01:13] That's right. So we thought we'd just do an episode where we fangirl out on each other and, you know, get that out of the way. Yeah. And we kind of I would be a good way for ya'll to get to know us to.

[00:01:33] Amy, how about we start with you, since you've been doing this for quite a while. I saw you recently say on Twitter that, you know, you've been hearing a lot of people say like, wow. Amy, you're suddenly everywhere in in the climate space and you just got started writing recently. And how much that bugs you because you've really been doing this for like, OK, more than a decade.

[00:01:57] Yeah, yeah, I know. It's funny. I think, you know, if you're a freelancer, you sort of end up writing about everything. But the thing that I've written about the longest and most consistently is actually climate. And I've been writing about it for maybe 16, 17 years now. Well, yeah. But then I had sort of like a little break in the middle, which is that was sort of what I got into that thread. Was that like, you know, I didn't actually come from nowhere. I, you know, started a long time ago, but then had various sort of career diversions foisted upon me by the caregiving roles that are often assigned to women in our society. And so I ended up taking, you know, three or four years out, which is like an eternity in media years. It's like if you come back after four years, it's like you basically are just starting over. So there's this weird thing that happens there.

[00:02:57] And that's another thing that you write about as well. That's another theme of your writing.

[00:03:04] That's true. Yeah. I do write about American ideas about motherhood and how those ideas impact women, whether they have kids or not. So how those ideas kind of shape everything from societal expectations of women to workplace policies, health insurance policies. There's a bunch of ways that, like our weird ideas about family and motherhood in particular, sort of infiltrate everyone's life, whether they choose to have kids. Right.

[00:03:35] So that reminds me of a piece that you wrote, I believe it was in The Guardian. Of course, U.S. birth rates are falling from May of 2018.

[00:03:48] I have a passage and I'd love it if you could read it.

[00:03:51] Yeah, totally. My big claim to fame here is that Bernie Sanders shared this story across all of his social media.

[00:04:05] Feeling the Bern. OK, so the story was called, Of course, U.S. birth rates are falling. This is a harsh place to have a family.

[00:04:13] And this story makes that very clear!

[00:04:20] In the midst of the harsh economic reality, facing parents and would be parents in America is a looming physical threat, climate change. As the president and his EPA head parrot talking points from the fossil fuel industry, pointing to volcanoes and natural temperature cycles as the culprits for warming temperatures. The global scientific community tells us that we have essentially run out of time to do anything about it, that any children we have will be at a higher risk of dying in a superstorm or a massive fire. That because a small handful of men decided that their own profits and comfort were more important than the rest of the world's safety. Any new humans that join the world will face greater challenges than the generations that came before. A few months ago, Paul Ryan asked Americans to have more children and said he had, quote, done his part by fathering three. I would argue that his part is creating an America that's truly family friendly and he hasn't done it at all.

[00:05:17] Very true. Suck it, Paul Ryan!

[00:05:20] (laughing) No, but it's also just so well-written.

[00:05:25] Like, I just I mean, for the bigger piece. Write us about all of these reasons. U.S. birth rates are probably like housing crises, unemployment or underemployment, the gig economy. But you ended it with the problem of all problems being climate change. And yeah, I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about how this piece came to be.

[00:05:49] It kind of came out of the research that I did for my book, which came out last year, which was about all of this motherhood stuff. And I you know, I I really what happened was I was seeing all of these pundits on social media kind of wringing their hands about the falling birth rate. And then I had also gone back and forth on Twitter with this guy who claimed to be just like an objective, you know, sociology researcher just looking at the data. And he had somehow. Yeah, he had like somehow gotten a piece in The New York Times, not in their op ed section, but in There, like regular newspaper section where he claimed that the following. He basically claimed that the falling birth rate was due to like women being selfish and like modern women were suing like careers and family and like shirking their reproductive duties like it was insane.

[00:06:43] And I was like, how did this get printed in the newspaper?

[00:06:47] And so I kind of went back and forth with him for a while to see what what exactly was the data that he had gathered and whether he had looked at like, you know, wealth inequality or stagnant wages or the impacts of climate change on all of these things. And of course, the answer was no. So that was kind of like the genesis of this piece. I was just like, I'm mad, you know? Yeah, like most of my pieces.

[00:07:16] Yeah. I think some of the best pieces come out of angry writing.

[00:07:27] Like, if I'm honest, the vast majority of my pieces that like are the most lovey dovey-- I think I talked about this a little bit on Drilled-- like the ones that are the most like woo woo and hippy start out angry.

[00:07:39] You did! You totally talked about that. Actually I thought that was so interesting that you said that like you will sort of start out with the angry version and then be like OK, is this might not be productive. Maybe I should soften this approach a little bit.

[00:07:59] Okay. Actually, that makes me want to have you read from one of your pieces that came out in the last couple years.

[00:08:07] And this is let's see if you pick one of the ones that actually started angry.

[00:08:12] Well, I think you talk about anger in this and how and how sort of like productive it can be. So this one is called the big lie, we're told about climate change is that it's our own fault. And it appeared on VOX. And I have a little excerpt from here for you to read. You're talking a little bit about when you first started to read a lot of studies about climate change and got really involved in the movement and kind of experienced your first brush with climate grief.

[00:08:46] And actually, this is one of the ones that started very angry.

[00:08:56] Yes! You talked about this on Drilled where you said that it started out you started out being like mad that people kind of read the recent CCC report and that they just realized that this was a serious problem. And then you realize that like getting mad at people for being slow to realize was probably not great, or telling them to like grow up.

[00:09:17] Right. Yeah. That was originally the title in my head set.

[00:09:27] I came to the organization as an editor, not as an environmentalist. I cared about the Earth. Of course, I knew climate change was real. I knew it was dire. I had an inkling that it was not far away. But I did know just how bad it was. I didn't know how many innocent, and I mean, innocent people were already suffering hideously. I didn't know how many people had been marked as allowable casualties simply because they were born in the wrong places under the wrong circumstances. Right. At that very moment, I knew I would see bad things in my lifetime, but I didn't know I would see them before 50. Nor did I realize how many of them I'd actually already seen. I was in both Sandy and Katrina. After all, I didn't know it then, but I went into mourning. I skipped denial and went right to shock. I floated around on a dark, dark cloud. I frequently and randomly burst into tears, and I refused to admit to myself that I knew exactly why I was crying. Where other people saw bustling crowds of people, I saw death and destruction. Even as I walked on dry land, I saw floods. I imagined wild animals, especially snakes getting out of the zoos in the aftermath of natural disasters. I worried about how we would treat each other in the face of such calamity. I doubted it would be kind. I still doubt that, actually. I kept editing, but I tried to dissociated as ridiculous as it sounds. It didn't work either. The craft of editing demands empathy. You have to be present. Then I went into depression. My social life turned into fits and spurts of intense engagement, followed by equally intense withdrawal. I was deeply afraid of telling even the people closest to me what I knew and why I was so scared. I couldn't sleep. The crying fits continued. They didn't become more predictable.

[00:11:23] I have to say, when I was reading this, it just felt so familiar and so like. That's how I felt.

[00:11:30] And like I said, I feel like I still cycle through that sometimes because it's...

[00:11:36] You go on in this essay to talk about how Wen Stevenson's book, What We're Fighting For Now Is Each Other, helped to pull you out of that depression. Can you talk about that book a bit and and how it got you from like, you know, kind of despair and shock to righteous anger?

[00:11:55] Mm hmm. [00:11:56]So there is a quote from James Baldwin that I love where he says, you think you're alone until you read and then you find out just how big the world is. And I think reading that book, which I highly recommend, is it sort of showed me that I wasn't crazy. [21.7s] So like the opening the introduction to it is really beautifully written. I'm gonna start reading now:.

[00:12:24] The question now is not whether we're going to stop global warming or solve the climate crisis. It is whether humanity will act quickly and decisively enough to salvage civilization itself in any form worth salvaging. Whether any kind of stable, humane and just future, any kind of just society is still possible. We know that if the governments of the world actually want it to address the situation in a serious way, they could finally acting as though we accept what the science is telling us. And as though we actually care for our fellow human beings. But isn't that a bit extreme? Really extreme business as usual is extreme. Just ask climate scientists. The building is burning the innocence. The poor or the oppressed? The children, your own children are inside. And the American petro state, which under the all of the above energy policies has overtaken Saudi Arabia as the largest producer of oil and gas on the planet. It is spraying fuel, not water, on the flames. That's more than extreme. It's homicidal, is psychopathic, is fucking insane.

[00:13:32] That's great. Yeah, it IS psychopathic.

[00:13:37] Yeah. Yes. So during my experience, like first coming to terms with this, you kind of feel like you're crazy because everybody around you is just acting like this is normal.

[00:13:55] You know, and I I came to the Green Movement and in earnest in 2014 and 2015 was the Paris agreement. My first year it was like sort of like that year shock. And 2015 was my year of like, oh, coming back to life around it all. And that is right during Paris, while everybody was, you know, over there. That's when I was reading this book. And I remember like watching. All the preparations for the Paris Accord being like, wait a minute, but we're already too late, like that was when I found out that we had already warmed. That wasn't clear to me before.

[00:14:36] Well, yeah, because I mean, I feel like honestly, before that most recent IPCC report. And like and David Wallace Wells story in New York magazine, scientists just were they had a it was kind of a weird, like closed ranks thing where it was like, we know this, but let's not tell anyone...

[00:14:58] Exactly. Exactly. It was such a weird experience.

[00:15:03] And when I would like finally. So after I read that book, that was when I started to be like, oh, I'm not crazy. I'm not right. I'm not crazy. When I should talk to someone about this run and reached out to a couple of other people that, you know, we're doing similar work and it was like, no, I'm scared to death, too. And that sort of gave me a sense of security. It leaves her like a some sort of reassurance. Yeah. It didn't fix the problem, but it was like, at least now I have someone I can talk to and I know that I'm not alone.

[00:15:39] Yeah. And that really helped me. And that was what I was trying to do with this piece.

[00:15:45] And I was like I was saying before, like we were saying a minute ago that I didn't write this in the wake of the IPCC report of 2008 18, the one that I had way more alarmist language than I believe any other IPCC report. Right. Yeah.

[00:16:04] Which is probably evidenced by the fact it's the first one I had ever heard of.

[00:16:09] And I think most people. And it's I just sort of felt like everybody was collectively in mourning and I felt like, you know, my first reaction was really frustrated. And I wanted to be like grow the fuck up. We've been trying to tell you this for ever. Like, yeah. Blah. And then I thought about my own coming to terms with it and I remembered the book that helped me come out of it. And this book did not approach me in that way. Like Wen's approach wasn't Grow the fuck up, you big baby. It was more like, no, you're right. The way you feel is right. And you probably haven't acted on it because everybody else is acting like, you know, let's just go along to get along.

[00:16:54] And so. I decided that the best way to actually get someone to grow up, which is my goal, right. I do think we have to grow up as a society to deal with this problem. Yeah. The best way to do that is to give them a road map. And the best road map I can give anyone is my own experience.

[00:17:16] I mean, that's a good point to cause Wen, you know, has been writing about and knowing about climate for like, yeah, I mean 20 plus years, so he definitely could have been like, yeah, guys we tried to tell you, but he didn't take it at all. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I want to talk to you. I think we should talk a little bit about anger because I know you and I both like to write a little hot

[00:17:46] I mean, you wrote the anger essay of two thousand and nineteen and I had to stop myself from asking you to read the entire thing and like videotape yourself acting it out.

[00:18:02] But I do have a generous excerpt. I'd love for you to read.

[00:18:11] Okay. So this was called the case for Climate Rage.

[00:18:17] And I feel like I had started working on this, like I had started working on it like months before it came out, because I just kept I kept having these experiences over and over again with specifically men in the climate movement where they would sort of like dismiss how I was feeling, especially if I was angry, like they. There was a really like consistent response of like, you know, like calm down, be practical. Yeah. You know, like this isn't going to help us. Why are you trying to point the finger at people that's unproductive? All of that. Like, I was like hearing these messages over and over again. And it kind of just reminded me of like experiences that I've had in the climate movement all along with like male editors and like, you know, like people that I'm on list serves with and all of that kind of stuff. And so I wanted to kind of combine it all together and also a little bit make the point that like, you know, people with different experiences than white men have different emotional reactions to climate change, and that is equally valid.

[00:19:34] Oh, yeah, yeah. So they were against pointing the finger. Meanwhile, you know, we see this in so much climate writing. It's all about we.

[00:19:45] You know, like we did this. And it's very much an all that is pointing a giant finger.

[00:19:51] Exactly. Well, and it's it's in this way that it's like, oh, if we if we can if we can make it a collective responsibility, then we don't have to look at the fact that the people, the very specific people who had a much bigger hand in this look just like us.

[00:20:07] Yeah. You get into that in the in that excerpt. Yeah.

[00:20:12] Yeah. Okay. So here I'll read from this case for Climate Rage. I think there have always been a lot of women covering environmental stories, but the breakout stars, the loudest voices have tended to be those of white men. More recently, there, specifically literary white men for whom climate change is the ultimate epic saga in which all of humanity is both villain and hero. We had a chance to act on climate. Decades ago and blew it. The story goes. And now we must rise to the challenge and save humanity. If we don't. And we're unlikely to. We only have ourselves to blame. These dominant voices are agreed that climate change stories can be serious. Sad, occasionally. Funny or hopeful? Always smart and knowledgeable. More recently, a bit alarmist, but never too emotional and especially not angry. For about two decades now, white male environmentalists and journalists have been telling me and other environmentalists and reporters who look like me, and especially those who are browner than me, that we doesn't quite include us or our anger. It is unseemly and certainly on intellectual to react this way. So is imagining a vastly different future that goes beyond technological solutions or new energy sources and fingerpointing, quote, playing the blame game. That is certainly not on the appropriate response is bemused detachment and plenty of charts followed by a book tour. But when women like my colleague's point the finger, it is not at one company or even one industry. The oil, coal and automotive industries all play a role. The utilities to the PR flacks and lobbyists who carry out their vision, the politicians who cave. It's a lot of people, but it's not all people. It's not humanity. The story of, quote, us consuming our way to oblivion with the oil companies innocently fulfilling our insatiable greed for fuel is just a lie. What does it matter who's at fault? We all need to come together to solve it. Shout men who look just like the men who are most to blame. Men who will suffer. Last and least it matters because the same patriarchal elites have remained comfortably in power for so long that their imaginations are unequal to the task we face. Arguments for civility, for forgiveness, for we're all in this together for a preservation of the status quo with just a few tweaks won't keep us all from going over the cliff.

[00:22:44] Mm hmm. I love that, so. I remember after you posted this, it was just like all over the Twitter machine. Can you talk a little bit about what the reception was like for you?

[00:22:59] Yeah, actually, I was kind of expecting to get a lot of angry emails from people.

[00:23:06] You know, I was like I was like sort of, you know, preparing myself for, you know, like trolls and anger.

[00:23:12] But actually, a lot of people were really supportive. And a lot of women in particular were like, yes, absolutely. And actually, quite a few white dudes were like, yeah, I've noticed this. And then, you know, the people the emails that I did get were mostly from men who who were really genuinely asking, like, how can I be a better ally, which I was like, really appreciative of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really I.

[00:23:41] Those are my favorite climate guys.

[00:23:43] Yeah. But I do think that there's this thing that happens where a lot of us, like white men that I've talked to in the movement will sort of initially take this tack of. So what do you think? I should just not write about this? And it's weird to me that the choices are like I either have to dominate or not be involved at all. You know, like there's a huge middle there. And there's like many ways that you can both continue to say your piece and support other people, you know, expressing themselves, too.

[00:24:16] Yeah, [00:24:17]right! The climate movement It does not do good with nuance. It's funny. It's just so much black and white thinking. Right. It's either individual or collective action is either hope or complete and total despair. It's just we can never the pendulum just keeps going all over the place. [20.4s]

[00:24:38] Yeah. Yeah. That's actually a great segue into the next one I want you to read from, which I just loved this essay and especially this part of it where you talk about how like the "we must have hope" and "everything is doomed" things are basically like two sides of the same coin. So this one is called. Home Is Always Worth It. And this one also started out angry. It was like sort of an angry response to the Jonathan Franzen essay.

[00:25:09] It's a little bit that, you know, I think I kind of let the Twitter machine get me a little more worked up over that piece than I wanted it to be. And so, yeah, when I sat down to write it, I sort of like I reread his teeth and was like, actually, I see, you know, I kind of see where he's coming from. And I kind of see what what could send someone like this over domination of the whole narrative, how that can send someone all the way to the other side, because the hope narrative is just like so incredibly out of touch at this point that I do see how someone can go all the way to the other end of the spectrum. Yeah. And I did think that a lot of the stuff he was saying were like he describes like, you know, climate action can be like voting rights action. Right. And I totally and completely agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. And he was talking about how it's too late to stop climate change. And he's right. And I also started to see a lot of blowback for this is why fiction writer shouldn't write about climate. Like, OK, hold on there. Put that pony back in the barn, you can't both say that we need everybody in the climate movement--why aren't more people engaged on this?-- and be upset about that, and then when new people come and decide that they want to have not just a role but a speaking role and not just be an extra and take orders, right. Then, you know, tell them to get back in their lane like that's not cool. And I just thought that rage is not a good way to engage with those ideas, because I think people who have gone to this other side of the spectrum are in a lot of pain. Yeah, that is why I decided to take a more compassionate approach. So, OK, this is the part you want me to read.

[00:26:57] What we used to know as potential impacts of global warming now have proper names. Dorian You two add a campfire. Maria In our context now, Rosie, hopefulness feels downright sociopathic as these tragedies fade and blend into a continuum. The climate community's insistence on hope everlasting begins to sound anything but realistic. It becomes emotionally immature, a hurdle unto itself. Not to mention that in order to have this type of pope, you have to be able to explain the solutions that would justify it. And that favors a certain type of expertise and rages raises the price of admission to the climate conversation to an astonishing astronomical rate. We can't afford to keep all these gates and all these gatekeepers again. We don't have time. Granted, this reflexive ness is a byproduct of decades of relentless bad faith attacks from both industry and government. But the result is the same. It's exhausting, it's ineffective and it's alienating. Honestly, it's not terribly unlike the doom or narrative. Both are mansplaining paradises, both smack of the privilege, right from the deluded belief that this world has ever been perfect and that therefore an imperfect version of it is not worth saving or fighting for. Both represent two sides of an overprivileged pendulum swung too far, and the swing is so unnecessary. Given the abundant room in the middle room for all of us. In fact, the community that prides itself on scientific nuance can learn to embrace emotional nuance. It is absolutely possible to prepare for the disasters already terrifyingly upon us, while also doing our damnedest to quit baking more than we can acknowledge. The storm of emotions that comes with watching our world unravel. Process those emotions pick ourselves up to protect what we can. Because it's worth it. Because we're worth it. We don't have to be Pollyannish or fatalistic. We can just be human.

[00:29:03] I love it so much. It's so good. I love that when I read something that I feel like expresses what I've been thinking but unable to articulate. Yes. Yeah.

[00:29:16] Yeah. That's kind of like, you know, always the goal. Because I think we've never really talked about the emotions of climate change. At least not at a large scale. I think we just like there's so many things swirling around it that we don't know how to talk about. And it just feels like you're trying to grasp at the air. Yeah. It doesn't have a form. You can't fully see it because you can't describe it. But the interesting experience of writing this essay was, as I wrote the hope section I was like, why does this feel redundant?

[00:29:56] Like I got to, you know, like the editor in me sort of like, kicked in and I was like, you wrote this part already? Yeah. Why are you repeating yourself? And I scrolled up and was like, no, I didn't write this part.

[00:30:06] And then I reread what I wrote about the doom narrative and how that made me feel. And I looked at what I wrote for the hope one and was like, oh, they both make me feel the same thing. They're the same thing. They're two sides of the same coin. And that was when I completely changed the entire frame of the piece.

[00:30:21] The way you put it here is perfect, that it's the exact same kind of approach of like like sort of mansplaining. It's coming from this place of thinking that like things were perfect and that anything imperfect is like not worth fighting for.

[00:30:36] That's real good. Yeah. Okay. I feel like I want to have you read from the first essay of yours that I read, which was this Vox one that really just kind of debunks this whole, you know, individual responsibility narrative that we hear all the time and we see all these yelling fossil fuel ads like, you know, you need to get a handle on your carbon footprint or like you need to fly less or you need to go vegan.

[00:31:05] And I especially loved how you were very careful to make the point. And of course, this did not stop people who didn't actually read the essay from arguing with you. But I loved that you were careful to make the point that, you know, you're not saying that those actions are unnecessary or stupid or a waste of time or that people shouldn't do them or any of those things that just like they need to be combined with systemic action.

[00:31:37] Okay I have this excerpt for you to read.

[00:31:43] Once upon a time perhaps. We need a strong grasp of science to understand climate change.

[00:31:49] But now all we have to do is look at the date daily headlines or out of our windows from the campfire. A devastating California wildfire that was exacerbated by dry, hot weather to Hurricane Michael. A storm that rapidly intensified due to increased sea temperatures. Climate change is here.

[00:32:07] I don't blame anyone for wanting absolution. I can even understand abdication, which is its own form of absolution. But underneath all that is a far more insidious force. It's the narrative that is both driven and obstructed. The climate change conversation for the past several decades. It tells us. Climate change could have been fixed if we had all just ordered less takeout use, fewer plastic bags turned off some more lights, planted a few trees or driven an electric car. It says that if those adjustments can't do the trick. What's the point? The belief that this enormous existential problem could have been fixed if all of us had just tweaked our consumptive habits is not only preposterous. It's dangerous. It turns environmentalism into an individual choice defined as sin, defined as sin or virtue, convicting those who can't or don't uphold this ethics. When you consider that the same IPCC report outlined that the vast majority of global greenhouse gas emissions comes from just a handful of corporations aided and abetted by the world's most powerful governments, including the U.S., is victim blaming, plain and simple. When people come to me to confess their green sins as if I were some sort of eco nun, I want to tell them that they're carrying the guilt of the oil and gas industry's crimes, that the weight of our sickly planet is too much for any one person to shoulder, and that that blame paves the road to apathy, which can really seal our doom. But that doesn't mean we do nothing. Climate change is a vast and complicated problem. And that means that the answer is complicated, too. We need to let go of the idea that it's all of our individual faults, then take on the collective responsibility of holding the true culprits accountable. In other words, we need to become Mini Davis against one big bad Goliath.

[00:34:00] Yes. Also, I love that you're. I love that you're like an eco nun that people confess their sins to (laughing)

Transcription

In this intro episode, Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt share their own approaches to climate storytelling and what they love most about each other's work.

S1, Ep2 | 2016-2017 in Review: The Hangover

S1, Ep1 | Fangirl v Fangirl

Hot Take is a holistic, irreverent, honest look at the climate crisis and all the ways media and society are talking—and not talking—about it. Hosted by real-life friends Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt—an essayist and a journalist— Hot Take offers a unique perspective on the issue of climate change. With a breath of fresh humanity and humor, conversation moves swiftly from cackling about the bad week an oil company had, to speaking seriously and passionately about the unequal distribution of climate impacts and our own experiences of climate grief. And then washing it down with a round of dad jokes! Every week, we’ll connect you with the latest climate news and with the journalists and storytellers trying to make sense of this complex issue to help you see the world through climate-colored glasses. We ended production on Hot Take at the end of 2022, but you can still access episodes here, or 

A holistic, irreverent, honest look at the climate crisis and all the ways media and society are talking—and not talking—about it.

S1, Ep1 | Fangirl v Fangirl

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