Here is the full transcript of former climate activist Lucy Biggers’ interview on TRIGGERnometry podcast, May 13, 2026.
Editor’s Notes: In this episode of Triggernometry, hosts Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster sit down with former climate activist and video producer Lucy Biggers to discuss her journey out of the progressive movement. Biggers opens up about her time at Now This News, where she interviewed figures like Greta Thunberg and AOC, and explains how groupthink and social media fueled her early activism. Now a writer at The Free Press, she shares her insights on “deprogramming” from ideological bubbles and why she believes the current climate narrative can be more destructive than helpful for younger generations. It is a candid conversation about the intersection of media, identity politics, and the pursuit of human flourishing.
Lucy Biggers: From Climate Activist to Free Press Journalist
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Lucy, welcome to TRIGGERnometry.
LUCY BIGGERS: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Oh, it’s great to have you. You were a climate activist and you are not anymore. You have a very interesting story to tell. So why don’t we just get started there? What is your story?
A Career Built on Climate Activism
LUCY BIGGERS: Yeah, so I was a climate activist for half my 20s, so that was from 2016 to around 2020. And I fell into it because at that time I was a video producer at a very left-wing news company called NowThis News, which some people know it, some people don’t. But we were one of the first news companies to get videos to automatically play on the Facebook feed. Back in the 20-teens with subtitles.
So I moved into that newsroom as a 25-year-old and my job every day was just to be scrolling on my newsfeed, which now we know about this, right? It’s like doom scrolling and our algorithms. But that was where I first got exposed to this modern climate movement in the form of actually this Dakota Access Pipeline protest that happened in 2016, which was very viral, where there was Native Americans protesting a pipeline going in. And 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. 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.
Eventually growing my following to 50,000 on Instagram by like 2019. I interviewed Greta Thunberg. I gave AOC one of her first interviews when she was running for Congress in 2017, and that went very viral. So I was very much entrenched in the very progressive political movement, and then also the climate stuff, from the center of this newsroom essentially.
So that was how I basically spent half my twenties, kind of just buying everything as it was sold to me. Never really investigating. Watched a few documentaries that honestly convinced me that this was an existential threat. And did not have a deep understanding of the science. And to the point where I’ll just anecdotally say, in 2019, I learned that CO2 is only 0.04% of the atmosphere. Up until that point, I’d been covering the climate for 4 years and I didn’t even know what percent of the atmosphere CO2 was. So that was how turned off my critical thinking was, because I was getting so much support from being part of this movement that I just pushed it, right? And that was 5 years of my career.
The Psychology of Groupthink
KONSTANTIN KISIN: And you know, I’ve listened to a bunch of interviews Frances has as well that you’ve done. You’re clearly an intelligent, very intelligent person.
LUCY BIGGERS: I mean, I feel a little naive.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: No, no, we didn’t bring you here to humiliate you. I actually—
LUCY BIGGERS: No, it’s important though, because I think it’s showing how someone, even if you’re intelligent, can turn your critical thinking off when you’re in groupthink.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: So this is what I was going to ask you. Why do you think you were, and people are, susceptible to this thing, even if they are smart and are capable of thinking things through and using critical thinking in other contexts?
LUCY BIGGERS: Yeah. So I think there’s a confluence of things, of timing and my generation and technology and politics, because again, I’m a millennial. I was born in 1990, so this is my mid-twenties. It’s the 20-teens. Social media’s picking up. I’m scrolling on my algorithm, which we did not really understand how those things worked then. I feel like I was like patient zero of some of this stuff.
And I was also at the same time working in a very left-wing newsroom, which cannot be separated from my story. Because while I was at that newsroom, it’s 2015, I started, and then 2016, Trump’s rise is happening. We’re all Bernie supporters. Trump gets elected and kind of everyone goes crazy, right? We’ve now been living with this for 10 years, especially on the left. And it became a lot about identity politics. That kind of came into the newsroom over the Slack, over social media. And so I’m—
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Give us some examples. Like, what do you mean?
LUCY BIGGERS: Just like the idea of everyone who’s white is a white supremacist, even if they don’t know it — you’re racist. So you should really question what you believe because more often than not you’re racist. You have cisgender privilege.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: And did you think this when this was happening? Were you like, actually, I must be a white supremacist?
LUCY BIGGERS: I literally was just like, I guess this is what is true. I was just like, I’m going to listen to BIPOC, which is POCs, people of color.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Mm-hmm.
LUCY BIGGERS: Right. But it just took it to such a degree where we threw out the idea that, as MLK would say, you should be judged by the content of your character, not the color of your skin. That was out the window. And it was like everyone who’s white and cisgender and privileged doesn’t have a perspective here.
So anyway, that’s the culture of the newsroom. Not that anyone had a gun to my head being like, “You must believe this,” but it was just the water that I was swimming in. And I want to be a good person. I’m not inoculated against these ideas coming out of the American education system. And we have social media online for the first time. So it’s not like my parents can warn me of how these things work. Throw in the Slack channel where everyone group messages, so it’s public messaging. And you very quickly just get a culture that’s very ideological in the newsroom.
And so I just bought into everything because I wanted to be a good ally. And I’m looking around at the ideology as it’s really picking up in 2017 and on, post-Trump elected. And it’s saying like, if you’re a white person, if you’re an American, if you’re straight, you have all these privileges. And so to me, the climate movement was a perfect way to atone for the sins of my birth of being a privileged person. I can represent the indigenous Native Americans who have been historically oppressed. I can now help them. So now I’m on the right side of history. I’m atoning for being descended from this oppressive group of people.
And so it was all in my psychology, a way to be a good person and fit in with a group which I felt wasn’t going to accept me if I was just like a normal white person who was like, “Actually, this country is worth defending. Actually, I’m not racist.” I was never going to say that stuff because I would get my head chopped off by the groupthink, even if it was never an overt threat.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: How do you know that you would’ve been attacked if you’d said that?
LUCY BIGGERS: Because you would just see in the Slack channel what was an appropriate opinion to have, and anything that was slightly moderate or pushing against this would very much get shouted down by the most vocal, most extreme groups — the most vocal employees in the group. And so it wasn’t a conscious thing. It’s just a bunch of 20-somethings kind of just figuring out what is okay. And again, this is a very millennial 20-something newsroom in the 20-teens. The virus has left the lab at this point. And I think this ideology is now at the New York Times. We know this. It’s the woke stuff that we talk about.
But I was just in it. I didn’t question it. And it just subverted everything in my worldview, right? Where it’s like, I grew up in a two-parent household in Connecticut, like an idyllic American life. I have family who fought in the Revolutionary War, Civil War, whatever. I have a lot of national pride. And all of a sudden, because of this ideology, I was like, I can’t have pride in any of that. And I need to just kind of apologize, stay small and atone and hopefully be accepted by the group, because like, sorry guys. So it was a very sad ideology to live by.
But I think that my experience is very common. And my way of being a good ally, I took it out by building up this climate movement and brand. And again, this is all in retrospect that I’m saying this. At the time it was all subconscious.
Only now, years later — I left that job in 2021. I went to a nonprofit for one year and that’s when I then heard about Bari’s podcast. Bari Weiss is my boss now at the Free Press and she started the Free Press and I’ve been at the Free Press since 2022. And so that’s even been more of a deprogramming essentially.
Interviewing Greta Thunberg
FRANCIS FOSTER: So yeah, the thing that I found really interesting about this movement — because at the time I was teaching primary school, so I could see some of these ideas start to creep into primary school teaching and teaching about climate and the fact that the world is coming to an end, all this stuff. And I remember reading about it and I stumbled on Greta Thunberg and she was 15 years old at the time. And as somebody who also used to teach special needs kids, I found it deeply weird that the head of this movement was a 15-year-old autistic girl. What was your impression when you interviewed her, and did you not find that strange as well, or was it something that was just accepted?
LUCY BIGGERS: It was something that was just accepted. In retrospect, I think it’s so weird. I think it’s such a red flag. But at the time, I think this ideology of the climate movement and the nihilism and the apocalyptic thinking, it has a lot of religious undertones. And so I think Greta was accepted as like this beacon of hope, right? She was a Joan of Arc character. And this idea that the youth are unspoiled by the sins of this world. So she’s a truth-sayer. That’s how I saw her, right?
I thought she was so brave and I would laugh when I would see the conservative critique of her that was like, “Oh, why do you have a 15-year-old leading your movement?” I’d be like, “They just don’t get it.” And now I think that’s a very valid critique. Why does a movement need a teenager to be its leader? We’re living in the real world here and things like our energy system are not something that a 15-year-old who’s never paid an energy bill in her life should be talking about.
But again, it was so ideological. And so when I met her, which was May of 2019, my producer at the time was able to get an interview with her, which was a big get. So we flew to Stockholm, which I put the carbon emissions of the flight out of my mind. I’m like, it’s for the greater good. And I interviewed her and the things that I took away from it the most — it was a very professional operation, right? Like she brought her bike in multiple times to get multiple shots for me and other camera crews that were there. I think 60 Minutes Australia was also there and a few other outlets. And I had a designated time with her, only about 20 minutes.
And I thought she was actually very articulate and had a great quality about her. She has charisma obviously to lead a movement like this. And so I thought my interactions with her were lovely. Obviously the cultural divide of her being European and younger and on the autistic spectrum — I felt like she was a little bit more serious than the American me. I’m trying to crack a joke, I’m trying to get a smile out of her. Not successfully. But I felt that she in person was actually a lovely person.
But again, she’s so young and her parents — her dad was there, dropped her off, and then I know he went to a nearby coffee shop while she was doing all these shoots.
FRANCIS FOSTER: Because to me what it betrayed was a fundamental lack of seriousness about the movement. Because as somebody who saw themselves at the time as being on the left, I had that thought as somebody who’s taught 15-year-old girls. I was thinking to myself, number one, she’s not an expert in anything. And number two, if I’m being honest, this is a fundamental act of cruelty, putting someone so young and turning them into a celebrity. When you look at what happens to child stars in Hollywood, I mean, it never normally ends well.
The Climate-Socialism Connection
LUCY BIGGERS: Yeah. And look at her now. I mean, I feel like she’s lost the plot, right? Like I think, yeah. And I know her origin story was she had so much anxiety about climate from, I think, probably watching the same documentaries that I was watching that were very biased. And her way to act out this anxiety was to become an activist. And I think now as a parent, I think if that was my child, I would be showing them counter-facts. And there’s so much out there around climate change to paint a picture that it’s not existential. So the fact that her parents went this route of activism is — I mean, it’s a reflection, I guess, on their values and everything. And obviously now we see that she is very confused. I think she was just making a video about Cuba and she’s basically gone full Marxist, which is kind of, you know, there’s the connections there between climate and that movement. So maybe not surprising.
FRANCIS FOSTER: Well, let’s explore that. So what are the connections between communism, socialism, whatever you want to call it, and the climate movement? Because there does seem to be quite a lot of overlap.
Ideological Parallels: Climate Activism and Socialism
LUCY BIGGERS: There’s a lot of overlap that I’ve seen, and having been in that mindset and then gotten out, I can just say the parallels that I see. One is this idea of the intelligent bureaucrat knowing more than the average person, and that the average person is somehow stupid, they’re ignorant. So we, the central planners, can plan this better. And then also taking away people’s property rights in the name of a greater cause. So socialism, we all know, is to get to equality, and climate change is to save the planet, but they end up being acted out in very similar ways. You need more bloated bureaucratic government. You’re always trying to reach a utopia, right? It’s like in 10 years it’ll be a green utopia. Just, we’re going to tax you a little more. You’re going to give up some of your freedoms, but in 10 years it’s going to be utopia.
So there’s a lot of ideological overlap. And I think again, you can’t understate how uninoculated the West is from this. Young people were not educated properly on communism and socialism in America at all. We’re taught a lot about World War II and Hitler and stuff like that, but I never even learned about the destructiveness of communism and socialism when I was in school, and have only had to educate myself later. And so I do see the climate movement as sort of the next iteration of that same ideology. It’s about control, but in the name of the greater good. Because —
FRANCIS FOSTER: So just one final thing, because then the climate movement entered this really weird phase where then it started to equate its struggle with Palestine. No, I know, it’s not.
LUCY BIGGERS: And I was like, what? While I was still in it in 2019 too, and the BLM stuff was coming in 2020, then it was all about like everything is social justice and it’s all about the global north has been oppressing the global south and Western imperialism. And I’m like, what? The mask really came off, I think. And you started to realize around 2020, at least for me, I’m like, wait a minute, I thought we were trying to recycle here and maybe put in a few solar panels. And now I’m having to say, okay, down with the West and the global north is oppressing everyone in the global south — very black and white thinking.
And I think as the years went on, the overlaps between those ideologies got more and more. When I entered it again in 2015, 2016, I truly was the definition of a useful idiot. I was just ignorant. I was trying to do good. I really just was a well-meaning young person who wanted to be on the right side of history. Wanted to have my impact. I felt like there was an injustice. In this case, evil fossil fuels were taking advantage of a Native American tribe, and it was a very black and white story for me. And then as the movement went on, I started to see everything that we’re talking about.
Growing Up Millennial: The Path to Activism
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Lucy, where did you get this idea that to be on the right side of history was to be on this side?
LUCY BIGGERS: Yeah, I think that for my generation, the millennials — I’m now 35 and I was 25 at that time — you have to think about the context that we were growing up in, which was the financial crisis in 2008, which happened under Bush, the forever wars. And so we are a very liberal generation and we never lived through Reagan, right?
KONSTANTIN KISIN: I love the way she’s pointing at me. I didn’t live through Reagan either. We’re all kind of the same.
LUCY BIGGERS: That’s how old you guys are. Why am I assuming — wait, are you like — wait, we are elderly millennials. No. Reagan, like your favorite president. Maybe it’s because your opinions are just so mature, guys.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: That’s right. You’re elderly, you can weasel out of this all you want.
LUCY BIGGERS: When you were in high school, when Reagan was in office. No, I’m just kidding. But I guess my point is — I feel really bad now to age bias you.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Lucy, I’m messing with you. I actually think this is a really interesting point because we are a little bit older than you.
LUCY BIGGERS: Just a little.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, probably about 8 years.
FRANCIS FOSTER: And we don’t have to be public about it.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: When we were at school, I actually don’t remember being taught anything that would predispose me to this kind of worldview. But I went to school in England, so it may be a bit different. I guess what I’m getting at is, when you mentioned that the American education system didn’t prepare you to be critically thinking about some of these things — but did it also prepare you for the view that you just described, which is this is the right side of history? Were you being told about climate change being about to destroy the planet and all this kind of stuff at school?
LUCY BIGGERS: Yeah. And again, I graduated from high school in 2008, so I’m kind of at the end of the millennial generation. And I think the generation after me has it even worse with some of this stuff. Because I got out of college by 2012. And I will say, we’re 9/11 kids. We were 11 when 9/11 happened. And when Osama bin Laden got shot, we had a party at my college because we were so excited. So we were very much still — now there’d probably be like a eulogy for him or something. So even I was kind of a transition generation to what this younger generation has been fed.
But I will say, the context for me — and maybe just not being inoculated against this at home and at school — was like, obviously Obama is the hope president. Obviously Bush is bad. Look at the forever wars. Look at the financial crisis. Look at income inequality. And so I was just your basic millennial liberal because that was just the path of least resistance. And everyone who was conservative, I just kind of thought was old school or they didn’t get it. And I was never articulated to in a way that made me feel like I should be on that side. And only after being on the left for so long and seeing it go completely crazy was I like, hold on, I need to get out of here and basically reeducate myself.
And I don’t know, there was enough cognitive dissonance that I was able to leave the movement, and I chose to work for Bari, which is not exactly a safe choice. And then I will say, being now at the Free Press for 3 years, and all of our contributors, our writers — Douglas Murray, Niall Ferguson, all these people who are now household names to me — knowing all their work also helped reeducate me. Because even coming into the Free Press, I was still questioning, right? It’s like, this is a very long process.
I stopped posting on my social media as a climate influencer in 2020. Then I had my son in 2022 and I was at a nonprofit. Then I came to the Free Press at the end of 2022. Had another son in 2024, and I didn’t start posting publicly about my new opinions until 2025. But questioning the whole time. And I said before the cameras were rolling, I remember seeing your guys’ videos in 2020 and I really liked the name TRIGGERnometry because I knew that everyone in my circle was triggered by everything because everyone was such snowflakes. But I was still thinking of myself as in the group.
And I think it can’t be understated how much it takes to extract yourself from that. And I think now it kind of all ties in — my cause is climate, right? And we’ll talk more about that. But I think you look at the activism now and it feels like every 6 months there’s a new cause du jour. And a lot of young women, mothers, and people of my demographic are getting whipped up every few months. What’s the new thing that you’re going to freak out about? And so my experience is just one, but it continues on.
Understanding the Appeal to Young Women
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Of course. Yeah. And by the way, the reason I’m digging into why you had the views that you did is I actually think understanding where people are coming from is the most important thing. Doesn’t mean that I agree or accept or tolerate even, but understanding I think is key. And one of the things you mentioned is kind of interesting. You mentioned young women. This is something that Orwell wrote about in 1984, that it is young women that tend to go for all these social — I don’t know what the right word is.
LUCY BIGGERS: Social justice causes, essentially.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, right, but also I guess he wasn’t really talking about social justice. I think he just meant if there was a kind of social derangement in which everybody went in a particular direction. It didn’t have to be about social justice necessarily. It was just about a lot of people who hadn’t thought about something critically, but felt very passionately that it was the right thing to do. Does that match your experience with the people around you?
LUCY BIGGERS: Young women? It was a mix. It was both, I think. But I would say in the climate movement, yes, many, many women. And what you said about the not critical thinking is basically everything about it.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: And why do you think that is?
The Emotional Hooks of Climate Activism
LUCY BIGGERS: Because I think there’s an emotional side of women where we’re very empathetic and so we see suffering and we want to fix it. And so I had a lack of boundaries of individuation between myself and what I can control, and the suffering in the world.
And then again, social media, kerosene on the fire, where we’re now getting exposed to all of these different causes around the world. You have to care about everything. And then if you start to say, “I don’t want to care about something, I have an emotional boundary here,” the movement will say, “Well, you’re privileged for having an emotional boundary. That’s selfishness.”
And so there were so many ways to hook you back in when you’re in this movement. And again, that’s why even years after leaving, I would be on the edge. I had to read every single one of Douglas Murray’s books to be like, “I’m not crazy.” And recreate a foundation for myself that was not so anti-West and so just emotionally dispersed over the whole globe.
I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders with all of these different ideologies that I felt I had to push. And for me, climate was the main one, but again, kind of everything — like your textbook, very left person. So yeah, there’s so much there.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: You’re right, there’s so much there. The thing I’m hearing through all of it is almost like there is a sense of pressure, but there’s also almost like a craving for some kind of meaning and purpose as well. Is that part of it?
LUCY BIGGERS: 100%. I think the social pressure to be seen with good within the group, wanting to have your impact on the world and to have a legacy and make a difference. And having that desire, but because of the internet and social media, it’s kind of dispersed over the globe versus caring about your own community near you — your own school board or all these things.
Again, I was younger. I’m an urban New Yorker at that time. I’m living, I’m renting an apartment. I don’t really have a stake in the game in the way that I do now. And so I fell for all this stuff.
And again, I see people that I know now in my life that I’ve known in person, and I see them posting the memes every few months — whether it’s the person posting the black square during BLM, and then it’s like Palestine stuff, then it’s the anti-ICE stuff. And you can care about immigration and all these different things, but the level that these women are triggered by this stuff — I think of it now as like their nervous systems are hijacked by this ideology, even if they’re at home on their phone breastfeeding a newborn, but their minds are in that global cause.
And climate was the big cause in 2018, in 2019, and now it’s no longer as fashionable. But I think that’s why my story is important, because there are different causes, but the same tactic is used.
The Impact on Young People
FRANCIS FOSTER: I really have an empathy for young people, and particularly of your generation and the generation that came after you, which I didn’t at the start because of the way that we were treated and the way that things happened in the comedy industry. I was very angry, but the more I step away from it, the more empathy I have because I talk to young people and they say things like, “I don’t want to have kids.” And I go, “Okay, why not?” And they say, “Because of the climate crisis, I don’t want to bring children into this world.” And you go, this has gone so deep, so deep into your psyche that it’s actually affected you to the point where you don’t want to carry on your own lineage, which to me is heartbreaking.
LUCY BIGGERS: It’s so heartbreaking. And again, I think that generation that’s younger than me — the people in their 20s now — they were the ones that were taught climate stuff in school. It became curriculum because all the teachers and people were like, “We have to teach this to them to be responsible.” And for me, in 2006, I was a sophomore in high school and we watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth during a high school assembly. And that was my first exposure to it.
FRANCIS FOSTER: Was that widespread or was that just your school, do you think?
LUCY BIGGERS: I think it was widespread.
FRANCIS FOSTER: Wow. Okay.
LUCY BIGGERS: And that was sort of the beginning of the climate movement of my era, where I feel like my parents are baby boomers and they had like Silent Spring and they were like hippie environmentalists. And then for us it was the climate and Al Gore’s film.
And I will say, I remember watching that film and I was overwhelmed afterwards with so much existential dread. I remember sitting in a photography class, hanging out with my friends after, and I was thinking in my mind, “Okay, I’m 16. I have till I’m 26. I have 10 years to live,” based on whatever I took away from that film. That was what I thought. I was racked by anxiety in my nervous system. And then at the same time, my brain was kind of like, “Well, we’re going to not think about that anymore. We’re going to throw that out of my mind. I’m not going to think about this every day.” But something changed.
Like you’re saying, this hopelessness — where then my new reality was, “There are certain rules I have about reality now. We’re ruining the planet. We’re burning the planet. The planet is burning and it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.” But I guess my future self will have to deal with that, which now I know isn’t even true.
But that was one film. So again, the younger generation, they’re getting this from their teachers as a curriculum. And so they have it way more in their psyche than we do, elder millennials that we are.
FRANCIS FOSTER: I hate to use this term because it’s kind of hyperbolic, but it feels appropriate. It’s kind of brainwashing, isn’t it?
A Crime Against Humanity
LUCY BIGGERS: Yeah, I think it’s brainwashing. And I’ll be even more hyperbolic — I say it’s a crime against humanity. I really do. I think that the teachers and the schools, again, they pushed this ideology and I think in their minds they were saying, “We’re doing the responsible thing. These kids should know. The planet is burning and they should know in 5th grade.” Not that they can do anything about it, but they should learn so they can grow up and be an activist or whatever.
And I think, unfortunately, we now know that the tide’s turning a bit. There’s been a bit of a vibe shift because reality is hitting with the energy prices and everything. But think about the social cost back in the day — if you’re in 2015 saying, “Actually, maybe we don’t teach climate to 5th graders,” they’d say, “Well, you’re a climate change denier,” and you would be ostracized or maybe even be pushed out of a role, a position.
So it just was a snowball, compounding, compounding effect. And it really hit every level of our education system. And it’s such a waste of human capital. It frustrates me so much.
Debunking the Core Claims of the Climate Movement
KONSTANTIN KISIN: And Lucy, obviously since you’ve evolved in your views, I’m sure that one of the things you’ve done is gone through some of the main things that you used to believe and done the research and looked into it. And there are so many things that are now effectively accepted as the truth about this issue that when you actually dig down, are not true. I’d love for you to talk us through the key beliefs of the climate movement and also talk about where they’re not actually true.
LUCY BIGGERS: Yeah. So the climate movement, when I was in it, the ideology was essentially, “We have 10 years to prevent catastrophic climate change.” And basically the planet will become unlivable unless we transition off of fossil fuels as fast as possible to things like solar and wind. And meat was vilified. Capitalism was also vilified because of this endless consumerism and all these things. And so the picture was very bleak. And the only way to change this was, again, off of fossil fuels as fast as possible and to renewable energy, or else the planet would be unlivable. That was the basics.
So I sort of secretly started doing my reeducation all the way back in 2020. And I read Michael Shellenberger’s book Apocalypse Never, and he debunked a lot of stuff. And then I read Steve Koonin’s book Unsettled, and Steve Koonin was a Department of Energy appointee by President Obama. So I really liked that because he was not like an “other” to me. And both of those books sort of broke my association with some of these biggest narratives, essentially saying, “This is not catastrophic.”
Steve Koonin, I think, is the best to quote because his book Unsettled went into what is — basically saying, “Hey, this science is unsettled. We’re all being told that it’s settled fact. Anyone who questions it is a climate change denier and you’re ostracized.” But he was like, “Hey, I’m telling you, it’s really not.”
And one of the things that made my jaw drop was that extreme weather — hurricanes, droughts, flooding — have not gotten worse because of climate change. And when I read that, I was like, “You’re kidding me.” Again, because every time there’s an extreme weather event, the news will say it’s because of climate change, it’s made worse because of climate change. But the IPCC, which is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the UN body that looks at all of the climate research when they do their big studies — they’re not even able to find in their own work that there’s a pattern of increase.
And hurricanes, I think, is a crazy one. There’s no pattern. And if you, to the uninitiated, hear in high school, “Extreme weather’s getting worse because of climate change,” then there’s Hurricane Katrina, and they’re saying, “Look at these billion-dollar damage hurricanes, they’re getting worse.” And so you never question that original assumption. And then every time there’s a storm, your brain goes, “Oh, another horrible storm.”
KONSTANTIN KISIN: An asteroid hit. That was climate change. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of the core claims, I think, that is the most ingrained is the idea that 97% of climate scientists agree. And that’s where it gets a little bit hazy in people’s minds, because no one kind of knows what it is that the claim is they agree on. What is the claim?
LUCY BIGGERS: Oh my gosh. That was one study by a man whose last name is Cook. And I want to be careful, I probably will not say it perfectly, but essentially the takeaway was that he said in his research that he looked at like 12,000 studies on climate change and he said 97% of the scientists said that climate change is happening.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: And it’s caused by humans—
LUCY BIGGERS: But no, he just said, I think in that one it was just that it’s happening. But then it got retold by people saying that it’s happening, it’s caused by humans, and it’s dangerous — that was like the—
KONSTANTIN KISIN: So the original claim was that the average temperature is changing.
The 97% Consensus Myth
LUCY BIGGERS: Yeah, it’s been going up basically. And he would count people, like in a lot of scientists when they were counted, when they heard that they were counted, their papers were counted in the 97%, they were like, “Yeah, but my paper said like it wasn’t a big deal.” So like, but the thing is it was like a game of telephone because this guy Cook, he really wanted to find this so that journalists and everyone can now have this thing to go to. It’s like, “Studies say 97% of scientists agree.” Which is not true at all.
But President Obama in 2013, when this study came out, tweeted that and said, “97% of scientists agree that climate change is happening. It’s caused by humans and it’s dangerous.” And that was like a really big leap from just the fact that 97% said that it was happening.
And again, there’s more people that are experts on that specific 97% study, but essentially there is no consensus on the human made aspects of the climate change, right? Like, how much we’re causing it. And there’s no consensus on how dangerous it is to us. There is a consensus, I would say, that the planet is warming, but whether it could just be a natural warming cycle that we’re in. And I know you just had on Ian Plimer, who maybe — is that his last name?
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Plimer. I think. Oh yeah.
LUCY BIGGERS: Yeah. Well, you just had on Ian Plimer and he, I know he is a scientist who went into all of that.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, he’s a geologist, but forget about what he said. If you look at the graph of the temperature of this planet over a long period of time, sufficiently long period of time, what we’re living through now is just a small and very insignificant change that is not unprecedented in — in the planet’s history, etc. But you say there’s no consensus. So there’s no consensus among scientists, in your view, that we are contributing to climate change?
Scientists Who Question the Narrative
LUCY BIGGERS: I would say, listen, this isn’t — I don’t feel like I am necessarily the best expert to be like, “These scientists say that stuff.” Like, for me, what I learned from doing all this research is how many scientists, if you question it, you were kicked out of polite society. You are losing your career, your tenured position.
And so there’s a few really outspoken scientists, like Michael Mann is a very good example, who are touted by the media all the time. And then anyone who questions it, they have been so successfully tarred that people in the media, like what I used to be, they don’t even go to those people because in their minds they’re quacks.
So there’s no consensus, I would say, among scientists around the impacts we’re having and the danger. But the media — it’s like the media has not caught up with that. And so they always are selling it like the mainstream media, the big outlets you can think of, they’re always selling it like it’s an existential threat. It’s like they haven’t quite caught up to the fact that there’s so many scientists who say there’s not a consensus on this stuff.
Advice for Young People in the Climate Movement
FRANCIS FOSTER: There’s going to be a lot of people who are watching this show who are thinking to themselves, “I’m young. I’m in my mid-20s, late 20s, whatever it may be,” particularly young women who are enmeshed in these types of movements or social groups, etc. What would you say to them is the most effective way of actually deprogramming and leaving?
LUCY BIGGERS: Yeah. And I think that’s the thing too, is where I feel the most comfortable talking about everything is, what can we observe from the last 40 years? The observational data. Because the climate scientists, they have their fancy models and they’re always going with, “Well, what if, whatever.” What we can observe over the past 40 years is the fact that deaths from natural disasters are down 99% in the past 100 years.
So when I will always say, if I concede to you that climate change is happening — let’s concede everything about the science — deaths from natural disasters are down 99%, so it’s not dangerous. So even if it’s happening the way that everyone says it’s happening, we’re obviously very good at adapting as a species because we’ve gotten wealthier, we’ve gotten more technologically advanced, and so we are not dying the way that we used to from storms, floods, droughts, and all of that.
So I think that’s a really great place to start, because it doesn’t require you to get into the minutia of all this other stuff. And like, “This scientist said this,” because I already feel like that’s a losing conversation. So the deaths from natural disasters is one I always start out with.
Another thing I think is really important is understanding how lopsided the coverage of this is in our media. So they always are pushing the fear and the disaster and saying things like CO2 is a pollution, when CO2 is also a plant food. And so because we’ve increased CO2 in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, we’ve seen global greening across the globe by 5, 15%, even 25% in regions of the globe. That’s good news.
And so I like to bring in the good news with the supposed bad news and say, “Hey, let’s look at this logically.” CO2, which is the thing that we’re releasing into the atmosphere when we use oil, coal, and natural gas — the plants use it for photosynthesis. We learned this in biology class, right? So before you learned about climate, you learned about this. And so because we’ve doubled that rate of CO2 in the atmosphere, plants are better at performing photosynthesis, so they’re growing bigger, they’re growing faster.
I love the fact also that greenhouse growers will pump CO2 into their greenhouses up to 1,500 ppm — parts per million — because the plants love it, versus we’re at 420 ppm right now, parts per million, and that’s how you measure all this stuff. And so that’s almost 3 times as much CO2 going into greenhouses to grow things like our vegetables and our houseplants and all these things. So if CO2 were really such a dangerous boogeyman, why are greenhouse growers putting it into these greenhouses?
And that’s the thing I think is really important. And maybe why my voice is important in this conversation versus someone who’s like the climate scientist who’s been studying this 40 years, is I know the misinformation that’s in the mind of the activists or just the bystander. They think that they’re choking on carbon dioxide, right?
FRANCIS FOSTER: Oh, do they?
LUCY BIGGERS: Yes. Yes. People just think carbon dioxide is bad. There’s an association in their mind that it’s a pollution. And so just really attacking those really basic levels of misinformation, I think, is where I play that part. Because I don’t think climate scientists necessarily would even know that they have to acknowledge that, because the misinformation again is so wrong. It’s so blatant.
And like I said, I was in the climate movement for years and I didn’t even know what percent of the atmosphere was CO2. And I was in the climate movement for 4 years and then I learned it was 0.04%.
Having Kids and Shifting Values
FRANCIS FOSTER: And a really key part of your journey, I think, is the fact that you had kids.
LUCY BIGGERS: Yes. Yes.
FRANCIS FOSTER: And how did that change the way you saw the world? Because when you talk to a lot of women, particularly women who were hyper-liberal at one stage in their life, they have kids or they plan to have kids, and suddenly their view of life completely shifts.
LUCY BIGGERS: Yeah, I think having kids is a really defining moment where you really create boundaries emotionally all of a sudden because you have this life in front of you. And so I had to bring my energy back to the life in front of me. And I think you start to reflect on how you were raised by your parents and the values that they gave you.
And I started to realize I really wanted to be raised with the values that my parents raised me with — a gratitude for being American, an appreciation of capitalism, all these sort of basic American values. And I had strayed so far from that.
I think having my first son in 2022, it made me kind of take stock of what are my values and what am I passing on to my son? And do I want him to be raised to be like some crazy leftist? Like, no, it’s actually a really destructive mindset.
And then also the guilt for consumption in the modern world. And I’m looking at my son, born in 2022, and going, he didn’t choose to be born in 2022. He shouldn’t feel guilty for having fast fashion one day or filling up his car with gas or whatever it may be, right? We don’t choose when we’re born. So the fact that I was carrying around so much guilt for living a modern life was something I had to let go of because I didn’t want to pass it on to my son.
The Pipeline from Good Values to the Left
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Can I jump in very quickly here? You mentioned that your parents raised you with what sounds like very good, healthy values. How does one go from that to becoming a crazy leftist? What’s the pipeline? Because a lot of parents nowadays, including people who watch us and listen to our show, will be thinking, “I want to do right by my kids. I know there’s a crazy world out there that’s going to teach them a bunch of weird things. I want to protect them.” But your parents did do that, right?
LUCY BIGGERS: Yes, my parents did. But again, I don’t think that they realize the power of social media. So I think I started spending a lot more time on social media through work and in my 20s. And I think I just started getting exposed to ideas. And I think I would say to my parents, or like my dad, I’d be like, “Oh, the world is such an awful place. Like there’s so much inequality and suffering.” And he’d be like, “It’s not that bad. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And I’d be like, “Oh, he’s so out of touch. He’s so privileged.”
And so I think he didn’t really know how to — yeah, he didn’t really say, “Lucy, what are you worried about?” I think it’s like, get specific. What’s so bad about the world? What is it about America? What is it about inequality in America? And I think bringing an international context of other countries and how other people live would’ve really helped ground me, because I started to just think that America was uniquely evil and capitalism was uniquely evil. I had no context and I just kind of fell for it hook, line, and sinker, which is embarrassing.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: And I think, by the way, I’m not trying to embarrass you.
LUCY BIGGERS: No, no, I know.
Reclaiming Autonomy and Critical Thinking
LUCY BIGGERS: But it’s really important because it’s very common. And I’m not embarrassed at all. I think it’s kind of the issue of our time with this disconnect between the older generations and the social media. And again, it’s only gotten worse as the generations have gone on. I think we are a weird generation where we’re the first people to be exposed to all this stuff.
And I think obviously the way I’m going to raise my kids and their access to social media is going to be so different because I’m going to know what that technology is, versus my parents didn’t know. And I think I just got myself really hooked up into the group of this very leftist thinking. And again, when you start to also get career accolades and you start to get success from that and it becomes your social circle, even if you start to question it, which I did when I was in it, I didn’t leave it because of all the other things that were then part of my life.
And again, I will say, I think being part of groupthink and you kind of give up your critical thinking to the group, it’s a comfortable way to live. And even when I would see in the climate movement some contradictions of how these things were working and I go, “How are we going to go exactly net zero?” Even when I would see those contradictions, I would think, “Oh, well, if I go against the group, I’m going to have to do a lot of work on myself,” because it’s almost like you’re having to stand up against the group and think about all the incoming you’re about to get because people are no longer going to be looking at you as a friendly. You’re now like an op and they’re going to try to take you down and all this stuff. And so I think that’s also why it took me so many years between questioning this stuff and going public in 2025.
FRANCIS FOSTER: And I think it’s really, really commendable what you did because there’ll be people who’ll be watching this who’ll be quite judgmental and go, “You don’t know what it’s like.” Yeah, to be in a group, that deep-seated desire all human beings have for a tribe, and then suddenly become aware that actually what you’re being told isn’t true, and then having to stand up and leave it. And I think a lot of people are going to experience that with a lot of the tribes that they’re in. People have joined the MAGA tribe, they’re going to find they’re uncomfortable with certain aspects of that, right? With the Dems, whatever it may be. And to actually have that — how can I say — consistency of character is really quite, you know, kudos to you, to be honest.
LUCY BIGGERS: Thank you. I think more people need to reclaim their autonomy and their critical thinking in their mind because I think that with the algorithms, we’ve just given up so much of our thinking. And I think there’s so many ways — I was talking about this a little bit before — how they hook you back in.
You know, even one of the last ideas I had that kind of kept me in was that it was such a nihilistic movement being part of the climate change movement. And so I thought, “Oh my gosh, I don’t want to think that the world’s going to end in 10 years.” But then I would think, “Well, maybe the people who are spreading the doom and gloom are smarter than me. I’m optimistic, I’m positive about the state of the world. Well, I’m naive.” And so there are so many ways your mind plays tricks on you to keep you in the group.
And again, years of just giving up my voice to the group, even thinking, “Well, I’m a white woman, who am I to say?” Which is so silly, but a lot of people live that way. The identity politics keeps you in. Yeah, it’s very pervasive.
FRANCIS FOSTER: And it’s also as well on a more basic level, losing friendships. That is always painful. Yeah, losing friendships.
LUCY BIGGERS: Although I feel like everyone whose friendship I lost — obviously they were my fake friends. They were like my colleagues and sort of my vaguer social circle. And so I will say for anyone watching this who maybe needs to leave a group, it’s really not actually as bad as you think, because the people who are your true friends don’t leave you. And the people who leave you were never really your friends anyway. It was superficial connection. And on the other side of leaving something like this and reclaiming your power over your life and your truth and autonomy, it’s so priceless.
The Addiction of Groupthink
FRANCIS FOSTER: It’s really worth it. Because I always see these types of groups — and again, maybe it’s my bias — through the lens of addiction. You get the nihilism, you get addicted to the nihilism. You get addicted to your own sense of self-importance. You get addicted to the fact that you are right and other people are wrong. And then the engagement you receive on social media, it’s a constant feedback loop.
LUCY BIGGERS: Yeah, it is. Again, in the end, the phone — you can never turn it off, right? It’s just always there. And I remember anytime I used to get a critique when I was still in this groupthink, I would spiral. If I had any kind of feedback that was signaling to me that I was not part of the group, I would have anxiety for days because my sense of self was built on sand. I truly was just constantly pinging the group to be like, “What are my opinions? Am I a good ally? Am I doing everything right to show that I’m part of this movement?” And it was so exhausting.
And I say this anecdote sometimes — by the end of it, this is 2020 and I’m at home during COVID and I started to binge watch this reality show Survivor. And I remember thinking I wanted to post “I like Survivor” on my Instagram, but I was afraid that people would think it was a privileged opinion because it takes place in Fiji, the global south, and it’s an American reality show. And I was like, “Oh my God, people are going to think I’m a privileged woman for liking Survivor.” That was the level of self-censorship.
And I guess this is tangential to the climate stuff, but honestly it can’t be separated. It was all an overwhelming thing. I will say too, one thing we didn’t talk about other than my having my son was also living through COVID, which was a huge moment where I created separation from the group because we were shut down. Couldn’t leave. Freedoms were on hold. And during that whole year, our carbon emissions went down by 5%. And at that point I’m like, “Net zero by 2050.” And then I’m like, “Wait a minute, what does net zero want from us? Because I don’t want to live in a world where we don’t have freedom anymore.”
And I think that was enough of a window of opening for me to read Michael Shellenberger’s book Apocalypse Never in 2020 when it came out. And then that reading began. I read it secretly and that was enough — I then stopped posting and started reading books and educating myself privately. And I truly thought I was never going to post again. I was like, “I’m just going to keep my opinions to myself, take it to my grave, and just help build the free press for Barry and all this stuff.”
But then I think this past year in 2025, May of 2025, I was kind of looking around and I started to realize that the climate narrative wasn’t neutral, right? Like to stay silent was actually irresponsible because of the damage it’s doing to our energy system and the nihilism it’s pushing to young people. And so I think I kind of had to have a come-to-Jesus moment where I’m like, “Okay, there are two roads. What do I want my life to represent?” Because at the end of the day, I don’t want to be on my deathbed one day saying I never spoke up because I was afraid.
And then it became something bigger than myself. Like, “Okay, I’m going to speak out because I’m doing this for young people. I’m doing this for affordability.” And I just had to transmute it to be able to put myself out there because I’m like, “Okay, this is bigger than me.” And I mean, look, it’s led to conversations like this, and so I’m so happy that I did because I feel like people don’t realize how destructive this climate movement stuff is — whether it’s on our economy or just the mindsets of young people. And so it really needs to change.
Identity, Anxiety, and the Inability to Debate Ideas
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, one of the things you mentioned there — backtracking a little bit — that I’ve been very curious about recently is you talked about how when you weren’t clear what your opinion was supposed to be, or if your opinion was challenged in any way, it caused you to feel really strong anxiety. And we have noticed that whenever we have engaged with people who have more of that mindset, it’s like you can never talk about ideas, right? Because there’s always an emotional reaction. Do you think this is what’s happening? It’s like if you have that mindset and I say to you, “Well, have you heard about this, or are you aware of that, or I see a flaw in that logic” — it’s not like we’re discussing the ideas. I’m threatening your entire existence.
LUCY BIGGERS: Is that what’s happening? Exactly. Yeah. It’s threatening the identity and that’s why they can’t have the conversation. Wow. Yeah.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: So how do you — can you win those people over?
LUCY BIGGERS: I mean, I think we have to, honestly. But can you?
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, I mean, I’m here. Yeah.
LUCY BIGGERS: I don’t know how I made it.
FRANCIS FOSTER: I think — can we take credit for that?
LUCY BIGGERS: Yeah. I was watching you guys in 2020.
FRANCIS FOSTER: We radicalized you.
LUCY BIGGERS: Anyway, the radicalization of Lucy. Yeah. No, I think, yes. Okay. So yes, I think we can win them over. I think we’re moving out of this emotional heightened phase that we were in.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: What? I think we are.
LUCY BIGGERS: What? Yeah. I’m here. Look around. It’s only getting worse.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah.
LUCY BIGGERS: No, I think it’s becoming more visible. I don’t think it’s getting worse. I mean, I don’t know. This is where I feel that it is now. I mean, it’s not like I’m taking polling or anything like that. But I think that the fact of the matter is this heightened emotional state we’ve been in because of social media and because of Trump Derangement Syndrome for the last 10 years — I think something’s got to give.
And I think that ultimately more and more people are speaking out against their own experience in what I call the blob now, or the woke ideology and the leftist ideology. There are so many people who are decamping from it. So many. And it’s probably as millennials are getting older. But I know so many influencers who are at my level of following who have similar stories, but maybe not climate activists, just activists.
And so I think we just need more people to tell their story. And I think it has to change eventually, or there are a lot of silent people maybe who’ve stopped posting, right? Like even that silent period is really big. Because for me that was 5 years — I didn’t post, I was just sort of taking things in. And hopefully my story as an example helps people who are maybe going through that transition to orient towards something where they can relate to bits of my story and then also hopefully not think I’m a right-wing nut and write me off, which does happen a little bit.
Reaching Across the Aisle
KONSTANTIN KISIN: But, well, I was going to ask you about that actually, because one of the things that we’ve, as you well know, I imagine since you watch our show, is yeah, we’ve always tried to find the highest value for us has balance and truth. Yeah. But nonetheless, the moment you question the progressive movement, you immediately become, you know, right-wing or whatever in their minds.
When you were kind of in that space, what do you think were some of the most effective ways of reaching someone who has that point of view without being immediately put in a kind of right-wing box or whatever it might be? Is there something that we and others can do to make ourselves more palatable and to actually reach across that aisle? Or you are laughing, which makes me worried.
LUCY BIGGERS: I mean, I think it is going to have to come from the people who are still in it to be ready for it. Right. And again, my experience of having my son and living through COVID were two shifting experiences that I was open to it. And so I think it has to come from the person because again, it is like if I had the answer to that, I would be like a millionaire because that is what everyone wants to know. And I get messages a lot that are like, “Oh my God, help me. You’re giving me hope for my daughter. I can’t reach her because she’s so this way.”
And so I think also just in person, showing up as a normal, kind, good person in your life and how you act in your life. I think for me that was interesting because I would see people who were very conservative, but they also had a lot of really lovely values. And I would be like, wait a minute, they’re kind of like a better person than I am. And I’m like this always armchair activist over here.
Actually, I will say, you guys know who Rikki Schlott is? Yes. We’ve had her on the show. Oh, you have? I love her. Actually, she actually plays a really big part in my story because when I left NowThis, that left-wing place, and then I had one year at a nonprofit, Rikki was there and I sat next to her and she’s a libertarian, sort of like small c conservative, and she wears a cross on her neck. And I had never worked with a conservative who was my peer my whole career. And she was awesome. And I’m like, this girl’s so smart. She’s so confident in her perspective and she stands up for what she believes in. And she was modeling to me the type of person that I would want to be. And she had conservative values, but she was so kind about it.
And she actually introduced me to Bari Weiss’s podcast, honestly. And she said, “You should listen to this. You would like her.” And she could pick up from talking to me that I was not as left-wing as I had once been. But in my mind, Bari was like a fascist, which is crazy because I worked at this really left-wing place. And so she was a name that would regularly get tossed onto Slack and then they would drag her. So that’s where I was coming from, which is pretty crazy.
And so when I listened to Bari’s podcast back in 2021, whenever that came out, or I guess it was 2022, whenever it came out, I listened to it and I’m like, wait a minute, she’s not a fascist at all. She’s awesome. And then I was like, actually, this is really great conversation. This is really good content. And that was a big awakening for me because I’m like, oh, I’ve been labeling this woman as like this right-wing nut. I’m listening to her podcast. It’s normal. It’s actually really good because all the content I’d been consuming when I was really on the left was so boring. It was all the same, you know, identity politics and boring stuff. And so that was a huge shift. So again, that one interaction was enough to totally shift things, but I was ready for it.
Inoculating Children Against Extremism
KONSTANTIN KISIN: And I think that’s a really important part of it because when the student is ready, the teacher magically emerges. But also I was wondering, and you’re a parent now, of course, I’m sure you’ve thought about this. As a parent, what can one do to help their children navigate this? I’m not saying you have to brainwash them into your worldview, but how do you — the word that you used that I love — inoculate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you inoculate your children against this craziness?
LUCY BIGGERS: I think you have to do counter-programming, right? You have to show, if they come home from school really upset about something and thinking America is the worst, you have to say, “Listen, we have a complex history, but we also are responsible for X, Y, and Z,” and showing them the good parts of American history. Or also showing them other countries that are so awful, like their leadership. Like I didn’t know how bad Stalin and Mao were. I did not know. I really thought that we were just the worst country, which is really so sad. That’s such a common thing. You laugh, but that’s what every leftist thinks.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: That’s so crazy to me. Yeah. I always say though, when people ask me the same question, I’m like, I am so lucky because I have family living in poor countries. Right. So the moment if my son ever said something like, oh, we live in the worst country in the world, I’d be like, okay. Three months in Armenia for you. Bye-bye. You’re staying with grandma.
LUCY BIGGERS: No, seriously. It’s this Western privileged perspective where we truly just don’t know how good we have it. And unfortunately, the education system, the culture, the movies, the shows, the social media, everything is pushing the same ideology. So it’s so pervasive. And unless you just really have someone who’s intentionally saying, “Hey, hold on, let’s look at this.”
Full circle. And I think for me, if someone had said that to me when I was kind of first getting into it, my early 20s, I guess I had conversations with my dad and he just sort of said, “The world’s not that bad.” But he didn’t show me evidence. No fault of his own, but I think that was a moment where if he had said, “Hey, look at how tens of millions of people died under this despotic leader,” I think that would’ve helped ground me and not had me get swept up into it as much.
FRANCIS FOSTER: But it’s also, let’s be honest, your peers at that point in your life are more important to you than your parents.
LUCY BIGGERS: So true. Yeah.
FRANCIS FOSTER: So if that’s literally what you imbibe with, the opinions that you hear, the conversations that you have, and all your friends are echoing this particular viewpoint, it’s quite natural that you’re going to take it on.
LUCY BIGGERS: Exactly. Yeah.
FRANCIS FOSTER: And I think one of the things that gives us hope is that we’re now more aware of social media and the effects that it’s having on young people.
LUCY BIGGERS: Yes, exactly. I think so too.
FRANCIS FOSTER: So hopefully we’re going to get to a point where we realize that what we see on our phones ain’t always the truth.
LUCY BIGGERS: I know. Well, and with AI and stuff, it’s like only getting crazier with being able to tell what the truth is too. So I think by using the internet now, you have to just be like — you have to fact check every single thing that you see.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: You totally do.
LUCY BIGGERS: Especially if it gets an illicit emotional reaction because now I have my own triggers that are more on the other side. And if I get really worked up by a tweet, after I’ll be like, wait, let me just make sure this tweet’s actually accurate. Some of the stuff going on in the UK, I follow. I’m like, “Oh my God, who’s getting arrested for a tweet?” And then sometimes it is still true. But I think having that moment of taking a beat, letting the emotion pass, kind of clearheaded — okay, what actually is happening here — is so important.
FRANCIS FOSTER: Absolutely. Because when you see a tweet, you go, all right, it’s only a tweet and that can be a small part of the truth, but it’s not going to be the whole truth. Right, exactly.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: But the last bit of this interview is just Francis making points and Lucy going, “Yeah, exactly.” That was the last four questions.
LUCY BIGGERS: He’s making great points.
The Climate Movement’s Real Impact
KONSTANTIN KISIN: I don’t deny that at all. Lucy, it’s been great having you on. We’re going to go to questions from our supporters in a second. Before we do though, what is the one thing that we’re not talking about that we really should be?
LUCY BIGGERS: Oh my God, you’re putting me on the spot. I was just listening to Francis over here.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah. Well, he was just smashing the point.
LUCY BIGGERS: I think the thing that people really need to understand, that even took me a while to get through, is that the climate movement actually is not a force for good. It’s not your friend. And I think hearing that, depending on where you’re coming from, sounds very extreme. But when you actually look at its impacts on reality — with the energy costs going up, our dependence on our adversaries for energy, whether it’s China and the renewable supply chain, or even Europe having to use Russia — and then also the nihilism, the anxiety among young people, basically a mental health crisis for young people.
All of these things. Oh, and also I will say the vilification of fossil fuels, which I think are the best technology that’s ever happened in the last 150 years. When you take all those things objectively, this is not a neutral movement. It’s actually hurting society. And the quicker people can kind of come to that conclusion and help push against these really destructive narratives, I think the better.
Nuclear Energy and the Degrowth Agenda
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Oh, by the way, I was going to ask you one question that I forgot. Yeah. And I want to ask you, when you were in the climate movement, did you ever get confronted with the idea of nuclear energy and the fact that it’s actually incredibly carbon neutral?
LUCY BIGGERS: Yeah. And like, yes, but of course, for whatever reason, that was also like a third rail and you weren’t allowed to support nuclear energy. Supporting nuclear energy in the climate movement when I was a part of it was like edgy. If you’re like, “Well, I support nuclear,” they basically — because the climate movement that I was in was kind of like a degrowth society that hated the West. So they were just like, just solar and wind, which are the worst technologies.
Nuclear now has kind of come back and there’s a lot of practical people, I will say, who support nuclear. But back in my very activisty world, nuclear was not seen as a solution. And also the climate activists would say stuff like, “Well, we can’t innovate our way out of this problem. We can’t innovate our way out of it.” I’m like, what? We innovate our way out of every other problem ever. But for some reason with climate, this nihilism was pushed to such a degree that they were like, “No, they just want you to say we can have nuclear so you can keep consuming at the level that you want and keep capitalism at the level that you want.”
KONSTANTIN KISIN: That’s what we want. Yeah, I know.
LUCY BIGGERS: I was like, yeah, sounds great. But once you realize that the movement is founded by people who put the value of life on Earth and nature over humanity, it makes sense. They prioritize untouched nature and a perfect untouched Earth over human flourishing. And that is the flip you need to switch and realize that the goal isn’t untouched nature. The goal is human flourishing.
And once you make that movement in your mind, you can still care about conservation. You can still care about the animals and all these things and cutting down on pollution, but you need to prioritize humans. The climate movement’s most ardent supporters, which is what I was part of, don’t prioritize human life. They want an untouched perfect planet from before we were born.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: So, all right, head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where Lucy’s going to answer your questions.
FRANCIS FOSTER: If climate doomerism is exaggerated, what environmental issues do you think actually deserve attention?
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