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A podcast at the intersection of psychology and culture that intimately explores the human experience and critiques the counseling profession. Your host, Stephanie Winn, distills wisdom gained from her practice as a family therapist and coach while pivoting towards questions of how to apply a practical understanding of psychology to the novel dilemmas of the 21st century, from political polarization to medical malpractice.
What does ethical mental health care look like in a normless age, as our moral compasses spin in search of true north? How can therapists treat patients under pressure to affirm everything from the notion of "gender identity" to assisted suicide?
Primarily a long-form interview podcast, Stephanie invites unorthodox, free-thinking guests from many walks of life, including counselors, social workers, medical professionals, writers, researchers, and people with unique lived experience, such as detransitioners.
Curious about many things, Stephanie’s interdisciplinary psychological lens investigates challenging social issues and inspires transformation in the self, relationships, and society. She is known for bringing calm warmth to painful subjects, and astute perceptiveness to ethically complex issues. Pick up a torch to illuminate the dark night and join us on this journey through the inner wilderness.
You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist ranks in the top 1% globally according to ListenNotes. New episodes are released every Monday. Three and a half years after the show's inception in May of 2022, Stephanie became a Christian, representing the crystallization of moral, spiritual, and existential views she had been openly grappling with along with her audience and guests. Newer episodes (#188 forward) may sometimes reflect a Christian understanding, interwoven with and applied to the same issues the podcast has always addressed. The podcast remains diverse and continues to feature guests from all viewpoints.
190. Lucy Biggers
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[00:00:00] Lucy: I think it's a very easy story that maps perfectly onto our psychology already, which is that modern humans are some sort of a fallen species. So of course it just makes sense that we're burning fossil fuels that are destroying the planet and every storm is getting worse because [00:00:15] we are some how sinful as modern humans, and we need to go back to the way things were.
[00:00:20] Lucy: Even though if you start to really study this stuff, the way things used to be is that life was short and cold and brutal and full of toil and then you [00:00:30] died, right? And so we don't really have a context as modern humans of how hard life used to be. And so every day when you turn the news and there's a wildfire or there's a hurricane, or there's flooding, and the news insinuates, it's 'cause of climate change.
[00:00:43] Lucy: Why would you question that? Like you don't [00:00:45] have a reason to. And the only reason why I ever did was because I was so enmeshed in the movement for so long that I started to see the cracks myself.
[00:00:54] Stephanie: You must be some kind of therapist.
[00:00:59] Stephanie: [00:01:00] Today. I have the pleasure of speaking with Lucy Biggers. She's a form climate activist who now makes content to calm climate anxiety. She's also the head of social media at the Free Press. Lucy, thanks so much for joining me. Great to have you. Thank you so much for having me on. [00:01:15] So after 180 something episodes of this podcast, I've never talked about climate anxiety before, which is really surprising if you know that part of my background, which I'll, I'll share in a little bit because at one point in my life, climate [00:01:30] anxiety had a huge impact on me and, uh, it's something I haven't revisited in many years.
[00:01:35] Stephanie: And so when I saw your content, I was really struck by it. And I thought, this is obviously an issue that means a lot to a lot of people. And so [00:01:45] maybe we could start off, if you wouldn't mind sharing your story arc, how you went from being an activist, trying to raise the alarms about the climate to someone, uh, trying to actually soothe people's worries about the environment.
[00:01:58] Lucy: Thank you so much for having me on. [00:02:00] So I am 35, so I think that's important for just the context of how old I am and my generation. Just being an average millennial and I grew up in high school, we learned about the Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore, which [00:02:15] was sort of my first introduction to the climate.
[00:02:17] Lucy: I was 16 when I watched that, and that was a huge movie for people who are younger who don't know about it. It was sort of a phenomenon, and that was my first introduction to climate. It really scared me. I remember having an overwhelming feeling of existential [00:02:30] dread and then kind of going, I'm not gonna think about that anymore, and pushing that in my mind, but kind of in the back of my mind going, the planet's not in a good place.
[00:02:38] Lucy: Then cut to my twenties. I became a video producer at a news company in New York City called, now This News, [00:02:45] which millennials of my age know it, but it, it was a very popular. Uh, Facebook, first video company and we had millions of followers. And while I was there, I just started watching climate documentaries.
[00:02:57] Lucy: The ones that came out around that time [00:03:00] was, uh, Leonardo DiCaprios before the Flood. There's also Josh Fox films that were coming out. And also there was the Dakota Access Pipeline protest, which was a protest against an oil pipeline in North [00:03:15] Dakota. Uh, also it was called Standing Rock. So as a producer in that newsroom in the 2018, since it's now 20 15, 20 16, I was consuming content about climate change.
[00:03:25] Lucy: And then I was covering these protests. And so from that, I just got, [00:03:30] became part of the climate movement. Just sort of took it whole cloth. Everything that these documentaries that I was watching were pushing, which now I realize were not the whole story. A lot of it was projections about what could have could happen because of [00:03:45] climate change, right?
[00:03:45] Lucy: We'll see, we could see seven feet of sea level rise. We could see crop failure, we could see extreme weather every year, and I thought that that meant that those things were gonna happen. And so I thought it was an existential threat. And so I [00:04:00] dived in all the way, becoming an advocate. I call myself now a climate activist in a newsroom, so I was still technically a news producer for my company, but the way that I covered climate change was very biased.
[00:04:13] Lucy: One example [00:04:15] would be that when it was probably 20 17, 20 18, all these newsrooms. I don't even know which one's off the top of my head anymore, sort of saying climate crisis instead of climate change. They just said that all of a sudden. And so I said to my news newsroom, we've gotta do that too. [00:04:30] We've gotta start calling it the climate crisis.
[00:04:31] Lucy: I didn't say that because I saw that deaths were going up from climate change. I didn't say that because extreme weather was worse, you know, and, and as if I was even looking at the data, I wasn't looking at anything. Um, and so I lived like that [00:04:45] for five years in my twenties. At that same time, had climate anxiety, never diagnosed to diagnoses these things, but just this existential dread, essentially feeling very powerless, feeling like I did not have a future, that my life would never be as abundant [00:05:00] or as prosperous as my parents' life.
[00:05:02] Lucy: That, you know, the world was beyond saving and basically we're on a sinking ship. You can picture the memes we've probably all consumed about this stuff. Every climate, uh, event, every natural disaster every year would trigger me. You know, if [00:05:15] there was hurricane or anything like that, you know, just glued to the TV watching it, uh, my cortisone levels going up from all this fear, and then I, you know, became 30, 31, you know, the frontal lobe is forming and which [00:05:30] is whatever.
[00:05:30] Lucy: People get annoyed of me for saying that not to be dismissive of 20 somethings. But, you know, I just matured. I started to have more life experience and I also lived through COVID. I saw during COVID a few things that really put a crack in the climate facade for me and broke up [00:05:45] my black and white thinking.
[00:05:46] Lucy: One of them was the proliferation of PPE, so the personal, uh, protection equipment of, and it was all plastic. Masks, dividers, all the in restaurants, plastic dividers and restaurants. And so I was someone who was [00:06:00] afraid to use a plastic straw, and all of a sudden there's more plastic used in an hour of it in a day by any of these businesses that I could, than I could even try to save in my lifetime.
[00:06:10] Lucy: And at the same time, I looked around and go, well, I guess we're able to absorb this. Like we [00:06:15] have all extra plastic. But it's, man, it seems to be manageable. It's going to go eventually to the garbage, but like, it's okay. And then at the same time, our carbon emissions, even with the world shut down completely and everyone's [00:06:30] lives, um, uh, you know, stop.
[00:06:31] Lucy: Schools shut down, businesses shut, shut down. Our carbon emissions only went down 5%. And that was when I thought, okay, if the climate movement gets its way, what is it asking of us to give up? And so that was a moment where I [00:06:45] thought, wait a minute. Is climate change and the impacts of climate change so bad that it's worth basically shooting our civilization in the foot, because that's what I'm basically saying.
[00:06:57] Lucy: And so those are two things. But just over time, [00:07:00] you know, many of my doubts started to add up. And in 2021, I got pregnant with my first son and I just changed jobs. I had been in front of the camera, my old job, and I changed jobs and it provide, it allowed for me to be behind the scenes. And so I said, you know what?
[00:07:14] Lucy: I'm not [00:07:15] gonna post anymore. I have too many doubts about this. It just doesn't feel in alignment with me. And so then from 2021, up until earlier this year, I just was researching, reading different books, you know, on and off. I got my job at the free press, and finally this beginning of the [00:07:30] summer, and you mentioned my content that I create now at the beginning of this summer, I finally said, you know what?
[00:07:36] Lucy: I'm not gonna be on my death bed one day looking back with regret that I didn't speak out because of fear. I need to sort of make a [00:07:45] decision here. And so I decided to sort of cross the Rubicon and I came out as a climate realist. I'm just very anti-climate alarmism and climate anxiety, which we'll talk more about, but that's my story.
[00:07:57] Speaker 3: Thanks so much for sharing that. And you [00:08:00] painted an image that I, I can picture of yourself in the early pandemic, noticing what a huge impact the lockdowns and the lifestyle change had on our way of life, including, um, a huge change in [00:08:15] our ability to socialize, which must have been on your mind as a, as a new or expecting mother, right?
[00:08:20] Speaker 3: Because of the importance of social connection and raising families. And then you're going, wait a minute. So what exactly are the demands of the. The climate change [00:08:30] movement and does it, does it look like this? Does it look more extreme than this? What, and that's, that's very, um, relatable.
[00:08:38] Lucy: Yeah. So it's sort of where the rubber hit the road.
[00:08:41] Speaker 3: I, um, I wanted to share a little bit about my background that I [00:08:45] haven't shared on this podcast before, but this is really the, the perfect place to share it, which is that I was actually very much a climate alarmist for much of my life. I think for me, it came from, for one thing, growing up [00:09:00] in an overwhelming city, I grew up in la I.
[00:09:04] Speaker 3: Yeah, not in a certain neighborhood of LA where I could stay within that neighborhood either. I was all over the city, constantly exposed to so much pollution, and you're in this desert pumping in [00:09:15] water from thousands of miles away and there's trash everywhere and it feels grainy. And there's, there was so much about my experience of the city plus some of the more apocalyptic events of my childhood, like being present for the, the riots, for [00:09:30] example, that I think made me very susceptible to any type of alarmism.
[00:09:35] Speaker 3: Like if, if you'd told me, yeah, the world is ending, I would've believed you because it sure felt like that in so many ways. Um. And then I got involved [00:09:45] in radical activism as a teenager, partly as an outlet for angst. And some of the things that had happened to me. I was, I was angry at the world, and so I was very susceptible to extreme ideas.
[00:09:58] Speaker 3: And I think I was [00:10:00] always seeking good and looking to do good with my life. And so when I, uh, when it came time to choose a major, I, I chose environmental studies.
[00:10:10] Stephanie: Hmm.
[00:10:10] Speaker 3: Um, and, and prior to that time, I had volunteered for a sustainability [00:10:15] organization. I'm about five years older than you. So, uh, you know, when you were in high school watching an Inconvenient Truth, I was in college watching an inconvenience.
[00:10:22] Speaker 3: Right, right. So, and we had, um, you know, I remember the shift. Do you remember the push from incandescent to compact [00:10:30] fluorescent light bulbs? Yes.
[00:10:31] Lucy: Yes.
[00:10:32] Speaker 3: Like I, I was teaching people, I was volunteering to teach people to use CFLs, which I now, right. I now hate fluorescent light because I'm, I'm a big, I'm a big health nut and I'm all about [00:10:45] switching back to incandescent.
[00:10:47] Lucy: Um, that's hilarious. Well, you know, my cohort of that was pushing everyone to not use plastic straws. Yeah. So we all have our generational, like environmental thing. Oh God, we should be having incandescent. We could talk about it more, but incandescent, can you even buy those [00:11:00] anymore?
[00:11:00] Speaker 3: Um, it's very hard to find good incandescent.
[00:11:03] Speaker 3: Plus there's a lot of fake incandescent that are actually like LED made to look like incandescent. Mm, yeah. No, the hardest thing to find are those GE reveal bulbs, which is a type of halogen, I [00:11:15] think, that are really nice. Anyway, I was part of that, like everyone change your light bulbs to save the world.
[00:11:21] Speaker 3: And, but then, you know, learning about how the fact that the new, the CFLs, unlike the incandescent bulbs, contained heavy metals. So they had [00:11:30] to be disposed of in a particular way. And then learning how environmental cost of solar panels and, you know, it's like, and so for me, um, as first a, an activist and volunteer and then an environmental studies major for my undergraduate, [00:11:45] I lived with a lot of climate anxiety.
[00:11:46] Speaker 3: In fact, in fact, I would, I would cry in class. Like we'd be learning all this doom and gloom stuff and I would get all emotional. Oh my gosh. And I didn't, I didn't know how my peers were so. Um, a able to stay logical [00:12:00] about it and, um, you know, is it any surprise I went into psychology instead after that? I did, I did take some psychology classes in my undergrad, but I think that the scale of learning about environmental devastation, um, was so [00:12:15] overwhelming for me.
[00:12:15] Speaker 3: And it, it came to like, what can I do? And, and working one-on-one gave me more of a sense of agency. But I, I think that the climate alarmism, um, that sense that the [00:12:30] world is ending and we only have a few more years. And, and, and, and also the sense of I'm supposed to be waking everyone up. Everyone wake up, there's, you know, you need to go vegan.
[00:12:38] Speaker 3: You need to, you know, put on low flow shower heads. You need to start, oh, by biking, I was biking [00:12:45] everywhere instead of driving you all like the, it, it makes you feel very distant from your fellow human beings. Mm. And um. And it's part of the reason I never had my own children. I'm, I'm a stepmom now, which I've, I've talked about, um, on this podcast [00:13:00] before, but, so I'm actually curious because when we look at one, one of the things we'll talk about today is the impact of climate anxiety on people's worldview relationships and decision making.
[00:13:10] Speaker 3: And I'm actually curious how you came to decide to have a [00:13:15] family given that, um, you know, the, the beliefs that you held at the time with your understanding of the environment could have easily made you feel like this wasn't a safe place to bring children into the world or that children in too much of a burden on the environment.
[00:13:27] Lucy: Yeah, I think it's really hard to live with [00:13:30] that mindset, and for me it was sort of having to live a double life because I would show up to work and have to, and really obviously, believe everything that I was saying. But then as I sort of matured and started to have some [00:13:45] cracks in it, I. I felt like a hypocrite.
[00:13:47] Lucy: So in my timeline, so I, my son was born in 2022, so it was like COVID and then that, so by the time I was pregnant with my son, I actually had, I, I found out I was pregnant the day that I took a new job that left my [00:14:00] old company before. But I, I had a while there where I was sudden was, I was trying to, I was thinking about getting pregnant.
[00:14:05] Lucy: I was like, should I do a sustainable baby series? Like, which is a nightmare to think about, like, don't look at my footprint now. Yeah. Um, and so I think for [00:14:15] me, I am very naturally an optimistic person and that's something that I've come to really accept. And, but most of the life, most of my life, the messaging that I got was to be optimistic, is to be naive or to be have your head in the sand or it's a [00:14:30] privileged position to be optimistic.
[00:14:31] Lucy: And so I, even when I was part of the climate movement, my thing was, my series was one small step. So it was one thing you could do to impact the climate, you know, switch your light bulbs or compost or all these things. And so. [00:14:45] Even when I was in it, I think my na nature was more oriented toward the, the positive side and the builder side and the maker side.
[00:14:57] Lucy: And so even if I wasn't [00:15:00] admitting it to myself when I first decided to start to have kids, that was always kind of where I was gonna go. 'cause EI never, even, when I was like wallowing in it, I was always trying to like take action. I guess there's worse cases of climate anxiety out there than I think I had.
[00:15:14] Lucy: But [00:15:15] I'm very sympathetic now to the mindset, wherever it is in the spectrum, whether it's someone who's protesting and like you're saying, years of your life really in darkness and overwhelm. Or just even the average person who they don't necessarily [00:15:30] think about every day, but they have this subconscious belief that the world is, um, going to burn.
[00:15:35] Lucy: So yeah, I think moral of the story is that I. WA was able to still sort of see, keep this in [00:15:45] this contradiction of being really invested in the climate, but then in my personal life, making steps towards, you know, having kids and all these things. But I know for a lot of people, and it sounds like your experience, not everyone does that, which is very frustrating to hear because we can get into more of the science and things that I've [00:16:00] learned, but really, I don't believe now that climate change is something to be afraid of at all.
[00:16:06] Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad that between your optimistic temperament and whatever was positive about your upbringing and, [00:16:15] um, the way that you, the, I guess the timing of events in your life that, uh, the climate alarmism that affected your youth didn't stop you from having a family and, and isn't. [00:16:30] Isn't creating in you a fear-based approach to parenting, because I think that that is a, a genuine problem for a lot of people that, um, either would want to have a family but feel like [00:16:45] they shouldn't be taking up resources on the planet, that the world is in a safe place to raise kids.
[00:16:51] Speaker 3: Um, and, and I feel sad for those who sort of discover that too late, that maybe they were looking through a [00:17:00] very dark lens. Uh, for me personally, it was too overwhelming to try to keep up with this really macro level stuff when my natural inclination is, is to focus more on. Intimate personal things. [00:17:15] And, and so I've just kind of left the climate issue alone for many years.
[00:17:19] Speaker 3: And I guess my attitude towards anything that I am not deeply familiar with and really keeping up with is I, I don't know about that. And there are people who know more about it than [00:17:30] me, and of the people who know more about that than me, um, they, there are people very strongly on all sides of the issue.
[00:17:38] Speaker 3: Um, so tell us about, I mean, before we get [00:17:45] into what you've learned that you find helpful to share with people, talk a little bit about the mental health part. Actually, you know, I need to share this, this is,
[00:17:52] Lucy: yeah.
[00:17:53] Speaker 3: Another personal anecdote that connects to the, the topic of mental health. And this is a psychology podcast.
[00:17:59] Speaker 3: Um, [00:18:00] Abigail Schreyer interviewed me for her book, um. Bad therapy. And I was so excited to talk to Abigail Schreyer. There are all these things I wanted to talk about during our conversation, but she didn't even tell me before [00:18:15] the interview that it was for a book. I just thought that she just wanted to get to know me.
[00:18:19] Speaker 3: So, so then she shows up to the interview and she's, she's a, you know, very efficient journalist. So she was asking these really pointed questions, and I didn't get [00:18:30] to talk about everything I wanted to talk about, but she did ask about my thoughts on why the younger generation's mental health is so bad.
[00:18:41] Speaker 3: And I mentioned climate anxiety.
[00:18:44] Stephanie: Mm. And [00:18:45] then I
[00:18:45] Speaker 3: start reading her book a couple years later and she uses a scornful and mocking tone about therapists who believe that climate anxiety is affecting the younger generation. Mm. And that [00:19:00] was one of the things that made it hard for me to get through that book, because I was like, you know.
[00:19:04] Speaker 3: I, I actually stand by that. Like I, I had personal experience of climate anxiety having a huge impact on my own mental health, my behaviors, my decisions. I mean, [00:19:15] I used to be paralyzed in the grocery store to shop Right. A can of beans because I had been taught to do a lifecycle analysis of every item on the shelf.
[00:19:23] Lucy: Oh my
[00:19:23] Speaker 3: God. So, um, that it was something I personally understood. It was actually part of what drove me [00:19:30] to study psychology is, is how it, how it affected me and the people around me. And as I, I guess just given the kind of demographics of the types of people that I worked with, I had seen climate anxiety in people.
[00:19:43] Speaker 3: So I was, I was like, wow, Abigail, [00:19:45] that's, yeah. From our interview. Well, that's great.
[00:19:48] Lucy: No, but that's interesting because I think what she's, what maybe what she meant, what her perception of it was, are the therapists pushing climate anxiety on the kids versus you're saying they're coming to me with climate anxiety.
[00:19:59] Lucy: Not that they [00:20:00] should have it, but that they do have it.
[00:20:03] Speaker 3: Yeah. And, and there's, you know, somewhere between therapists pushing an ideology and therapists simply being receptive to Right. What their clients are saying is what [00:20:15] about when a client brings a fear that the therapist also shares? And, you know, it's not necessarily that the therapist is driving the agenda, but if the client is saying, wow, it really feels like we don't have much time left on this earth.
[00:20:28] Speaker 3: And the, and the [00:20:30] therapist is reading the exact same news sources. Yes. Um, you know, I, I do think there's some gray area in there with, with any ideological or political issue. And I've, I've been on many sides of, of many issues. I mean, I work on both sides of many issues like that. [00:20:45] So I, and I appreciate you sort of, um, steel manning her case a little bit there.
[00:20:51] Speaker 3: I think the impression that I got is that, uh, climate anxiety isn't real. It shouldn't be treated like a real thing. And I wanna talk about what, what about the kids [00:21:00] for whom. It is Like what? What is the, yeah, the psychological experience of growing up, feeling like the world is ending or like your species is a burden on the planet.
[00:21:09] Lucy: It is real. It is real. And I think the way that the media covers it is the, the way the media acts in [00:21:15] general. I don't know if you think this too, but it's so anti-human. It's so anti-progress, it's anti west. So it's sort of starting from this assumption that we're the worst and everything is built out from that.
[00:21:27] Lucy: And so you can see that with any topic across the [00:21:30] spectrum. But just specifically with climate change, how I think this shows up is that it's almost like the way that we live is inherently bad. And there's this sort of presumption that the noble savage or the less [00:21:45] pop, like the like less developed man was somehow mu more pure than us, which is a stereotype that can go back to ancient Rome.
[00:21:51] Lucy: Like intellectuals had the same perception, right? So this is not a new pattern for humans, but with the people in the media newsroom [00:22:00] there. New Yorkers and they're in LA like you're saying, that's where you grew up. They don't, they've never probably hunted. They've never been on a farm. They don't really know anything about nature other than maybe when they go on a hike in a preserve or something like that, or on a vacation.
[00:22:14] Lucy: And [00:22:15] so I think it's a very easy story that maps up perfectly, maps perfectly onto our psychology already, which is that modern humans are some sort of a fallen species. So of course it just makes sense that we're burning fossil fuels that are [00:22:30] destroying the planet and every storm is getting worse because we are some how sinful as modern humans, and we need to go back to the way things were, even though if you start to really study this stuff, the way things used to work used to be is that life [00:22:45] was.
[00:22:45] Lucy: Short and cold and brutal and full of toil, and then you died, right? And so we don't really have a context as modern humans of what life, how hard life used to be. And so every day when you turn the news and there's a wildfire or there's a [00:23:00] hurricane, or there's flooding and, and the news, uh, says it's 'cause of climate change or insinuates, it's 'cause of climate change.
[00:23:06] Lucy: Why would you question that? Like you don't have a reason to. And the only reason why I ever did was because I was so enmeshed in the movement for so long that [00:23:15] I started to see the cracks myself. Just like any topic, I'm sure the way that the news cover psychology is so irresponsible, right? They're showing studies that are not repeatable, or there's headlines that are really, um, fear mongering.
[00:23:27] Lucy: Like I think a good exercise for people who [00:23:30] maybe are listening to this podcast for the first time is, what topic do you know really well at home? And does the media cover it well? And the answer's always gonna be no. Because the people who are in these newsrooms don't really, they're not experts in everything.
[00:23:43] Lucy: They don't know what they're talking about. [00:23:45] And so with the climate, it's just the same thing. We, for the last 30 years, we've just been told that the planet is burning and it's our fault. And everything stems from that. And why would you question it?
[00:23:58] Speaker 3: So I'm gonna say something [00:24:00] that I don't in any way to expect you to agree with, uh, because, uh, you're just a, a new guest.
[00:24:06] Speaker 3: Welcome. Very glad to have you here. And I have no idea where you stand on these issues. Um, but I'm gonna share my perspective. I'm actually a new Christian, so, um, I've, [00:24:15] I've recently become a Christian. It's been something that's, uh, been in progress for a long time. I can say that in retrospect. Um, but I'm just thinking, I'm hearing what you're saying through that Christian lens.
[00:24:28] Speaker 3: And one of the, one of the things [00:24:30] that brought my faith together for me is recognizing that. Much of my life, I have been sort of experiencing a longing to return to Eden, a longing to return to this mm-hmm. Original [00:24:45] state of perfection. It's part of my attraction to natural beauty that, that sense that most of us have of longing for the perfect garden.
[00:24:54] Speaker 3: And I saw that in so many ways, including as an environmental activist. I was seeking that perfect [00:25:00] state before the fall, before sin, before separation, before evil came into this world. And so for me, the biblical understanding of the nature of good and evil has actually been really helpful in contextualizing some of these [00:25:15] inclinations because, uh, the, the thing that you describe of, you know, we're a fallen species living.
[00:25:19] Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that actually resonates. But I think for me personally, having a spiritual understanding of that and then recognizing, okay, this is life east of Eden, this is life after the fall. And [00:25:30] our longing for perfection does tell us something about our nature. Um, but. Some of our attempts at recreating that can also be misguided.
[00:25:40] Speaker 3: Right? Right. If, if we're trying to, um, create a perfect world, in [00:25:45] a world that cannot be perfect, you know, right. We will, we will encounter this frustration. And so I think any type of sort of zealotry or idealism or extremism maybe has that little grain of truth in it [00:26:00] where, you know, there is some instinct, some compass in us that tells us that, that a more perfect world is possible.
[00:26:08] Speaker 3: But I I see that instinct right as misguided.
[00:26:12] Lucy: Yeah. I agree with you. I have been thinking about the same [00:26:15] exact theme for a while as well, and I ha I'm was born Christian. Culturally, right? And went to church every Sunday and was in the choir and all those things, but I never was really had a faith, and I really started to study that this past year and get back into [00:26:30] it and commit to actually having faith and learning about what is the soul like bible thing, you know, when we're all kind of, so like learning more about like your saying original sin and Genesis and like the leaving of Eden and all of that.
[00:26:41] Lucy: And so I think you're so right that there are themes there and I, I, I [00:26:45] see those themes as well. And I think it, it, it goes back to like the way that the human mind is made or like our subconscious or our souls or the messaging that we get about Christianity from the moment that we're born. And so that's why it resonates so much because that is such a [00:27:00] universal experience, at least in the west, in the modern, um, you know, uh, industrial world that we, that we occupy.
[00:27:06] Lucy: Um, those themes are there and I think. Again, yeah. The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions is my, is basically my favorite expression. [00:27:15] And people who are trying to bring about communism, they thought they were bringing heaven on earth and, you know, leads to millions of people being killed, uh, with the climate movement.
[00:27:23] Lucy: I mean, we're not seeing that, but I think if we were to do everything the climate movement wanted in the name of, you know, somehow saving the planet, [00:27:30] it would actually create so much death and destruction just because we're so reliant. On the modern world that we live in, cheap ab funded energy right now, which is 80% of that is fossil fuels.
[00:27:39] Lucy: And so I agree with you, I'm very wary of anything that's trying to [00:27:45] bring heaven onto earth. I think what we are craving when we want that is we really want heaven, like our souls are craving going back to heaven where we were, we came from, but I then maturing and being a human long enough, you realize like, okay, well we're never gonna create like quote unquote heaven on earth.
[00:27:58] Lucy: We have to be realistic [00:28:00] about the systems that we can work in. And so for me. That means, okay, let's get as much cheap and abundant energy to as many people as possible. Like I want Sub-Saharan Africa, they should be able to have access to cooking with natural gas if they so shoes. And they should be able to develop with it.
[00:28:14] Lucy: So they could have [00:28:15] these like lives that we have, which are so full of abundance, like, you know, with DoorDash and washing machines and grocery stores and everything, um, and cars. And so, yeah, I mean those themes are there. And I think when you get into activism without a foundational [00:28:30] faith, you are trying to find that faith in that activism.
[00:28:34] Lucy: And that's a theme that's very, um, relevant. And it happens with all the types of activism that we've seen in the past. You know, the pro-Palestine trans uh, stuff, and I don't [00:28:45] know if you're familiar with Michael Shalen Berger's work, but he has talked about that a lot that Yeah, yeah, yeah. So those, that this idea of like the dogma, um, and yeah, so I mean, I agree with you 100%.
[00:28:58] Speaker 3: I'm, I'm really glad I took a chance [00:29:00] on sharing that You resonate, right? I think the, the myth of the noble savage, which I also believed in, uh, one time ago. Yeah. So it is just one of those kind of misguided attempts to connect with some original state of perfection. Um, but this, this talk about, [00:29:15] uh, wanting more abundance for the world.
[00:29:18] Speaker 3: So you, it sounds like you realized at some point as your climate activism was falling apart, that there were ethical issues in [00:29:30] idealizing the noble savage and in, in holding the belief that our way of life in the civilized western world is sinful. That it is, um, harmful to the environment. In holding that belief, there are [00:29:45] some contradictions that come up that don't have easy answers.
[00:29:49] Speaker 3: Like, for example, what should we in the first world want for people in. The third world or developing countries, what should we want for them? Right. And so, right. You see [00:30:00] now that you want cheap, abundant energy, tell us about how you arrived there.
[00:30:04] Lucy: Yeah, so one of my influences and inspirations is Alex Epstein, who wrote the book Fossil Future.
[00:30:11] Lucy: And he also wrote, uh, the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. And he's been [00:30:15] on this now for over a decade, and he is a philosopher by nature. And he said, he just started realizing that when you, you know, fossil fuels are so demonized in our culture. Um, [00:30:30] and even if you don't have a hard held belief, you just kind of think, well, they're kind of bad.
[00:30:33] Lucy: We stage them out. But when you really look at what the role that they've played, they've lifted billions of people out of poverty. Because before we had fossil fuels 150 years ago, when they kind of started. [00:30:45] We were killing whales for whale blubber to light our kerosene like to light our lamps, right? So we were not exactly, uh, like protecting the environment when we were like making whales go extinct.
[00:30:58] Lucy: Um, and then also [00:31:00] energy was just so hard to come by that a lot of labor in a home was the energy expended by that of a, of the woman. So the woman is the one going and collecting wood and then creating a fire and, and milling, uh, grain and [00:31:15] all this physical labor that now we outsource to machines. And so.
[00:31:19] Lucy: What happened with fossil fuels was the first energy source to really do this at scale, and there'll probably be more in the future. There's nuclear fission infusion, which probably could get there for us. Basically, it made [00:31:30] all of a sudden energy so cheap that we could create more and more complex machines that could do more labor for humans, and it freed up more human minds to innovate and to invent.
[00:31:41] Lucy: And so you see this really interesting hockey stick, hockey [00:31:45] puck stick up into the right, that all happen at the same time. Fossil fuel use, um, which also is our carbon emissions, our GDP, our population growth and our life expectancy, they basically can all be mapped on top of each other [00:32:00] because when you had the first piece of the puzzle there, which was cheap of budget energy, you have, uh, you know, now a tiller that's powered by fossil fuels tilling the land.
[00:32:10] Lucy: So now instead of having. You know, a hundred people work X amount of [00:32:15] crop, uh, x amount of acres. You have two people. And then those people that were working in the land, they have food that they can now do, do other things. So we create more complex systems across, you know, the world. Um, beyond just these little, we would see little [00:32:30] nucleuses of civilization throughout history, but what fossil fuels did was just bring it global in a way we'd never seen before.
[00:32:36] Lucy: And then you have things like the pen penicillin being invented because you have more people who have more time to investigate and to, uh, invent. [00:32:45] Um, and so the way that Alex talks about it is there's the empowered world, which is what we think of as the first world, but for us, we can, I'm washing my dishes in a dishwasher, or my clothes are in a washing machine, and so I have a lot more free time.
[00:32:57] Lucy: And then there's the disempowered world, which is still [00:33:00] Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of India, Asia, where the women are still doing a lot of physical labor. And so they're working 40 to 50 hours a week, feeding their families, collecting fuel. Doing everything by hand. And so, and if you live in that setting as a woman, you're [00:33:15] not getting an education there.
[00:33:16] Lucy: Why would we, you can't, we need you, we need you doing work around the house. So, um, to me, it, as someone who cares about human rights and about [00:33:30] women having access to education and all the things that, you know, progressives say that they care about, it sort of sounds like this sort of edgy thing to say, well, fossil fuels will get you there.
[00:33:38] Lucy: Right. But it's actually true. And ultimately we should have another form of energy that can come down the pike. But wind [00:33:45] and solar don't have the same, uh, they're not, wind and solar are not as. Versatile as fossil fuels. So you can't just like put wind into the tank of your car, you have to have [00:34:00] the big windmill that goes to a battery, you know, so it's just like way more complicated.
[00:34:03] Lucy: So fossil fuels as they are today, are the most scalable and versatile and affordable. And so I would love to see something change. But in the meantime, I think it's [00:34:15] important to kind of count our what, where we can count winds and, and I think fossil fuels, the benefits far outweigh the side effects, which is the climate change, which we're talking about a little bit.
[00:34:24] Lucy: We haven't talked about it a ton. Um, but you know, we are seeing some warming from climate change. It's about 1.3 [00:34:30] degrees over the past since 1850. But we can talk about more too, is that even with that warming, it's not that we've seen it get dangerous for humans, which I think is a huge, huge piece of the puzzle we can talk about.
[00:34:40] Speaker 3: That does sound important, but I have to ask, while you're talking about fossil fuels, [00:34:45] what about the fact that they're running out and that our methods of extracting them are becoming more toxic, like fracking, for example, many of you listening to this show are concerned about an adolescent or young adult you care about who's [00:35:00] caught up in the gender insanity and therefore at risk of medical self-destruction.
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[00:35:41] Lucy: I think that no matter what, we're going to have an [00:35:45] impact on the planet, right? We can't not have an impact. And for me, the benefits that fossil fuels bring outweighs the cost that they do have on the environment where we do have to [00:36:00] disrupt the environment to extract them.
[00:36:01] Lucy: Like you said, solar panels have the same thing. Wind, wind turbines do too. Um, you could argue about how and when, which is worse, you know? But I think. I would [00:36:15] rather have an empowered world of people who can, you know, live in modern societies that are full of choice and opportunity and different, you have the ability to follow your dreams.
[00:36:24] Lucy: You know, that's not something you can do in a world where you're just collecting fuel all day. So yes, I think that there are [00:36:30] impacts that we're gonna have no matter what, but I think it's still, it's just a, it's the price you pay for the water and lives we live in. And I think that that's okay. Um, everything has a trade off and, and, and in regards to it running out, I just, you know, we always think we're running out of stuff and then, [00:36:45] you know, 30 or 50 years later you look at whatever that thing was.
[00:36:48] Lucy: And we have more of it than we did before. 'cause we discover something so fall for fracking. Even though it has an environmental impact, like you said, we didn't even see that on our radar. We thought we were running outta oil. Then we [00:37:00] came in with fracking for natural gas, and then natural gas actually has way less carbon emissions than coal.
[00:37:04] Lucy: And so, you know, we, I can't predict the future, but human ingenuity has always shown that we are really good at finding the resources that we need in making them more cheap and abundant and available [00:37:15] than in the past. Okay. That's just been always our pattern.
[00:37:18] Speaker 3: So it sounds like you couldn't give a number with confidence as to how many more years of fossil fuels we have ahead of us because of that.
[00:37:26] Lucy: Oh, I mean, I've asked people this who are smarter than me. I [00:37:30] even asked like people that like Chevron, that I met them, I'm like, how many more years? And they were like, maybe a hundred, but probably like even less. Like, because there's going to be an like, think about what a hundred years ago was. We didn't have the internet, we just, I think we were just [00:37:45] getting the car.
[00:37:47] Lucy: We had electricity maybe 130 years ago, and look at us now, we're like at such exponential growth. So I think it's gonna be somewhere like a hundred years or less. But what would happen, I think first is the electrical grid could go nuclear, but [00:38:00] then you would still use gas for your cars.
[00:38:03] Speaker 3: Tell us about nuclear.
[00:38:06] Lucy: So I can't, I I'm not, I'm not an expert on it. I can't, it's not my area of expertise.
[00:38:12] Speaker 3: You're pronuclear.
[00:38:13] Lucy: So yeah, I am pro [00:38:15] nuclear. Like I, my understanding of it, which is not like I, I don't talk about it a lot because it's not like one of my areas of like main interest and expertise, but basically if you look at the chart of like how much resources are need for needed for coal to wind, solar, [00:38:30] whatever, nuclears is minuscule.
[00:38:32] Lucy: And so that's really, it's actually truly clean energy. Um, there's been some really bad nuclear. Power plant failures. And obviously there was nuclear war, uh, threats in the past that made people very afraid of it. It was one of the things environmentalists used [00:38:45] to fight, but now the, the fears are basically overblown.
[00:38:49] Lucy: But the problem is that the, uh, regulations on nuclear, especially in the United States, are so bad that it's an exorbitant cost to build a new nuclear [00:39:00] plant. And so that's hopefully changed. The tide's definitely turned on that, where people are more open to nuclear. But, um, I think it has a lot of promise.
[00:39:09] Lucy: It's just not like, you're not gonna be putting like nuclear fuel into your car. You would get, I guess, than [00:39:15] an, you know, an electric car that you would charge on nuclear energy, which would be powering the electric grid. So I think we're gonna see an explosion of that in the next decade. And people who are smarter than me and experts on that know more than me, but I, I think it's a good thing.
[00:39:27] Lucy: And it was unfairly vilified. [00:39:30]
[00:39:30] Speaker 3: What about the issues with long-term storage because it needs to be stored safely for thousands of years and it just seems like any, I mean, an earthquake could wreak havoc. Right? What have you learned about that that makes you feel better about it?
[00:39:43] Lucy: I don't think it's, I just [00:39:45] think it's one of those things where people are afraid of everything, stuff they don't understand, like I don't think it's as toxic or hard to store as people say.
[00:39:52] Lucy: It's really not. I've seen like it's like what an A soda can nuclear waste for one person's entire energy life is out of a soda can, which is pretty [00:40:00] crazy. So I think it's fine. Like I think I, again, you have to look at people who know more than me about this, but from what I've understand about it, which is still pretty surface level, the waste stuff is not something to be afraid of.
[00:40:12] Speaker 3: So when it comes to our [00:40:15] energy future, it sounds like what you imagine the most likely scenario is, is that we gradually transition more and more of our electrical grid to nuclear. And that the decline of fossil [00:40:30] fuels doesn't create a crisis.
[00:40:32] Lucy: Yes, exactly. And we just need to have more, you know, research and development and like, I think the pro the issue with the activism, like we've seen, like you're saying like you fought ness in L and now you realize they're good.
[00:40:44] Lucy: Like I fought [00:40:45] plastic straws and now I'm like, well, paper straws are slush and they have chemicals in them. You know, there's always like these things and, and like the, the environmentalists of the past, they fought nuclear and then it turns out that could have maybe solved a few problems. I'm, I'm like so against activism now because it's always very [00:41:00] emotional and fear-based.
[00:41:01] Lucy: And what I'm very pro is the engineers and the research and development and r and d that we need to solve these problems like. Cars weren't brought about because of activists. Right? Cars were brought about because someone invented them and then they were a better model that then replaced the [00:41:15] horse.
[00:41:15] Lucy: And before we had the car, everyone in the newspapers was freaking out 'cause they said New York City was gonna be under manure in 50 years. And they were so worried about manure. And what were we gonna do about manure? Should we put a cap on how many horses we have? Should we have only one horse, poor family?
[00:41:29] Lucy: 'cause [00:41:30] there's gonna be too much manure. Um, we should tax people, right? For the manure that they're creating. And then it's like, oh, the car was invented. And so I think with, with climate, I think it's the same thing. I'm humble enough to know that the universe is so interesting and there's so many ways to get [00:41:45] energy that we probably haven't even begun to understand.
[00:41:47] Lucy: And maybe it's being invented in the lab right now and it could happen in our lifetime. And like in 1980, could you have predicted the internet or the iPhone or FaceTime? Like it's just to say that we can't figure this problem out with more [00:42:00] invention, but we figured out how to have this conversation over our computers is pretty crazy to me.
[00:42:04] Speaker 3: Sounds like you have a lot of faith in human ingenuity.
[00:42:07] Lucy: Yes, I do. I definitely do.
[00:42:10] Speaker 3: And it also sounds like you have some, uh, important data for us, right? Because at [00:42:15] 1.3 degrees since 1850, and there's, there are some things you've learned specifically about climate change that have really changed your perspective.
[00:42:21] Speaker 3: And now you actually go out and talk to people about what you've learned to calm their anxiety. So tell us some of those key points.
[00:42:27] Lucy: So I wanna shout out all the amazing [00:42:30] scientists who I am inspired by, and I follow a lot of 'em on Substack. Um, you can follow, you know, Roger Pike Jr. Uh, Judith Curry. Um, why am I now forgetting everyone's names?
[00:42:42] Lucy: Steve Koonin, who is a former DOE, uh, [00:42:45] employee for President Obama. Gregory Wright Stone is a geologist. So anyway, there's a many, many people out there. Dr. Will, uh, Matthew Ecky, who these are the climate realists who have been shouting this stuff for, you know, more than a decade. And so I'm really. [00:43:00] Grateful that in my position as a former climate activist, I can sort of be a mouthpiece for their amazing research and ideas and get it to more people because I speak the language of the climate activist.
[00:43:10] Lucy: So some of the things that really, um, first made me not have fear, which [00:43:15] is the first one, is the fact that disaster deaths, so deaths from natural disasters, hurricane, floods, droughts, all that are down 98% in the last a hundred years. So right there, I think is a huge blow to the climate alarmism narrative because we've seen [00:43:30] 101.3 degrees of Celsius warming around that same time, but we've seen disaster deaths completely drop off.
[00:43:36] Lucy: So we have to break up this idea that warming means danger, because I always just made that assumption. I mapped those onto each [00:43:45] other, didn't think about it. Again, warming, it's different, it's dangerous, but that's not true. So we have the warming that we've seen, um, and whether that, and then. Whether that is caused by us and how much of impact we have on the warming, that [00:44:00] is something that scientists are still debating.
[00:44:02] Lucy: But we do know, we can all agree that since 1850 it's been 1.3 degrees. And then so there's, the deaths are down. So right there it's like, okay, we're safe. And the reason we're safe is 'cause of all the things I was kind of talking about before, which is just our industry, the fact that [00:44:15] like we live in buildings that are with solid foundations and strong roofs and insulation and we have heating and cooling.
[00:44:22] Lucy: We are much more pro protected from the weather than, you know, someone living in a mud hut. And, um, if a storm comes, our [00:44:30] houses are not washing away with a flood, they might get a little bit of rain in the basement, but you're gonna be fine and you're, and you're gonna be okay. So we are so resilient as modern humans that we are much safer.
[00:44:41] Lucy: And so that's why the deaths have just dropped off precipitously [00:44:45] everywhere around the globe as we've modernized. Um, specifically one area where we've done the best is with drought. So drought used to cause famine. If crops failed before you had fossil fuels and modern shipping, [00:45:00] if you had a region that was impacted by drought, people, you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of people could die.
[00:45:06] Lucy: And so now with global food system, you're able to bring in food to places that didn't have food before or you're able to irrigate. So it's basic stuff, right? You just don't [00:45:15] necessarily think about it. Um, also just modern technology. When a storm's hitting where we evacuate versus 18 hundreds, you may not know a storm's coming.
[00:45:24] Lucy: Um, and it's, it's too late to evacuate. Um, but I will say the climate alarmists will say, [00:45:30] well, there's more trillion dollar damages. And I say, well, that's just a sign of how wealthy we are. And it just proves my point even more because if you look at the, uh, the migration patterns of who lives in Florida now compared to, you know, a hundred years [00:45:45] ago, that population has grown.
[00:45:47] Lucy: I don't know, 10 x off the top of my head, whatever it is. And there's a lot more mansions in Miami than there were. In 1910. So when you have a storm hit Miami, it costs civilian dollars because there's a lot more there to [00:46:00] destroy. But it doesn't mean that the people who live there are gonna die from the storm.
[00:46:03] Lucy: Then they can rebuild like we've seen every time that there's a storm. So that's one thing we're safer than ever. And then in regards to extreme weather, so when you think of extreme weather, um, [00:46:15] hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, all of those things I just named either have stayed steady or have slightly declined because, or, or sorry, either there's no pattern, no pattern has emerged.
[00:46:27] Lucy: Or even in the case of hurricanes, [00:46:30] droughts and wildfires have actually gone down. Um, and so again, in the year 2000, probably when you were first getting into climate stuff, I know in community was truth was 2006, but I feel like it was picking up in the year 2000, whatever they were saying, by the year [00:46:45] 2020, we're gonna be seeing extreme storms, we're gonna be seeing floods, we're gonna be seeing.
[00:46:50] Lucy: Uh, crop failures right by 20 20, 20 25. Well, it's now 2025 and so I get maybe in the year 2000 we were afraid, but we now have 25 years of data. And [00:47:00] so if there was going to be a crazy pattern that would've emerged, we should be able to see it by right now. But the fingerprint of humanity on those things, the IPCC UN scientists say in their own reports, we have low confidence that [00:47:15] we're impacting any of this stuff.
[00:47:16] Lucy: That doesn't mean that there isn't variable year to year. There's obviously very bad wildfires. We saw one in the Palisades last year. There's bad hurricanes. We just had one in Jamaica a few weeks ago or a week two ago. Natural disasters happen, but what people in climate anxiety don't [00:47:30] realize is natural disasters have always happened, and I think that they have this perception.
[00:47:34] Lucy: It's like the earth used to be gentle and now it's scary and dark and no, it's not. The earth or Earth has always been. Um, and [00:47:45] ultimately what we've seen with CO2 going up and the weather getting slightly warmer is not a more extreme, um, levels of weather at all. So that was something when I learned about the hurricanes not getting worse, I was like, the [00:48:00] scales are coming off my eyes, because if you turn on the news every time there's a hurricane, we just went through it with the one that was in Jamaica.
[00:48:05] Lucy: Every single time they cover it, they're like, well, it's because of climate change. It's X, Y, and Z. It's x, it's intensifying faster. Like, they just have like vague things that they say like, well, the wind speeds are [00:48:15] records of the last 10 years, or like, this is the strongest hurricane to hit this island since whatever date.
[00:48:21] Lucy: And that gives you the impression that it's unprecedented when like, it's just, you know, these things happen. And, and, and weirdly this year, hurricanes [00:48:30] was one of the quietest seasons we've seen. I think that Jamaican hurricane was the first hurricane to make landfall this year, and so. I thought we were supposed to be having hurricanes every, every week.
[00:48:39] Lucy: Like that was what I thought when I was in the climate anxiety. I don't know if you have those perceptions of you remember what you [00:48:45] thought. Right. But like, I thought we were gonna have a hurricane Katrina, maybe one or two a season. And actually it stayed completely like normal.
[00:48:52] Speaker 3: I wanna talk about each of those individually.
[00:48:54] Speaker 3: So starting with wildfires. Yeah. Um, well, and fires not all of them wild. So, [00:49:00] well
[00:49:00] Lucy: like yeah, they're like ourselves.
[00:49:02] Speaker 3: I have a family member who lost a house in the, uh, Palisades fire. Um, awful. And, and actually I went to Pali High, so my former high school B burnt down. Oh wow. And um, my cousin lost a house in [00:49:15] Altadena.
[00:49:16] Speaker 3: Um, so it was basically the same fire that spread over a, a very wide area. I think that's awful. Traveled on the wind or something. And I think eventually, if I understand correctly, it was revealed to, uh, be arson. Right. That started that fire. [00:49:30] I was also at a time of year, it was, it was winter, not, not fire season.
[00:49:34] Speaker 3: Um, but in the Pacific Northwest, we have some really terrible wildfires that feel very apocalyptic. And I feel like I, I, [00:49:45] I'm just one person, but from my subjective limited perspective, it feels like it has been getting worse.
[00:49:51] Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
[00:49:52] Speaker 3: Um, now I, I don't know how much you know about wildfires in particular, but I hear debate over [00:50:00] how much of our wildfire situation in the northwest has to do with climate change and how much of it has to do with forestry management practices.
[00:50:08] Stephanie: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
[00:50:09] Speaker 3: Yeah. So lately, um, you know, this is, we're now in the, this. Dark and wet [00:50:15] season. Right. And in a recent trip to rural Oregon, I was very pleased to see some, um, proactive, um, what are they called? Um, the intentional burns. I saw the forestry management burning right piles of litter. [00:50:30] So for people who don't know anything about what I'm talking about here, it's basically that, um.
[00:50:35] Speaker 3: The, the problem with wildfires, as I understand it, and tell me if, if you wanna correct any part of this, is that we've always had wildfires. Right. Wildfires become more [00:50:45] devastating if they're hotter and faster and go higher in the trees. Mm-hmm. And one of the things that can contribute to how devastating a fire is, has to do with the amount of, um, forests, litter that Yeah.
[00:50:58] Speaker 3: Yeah. That is built [00:51:00] up. Right. And so, you know, these controlled burns, that's the word I was looking for, these controlled burns that they do during the rainy season when they know that the rain is gonna put out the fire. Right. Help with preventing the fires from becoming devastating. And actually there's some species that.
[00:51:13] Speaker 3: Require fire. Right, [00:51:15] right. In order to even thrive. But those should be sort of low to the ground fires that don't decimate the trees and, and go all the way up as torches. And so I've seen both types of fires in the northwest. Yeah. I've seen the devastating kind, which really feel very apocalyptic and [00:51:30] hundreds of miles away.
[00:51:30] Speaker 3: You can barely breathe the air and you know, the entire tree is completely arched. It's just really devastating on the landscape. And then there's also those times you're walking through a forest and you see, oh yeah, there was a small burn that went through here a few years ago. You can see a little bit of [00:51:45] black on that tree, but the tree is fine.
[00:51:46] Speaker 3: It just, it just burnt the forest floor. So, you know, I've heard that most of our. Wildfire problems in the northwest are attributable to how the forests are managed. Um, yes. I'm just wondering if you wanna [00:52:00] chime in on that.
[00:52:01] Lucy: Yeah. So in the US right now, our wildfire acreage is slightly up from the 1980s. So it's, so when you're saying, oh, it's gotten worse, it's probably possible that it has.
[00:52:14] Lucy: Um, [00:52:15] but if you look at it going back to the 1920s, it's down by a lot. So I think the numbers are like, it's 10 million acres or something are burned now, and it's down from 50 million, which was in 1930s, but it's up from like five, 5 million in [00:52:30] 1980s or something like that. And the reason why is because.
[00:52:34] Lucy: Up until the 1950s, the Pacific West, you know, it was a lot more, um, I, uh, it was not as densely populated. And when we were even like, let's go even back further to like the 18 hundreds [00:52:45] when we have settlers out there settling these places, right? You had cook fires that might start a fire and you're not putting that out if that starts a fire, right?
[00:52:52] Lucy: Because we don't have a fire department, we're just cor on horseback, you know, doing whatever people were doing. And so [00:53:00] you have a lot of wildfires that used to happen. And then you have the modern era where people live in these areas now, where we suppressed a lot in the 1950s into like 1980. We also passed a lot of logging limitations and banning at that same [00:53:15] time.
[00:53:15] Lucy: And we adopted more environmental protocols, which said, just leave the forest alone. Don't do the prescribed burns like you're saying. And so what's happened in the last. 20 years ish is that you have people living in [00:53:30] more fire prone areas where there hasn't been fires now since the 1950s and there's a lot more fuel and there's a lot more people.
[00:53:36] Lucy: So there's a lot more people starting fires like we've learned. And so that all has sort of worked together to see this slight uptick that is nowhere near historic [00:53:45] highs, but definitely up from the past. And yeah, in regards to like whether it's climate change or not globally, uh, wildfire rates are down 25%, acreage is burned.
[00:53:57] Lucy: And I think it's weird because the climate movement has contradictions [00:54:00] where they're like, it's making everything so dry and, and parts, but also flooding has never been worse and there's more rain and water in the air and it's like, okay, well which one is it? Because one of those things can. Lead to more fires.
[00:54:12] Lucy: And one of 'em, not, not, but what we're seeing is more, [00:54:15] CO2 in the air allows more moisture in the air. So you actually have wetter areas. So if anything, the CO2 would be helping dampening the amount of wildfires that we would see. So I don't think, and other scientists that I read don't say that, like the conditions are being made [00:54:30] worse for climate, for a wildfire, but the UN scientists will be like, we predict the conditions to be made worse, will be 50% higher.
[00:54:37] Lucy: And you're like, okay, what are you talking about? So there's a lot of weird like ways that they kind of like fudge it. But um, I think the [00:54:45] forest management, like you're saying, is so important. And you know, there's historic, there's historic accounts of people when they first came out to the California and the West where there were still Native American populations and the west coast would be in smoke every single season because that's what the, how the [00:55:00] Native American tribes.
[00:55:02] Lucy: Took were stewards of the land and they knew that the redwoods needed forest fires to um, stay healthy and they would do it themselves. So you wouldn't get the out of control fire that you're talking about. And so we need to go back to that. But [00:55:15] obviously it's really hard when you have suburbs in these regions.
[00:55:18] Lucy: And like I know as a homeowner, like I don't, wouldn't wanna fire every spring in my backyard even if it prevents like a bigger fire. Right? So it's just tough. Um, and I think with California, they're gonna have to come up with some common sense laws [00:55:30] that find time to clear the forest, whether it's through prescribed burns or just taking out shrubs or getting, I don't know, goats in there.
[00:55:37] Lucy: Goats could clear some stuff with some eat it or, um, you know, just that's what the government's gonna do. 'cause obviously we know what the Palisades. [00:55:45] That was a manmade disaster, essentially. Um, that was not a climate change thing.
[00:55:50] Speaker 3: You mentioned forestry and logging and, um, in the Northwest there's a lot of anti logging activism and it is Right.
[00:55:58] Speaker 3: Be sad when you [00:56:00] see clear cuts in the landscape because you'll, you'll just be, I know through rural Oregon or Washington and you look up at a forested hill and then it looks like someone just took a giant razor blade and shaved, I know part of it clean. And what I [00:56:15] recall from my environmental education is that clear cuts are pretty devastating.
[00:56:19] Speaker 3: They create erosion, they change the, you know, obviously they have an impact on, um, habitat for critters. Uh, [00:56:30] yeah, disrupt the microbiome, the fungi and everything. Um, and it was my understanding from that training that. Sustainable forestry would be a lot more time consuming because instead of just going in with all this industrial right, and just [00:56:45] shaving, running it down trees, it would be selective thinning of the front, right?
[00:56:50] Speaker 3: You still have some old growth and you still have an environment that has many of the characteristics of a natural ecosystem, but you're, you're [00:57:00] thinning it. Uh, so, um, but of course if, if companies can just go in and, yeah, yeah. Punch wood and, you know, I mean, there's financial pressure to maximize profits.
[00:57:11] Speaker 3: Um, so what's, what's your current understanding of the issues with the [00:57:15] logging industry?
[00:57:17] Lucy: So, I have been reading Patrick Moore's book. He's the founder of Greenpeace, and he is a huge proponent of a regulated logging industry. You know, sustainable logging, like you said, but also. [00:57:30] Incentivizing people to grow it on their farmland, just grow wood for the purpose of it being cut down as a crop.
[00:57:39] Lucy: Um, and so his whole thing is that it's actually the best way to do it because you can end up protecting land. So you could, [00:57:45] you can build in these things where it's like X amount of land is gonna be for selling and X amount of land will be preserved. Um, I know you can see that with like hunting as well.
[00:57:53] Lucy: So I think there's definitely solutions out there. And I would say like, I'm really not worried [00:58:00] about the US because we've gained a lot of tree cover since the 18 hundreds because you know, where I live in New England now, it's completely covered with trees everywhere. You, it was clear cut, you know, in the 18 hundreds and um, it's all grown back and we have so many trees now, um, [00:58:15] that.
[00:58:15] Lucy: It's just something that like, yeah, obviously if you have your blooded force, it gets cut down. It's devastating. And I agree with you, like with, like I read the book like Braiding Sweet Grass, which if you know that book, just talking about the importance of old growth. So I'm not being, I'm not trying to be flippant and be like, it'll grow [00:58:30] back.
[00:58:30] Lucy: But I do think that, you know, the US has more protected public land where we're not touching these things than any other country in the world, maybe other than like Canada. So I think we should feel good about that. If you [00:58:45] ever look at the map of the amount of land that's protected, it's so amazing. And we have a huge gift here.
[00:58:51] Lucy: And so the where the, where the places that have the worst logging are always the places that don't have access to fossil fuels because you have poor people going and shutting, [00:59:00] cutting, sorry. Cutting down trees. So we're in a pretty good spot because, yeah, because the, the tree growth in our country has increased.
[00:59:10] Lucy: In our lifetimes, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I didn't know that. So, yeah, because [00:59:15] if, I mean, it makes sense if you think about it though, because we're not really using the trees for the way that our ancestors would've used them. Right. Like where I live in Connecticut now, anecdotally, when you go on a walk in the woods, now there's, there's stone walk crisscrossing [00:59:30] in the woods, but it's trees everywhere.
[00:59:32] Lucy: And those stone malls used to demarcate different farmlands. So it's just funny that now these are just fully grown with, you know, 60 to a hundred year old trees. So I'm not worried about it. I feel like the [00:59:45] planet is very resilient.
[00:59:46] Speaker 3: That's encouraging to hear. Now, um, now let's talk about, um, hurricane. So you, you'd mentioned several natural disasters, wildfires, which we just covered hurricanes.
[00:59:55] Speaker 3: Hurricanes are one that I'm quite confused about. Now, granted, I've never lived in a [01:00:00] hurricane prone area per se. I did spend some time in Hawaii and remember a pretty powerful tropical storm there once. But I think the main areas that we see hurricanes are warm water areas like, you know, Gulf of Mexico, for example.[01:00:15]
[01:00:15] Speaker 3: And it was my understanding from my environmental education that. When the temperature of the water increases, it tremendously increases the risk. Uh, there's like an exponential relationship between Right,
[01:00:28] Lucy: right. The super [01:00:30] storm supercharged.
[01:00:31] Speaker 3: Yeah. And it is my understanding that the water temperatures are increasing.
[01:00:36] Speaker 3: So I'm surprised to hear that you don't believe hurricanes are getting worse. What, what am I missing?
[01:00:42] Lucy: Yeah, so the hurricane [01:00:45] rates, the rate that we have of, of hurricanes, like making landfall or out on sea has stayed steady since 1980, which is when we have modern satellite data. So it's 50 years of data.
[01:00:57] Lucy: So going back prior to that, [01:01:00] there's some issues because. We didn't have satellites. And so you see this sort of slight upward trend from like the 1960s to 1980, but that's because we didn't have all of the data that we have now. So if you just take the 1980 to now, which is going almost [01:01:15] to, what would that be, 45 years.
[01:01:17] Lucy: Um, we don't see that trend. And so this is just, I mean, it's just out there like, it's just the amount of hurricanes making landfall every year. It's staying the same. It's slightly decreased if you are like looking at [01:01:30] decrease, you know, they'll be like, if this is steady, it's like this. So it's not a crazy decrease.
[01:01:34] Lucy: And so I think what, what the climate scientists were saying back in the year 19, in the 1990s, they're like a warmer weather. We're gonna supercharge storms. But what's happened, and I talked to the, uh, Dr. [01:01:45] Matthew Acki, who's a, a climate scientist about this, and he said that that was what we predicted. But what we're actually seeing is that because the water's getting warmer and the poles are getting warmer, the.
[01:01:58] Lucy: Contrast [01:02:00] between the center of the ocean and the poles of the ocean is decreasing. And because of that, because there's less difference in the cold and the, and the warm, you're actually getting less friction. And the friction is where the storms are usually made. And so what's happened is that that's why we're seeing [01:02:15] less storms is because the warming is having this sort of unintended or unpredicted consequence where there's less friction between the poll, the cold polls, and where we are.
[01:02:24] Lucy: And so we're getting less storms to be created, but what the climate scientists will say [01:02:30] is that, okay, we're getting less storms each year, but the percentage of those storms, um, more of them are, uh, category five and above. So say we're getting like seven landfall, H seven hurricanes this season. [01:02:45] Four of them used to be category five.
[01:02:47] Lucy: Now we're getting six hurricanes a season, and four of them are category five. So it, the percentage, there's less hurricanes, but more of them are category five. So that's where the climate si, the climate, alarmist will say, but [01:03:00] higher percentage of them are worse. And so they say, um, less, but they're worse.
[01:03:05] Lucy: I guess it's, that's what they say. And my argument is, okay, but people still, less people are dying from them. Like, I don't understand, like even if they are getting worse, we are more resilient than [01:03:15] ever because of the way that we live. And so even if we were to see a slight uptick, my argument would be the same, which is like, okay, so we're seeing a slight uptick in hurricanes and what's like, we're still, we're still able to, to [01:03:30] adopt and survive like we, we've shown.
[01:03:32] Lucy: And so again, and the thing that they say is, well, there's more trillion dollar hurricanes. And my thing is that's because we're richer. And so there's more to destroy. And it's not because hurricanes are getting worse.
[01:03:42] Speaker 3: Interesting. Okay, so you mentioned [01:03:45] global water currents, temperatures, and, and patterns.
[01:03:50] Speaker 3: And that was another thing I learned about in my environmental alarm as an education. So. Um, so for, for those who haven't studied this [01:04:00] stuff, uh, just, you know, the, the elementary version of it is that water moves around the planet, including in the oceans. There are patterns of how water circulates. And if you've ever, you know, visited the Pacific versus the Atlantic Ocean at the same latitude and wondered why [01:04:15] one is cold and one is warm, uh, it has to do with those global patterns.
[01:04:18] Speaker 3: So, for example, um. On the west coast, our water is coming down from the north and on the east coast, your water's coming up from the south. And [01:04:30] so our water has been in frigid places and your water has been basking in the sun. And that's why, um, you know, Florida water is 80 degrees when California is 65.
[01:04:41] Speaker 3: So, um, that's kind of a rough [01:04:45] summary, right? But, but there, there are maps you can look at of global water circulation patterns. And what I was taught is that glacial melts, uh, the, the water melting at the poles was going to have such an impact that it was [01:05:00] going to essentially halt or significantly alter these patterns of circulation, which w were gonna have devastating impacts on weather, such as hurricanes, as well as aquatic [01:05:15] life.
[01:05:15] Speaker 3: Um, uh, just there's so much downstream of that. So. What would you like to correct or
[01:05:24] Lucy: So, so, yeah, so this is one of those things where that's a prediction versus an observation. And so I'm always saying [01:05:30] again, like, we predicted the climate scientist predicted that hurricanes were gonna get worse and then, but we now have 30 years of observational data that they didn't, or 45 years.
[01:05:37] Lucy: Right. So I, I understand like the scientists fear a lot of things where they make, um, a, a [01:05:45] prediction or like a thesis, whatever you would call hypothesis in science, whatever the, the thing is. And so I think that is a hypothesis. Um, I, I talked to Steve Koonin about this, who's a former Department of Energy secretary under President Obama.
[01:05:59] Lucy: So he's no [01:06:00] like right wing nut. And he said, you know, you could walk around with fear that an asteroid's gonna hit the planet, you know, next year. And you can walk around with fear for a very unlikely like black swan event that's gonna [01:06:15] ruin the environment and like. That to me is what that scenario is.
[01:06:19] Lucy: And so can I ever say that the odds of that not happening are zero? No. But would I worry about it based on the odds of it, of the likelihood of it happening? No. Um, but [01:06:30] also, um, I think it's really important to look at this toric record of geology going back, um, thousands of years. And Gregory Wright Stone is a geologist who's been running about this for a long time, and he talks about the climate during, [01:06:45] um, the last 4,000 years.
[01:06:46] Lucy: And, you know, we've had periods of time where the planet has been warmer, um, and where the sea levels have been higher. And so the glaciers that you're saying are melting, which we're seeing, we've seen melt since, um, the 16 [01:07:00] hundreds when we were in the, we were in a little ice age. I don't know if you know about this, but like.
[01:07:03] Lucy: We were in a little ice age where the weather was that 1.3 degrees cooler. So we were actually at a very cold period when we started, decided that we were gonna go into the swarming period and start marking it. And it was around the beginning of the industrial age, [01:07:15] 1850s is where we started our like clock up.
[01:07:17] Lucy: Right? But before 1850, we were come, coming out of this sort of dip, which was a little ice age. And so temperatures were colder. You know, the Potomac in Washington was, um, Washington DC was freezing. This is like when George Washington, it was actually in the [01:07:30] Revolutionary War. Very cold times. We don't wanna be in that time it kind of sounds very miserable.
[01:07:34] Lucy: So we are warmer than that. But we are also the same level of warm as like though there was a Roman warm period where we saw the peak of Roman Empire. Um, you know, Julius Caesar, when Jesus was [01:07:45] alive, like that time was as warm and maybe some people say it was a degree or two warmer than what we see today.
[01:07:50] Lucy: So the idea that we have this historically unprecedented, um, warm period is not true. And it's all based on, goes back to, you know, the scientist Michael [01:08:00] Mann. So he's a big climate scientist and he came up with a hockey stick graph, which said like, we've been like this and we're gonna go like this. And he did one study on tree rings and looked at them and, and from them there to, you know, mapped the, the, the temperature of [01:08:15] the earth going back 4,000 years and said, we've never been this warm.
[01:08:18] Lucy: And for some reason, like, and then Al Gore and Inconvenient Truth use that map of the weather that's now been peer reviewed and debunked dozens of times by many people. And everyone agrees unless you're like, really bought into [01:08:30] the climate alarmism narrative that we've had warmer periods in the past.
[01:08:34] Lucy: And these used to be called, before we were completely bought in on climate alarmism. They were called, um, these former periods. In the past, scientists would call them climate optimists [01:08:45] periods because they'd be periods of times where the plan would be warmer about what we are today and civilization would flourish.
[01:08:52] Lucy: And so in, in the past 4,000 years, every time we've seen warmer temperatures comparable to what we have now civilization, it would [01:09:00] coincide with, you know, a burst of technology, a burst of civilizations, and all of these things because warmer weather means you can have better crops that have better, uh, bouncy every year.
[01:09:09] Lucy: So you can produce, you can support more mines that are in cities who are coming up with a Pythagorean [01:09:15] theorem or whatever they were doing in ancient times of inventing gravity. I don't even know. Um, and so this idea that, um, warm periods coincide with something bad is not true. And then this also idea that the Arctic.[01:09:30]
[01:09:30] Lucy: Melt that we're seeing now hasn't happened in the past and that, and those currents didn't change, then it's not gonna happen. Now, I guess I would say long story short,
[01:09:39] Speaker 3: so one of the things you are referencing here is, I believe, called glaciation cycles. The, the [01:09:45] fact that aside, aside from what gases human activity is putting into the atmosphere or not, that the earth has its own natural cycles, right?
[01:09:55] Speaker 3: Of getting warmer and colder. And so for example, um, [01:10:00] most people remember learning about the land bridge up, right? You know that from Russia to Alaska and how that's how right people got to the Americas because, because
[01:10:11] Lucy: that was nice age,
[01:10:12] Speaker 3: right? Yeah. So, so when, when [01:10:15] there's more. When more of the Earth's water is trapped in ice and the sea levels are gonna be lower.
[01:10:20] Speaker 3: And when, you know, and, and so those patterns have been going on of ice ages and, and warming periods. And like you said, mini ice ages. That's been going on for a [01:10:30] long time. I can't remember off the top of my head. Maybe you can, uh, let people know what, what the non manmade factors are that drive those cycles.
[01:10:39] Lucy: I actually don't know. I think that, I don't know. I think the cycles, [01:10:45] I, I don't know. The planet just has its natural rhythms of, um, I don't know. I think it's even like sequestering of carbon. Like we naturally have plants that sequester carbon and then you get the lower carbon and then you get the lower temperatures and then that kick starts this ice [01:11:00] age.
[01:11:00] Lucy: We're really overdue for an ice age right now is the thing. So there are 10,000 year cycles, and this is again, Gregory Wright Stone, he's a geologist. And I think the geologists are really interesting antidote to the climate scientist because they're like. We have 800,000 [01:11:15] years of temperature records and we know what the planet's been doing.
[01:11:17] Lucy: And so you, climate science are looking at 30 years and you're projecting all these things into the future. But the best thing we can do to an antidote for fear and speculation is to look to history. And so when you're saying the [01:11:30] ice age cycles, you know, we have 10,000 year cycles where it will all of a sudden hit a point and for whatever reasons, the glaciers start to grow again.
[01:11:38] Lucy: And we have an ice age and in the last one it was so bad it was down to Long Island where the, uh, you know, so we really don't want that [01:11:45] happening again. Where we are right now is actually right at where we should be entering back into an, uh, ice age. And there's even theories again in the climate realist skeptic world that say the level of CO2 we have is.[01:12:00]
[01:12:00] Lucy: Really before the, before we started releasing CO2, we were at 280 parts per million. Now we're like 4 25 parts per million. 280 parts per million is very low. Historically, like, I think it was like above a thousand parts per million when the dinosaurs were alive. [01:12:15] And, and I think it could have even been 3000.
[01:12:17] Lucy: So this idea that like carbon needs to be at 280 parts per million, 'cause that's what it was before we started releasing it historically is not true. When you look at a longer scale. It is true for like the human [01:12:30] life. Like CO2 has been low since humans have been around. But, um, the idea that, you know, life doesn't thrive when CO2 is higher is absolutely wrong, it's just that we haven't been around to sort of see what it's [01:12:45] like as humans.
[01:12:46] Lucy: Uh, but yeah, I actually don't know why the, um, I don't think it's even. I don't think there's scientific consensus on what triggers these little, these ice ages when they do happen. Um, so that's a good question. I don't know what, I don't [01:13:00] know what it is because CO2, I think has been consistently pretty low for the past few of them.
[01:13:04] Lucy: So I don't know.
[01:13:05] Speaker 3: Well, we've been through a few ice ages as a species. Right. And, and that's Yeah, exactly. Hear feels like the warmer, the warm, the relatively warmer, not as warm as [01:13:15] dinosaur era. Um, but the relatively warmer periods have been associated with more innovation because I would think it just depends on where you live.
[01:13:21] Speaker 3: Like, like, right. Because right now, I mean, you say there's, there's been 1.3 degrees since 1850 and, and one of the forms of [01:13:30] climate Alarmism that we do hear about where there are scary things happening is, is people who live in very hot places.
[01:13:37] Lucy: Yeah, totally. Totally. Where,
[01:13:39] Speaker 3: where it's, if it's normally 110 degrees in the summer, now it's 120 and people [01:13:45] leaving on mine.
[01:13:46] Speaker 3: Um. So it would just seem like it, some of it's based on where you live and what I hear you saying is not that humans are not causing any degree of climate change, but what I'm hearing is that we're not causing as [01:14:00] much climate change and, um, relative to the total amount of influence along the environment.
[01:14:06] Speaker 3: And that furthermore, it might not be a bad thing. Am I understanding correctly?
[01:14:10] Lucy: Yeah, we just don't know. I think like when I asked Steve Kon in this, I was like, well, what do we know? And [01:14:15] he was like, what the scientists agree on is that the planet has warmed 1.3 degrees in the last 150 years, and that we're adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
[01:14:22] Lucy: That is where the consensus ends. And then every statement after that, are we impacting heat the climate? [01:14:30] That's a 50 50 divide among scientists that there's not a consensus. Like there's not like a, you know, majority of scientists say yes, we are. They, they're still debating that, that if you go out even further, is it dangerous for us?
[01:14:42] Lucy: There's no consensus on that either. And we have this [01:14:45] observational data, which I was talking about with hurricanes and the de dusting down all that, that observational data is really helping out the climate realist because it's really good. And even you said like, people are dying from heat. And like, again, that's one of those things where like, you see that I guess in the [01:15:00] news, like vaguely and like, sure, it's obviously devastating.
[01:15:02] Lucy: Every death is a tragedy, but more people die. Not, it's like six x more people die from cold every year than heat. And so even warming, Bjorn Lamberg is a writer who has written a book called, um, false Alarm on this, and he's another [01:15:15] inspiration for me. And he said, you know, climate change has probably saved upwards of a hundred thousand lives because the warmer weather has prevented cold deaths.
[01:15:23] Lucy: And so it's even obviously, like you don't, if you're in a warmer place, that's not the best news. [01:15:30] For you, but it's still net over the globe saving lives. Um, but again, you say these things in a certain environment and you're an open-minded person. You're listening to me without being too. Stuck in, but you say stuff like, well, cold deaths are kill more, or [01:15:45] like fossil fuels aren't that bad.
[01:15:46] Lucy: And depending on who your audience is, it can be very tricky and I can sound like a nut.
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[01:16:32] Speaker 3: I'll include that link and coupon in the show notes for your convenience. All right, now back to the show. All right, so shifting gears, I, I wanna talk about your current activism because I think how I originally found you was [01:16:45] a brief video that you'd shared on x of going out and talking to people at environmental protests or something like that.
[01:16:54] Speaker 3: And in this very, um, friendly and [01:17:00] uh, unassuming way, you, you basically just came up to people and said, Hey, would you, would you be open to me sharing some information that might give you a different perspective on this? And the reactions were also positive, which. It was almost hard to believe. I'm sure that that your [01:17:15] reactions are not always a hundred percent positive, but tell us about your work of actually getting out there and communicating with people over these issues and what kind of responses you get.
[01:17:27] Lucy: So that was one actually my first [01:17:30] in-person, you know, taking the information to the people event. So I'm glad that you saw that that video was really fun to make and I, I'm hoping I'll be, be able to do more of that in the future. But most of my stuff I've been doing is online, so, you know, getting the, I get comments of that.
[01:17:43] Lucy: But yeah, I went to an, I went to a [01:17:45] protest, it was a climate activist March I one there in September. And I was so scared because I didn't want to come off like a gotcha for them, you know? Like we've all seen the p the pieces where I didn't wanna make them seem like they were fools. Um, [01:18:00] because I don't think that they are, I actually think that they're victims.
[01:18:02] Lucy: You know, these a, these activists. So I just came at a iPad and had all these different facts that we've kind of talked about, like disaster dust being down, hurricanes not going up. There's other ones like heatwaves that have been worse in the past, whatever. And so I just would say to them, Hey guys, like I [01:18:15] used to have climate act.
[01:18:15] Lucy: I'm, I'm a climate activist. I used to have climate anxiety. I've healed it. Can I show you some of the charts that helped my climate anxiety? And I think just kind of going from it, from that perspective, people were really perceptive. Some more than others. I found the people that were sort of like [01:18:30] the happy go lucky, like part of their environmental club in college and um, just kind of there, there was one group of like four kids, two guys and two girls, and they were so sweet and they were like, oh my God, like thank you.
[01:18:41] Lucy: Like this is so great. And they were really perceptive to it. And then [01:18:45] there were the more like dug in. Like fracking activists or they have a career of it, or they are not just activists about climate, but they're socialists as well and they think we have to bring down imperialism. And those people were the ones who fought back [01:19:00] more, um, and seemed a little bit more entrenched and were de harder to reach.
[01:19:04] Lucy: But I was very heartened by the people who are sort of your more run of the mill environmental activists. And I think we're just there basically because of fear. They might have seen some of the documentaries that I've seen or you've seen, and [01:19:15] they, um, were like, 'cause I was like, can I help? Can I help you with this?
[01:19:17] Lucy: And they're like, yeah. Like,
[01:19:20] Speaker 3: I'm
[01:19:20] Lucy: so
[01:19:20] Speaker 3: scared. It seems like you got met with the most resistance from the people whose identities were most attached to their [01:19:30] activism and worldview.
[01:19:32] Lucy: Yes, definitely.
[01:19:33] Speaker 3: And that's not at all surprising to anyone who's familiar with my approach to understanding, um, these types of issues.
[01:19:40] Speaker 3: But I, I'm curious, um, I mean, I'm thinking about. [01:19:45] I guess a couple of things here. So, so one is how we sometimes choose to adopt worldviews, beliefs, social circles, ways of life that [01:20:00] match something deeper within. And so I explained how, for me, uh, some of the stress and trauma of my childhood. Made me a very easy target for any [01:20:15] messaging that, you know, the world is about to end and everyone who's not alarmed is stupid.
[01:20:23] Speaker 3: Hmm. Like I was very receptive to that message.
[01:20:25] Stephanie: Yeah. '
[01:20:26] Speaker 3: cause of who I was at that time and what I'd been through. [01:20:30] And when you describe your more optimistic temperament, I don't know anything about your past, but my first guess is, oh, she was raised well, she comes from a happy family,
[01:20:38] Stephanie: you know,
[01:20:39] Speaker 3: and so, uh, given the nature of the work I do, I, I coach parents of young adults with mental [01:20:45] health problems.
[01:20:45] Speaker 3: And, um, and I look at the trifecta of social contagion, including the cluster B piece, which has a lot to do with identity. So this whole identity politics thing, and I'm thinking about, you know, if the information that you were [01:21:00] sharing. Was truly convincing. And, and it might not be convincing to a listener right now because, you know, you didn't come here with a PowerPoint.
[01:21:08] Speaker 3: You just came to have a conversation and there were moments that you said, you know, I would, I would look to this book to answer that question. It's it's [01:21:15] not, you know. But if, if you were giving the most convincing talk of your life and you had your PowerPoint with your references and your charts and graphs and things like that, there would still be people who would defend to the death.
[01:21:29] Speaker 3: Um, a [01:21:30] stance antithetical to yours, even if they hadn't researched it as well, right. Because of how central those beliefs are to their identity and worldview and to the sort of relational structures that sets up between them and the rest of the world. Whether it's, I am the [01:21:45] self-sacrificing martyr and the rest of the world, um, is, is selfish and dumb, you know, whatever that kind of underlying structure is.
[01:21:55] Speaker 3: And, and then on the other hand, I'm thinking about the people who, like you said, they're, [01:22:00] they're sincere. They're genuinely looking for help. They're receptive to your ideas. And I'm thinking, um, those who. Maybe are, uh, let's say that their beliefs about environmental devastation are [01:22:15] potentially in the way of something that they want.
[01:22:17] Speaker 3: Like I mentioned, having a family, like someone who maybe wants to have kids but is feeling conflicted because Oh, I've been taught that. Right. You know, humans are such attacks on the environment. So [01:22:30] I'm, I'm just wondering if you've seen those sort of underlying motivations affect the way that people are receptive to this information?
[01:22:37] Lucy: Yeah. I think that there's the dug in people, like you said, who are more difficult to reach. But what I've [01:22:45] noticed, which is surprising is the messages from coworkers or just people in my personal life who are, were never activists, never even cared about the environment or thought about it, but they had a subconscious, loosely held belief that.
[01:22:58] Lucy: The planet was burning. [01:23:00] And so those people are the ones who go, oh, so glad I don't have to worry about that anymore. You know, like they weren't necessarily really worrying about it every day, but kind of just had a little ugh feeling and now it's one less thing to sort of worry about. So I love that. [01:23:15] Or they took a class, they took one class that really stuck with them and then kind of decided to not think about it again.
[01:23:20] Lucy: And those people, I think, are really reachable. And to me it is a psychological thing where I really care about [01:23:30] young people in this prosperous age that we live in, living in reality and understanding the, the, the prosperity that we have is such a gift. And so they should be so grateful. [01:23:45] And I think it, for me, it's sort of this journey from fear ended with the feeling of gratitude because I all of a sudden realized.
[01:23:56] Lucy: I'm so lucky to be born when I was born and it flipped every single [01:24:00] thing on its head. And so the, when I talk about this, that's what I'm trying to help people understand, is that we don't live in these unprecedented, scary times that everyone talks about. The scariest thing [01:24:15] that's going on is our news cycle and our social media feeds.
[01:24:18] Lucy: But if you're able to like disconnect and ground yourself and really look around at the abundance that we have, I mean, it becomes more of like a state of mind. [01:24:30] You know, like you're only as happy as you're gonna let yourself be. 'cause we all have the makings in front of us. I think if you live in the West, and most people who are consuming this content in a level, a certain [01:24:45] level, like of income and everything, like we have the makings to have whatever life that you wanna have.
[01:24:50] Lucy: But the, what's getting in the way right now is a lot of outdated paradigms, uh, and fear-based ones that are holding a lot of people back and climate's, just like one of you [01:25:00] can list off others. You work in psychology, so I'm sure you see it all the time. And so my hope is to just clear up the fear where I can with this one specific issue that I know about.
[01:25:10] Speaker 3: Well, I I appreciate that. And, um, I'm very much [01:25:15] on the side of young people living in reality and I I can, I, I almost, I feel like your work really separates the wheat from the chaff because for some it's not a big leap to [01:25:30] have that light bulb moment of, wow, I am so fortunate. I'm so blessed, I've so much to be thankful for, and.
[01:25:38] Speaker 3: Now I have no excuse for not making the most of the gifts that God gave me and, you [01:25:45] know, working hard and creating more abundance in this life. Whereas I think for others, um, you know, the idea of having that excuse removed is terrifying, right? Because my excuses are [01:26:00] keeping me in a victim mentality, allowing me to blame other people.
[01:26:05] Speaker 3: And I, I also pray for the liberation of those young people who were held back by, uh, beliefs that are not based in [01:26:15] reality and want the right help and the right guidance for them. That, you know, even if some part of your identity is attached to things that. Aren't serving you. And even if you're [01:26:30] getting some kind of emotional satisfaction out of feeling like you're morally or intellectually superior to others who you don't agree with, um, still there's, there's so.
[01:26:42] Speaker 3: Much more on the other side of [01:26:45] that, that missing piece of humility, right. That, oh, I was, I was wrong and actually I'm not a victim and there's nothing in my way and I have a lot to be grateful for, and now I just better like work hard with what I've been given. Oh, okay. Like that can feel really [01:27:00] scary, but there's still so much good on the other side of it.
[01:27:02] Speaker 3: Whereas I see every day just the consequences downstream of not letting oneself go through that sort of ego death of sorts.
[01:27:09] Lucy: Oh my gosh. It's so true. It's so true. And I hope, yeah, I'm working on a book proposal right [01:27:15] now, so I'm hoping that if I can get that into people's hands, it could be just a little, you could start prescribing it to your climate anxiety kids.
[01:27:23] Speaker 3: Um, what's your, what's your book about?
[01:27:26] Lucy: It's about basically like the facts to help like, um, [01:27:30] calm climate anxiety essentially. So it's in the works, it's not nothing, but, you know, manifesting that, um, because I just think, yeah, I wanna get this. Narrative out there. It's not really just about like, oh, don't fear climate change.
[01:27:43] Lucy: But it's also like, wow, look at the [01:27:45] civilization that we have built. There is so much to be grateful for. Like you said, it's yours for the taking this life and, and, and so many people are caught in this fear and victim mindset. So that is like kind of the crux of it is getting people to see all the gifts that we really do have.[01:28:00]
[01:28:01] Speaker 3: And the decisions that we make in our youth about how to view the world and our place in it, they're really consequential in ways that you can barely grasp in your twenties. You know, a, as I mentioned earlier, they affect your decision to have a family. Yeah. And, [01:28:15] and even whether you're looking for a partner to have a family with or not is going to have a huge impact on your relational health.
[01:28:23] Speaker 3: Um, they affect things like saving money for the future, because if you think that humanity has 10 years left on this planet, what's the point of a [01:28:30] savings account? Um, you know, they affect how you treat your health. They affect the dietary choices that you make. For, for, I mean, for many years I was malnourished because I thought that, um, eating animal products was a burden on the [01:28:45] planet.
[01:28:45] Stephanie: Um,
[01:28:45] Lucy: and that doesn't help your mental health either. No, absolutely not. The no animal
[01:28:48] Speaker 3: products is not good for your brain. Oh, I absolutely agree.
[01:28:53] Lucy: Yeah.
[01:28:54] Speaker 3: So, um, yeah, I mean, these things are. The, the beliefs that you adopt, [01:29:00] especially in your twenties, they really matter. They're super consequential. So Lucy, thank you so much for the work.
[01:29:05] Speaker 3: Yeah. You're doing, reaching out to young people and telling them that, that things are brighter than they appear.
[01:29:11] Lucy: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you. [01:29:15]
[01:29:15] Speaker 3: And so where can people find you?
[01:29:17] Lucy: So you can find me at Lucy Biggers, which is my Instagram, and then I'm on Twitter.
[01:29:21] Lucy: I'm at LL Biggers, and then I'm on Substack. Everything is just Lucy Biggers. I also work at the Free Press, which is awesome news [01:29:30] organization. I sometimes publish stuff there or like collaborate with them. Um, but if you were looking for just more journalism that is open to these kind of ideas, the free press is awesome.
[01:29:40] Lucy: So definitely check it out the fp.com.
[01:29:42] Speaker 3: Okay, great. And I'll share all those links in the show notes. [01:29:45] Thanks again for joining me.
[01:29:46] Lucy: Of course,
[01:29:46] Speaker 3: thank you. Thank you for listening to you Must Be Some kind of Therapist. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly take a moment to rate, review, share, or comment on it using your [01:30:00] platform of choice.
[01:30:01] Speaker 3: And of course, please remember, podcasts are not therapy and I'm not your therapist. Special thanks to Joey Rero for this awesome theme song, half Awake and to Pods by Nick for production. [01:30:15] For help navigating the impact of the gender craze on your family, be sure to check out my program for parents, ROGD Repair.
[01:30:25] Speaker 3: Any resource you heard mentioned on this show plus how to get in touch with me [01:30:30] can all be found in the notes and links below Rain or shine. I hope you will step outside to breathe the air today in the words of Max Airman. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, [01:30:45] it is still a beautiful [01:31:00] [01:31:15] world.