Personal Journey in Climate Reporting

I think my story of how I became an extremely biased climate

reporter is so relevant to

our era that we live in because what happened to me, I think, has now

happened to so many people in other areas of their life, where

essentially they're giving up their discernment and

agency and understanding of what is true

for the, for a cause. And so I see this a lot in the political

left, which is what I was when I was in the climate movement.

So for background,

I joined a news company called NowThis News in

2015, end of 2015, fall of 2015, about

this time in 2015. I was 25 years old.

And immediately when I got into this newsroom, I was with all these

young people who were around my age or younger, and they were

all very, like, Tumblr generation,

uh, politically. So they were Bernie Sanders supporters who also

believed in

cultural Marxism, which is the idea that the world is divided into oppress-

oppressed and oppressors. And if you're an oppressor, basically, like,

you

need to sit down, listen, give the floor to other people because

you cannot be trusted to be, like, a purveyor of truth and, like, you are

inherently racist, sexist, um, misogynist,

all the things, all the things you don't wanna be.

You are those things because you are an op- in the

oppressor class. So when I joined this newsroom, I

was just so excited to be there. I had come from a local news job in

Mississippi

where I had been, like, one of the only young people.

And so I was so excited with my new peer group, and I thought everyone was so cool,

and they brought with them this ideology, and I just

ceded my judgment to the group. I was like, "These people

are smarter than me.

They're saying white people are racist.

They're saying all men are, like, sexist," and there would be, like,

viral stories

that would come out at the time that would, like, reiterate this belief.

And so I was like, "I guess I don't know anything."

And so that becam- began a deconstruction of my identity

and my

belief system, which had b- originally had been very much more like,

I don't know, I'm a 1995 D- Democrat.

Like, you know, safety and capitalism is great, and America is

exceptional, but like yeah, we should have, like, rational immigration

and, like, not all men are assholes.

Like, I was, like, basically a normal, like, left of center person.

But what happened with this oppressor versus oppressed mindset

is it deconstructed

my identity, and I ceded all of my

discernment to the group. And so when the group didn't like something,

I didn't

like something because in my mind, I said, "Well, what do I know?

I'm just a stupid white girl," right?

And that translates into the climate stuff because it was the same thing.

There were of the oppressed class, which would be like indigenous groups or

other activists of, like, POC identities were saying, "This

is the way it is."

And you know, you know, all fossil fuels companies are evil.

This is capitalism's fault. This is the West's fault.

And because I had been deconstructed, I'd say, "Okay, I cede to you that your

truth is the truth, and I don't know what I'm talking about,

and I'm gonna stop to

stand for three minutes."