Does it feel vindicating or validating at all to see the momentum these conversations are having right now?

No, it does not feel that way. That’s in part because I’ve done enough work with my own ego in this space that I don’t need other people to lose in order for—I don’t feel vindication. I just feel like time is so short and we must do what feels impossible, and now is the time.

There’s so much combative behavior in this space that is essentially just a form of coded male power-brokering. And I don’t want to have anything to do with it. It’s all about the careers and power and currency of certain individuals. It’s not about growing social movements.

What sort of alternative to that would you envision?

I think the alternative is a movement that’s not gate-kept by white men. I think the alternative is a movement that is for big, open, broad cultural transformation with every kind of creative and public field. We need artists, and we need physicians, and we need engineers, and we need architects. We need everyone onboarded. We do not need to have climate leadership gatekept by only scientific expertise. This is not an issue of science anymore. This is about what kind of species are we as human beings on this planet, and what really matters to each of us, and how we treat each other, and what kind of ancestors we are going to be.

When you say it’s not an issue of science, do you mean the science is settled and we’re wasting time trying to convince people who aren’t convincible? Or do you mean that advocacy has been too limited by focusing juston science?

The latter. I think that the advocacy has been focused on “communicating the science,” and that has set up this false conflict between scientists and other purported experts in this field. Like the people that the House Committee on Science and Technology, when it was chaired by Republicans, would have come in to talk about the “other side” of the debate. This continued engagement in the false dichotomy, the both-siderism with scientists on one side—we’ve got to find a way to transcend that and get away from that. It’s bankrupt. And it continues to elevate individual scientists as if individuals are the ones defending this field.

The public narrative about science is that there’s some brilliant jerk alone in a lab making discoveries, and he’s the one who knows the Truth, capital T, and we have to listen to him. Where, actually, science is thousands of institutions around the world, billions of dollars, technology, instrumentation at the top of the atmosphere and the bottom of the ocean, a workforce that’s been trained through decades, educational systems. Science is so much more than this lone-wolf broker of knowledge that we use to prop up the solidity of these ideas. So we’ve got to find a way to get away from that narrative because it’s toxic.

How do you feel about the future prospects of this movement shift, or narrative shift?

I think there’s a lot of work to be done. And we are just beginning to grapple and understand. Because it’s not just about changing the weather: It’s about changing who we are as people. I think our stories have to change. Our values, our morals are gonna change. It’s a transformational time. The narrative of this being a crisis—I wish it was a crisis, because if it was a crisis there would be an end. We would go through it and we would be on the other side. But this is not a crisis. This is a mutation.

To me, this youth-led movement and moment seems like a new phase of climate justice activism. Would you agree? And why has it been so galvanizing?

I would agree that this is a historic moment in the scale and nature of climate activism. And it’s not just a youth movement—it’s a movement of girls. There’s definitely a gendered lens that’s happening right now. Why is it getting the attention and the permission that it’s getting? There are a few things going on. For one, these young women have exceptional moral clarity. They are unencumbered by what we deem to be political realities, and they are only negotiating around what is actual realityreality. So their lens on this problem is unencumbered by the bullshit that adults bring to it.

But I think that there’s another lens on this, which is: Because we live in this patriarchal misogynistic police state, you might ask the question, why does the culture afford so much moral and social attention on girls, whereas women who want to lead in public in positions of power are dismissed and degraded and eroded? And I think that is the more important question here, possibly. Why does it take girls to do this when there have been women standing on the sidelines for decades saying, “Listen to us, this is what we need, this is what we want out of leadership.”

So I think that child-led activism can sort of move around that misogynistic police state. Because we view the actions and the voices of children as sort of morally neutral. Like, “Oh isn’t that nice, look how cute they are.” And it is demeaning and disrespectful, but it’s sort of treated as, “Oh, what a quaint novelty, these children are angry.” So I think there’s a lot to be said there about how our culture operates—and how our culture functions to effectively erase lots of voices from the table that should have been centered on for quite a long time.

Do you feel like this is the start of anything different? A turning point?

I think this is a massive turning point. It is deeply nourishing and exciting for me. And I think those of us that have been in this movement for a while—we need to make space and onboard people, and be really welcoming and graceful and open and ready to support other forms of leadership in this space, and not act like the toxic gatekeepers that kept usout of positions of attention and power for the last decade.

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