← The Origins Foundation Podcast
The Origins Foundation Podcast
Episode 635 - Lucy Biggers || Lucy Biggers’ Journey to Realism
00:47:29
Lucy Biggers, a climate activist turned realist and in so doing is an example we want to show people of someone deeply committed to her beliefs and the psychology of how she changed her mind and became a “realist” on climate.
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- [00:00]
A
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- [00:31]
B
Lucy Biggers is a climate realist. She used to be a climate activist and in the course of research, in the course of asking questions, she realized that she actually had it all wrong, that she became a climate realist. Her example is one that we encounter every single day in that sustainable use hunting space. Oh, I didn't understand. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, why hasn't anybody said that before? Well, I wanted to have Lucy on here. We rabbit hole into a little bit of climate stuff a couple of times in the podcast, but what I really wanted to dig into her about is the psychology of what caused her to change. And so it's a quick podcast, 40 minutes, and I think you'll take away some psychology tidbits that will help you become more confident in talking about a subject that you are passionate about, in expressing your opinion, in putting facts out there. So enjoy this podcast with Lucy. She's a wealth of information when it comes to the climate side of things, and I think you'd enjoy understanding her psychology of change. So enjoy. So five years ago, there was a reason why I started this movement. And the truth then was, is the truth now that we need to champion our narrative. We need to champion the truth around what we do and who we are. There's a sweet spot with a gun, you know, too heavy and it's a burden to walk with. Too light and you whipping it. Why is the project so important to the hunting community? It's. It's a. I think it's not only important, I think it's. I think it's vital. I think it's. It's just in time. It's like snakes and ladders. You guys are climbing the ladder and then somebody does something stupid and you just slide down. That is such an amazing analogy. Snakes and ladders. Yeah. You know, ivory, in my opinion, was the plastic of its age. Okay.
- [02:31]
C
The expenses are going up. It goes a long way with families. We have families that do need it.
- [02:36]
B
Let me close this door because I have a little wiener dog. What are you laughing because I said wiener?
- [02:42]
C
I'm really glad you finished the sentence out.
- [02:45]
B
I'm sorry.
- [02:46]
C
The first half we doing here today,
- [02:49]
B
you're telling the whole world. I don't even know how you know. It's a strange world that we live in today. I don't even know how I came across you. Maybe I got tagged into one of your posts. We get tagged into a lot of posts, but, oh, I know what it is. It was obviously, I live. You might not have done any Google stalking of us or me or whatever we do. So if you didn't and you said, yes, thank you, I appreciate that.
- [03:33]
C
I did not do any stalking. I did not. I just said, okay, sounds good.
- [03:36]
B
Good. No, but we live in the world of. I run a nonprofit, and the nonprofit is simply to convey the truth about sustainable use of wildlife all over the world. That's what I reached out to you. I said, this is who we are. That's what we do. Love to have a conversation with you. And the reason I wanted to have a conversation with you is because in our field, in the work that I do, I hear all the time the response, I had no idea. I didn't understand that. Why did they say this? Why didn't they let us know about that crocodile that is strung up? That's a disgusting image. Why didn't they tell us that that had actually killed and eaten 15 people? I said, well, because they didn't want you to know that side of the equation. Okay. And so obviously your story is very much similar, not in the hunting, sustainable use space, but very much of the. I believe this. And then people gave me some information that I then took a step back, looked at it, digested it, and said, oh, I might be wrong. Lucy Biggers, welcome to the Origins foundation podcast. I'm so excited for this. I have stalked you on Inspect to see. See what you know, what you say and how you say. And I love what you do, really do.
- [05:03]
C
Thank you so much. Yeah, it's so crazy. The way I've been saying it recently is like common knowledge. You know, the sort of beliefs that you don't question a lot of times are really wrong. It sounds like with hunting and the connection between conservation and hunting, there is a real reason there. But if you're just the average Joe who doesn't know anything about it, the way the media discusses it's going to be really wrong. And obviously with climate change in our information system, the common knowledge around climate change, that it's dangerous, that we even have that much of an impact on it, and that solar and wind can somehow save us are all basically dead wrong. And so I feel like I'm a bridge between the more online younger generation who's consuming their news in short form video, and the climate realist group of scientists who have been marching on this beat, I guess for decades. But they have been censored, maligned, ostracized, kicked out of their jobs. And only in the last few years, with Elon Musk buying Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg kind of taking the censorship off of this topic, has it opened up. It's like Trump 2.0. We can kind of talk about this stuff now. And so I'm helping kind of just get that information that's been out there. And like you said, people who say I didn't know getting it to become more mainstream is my goal, so.
- [06:26]
B
But you started in the opposite camp. It is 2026 and my friends, big changes have happened in the world of firearm suppressors. The $200 tax stamp fee is now gone. Huge win for hunters, huge win for shooters, and a huge win for your wallets. If you're thinking about elevating your shooting experience and adding a suppressor, Silence Essential is the best way to shop. And you don't even have to get off your couch to do it. Go to silenceessential.com, browse hundreds of suppressor options. They literally have all of the popular makes and models. Then their experts will walk you through setting up your account, creating a free NFA trust, and then submitting your application to the atf. Once approved, Silence Essential ships your new suppressor directly to your door. That's when you're going to have to essentially get off the couch. It's a game changer, guys. You haven't done it yet. Do it. The old days of waiting eight to 10 months on a suppressor are gone. It's more like two weeks. Some have even gotten their suppressors in shorter time frames. It's never been easier to start shooting suppressed. Get started today by visiting silencer central.com it's really the simplest way to get your suppressors. Bushnell is eager to help you get set up for conservation success. That's right. They want to help you. The conservation and research community is dominated by good people doing good things and investing significant time and effort for the benefit of habitat and the species. So what do you need to do? Pretty simple. Send us your conservation story and or your conservation wishes. Could be managing whitetails, could be understanding your environment or species or something else related to conservation. What would you be able to do if you had a great trail camera setup? We will select the best story every other month and send you a camera bundle. Cell camera, normal SD camera, SD cards as well as optics. Everything you need to get set up for success. I can't wait to see what you submit. You can email us, DM us, message us, whatever you want. We are not hard to find. Good luck.
- [08:38]
C
Why?
- [08:39]
B
So tell me about that. How did you start an opposite camp? And maybe before we get into. Because I really want to dig into your thoughts about obviously hunting and sustainable use for wildlife. What? What, what? Why did you start there and what made you change?
- [08:55]
C
Yeah, I started there because I was in my 20s and I wanted to do good in the world and I saw this cause of climate change. I watched a few documentaries like Leonardo DiCaprio's film Before the Flood, some Josh Fox films which now I understand were extremely biased and they were looking at some of the most extreme projections on climate and sort of selling it.
- [09:17]
B
These were big documentaries at the time.
- [09:18]
C
Yeah, yeah. Documentary of like the 2000 teens. And I was working in a newsroom that was just very left wing, very young.
- [09:25]
B
And your background is in journalism?
- [09:28]
C
Yeah, so I've always worked in the news in some capacity. I think of myself as more video producer than. I didn't study journalism. I've. I do journalism occasionally but more of my stuff is video production, video editing. Now I head up social media. So. And then I was a climate influencer and now I'm kind of like a climate anti climate influencer. So I've built up my own platforms. But. But when I was in my 20s, I was just sort of your typical bleeding heart liberal who wanted to help and save the planet. And I watched a few very biased documentaries and there was sort of this psychological part of me that wanted to do good and be part of a group and that's where I found belonging. And it seemed it was a very underreported story in the 2015 era. We weren't really talking about it and or not we. But like the mainstream media wasn't dedicating time to it and so I was like, oh my gosh.
- [10:22]
B
That you thought you believed in that you believed in it. Nobody's talking about this. I needed that.
- [10:28]
C
Yeah, exactly. And so there was like a Dakota Access Pipeline protest that I covered and I helped make that go viral. Then I did a lot of stuff on plastics and how plastics are bad. I've interviewed Greta Thunberg, I've interviewed aoc, I did videos in the Green, New Deal, Plastic, Straw bans, basically any of the sort of 20 teen environmental topics. I had my hand in spreading that. And then I would say the dual experience of going through Covid and seeing how the climate. What's the word? Carbon footprint, I should say, of carbon emissions of the globe. Even when the whole world was shut down at the peak, maybe you could say In March of 2020, carbon emissions went down by 20%. But then like, like for that year it was like 5%. And so I started to be like, wait a minute, we're supposed to be at zero.
- [11:18]
B
That. Who presented that data to you? Like, how did you find that data?
- [11:22]
C
Just, I just saw that because I was like researching it, I think for like a video. Like, I just like saw, saw it. Like, like, obviously if we're all staying home, I knew the carbon emissions were gonna have gone down.
- [11:31]
B
Okay.
- [11:31]
C
So I just like remember researching it and realizing like, okay, the entire world was shut down. We weren't allowed to leave our homes and we only did a 20% reduction. How are we gonna do a hundred percent reduction by 2050? What would that require? And I just was like, wait a minute, I don't really wanna live in a world with like COVID lockdowns forever. Like, how are we gonna get there? And so I kind of just stopped posting.
- [11:53]
B
Do you think that you. I'm just trying to get to the. I apologize, not interrupt you all the time.
- [11:59]
C
I don't.
- [12:00]
B
I'm trying to get to the psychology of this because it pertains to what I'm interested in. Yeah. Was the psychology. Were you. Do you think that you were open minded to receiving new information in that Covid period as you were doing research? So somebody could have done the research and come across this statistic and go, yeah, that's right, that's fine. And just gloss by it. What made it. Were you again, were you open minded to like.
- [12:29]
C
Well, I think that the climate, the carbon emissions reductions of the COVID were not like a charged issue. It was just a fact. Like our emissions went down for like at the peak 17%. And then for that year it was like 5%. And I did a video about like, is working from home better for the environment or not? Like, whatever. So like, it's not like I came across that topic trying to like expand my mind. It just was like a fact. But then my mind was sort of thinking like, wait a minute, like if you take this to geological conclusion. Like the climate movement wants us to get to a hundred percent reduction. So like I just, it was just something that sort of planted itself.
- [13:02]
B
Was it a definitive fact that that's what led you down that road? There was no real, like, you can't question this. This is, this is a fact. Fact, like dare I say fact fact?
- [13:13]
C
No, because I don't think it was like a necessary, that fact wasn't like a climate realist fact. Like no one was saying what is the climate? When I do. Like, it was just a fact that only the emissions had gone down just a small amount. And so like, yeah, but I was
- [13:27]
B
just fact that challenged your position at the time and it was so definitive that it, it stopped you in your tracks and went, wow. Like, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm wanting to do this.
- [13:41]
C
Yeah, I think I was just primed for it. I think I was ready for it because I think even at that time I was seeing like I had pushed plastic straw bands and I was like, wait a minute now everyone' using metal straws and these mushy paper straws. And it's sort of like this like path of unseen consequences where you're not thinking about what the reality is of these policies. And so I had a lot of those, like the, like just even those examples, like there were many, many more. And I think it was just sort of building up over time where like if you were to at my public Persona started to feel different from my internal belief system. Like over those, like end of 2019 into Covid, into 2021, I started to just sort of be like, oh, I think there's kind of a lot of BS in this movement. But I'm not gonna go, I'm not gonna be content about it. I'm still gonna push the party line because like, to go against it then it's like you're a skeptic, you're a denier. Like, and another thing, actually you'll like this because I always felt that the push for plant based meats in the vilification of cows was a huge red flag for me where I was like, this makes no sense. Like, why? Because I was like, so we're gonna vilify animals that have been here forever and replace them with factories. Like, obviously a factory is gonna have more of a carbon footprint than a cow. And so that was another one where I, I, I remember even pitching, I wanna do a story on like regenerative ag and grazing cattle. And I was like, well, you Know, like, meat actually can be good for the climate. And my senior producer was like, yeah, but that's not what everybody's saying. So like, why are you saying that? And I was like, oh, I don't know. And again, I wasn't. I'm younger, I'm in my 20s. I mean, I was in my late 20s at that point. But like, it's also like, you have to be very confident in yourself, inside of yourself to go against groupthink. And I was not confident enough. So even if I would have these moments of like, this doesn't make sense or I'm gonna question this, or I kind of wanna follow my curiosity about this, the group think was so overpowering that like, you know that statement from my, my producer saying, like, well, everyone's saying it's the other. It's the opposite of what you're saying. I didn't in that meeting go, well, I have these facts and I've learned this. And the other thing, I was like, oh, okay, like maybe I'm wrong, right? So I left. And then, so that was like, while I was still at my climate activism role, which was like 2015 to 2021, I was at this company called now this. And so that was like when I was publicly climate activist. Then I had a year where I was at a nonprofit in 2022 and I was behind the scenes. And so then I stopped posting because I was questioning. And then I, in 2022, I stopped posting and I had a behind the scenes role and I had my first son. And then I was like, okay, I'm. I'm behind the scenes. Like, that was another era of my life. I'm just going to be a producer and I like it for this, that the other reason I'm never going to like post about my new opinions. Then I went to the Free Press, which is now I've been there for three years, and I again got hired to run social media behind the scenes role, which I still have today. And I just kept researching and kept learning. And Even back in 2021, when I was questioning, I read like Michael Shellenberger's book Apocalypse Never, which is sort of a go to for people questioning this narrative. Also, Steve Kudin's book Unsettled came out in 2022, which is a huge one, which talks about what we just don't know. And then finally this past year at the Free Press, and I think the Free Press played a huge role for me because if you are familiar with the brand of the Free Press at
- [17:03]
B
all, no, I'm not. What is that?
- [17:04]
C
Oh, you're not.
- [17:05]
B
Is it just a. Is it a distribution platform?
- [17:07]
C
It's a news. It's a newspaper. It's a. It's a news company.
- [17:10]
B
Okay?
- [17:11]
C
So it's sort of an. It's like a. It's a. We publish articles and we have 2 million subscribers. We're the biggest publisher on Substack.
- [17:19]
B
Okay.
- [17:20]
C
And our founder, Bari Weiss, comes from the left. She now runs cbs. So maybe you know about her because she's like, made a lot of headlines, but she comes from the left and left New York Times. She kind of got pushed out and, like, ostracized. And she was like, y' all have lost the plot. Like, I'm a leftist and you guys are now saying I'm a Nazi because I'm not going along with the party line. So she founded the Free Press to be like, we need to bring common sense back to the news. Like, the news is way too ideological. So she founded the Free Press. So I've been at the Free Press for three years, which was such a great incubator for me because I was all of a sudden around these press, brilliant thinkers and writers who are all, you know, aligned with the basic principles of the U.S. freedom of expression, freedom of the press. Like, not ideologues, but just common sense, smart people. So that experience kind of allowed me time to kind of build up myself and shore up my sense of self. And so then this past spring, my younger son turned one and I kind of had this moment where I was coming out of this baby making era and I looked at around and I'm like, okay, I have a crossroads here where I don't want to be on my deathbed one day looking back at my life and saying, I didn't make content because I was afraid. And so in the spring is when I started making my videos, which many of them have gone very viral, which is probably how you found me and how we got connected and are having this conversation. But I sort of came out of the ideological closet. I crossed the Rubicon as a climate skeptic and realist and the rest is history. We're here now talking.
- [18:50]
B
So again, do you think that. I know, obviously timing is everything. Do you feel like, though, maybe today or this spring or whenever you decide to come out again? Did you have better confidence in the facts that you had in comparison to, say, in 2022 when you're like, oh, there's a fact. And then the regenerative, you know, meet space and the Guy at the top says, nope, it's the other way. At that point, you, you know, again, it's all confidence, as you mentioned, it's confident data and saying, no, actually, this is the data. Like, this is the fact that fact, right, that, that fact that carbon emissions dropped. Like, there was no, there was no, like, questioning it. There was no questioning it. It was just a definitiveness. Right,
- [19:48]
C
right, Yeah, I agree 100%. I. The psychology of my story is like half of the battle, because to be someone who is going to go against your former co workers, to go against your former group, you have to be someone who can stand on their own and say, I'm gonna take whatever arrows come my way. And so I did a lot of research and reading of books, even more than I had before, to be like, okay, let me make sure I really have this. All right? So just really immersing myself in the works of Bjorn Lomborg, who's a writer on this. Patrick Moore, who's the former founder Greenpeace, has written on this and had the same evolution. And then I, the more I started to scratch at this surface and read more books, I'm like, oh, there's this huge ecosystem of climate realists out there.
- [20:39]
B
And unfortunately, the guy that ran Greenpeace has come across the divide.
- [20:44]
C
Patrick Moore, he left the Greenpeace in the 80s, but he, he was. Started it. He had a huge, huge evolution. He's amazing. You should look him up. He's amazing. He's in his, like, 70s now, but so there's so many people. Judith Curry is a former, you know, she's a, I can't say off the top of my head, physicist. I don't remember. They're all like, have, like, long titles. Steve Koonin worked for President Obama, and he's a realist. So I just had to really be like, okay, I trust these people and I'm gonna get my information from them. And then now, now that I've been doing it for six months, I've gotten even more confident because, like, I know the talking points and I know and every time there's a question, if I don't know the question answer, I will go and look it up and research it and then I'll understand and I'll make a video about that. So it's kind of snowballed, you could say, as I've gotten more confident and just like, the support of my company has been awesome because they, they love it. They're like, wow, this is great that you are feeling comfortable to speak out and I also speak out a lot in defense of fossil fuels, which I think are very unfairly maligned. And I, I am a big critic of solar and wind. I like, don't I kind of toe the line for a while where I'm like, oh, they're fine, like energy mix. Now I'm like, they suck. Like, if you want to put a solar panel on your roof, by all means. But I don't, I don't like those renewable energies because they're not 24, 7 baseload. And so you have to build out the grid to support the fickleness of wind in solar. And so it's so expensive and it's so much upkeep. And then we haven't even thought about this generation. The first generation of solar and wind are about to retire in the next decade or so. It's going to be a huge waste issue. So. Yeah.
- [22:31]
B
So Lucy, switching gears, when I reached out to you and said, look, I'm, I live in the hunting space, I live in a sustainable use space, what did you think? Is this something that you are for? Are you against it?
- [22:51]
C
I'm for it because I know that there's a few, my understanding is sort of surface level, but I know that there's what hunting. A lot of regions like the hunting programs and stuff, they can fund conservation and land conservation. So I feel like that's really positive. And then also predators aren't good and we don't want, you know, not that you're going to be hunting, but we
- [23:16]
B
don't want like a mammoth.
- [23:17]
C
Yeah, we don't want like wolves like attacking cattle, you know. And I know there's been a lot of these like well meaning, like Colorado bills. Well meaning, or you could say ignorant, where they're like reintroduce the wolf. And then people are like, they're attacking my cattle. And you're just like, oh God, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but literally stupid.
- [23:34]
B
Yeah. We're currently doing a documentary in Colorado called Wolves in Denver. A play on words on the, the, the general urban public that voted for wolves to be reintroduced into Colorado, in which the vast majority of counties, I think it was like 48 out of 52 counties voted no for the reintroduction. Three counties that are the urban metropolitan centers of Colorado voted yes.
- [24:01]
C
And that was enough to take if
- [24:04]
B
they lost by 40,000 votes in 2020 was.1%. It was 0.1% level.
- [24:10]
C
Wow.
- [24:11]
B
So anyway, the, the ballot box biology of the public saying we know how to manage Wildlife, we know how to manage the system versus the professionals that are hired by your local, state and game and fish agency is something that we obviously talk a lot about. Yeah, it's interesting. It's an interesting comparison the climate to what we do at Sustainable Use. Because I think that there's a lot of things that people just again, the media machine will create a narrative that is this right? Hunting is bad. How can hunting, killing animals be good for animals, man? That's. It's a tough paradox to swallow. Right. Like, how can that be like you kill to save. That makes no sense. At the end of the day, it works.
- [25:07]
C
And yeah, there's a black and white thinking.
- [25:11]
B
Yeah. And that's facts. And that's why I was like really super intrigued about the psychology of what you were, how you came to where you came to. Because I know a lot of people listen to, listen to our podcast that are non hunters and you know, you've been through that. I, I guess maybe I wanted to tap into your brain a little bit and ask, you know, what would you do? What would you do? Like, we live in this space. We live in the sustainable you space. We live in this wildlife conservation space. There's a lot of, it's almost identical to your space. You have some very, very loud voices.
- [25:51]
C
Yeah. That it's really hard.
- [25:54]
B
Speak various truths. Right. Well, truths in their mind, untruths in ours.
- [26:03]
C
Yeah. I can't even tell you how frustrating it is. And I think the psychology is so subconscious because there's a story that you're told where you have to buy this party line of climate change or else you're a denier. So you're don't believe in science or you're a bad person. You don't care about your grandchildren's future. Right. And so it's like this idea of. And a lot of people are not conscious enough to question it. Why they have a lot going on. They're trying to put food on the table and they're living their lives or they just don't care. But they identify as well, I'm a good person and I believe in science, so I'm gonna obviously believe in climate change narrative without questioning it. And you know, solar and wind, like those are the ways of the future. If you don't like solar and wind, why are you against progress? And so I think there's a lot of similarities, it sounds like with you too, where it's just easy messaging that has sort of, to an unthinking masses made common knowledge that ultimately is wrong and then it's damaging. And the thing that I'm thinking about a lot now is we passed a lot of these feel good climate policies back in 2020, wherever. And a lot of them are coming into like, it's like by 2024, lower your emissions by 40%. And I know Colorado has a big one where they have, you have to lower the emissions by heating by 40%, by 2030 or something, whatever it is. And so now everyone's bills are going up to pay for the electrification of heat, which is a horrible thing cause it's going to overburden the grid. Colorado still has really hard winters. And so it ends up having really tangible impacts that are very negative. It's not just like in the ivory tower discussing these ideas. It's real world people's lives are being damaged. And specifically working class poor people, fixed income people who a change, a $7 increase on your meter is life changing in how much you can afford. And then you take it out a step further on the global stage, the World bank and World Economic Forum and they've just thankfully reversed this in the past few years basically because of Trump. And just common sense is kind of creeping back in, which is good. The tide has slightly turned. But we used to not the World bank used to not fund oil and gas projects in developing countries because of the climate. So we in the west who still get 80% of our energy from oil and gas, we know and coal, it's the most reliable form of energy that the cheapest. It's the easiest to get online compared to these other crazy forms. We were not funding those projects. So you could argue we're keeping millions of people in Africa in poverty by villainizing these reliable fuels. And so it becomes not just like the USA American privileged university class discussing this. It's real world negative impacts. And I feel like over these last few months I've become more confident in saying it's not just like climate change isn't catastrophic, it's that the climate movement is damaging.
- [29:08]
B
Well, I think that's the key. I think you just, you just nailed two sort of keys. If, if you have to sort of translate this to somebody who's listening to this to say, well, what can I do? Regardless of topic, obviously they are listening to this because they have an interest in sustainable use, in hunting, in wildlife conservation. They may have a very strong interest in climate change as well. I heard two things come from you. The first one was it's okay to question, it's okay to ask questions. Something's happening. You're like, well, why do you believe that? If you live on the other side, why do you believe that? Secondly, though, I think more importantly, is. Is almost a re. It's almost like reverse psychology. It's a reversing of the script, which is. Okay, let's assume you're right here is what's going to happen because of what you want or you think or the way that you suggest, like in our space, you want to. The biggest one in our space is to ban the activity of hunting. Get rid of is not necessary. You don't need to do it. You don't need to kill animals. You don't need to do all these things. Well, what's the most fundamental thing that animals and wildlife need in this world to survive? The number one fundamental thing. It's the habitat. It's the place they live. Without it, you have nothing.
- [30:45]
C
Yeah.
- [30:46]
B
No wildlife. So wouldn't that be if we all were on the same team? Wouldn't we all agree that's the thing we should be protecting the most?
- [30:56]
C
Yes.
- [30:57]
B
And everybody would say, yes. But then you say, oh, but did you know that hunting protects 1.5 million square kilometers of habitat in Africa?
- [31:09]
C
Right, Right.
- [31:11]
B
Double the area and footprint that national parks protect. And most of those national parks aren't even fiscally solvent enough to stay alive without philanthropic funding. So now you're saying get rid of this other activity that is protecting double the amount of habitat that you just agreed with me as the most important thing that we need to do.
- [31:38]
C
Right.
- [31:39]
B
Sounds familiar.
- [31:41]
C
Yeah, it's exactly that. And now I'm thinking back to when I was in my. Now this. When I. My old company's days. I remember the viral images of someone, like, shooting a lion or something like,
- [31:51]
B
yeah, see through the lion. Yep. 2015.
- [31:54]
C
Oh, my God, I remember that so much. That was like the beginning of, like, these viral campaigns.
- [31:59]
B
And I think Jimmy Kimmel picked it up and it went like this. Boom.
- [32:03]
C
I remember that.
- [32:04]
B
And it changed the entire course of hunting, specifically in Africa.
- [32:09]
C
Jimmy Kimmel has done a lot of harm. And so has. So has John Oliver. By the way, John Oliver did an entire segment on 97% of scientists agree climate change is damaging. Da, da, da. And then he, like, got 97 scientists and it was like, so you're gonna believe that 3%, which ironically, the. The 97% of scientists consensus. I don't know, you've probably heard that before. I just did a video on it this morning because it was on top of mind. But that is based off of one study that has been so thoroughly debunked and called out for faulty scientific practices. Because when they were to get the consensus, it didn't matter if you were saying climate change is dangerous or like we have an impact on it. You could have a paper that said CO2 is a greenhouse gas and then it'd be like, you agree climate change is human caused. And so they took, they made a false consensus and there's multiple scientists whose papers got, you know, categorized as the consensus. And they're like, my paper was like criticizing our impact and saying we only have 1% impact on the climate. But then it got tweeted out. President Obama tweeted And he said 97% of climate scientists agree climate change is happening, it's dangerous and it's man made. And you're like, okay, whoa, that is a lot of misinformation. But no one ever calls that out. But it, it, it like became again in our minds this common knowledge thing where it's just taken for granted. And I get comments below my videos that are like, so you're going to listen to one random girl on TikTok and not the 97% of scientists who agree?
- [33:39]
B
Yeah, sure, absolutely. Absolutely. I guess if you had any thoughts to, to someone who's like, man, I want to speak out, I want to champion this cause that I believe in. What would your suggestions be?
- [34:04]
C
I would say try to find community of like minded people. Even if that means messaging someone that you admire. You can always message me. If it's climate change stuff, I will like the answer. You know, reading, read books. I think there's so much that I've gathered from just sitting down with a book on topic.
- [34:24]
B
Do your research.
- [34:25]
C
Yeah, do your research and learn the. Yeah, like really, really learn it. But I really suggest books. I think that even like the Google. Google is so biased in favor of the climate narrative that I have to go and seek out books that present a different point of view. And then if I'm sitting down, no distractions with a book, I find I really ingest that topic better and follow your interest and spark what sparks your interest. And I will say speaking out from an authentic place, that's true. On the other side of taking that risk is just so rewarding because you end up being connected with people who are really amazing and see you for who you are. You're never going to please everyone, but it becomes about who are the people worth pleasing. And I have a lot of people who don't understand me, but I have so Many people who do. And I've got a great network now. And I've also. I mean, my Instagram following is almost double what it was at the peak of my climate activism, ironically.
- [35:25]
B
Do you.
- [35:26]
C
I.
- [35:27]
B
Do you worry about speaking in an echo chamber? Like, you're just speaking to the people who are the same ilk as you and that really, it's not really having an impact?
- [35:39]
C
No, that's so true. And I, I don't know if you saw my video, but I went to a climate march and talked to climate activists and I showed them, like, climate realist graphs where I was like, look at deaths are down, whatever, which was really amazing. I think on X, I'm totally in an echo chamber on X, but I don't care because it's helped me really find other people and I've read their books and I gone to their websites and so that's been very educational for me. And I feel like it's a very supportive little ecosystem. And everyone's like, thank you so much for joining the cause. Because we don't have a lot of former climate activists and young women. It's a lot of, like, older men. And then on Instagram, it's a mix because I think there's a lot of people that I follow who are of my political persuasion because I'm more like center right, center, center right now. And so I have people who talk about geopolitics and they're conservative on some stuff, but they don't know anything about climate. And. But then like, they watch my videos and they're like, oh, my God, this is so great. Like, thank you so much for talking about this topic because I always kind of instinctively knew there was something wrong here, but I didn't have the background to question it. So I think I'm helping inform a lot of people who, maybe they're aligned with me, but they're not like, informed, I guess. And then TikTok, it's a mix because you get. Sometimes you have a video that kind of goes to the wrong side of TikTok, they'll say, and it will go viral for the wrong reasons. But, I mean, I'm definitely in an echo chamber for sure, which is fine for now. Like, I would love to break through even more, but I think as I'm just getting myself my confidence in how I talk about this stuff and becoming better at what I do, I think it's good to have that insulation. I had a lot of people unfollow me when I first went public in the spring Like a lot of my old co workers and people commenting, like, really just sad stuff, like being like they're disappointed in me essentially and unfollowing me, and I was just like, okay, don't let the door hit you on the way out. So I don't get a lot of hate fall. I hate gra. Hate comments. And if I do, I'm kind of just like, why are you so obsessed with me? Like, go make your own video full of facts. Instead of calling me a fossil fuel shill, you can refute what I'm trying to say versus I just get called. They'll say, how much is the fossil fuel industry paying you? Which I will say, psychology again, because it's so interesting, is that when I was just a climate activist pushing the climate movement narrative hook line and singer wholesale, right? Just pushing the generic climate change is a catastrophe stuff and the oil industry is evil without questioning, I never once got called a shill. No one ever asked me how much the climate movement was paying me. And everyone was just like, yeah. And now that I'm pushing the facts and a different side of it and the truth, the amount of disparagement I get in my comments saying that I'm a, you know, people going, don't listen to her. She's. She's paid by the fossil fuel industry or whatever it may be. It's just kind of funny because I'm like, wow, no one ever said that to me when I really was pushing a narrative. And now I just, I publish stuff. The things that I post, I post out of the goodness of my heart and because I think they're for the public good, not because anyone's telling me to. And, but again, I'm. I don't even, not even to say there's anything wrong with the fossil fuel industry because I think that they are very unfairly maligned. But I kind of had to make the conscious choice never to take money from them because then it's too easy to discredit me if I did.
- [39:01]
B
Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
- [39:03]
C
Yeah.
- [39:04]
B
No, you're certainly living in a world that is very similar to our world. I do see the benefits of the echo chamber. I do see the benefits of the echo chamber.
- [39:20]
C
Oh, you broke up again.
- [39:21]
B
Yeah, sorry. I do see the benefits of the echo chamber. I do see, you know, the ability to, to. To. I see. To me, the benefit is that you're a voice and at points you need a voice, at points you just need like, there's a large voice on this side, There has To be a large voice on the other side. And that's the, you know, the position that you're taking. So I love the idea of, again, it's the psychology of it. Like, how do you broadcast message, how do you broadcast facts across to the middle and say, here's what we believe, here's all of our facts. Here's the negative consequences of if you didn't follow through with what we believe in. Now you tell us where, where, where are we wrong? Like what, what facts are wrong? And you know, I know that sometimes, probably more, less than, than often, but you might come across an opportunity. It's like, yeah, hey, that science is actually right. I need to change a little bit. It's like, man, I didn't actually believe, like, so, for instance, I wouldn't say, and I'll say this all the time, hunting is not the panacea, it's not the silver bullet for wildlife conservation. It isn't. Is it a great tool that we have? Absolutely. We have a very, very limited toolbox when it comes to wildlife conservation as well. There's like seven tools, one of which is hunting. So why would you get rid of a tool that is in a toolbox that you only have seven of them, but in places in this world, does it work? No, it absolutely doesn't. And it should never be used in those places because there's other tools that are better for it.
- [41:22]
C
Right.
- [41:23]
B
And that's okay.
- [41:25]
C
Yeah, yeah. I think that that is so true. And I think the way that I think about stuff, because sometimes you'll be like, people will say to me, oh, well, now you're just black and white thinking by the opposite side because I'll make a video being like, I love fossil fuels, you know, and like, I know when I say that it's going to upset people and it's, it's, it's part of me using social media and getting you to engage with what I'm saying.
- [41:48]
B
Yeah, of course. And again, strategy. There, there's a strategy.
- [41:52]
C
Yeah. And all. But at the same time, it's like when the media system is so asymmetrical on how they cover fossil fuels, where the only thing you're going to hear about is how it's causing all this death and destruction and it's ruining the planet. It's almost like I have to be this counterweight to it to go, guys, it's so great. Like, it's truly the best technology that's transformed the modern world over the past 100 years. And we would not have the world we have today without fossil fuels. So you can't say the CO2 thing. Okay, sure, we're adding CO2, which you even argue is that even bad. CO2 has a lot of benefits too. So I'm just like, guys, you're so far to the other side. So I sound so crazy for just stating facts. And yeah, it's just funny that like, then people will be like, well, no one ever said fossil fuels were evil. And I'm like, yes, you did. But now you're moving the target back because I like to argue with me. So just it's funny. And yeah, I think again, no, it's not like fossil fuels are quote unquote good for the environment and have no impact. Everything that we do in this world as human beings, we're gonna have an impact. There's a footprint that requires for natural gas, fracking has environmental impacts, coal, gas, all of these things. But what are we getting from that impact? In the case of natural gas and coal and fossil fuel oil, we're getting a reliable energy that powers our life. And so to me that's a great trade off. I don't want to live in a world without those things. If it means a little bit of an environmental impact, I support it. Where I get, I have an issue is with solar and wind where they're not reliable for of energy. So now we're mining and we're built, you know, creating all this e waste or we're putting offshore wind and formerly pristine areas and the impact is not even reliable energy. It's higher energy costs and intermittency and ultimately energy that's not making our lives better or even lowering our carbon footprint. So like, why are we doing that? And so that's why I'm way, I'm so much more critical of the impacts of those technologies because what is the payoff here? And I. But you have to also realize where is your audience coming from? And so I think I make so much sense. You obviously understand what I'm saying. But then you have to think about through the lens of that person and what they've learned and where, where they're approaching your content. I can sound so extreme because they've been told fossil fuels are evil and then we're going to die from climate change and we just have to get off these technologies, evil technologies, as fast as possible. And so the best place I make inroads, I found is the normal person who's a mom maybe and has young kids and they message me, they go, oh, thank you for Posting this, I was really anxious about climate change, but like, I'm not going to worry about it anymore. And I'm like, great. That's like, you know, because they were never really like dug in either way. They didn't identify with their middle.
- [44:42]
B
It was just the middle. Right, yeah, right. 10% on the left. The middle are like.
- [44:48]
C
Some days like I could be persuaded. Yeah, exactly. And, and also it's like I want to repeal these policies in these blue states. I mean, I live in Connecticut and I, I know like our electricity costs are some of the highest in the country and we. I don't know exactly. I need to research on it like us specifically. But I mentioned the Colorado bill. I know California's electricity bills are insane and unfortunately the people who are losing out on this are manufacturers because, you know, when it's so expensive to produce energy, you're not manufacturing stuff and middle class jobs. So there's a lot of work to be done to just change the consensus.
- [45:24]
B
Yeah, yeah. Well said. Well said. Lucy. Thank you so much for your time, man. I promise I'd keep this under 45 minutes. I'm surprised your kids haven't yelled since you got young.
- [45:33]
C
They're a tear.
- [45:34]
B
Oh, they're here. Look at that.
- [45:35]
C
That's cool.
- [45:37]
B
I like it. I like. God, I like it. You got two boys. I got two boys, two savages. And so I understand what a household looks like, feels like sounds like with two.
- [45:48]
C
They're a handful. That's like my nicest way of saying it is. They're a handful.
- [45:52]
B
Exactly. Exactly. Well, if you need anything from us, please don't hesitate to reach out if you want to learn more about our space, you know, love to do this again and just almost like you tell me what are your questions, what are your answers? And we'll give you the answers. Honestly, awesome about us.
- [46:09]
C
Thank you so much.
- [46:11]
B
Appreciate you and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day.
- [46:14]
C
You too. Talk to you soon.
- [46:17]
B
Well, that's it for today. Appreciate you listening as always. Leave a review, share it with your friends and most importantly, do what's right to convey the truth around hunting.