Messy Conversations: How to Talk to Kids about Climate Change, with Mary Annaïse Heglar — a Mini Hot Take Reunion!

[00:00:00] Amy: Welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt.

Today we're bringing you another one of these conversations I've been calling messy conversations where we get into lots of different aspects of the climate crisis and how we're talking about it. Today my guest is Mary Anais Haegler, who you might remember as my co host on the podcast Hot Take. You might also know Mary from her many Excellent essays on the climate crisis and especially how it intersects with civil rights

few years ago, she wrote an essay for the Boston Globe about how she felt as a woman living in the world of climate crisis, and constantly being asked for her thoughts on whether she wanted to have kids. That story ended up being a lot about how she interacted with her nephew and how she thought and talked to him about climate.

And that ended up becoming a children's book, which is out today. It's called The World is Ours to Cherish. And it's an excellent way to start talking to the kids in your life about climate. This is a topic that I find really difficult. I have kids and I get asked all the time about how to talk to them about climate.

The assumption being that I have figured that out and I have not. So I thought I'd have Mary on to talk about that and her book. And of course, Mary being Mary and me being me, lots of other things that have nothing to do with either of those as well. That conversation is coming up right after this quick break.

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Happy book day, Mary! Happy book birthday!

[00:01:42] Mary Annaise Heglar: Thank you. Um, it's been a long time coming, as you know. Um, had no idea a children's picture book took this long to produce, but apparently it's one of the types of books that takes the longest. So I learned a lot over the past couple of years.

[00:01:58] Amy: that makes sense to me, because

[00:02:00] Mary Annaise Heglar: It does when you think about it.

[00:02:02] Amy: yeah, yeah. And tell us the name of your book so people can go buy it today.

[00:02:08] Mary Annaise Heglar: Yes. The name of my book is The World is Ours to Cherish.

[00:02:12] Amy: And this is a children's book! Like, I think it's very cool that your very first book is a It's a children's book and it came, it grew out of an essay that you wrote, right? About like a time that you were spending with your nephew.

[00:02:28] Mary Annaise Heglar: Yeah. So the origin story, um, is rooted in an essay that I wrote, um, in the Boston Globe back in 2020, um, that talked about, you know, the age old question that all the women in climate get, which is like, are you going to have children or why did you have children? Um, that annoying debate that somehow always goes to women and never to men.

Um, it's I was, you know, trying to deal with that in, in my way as someone who like even outside of climate, I'm not totally sure that children are in my future. Um, but that as much as whether I have children of my own, I'm really glad that there are children in the, in my life and how much I love my nephew and how I buy him.

At that point, I was the crazy aunt who bought him like books about all these different animals all over the world and that little ping of guilt that I would have when I bought him a book and being like, I don't know if these animals are going to be there by the time that he's able to get out into the world.

Um, now I say I was the crazy aunt who bought him a lot of children's books. Now I'm the New Orleans aunt. Um, so that changed.

[00:03:39] Amy: nice.

[00:03:40] Mary Annaise Heglar: Um, yeah, so I'm buying him books about different musical instruments and stuff. So, um, and about King Cake. Oh my God, he's obsessed with King Cake now. I have created a monster. But yeah, I actually started writing the book when I started to realize that I was gonna leave New York.

Um, which was in the, the winter early part of 2021. Um, and because I was leaving New York, that was where my nephew lived. Um, I realized I might not be there when he started asking questions about why the world is changing the way that it is. Um, and at the same time, his mother, his parents were moving back to DC and it was like, Oh, I'm really not going to be there when he starts asking these questions.

Um, and so, yeah, I started writing it.

[00:04:34] Amy: awesome. I actually didn't know that part about the fact that you were thinking about, you know, just not being there to answer those questions and writing it down instead. That's cool.

[00:04:44] Mary Annaise Heglar: It was also like a nervous project while my novel was out on submission. Um, for people who don't know what that means because you've, um, only if you've been in the publishing industry, do you know what that means? Um, Like, that means you're taking your, it's very stressful.

It means that your book is being shopped from different editors at different publishing houses to see if they want to buy it. And it's like going out to be judged and you need something to do while this is going on.

[00:05:16] Amy: especially with a novel, because for, um, nonfiction, you know, like you write a proposal and you write like one sample chapter, right? But for a novel, like you've got to write the whole thing first.

[00:05:28] Mary Annaise Heglar: The whole

[00:05:28] Amy: then.

[00:05:30] Mary Annaise Heglar: The whole thing.

[00:05:31] Amy: you've like invested a lot of time. Yeah,

[00:05:35] Mary Annaise Heglar: Your heart and soul is on a page and it's going out to be judged and it's like, I need something else to do. So I'm not just sitting here thinking about this.

[00:05:43] Amy: yeah, yeah, totally. Um, fun fact, I have children and I

[00:05:49] Mary Annaise Heglar: You

[00:05:50] Amy: know how to talk to them about climate change. It's, it's like something that people always ask me advice on because The assumption is, and it's not a wild, it's not like a wild assumption is that, you know, well you work on this subject all the time and you have kids, so you must have like figured out how to talk to them about this.

And to be honest, no, I feel like I'm, I, I feel like I might even be like worse than the average person at talking about it. Like to a weird extent, sometimes they'll ask me stuff like just the other day. Archie, my older kid was asking me about,

[00:06:27] Mary Annaise Heglar: How old is he now?

[00:06:28] Amy: he's 11 and he was asking about emissions or something.

And, um, and I, I kind of like clammed up. It's terrible. It's like, but it's sort of like that thing where it's like you, I don't know, I find myself having this like very lizard brain reaction where I just want to like protect their,

[00:06:52] Mary Annaise Heglar: Yeah.

[00:06:53] Amy: Like innocence for as long as possible, though. Well, you know, they're like kids figure stuff out so quickly.

I'm sure that like they've been worrying about it and really like more helpful if I talk to them and then avoid it. But but it's hard. It's hard to talk to kids about that stuff, especially because also, you know, there's a level of like of guilt to it, too, where you feel like. Oh, God, I can't believe we didn't fix this in time, you know, um,

[00:07:25] Mary Annaise Heglar: hmm. Mm hmm.

[00:07:26] Amy: and yeah, that paying of like, Oh my God, you know, like the thing that always got me about like gave me that feeling that you were talking about with the animals was, uh, was when Archie who's 11 now, he was like, he's been obsessed with the idea of going away to college since he was like seven and not even because he Like understands what that is, or he like wants to study or something.

It's really just having a roommate that seems fun to him.

[00:07:54] Mary Annaise Heglar: He wants a roommate?

[00:07:56] Amy: I mean, in his mind, it's like permanent sleepover, you know? Like I could just like live with

[00:08:01] Mary Annaise Heglar: Yeah. That gets old, buddy.

[00:08:03] Amy: I know. I know. So he always was like, when I go away to college, like, you know, could I do this? Could I do that? And every single time he would ask, I would always be like, Oh, you know. In my mind, I'm like, you're, there's not going to be college.

You're going to be like involved in water wars, you know,

[00:08:24] Mary Annaise Heglar: Oh, wow. Okay. Well, maybe that's not the best starting point for the conversation, Amy, but,

[00:08:32] Amy: my immediate fear response. I'm like, ah, yeah. So anyway. Yeah. I guess, um, my very long winded question here is like, how, how did you figure out how to start talking to him? This stuff?

[00:08:49] Mary Annaise Heglar: Well, um, I also have a lot of questions about that. Hopefully, um, I'll, I'll get, I'll, I'll get to them. Um, but how did I figure out how to start talking about it? It was like, I just started thinking about, um, what is the operative word in climate change? Um, and I think it's change. And so that is the, the message of the book of like, the world is Very magical.

It's very beautiful. But also the world has changed and the world that you're growing up in is not the world that I grew up in. Um, but the world will always keep changing and it's changed because you're here. You will continue to change the world and we can change the world together. Right? And so going with the idea that change is inevitable and it could be good or bad and you can play a part in what that change looks like.

So I really leaned into the idea that I, and no one else really knows what's going to happen, but we can control what we do and what our actions are. And I, I had to fight a little bit of a battle to make sure that the book stayed honest. Um, you know, cause I think part of, uh, the trouble with climate books is that people always want a climate book to be just closed book hopeful.

And I think you can write. I think I did write a hopeful climate book. Um, but I think you also have to be honest because as, as a friend of mine, um, said recently, Daniel Jose older, if you lie to Children, you don't deserve them. Um, and so I got some pressure to like, make the You know, in the beginning of the book, it's like, there's more fires.

There's less water. There's this, there's that to make those things come back as a resolution to the book. And I was like, that's not realistic. That wouldn't happen in their lifetimes. And I'm not going to lie to these children. Um, and so that took some convincing because I think it's just. Honestly, a lot of people, um, and our communications industries don't realize how bad the climate crisis has gotten, um, and think we're still in this place of, like, stopping global warming, preventing global warming.

It's like, oh, that ship sailed, right? Like, I think you remember when we were on Hot Take and we got the question of, like, what do you think of the debate between mitigation and adaptation? We were like, what in the 2010 hell? What kind of question is this? So, wait, but I also have to end this answer with a question.

Uh, what kind of messages do you think your children are getting from the outside world about climate change that they're internalizing?

[00:11:40] Amy: it's that's an interesting question. So also I While you were talking I was like thinking about the lying to thing and I was like, oh, maybe that's why I'm like avoiding Talking to them about it because I don't like I don't really lie to them I mean, you know, sometimes I tell little lies like we don't have any cookies Um,

[00:12:01] Mary Annaise Heglar: Cause mommy's eating them. We don't have cookies. Mommy has cookies.

[00:12:07] Amy: but I don't, you know, like about how life works in general, I don't shy away from like reality. So like, so yeah, I feel like part of it is I'm like, Oh, I'm not ready to have this like fully,

[00:12:22] Mary Annaise Heglar: Oh

[00:12:22] Amy: you know, honest conversation with them about this, but, but it's, you know, I'm going to have to, uh, but yeah, I think. I think that, um, you know, my older kid in particular, like he's, he's like, you know, goes on TikTok and like goes on YouTube and watches things.

Fortunately, he, um, he also talks to me about everything that he sees, so I know, like,

[00:12:50] Mary Annaise Heglar: Mm hmm.

[00:12:50] Amy: if he's being, you know, fed something, then, then I know. And also I've instilled in him from a very young age, like a, a level of skepticism. So like, he'll totally fact check things with me, you know, he's like, I heard this, like, is that true?

I'm like, no. Who said it? You know. What, what organization are they with who's paying them, you know, all of that

[00:13:14] Mary Annaise Heglar: Mm hmm.

[00:13:14] Amy: So he's, he kind of has that filter, but also we live in Costa Rica. So he goes to a school where like, he has an ecology class. Three times a week and like they actually talk about all kinds of stuff related to The environment in general and climate change and all of that stuff.

So he is getting you know an education about it But I don't think and you know, actually both of my kids It's really funny like in for both of them like they you know at some point in school kids always get asked this This question that's like, if you had, you know, a million dollars, what would you do?

Or if you had like endless amounts of money, like what problem would you solve or whatever? And both of them like immediately, um. They immediately say, shut down the oil industry and give everyone a house.

[00:14:12] Mary Annaise Heglar: Oh my god, you must be so proud!

[00:14:15] Amy: So they do get some, they're getting like, you know, they're getting

[00:14:19] Mary Annaise Heglar: These are your kids!

[00:14:21] Amy: know, I know,

[00:14:22] Mary Annaise Heglar: not subliminal. That's not subliminal, no. You you raised little. little fossil fuel haters and I love it. Um,

[00:14:30] Amy: yeah, I know,

[00:14:32] Mary Annaise Heglar: so honestly, I think that's like interesting because it's like they know more about the fossil fuel industry than they know about climate change, which actually,

[00:14:40] Amy: Yeah,

[00:14:40] Mary Annaise Heglar: know, that's the root cause.

And I wonder like, Especially with older kids, that might be the better place to start because otherwise it's just like, are they supposed to go fight the air?

[00:14:53] Amy: Well, also I, I feel like, um, I feel like, yeah, I, I, I know like when I, when I talk to Other young people, other people's kids, um, and they talk about climate, like a lot of times it's sort of this, um, deserved, you know, like anger at, at previous generations for like failing to, you know, deal with this problem and this and that, which is, is not You know, like I said, I mean, that that's deserved in some ways, but I feel like it is important for kids to understand, like how, I don't know, I guess like how power structures work and like how limited their, you know, parents or grandparents were in like their ability to really do something and how much that plays into it, which doesn't leave, you know, I, I, you and I have talked many times about this sort of like false dichotomy between Individual responsibility and systemic change.

Um, I'm not trying to say like nothing. Any one person does matters or any of that stuff, but, um, but like, you know, giving them, but at the same time, like, with. And I have talked to my kids a little bit about this, but I also don't want them to feel like, yeah, to feel like, oh, well, nothing I do is going to matter because these systems are so powerful.

There's nothing I can do to change them. But that's true of really like any social justice issue, you know, like

[00:16:21] Mary Annaise Heglar: Exactly. For some reason, people say climate change is different, right? Like you're supposed to find the one solution. Um, it's like people are just desperate to dip one toe in and be done. And it's like, you don't, you don't think about it that way with anything else. Right. Like nobody thinks like, Oh, you were nice to that one lady, but you didn't solve racism.

So you might as well have been an asshole to her. What? Yeah. See, that sounds absurd. Um, but I, I also, um, I also want to talk about this generational. problem that we tend to have in the climate space. Um, because I honestly think that might be the driving force between both of my books. Um, so shameless plug, I have another book publishing this year.

It's called Troubled Waters. It is a novel, um, and it comes out May 7th and it is about, uh, climate change, school desegregation, and the things that are lost between the generations and quick pause. That is the most. Coherent way I've ever been able to explain it quickly. I'm very proud of myself, very proud of myself, um, I've been struggling with that, um, however, it deals with this thing that I, I have always found very problematic and bedeviling in the climate space, this idea that, um, it's the previous generation's fault, um, and like, our grandparents didn't know what they were doing when they were setting the world on fire, right?

Like, that was just this fallacy that I heard. Um, Every freaking where and as a black person, um, whose grandparents were active in the civil rights movement, um, who's great, great. I think great. Maybe three greats. Grandparents were slaves. Uh, that sounds absurd to me. Um, like we were still waiting on 40 acres and a meal.

We wanted to go get our land, go farm it and mind our business. That's what we wanted to do. Um, but we weren't able to do that. The last thing we were doing was finding oil and digging it up and setting it on fire. So like this idea of like Blanketing previous generations with this like guilt was really insulting to me and to, you know, my grandparents and even my, my parents.

So, um, I, I wrote the novel to kind of deal with that. And also like you were saying you have guilt talking to your children about climate change. I feel guilt talking to my mother and my mother's generation about climate change because it's like y'all already dealt with a lot. Um, I don't want to. Also bring this to you.

And it's like, as a friend of mine once put it, there are certain conversations that you're not qualified to have with your mother when she's older than integration. just like this idea of like lecturing my mama about plastic bags, please. Absolutely not. I will not be doing it. Um, so, um, and then also with the Children's book, I think what we do with the younger generation is we'll be like, All right, buddy, go, go save the world.

Go fix it. Like our Children are going to fix it. The kids are all right. They've got this blah, blah, blah. And I feel like that is abandonment. Um, and like they are fighting for their lives. They're not fighting for yours, right? So I, I know that you've seen this, this phenomenon to where it's like, oh, we're going to be fine because Gen Z is going to save us.

Gen Z might save themselves and then they might beat your ass because that's cruel to just leave this all in their lap. Um, and so I, I made the point in the book of making sure that like, yes, you will change the world, but we'll, we'll do it together. You're not in this by yourself. Um, so that was a big. A big point of the of the narrative of like making sure that the child understood that this was communal and to go get involved in like, there's little suggestions at the end for things to do, and most of them are about, like, I think the biggest thing children can do to prepare themselves for climate change is to build community and know their neighbors.

And I say that as an introvert. Like, that's not easy to me.

[00:20:34] Amy: Yeah! Totally! That's the answer I always give to people to, in

[00:20:38] Mary Annaise Heglar: Mm hmm.

[00:20:39] Amy: what should we do? Or, or, and also actually the what, the what gives you hope question too, is like, um, seeing community. I know, I know. But it is like, you know, when I see communities really coming together, I'm kind of like, okay, like people can figure this out and be okay, you know?

[00:20:56] Mary Annaise Heglar: Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. And it's like when us like Children can understand things like, uh, we live in a place where there are tornadoes when there's a tornado. This is what you do, right? Like, I remember those drills as a kid. I'm sure you remember like fire drills,

[00:21:11] Amy: Earthquake drills.

[00:21:12] Mary Annaise Heglar: California. Yeah.

Um, so like kids getting them involved with how to prepare for a disaster, what to do, where to evacuate to. Um, yeah. A few, uh, like a couple of years ago, I was at my therapist's office and her, her child was often there. He had to have been like maybe six or seven. Um, and he also, I don't know if it was TOK, but he would always be listening to these videos.

And I overheard him once listening to these videos about climate change. And I asked her, Yeah. I asked her, I was like, are you not worried about him? Like getting nightmares, getting scared or anything like that. And she's like, actually, no, he comes back from those videos, like with a lot of like good questions.

He likes to strategize with me about it. This was in new Orleans. Like if, when there's a hurricane, where do we evacuate to? And how soon do we go? What are the categories? Like he, he. learning how to be prepared. And like, so as I was writing the children's book, one of the things that I was aware of was that these children that the book is, is going to, they don't know what that world looked like before.

So this world now that's their normal. So this idea is so half the half of the book is for the parents. Um, then it is for the, or in, in some ways the book is to comfort the parents more than it is to comfort the children because they're just like, all right, we got storms all the time. This is what the world is, right?

Like, cause before that they were just, you know, in the womb, they didn't know anything.

[00:22:44] Amy: Totally. Totally. I actually was, I was just talking to, um, a friend of mine who, um, is also a reporter and has kids and she was And still is really like an education reporter, but she started getting into doing more climate stuff recently because her kid when she was seven, I think, just said sort of offhandedly to her, um, you're so lucky that you got to be a kid before the world was exploding.

Like,

[00:23:15] Mary Annaise Heglar: Oh, oh wow.

[00:23:18] Amy: whoa, whoa.

[00:23:24] Mary Annaise Heglar: Gut punch.

[00:23:26] Amy: know. I know. But, um, the like, actually, when I was when I was thinking about your book and this conversation and stuff this morning, I was like, you know, in a way, because actually, A lot of people are not necessarily like super clued into climate writing a kid's book about climate change is like a little bit like, I mean, I feel like it's very applicable to adults as well.

Like, I bet the parents will actually learn a lot and reading this book too, because yeah,

[00:24:00] Mary Annaise Heglar: Yeah, cause I wrote it as much for an actual child as I did for someone's inner child. Um, so like, you know, I want people to buy the book obviously so, but I'm being very genuine when I say you could buy this for a grown friend. Um, children's books kind of function as like a really fancy birthday card sometimes.

So you really, if you have a friend who is like really struggling with how to deal with climate change and needs it broken down to their inner child, actually this book could be good for that.

[00:24:30] Amy: true. It's like, it's like, uh, it's like a, um, you know, like a, a gentle dose of reality, it's nice,

[00:24:39] Mary Annaise Heglar: Mm hmm. And it's got really pretty pictures because of a really good, uh, illustrator, Vivian Meiniker. She did a great job.

[00:24:47] Amy: That's so cool. Did you get to, um, like, were you and she working together on stuff or, or did she kind of like take the book and then come back with some ideas? I'm like, how does that whole process

[00:24:59] Mary Annaise Heglar: Yeah. So she and I never communicated. Um, but I will say that, that Random House. me, um,

[00:25:06] Amy: to me. Shocking.

[00:25:08] Mary Annaise Heglar: no, it's, it's pretty normal. Um, but Random House gave me a lot of leeway in terms of who the, who the, who the illustrator would be like more than normally would be given to, uh, an author. Normally the author has no say whatsoever.

[00:25:24] Amy: Yeah,

[00:25:25] Mary Annaise Heglar: but they actually I said, I want a woman of color. They were like, absolutely. They gave me options. I got to pick. And then, you know, she, she did her thing and I was able to give feedback. I was like, I, she automatically did a lot of like skin tone diversity and ethnic diversity. Um, but I gave more feedback about like, I want different types of hairstyles, for example.

Um, and, uh, at the end, there was still a little bit of like, um, I want to see this type of protest and not that type of protest to fit with the story and she's just like matched it perfectly. So yeah, yeah, she did a great job.

[00:26:06] Amy: that's awesome. Um, okay, I want to ask you, because since we haven't recorded a podcast since the end of Hot Take, I want to ask you a very Hot Take y question, too, which is, um, are there, what other, what like, um, media or books or anything in that, like, realm have you consumed recently that, like, tackled climate in a way that you found Interesting or good or entertaining or what's your what's your climate culture recommendation right now?

[00:26:44] Mary Annaise Heglar: so I actually haven't had, um, a lot of time to consume a ton of media, unfortunately. Um, I, I've been enjoying True Detective. Um, the episode or the season that's set in Alaska that seems to have a lot of climate change undertones. Um, I think they might be on like the last episode, so I'm excited to see what happens there.

[00:27:09] Amy: I did. Yeah, you know what? I actually like I was finding it really boring until the last the episode last week and I was like, okay, now we're like now we're getting into it. I don't know like, yeah,

[00:27:21] Mary Annaise Heglar: a spoiler. A supposed to

[00:27:22] Amy: no, no, don't but I felt like they I don't know it was like I don't know. Yeah. I felt like it was like a lot of set up the first three episodes, you know.

But the story is good. Like there's there's like a mining company and their climate scientists. And, you know, there's indigenous people protesting the mine. And there's like, yeah, it's interesting. There's a lot of like really timely. Threads that they're pulling on there.

[00:27:53] Mary Annaise Heglar: Yeah. Um, I honestly, I feel like maybe, maybe I just haven't been watching enough tv, but I feel like TV kind of sucks lately.

[00:28:06] Amy: Yeah, I

[00:28:08] Mary Annaise Heglar: Netflix is not putting out super great stuff. Um,

[00:28:12] Amy: I think we're experiencing the aftershocks of the writer's strike.

[00:28:17] Mary Annaise Heglar: Yeah, that must be what it is. That must be it, cause, yeah, I've been like, watching these shows come out and being like, you can't be serious, like, they turned Squid Games into an actual game show?

[00:28:29] Amy: it's so weird. So

[00:28:32] Mary Annaise Heglar: Who?

[00:28:32] Amy: I

[00:28:33] Mary Annaise Heglar: then you have the nerves to increase the price of the of the subscription.

[00:28:38] Amy: know. I know. Yeah, it's outrageous. Outrageous. A lot of, I feel like there's a lot of, um, Nostalgia going on too that I wonder. Like, I don't know, I wonder how much of that is a little bit of like, just avoidance of not just the climate crisis, but sort of like all the intersecting crises that we're living through today.

[00:29:03] Mary Annaise Heglar: Yeah.

[00:29:04] Amy: because I keep seeing stuff that, yeah, it's either like, yeah, it just seems very like, weirdly nostalgic, um, or dystopian. It's like one or the other. That's it. You know?

[00:29:19] Mary Annaise Heglar: I will. So as far as books are concerned, um, Lessons for Survival by Emily Raboteau is, uh, I mean, it, it publishes in March, uh, but you can pre order it now and I've been reading an advanced reader's copy. And yeah, it's really good. I was, it goes. It's some of some of everywhere, but it's basically about mothering during, um, climate change and all COVID and all of these other sorts of converging crises.

Um, so I think that's. That's a good source. Um, and I've been ordering a lot of books, uh, from Palestinian writers. I'm really excited to read those because I am watching and reading the Palestinian struggle as like this really amped up indigenous resistance movement. Like we we've seen in the U. S. What happens when indigenous people resist?

The response is like swift and overwhelming and just wildly overblown. Um, and that is, I feel like what we're seeing in Palestine as well. And it's just. It's really shocking and sad for me to see the climate community, too many people, not everyone, obviously, um, but too many prominent people acting like this is divorced from climate change.

Um, because if you understand that land back is a climate solution, then how do you not see this

[00:30:46] Amy: Yeah, totally. I, you know where I have seen that, um, kind of weird, like, I don't know, just, just like blind spot or a willing blind spot in the climate space in particular is, um, is around discussions about us politics. Like I keep seeing people kind of being like, like framing the, The election this year in the U S as like, well, climate people better get behind Biden because Trump is going to be worse for the climate.

So, you know, like just because you're not in love with the IRA doesn't mean blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, are you just like totally ignoring the fact that Biden is also funding a genocide right now? Cause I'm pretty sure like everyone I know who's on the fence, that's the thing they're worried about.

It's not about the details of the IRA, man.

[00:31:42] Mary Annaise Heglar: I mean, also the IRA was not awesome.

[00:31:46] Amy: Yeah.

[00:31:46] Mary Annaise Heglar: to be honest about that. I think, you know, that big sea change event that the climate movement had back in 2020. Uh, I, I think Some folks need to come out and be like, oops, I didn't mean any of that.

[00:32:01] Amy: Totally. Totally.

[00:32:03] Mary Annaise Heglar: you obviously didn't, right? So like, at least be honest about where you actually are.

Like people made a whole lot of commitments that are obviously not true. Yeah.

[00:32:19] Amy: I, I'm seeing the exact same thing in media too, where like all these newsrooms were like, we need to do a better job of, of, well, actually on race and climate, they're like, we need to do a better job of doing, of covering this. And we need to do, you know, we need to be more intersectional and more diverse and all this stuff.

And then, you know, 3 years later, it's like. Either people are getting let go or people are leaving because they've been so like burnt out by trying to, you know, do the thing they were hired to do, but nobody actually supports it, you know,

[00:32:55] Mary Annaise Heglar: Fighting the infrastructure the entire time.

[00:32:58] Amy: exactly, yeah, it's very, um, it's disappointing. It's really disappointing.

And, you know, the thing actually, like, I, I just wrote about this recently and, um, we put out an, an episode with Rihanna. Gun Wright, who I know you also know and are friends with about this issue as well, that like, I feel like there's this weird idea that, um, you know, we need to quote unquote stop climate from being pulled into the culture war.

And it's like, first of all.

[00:33:35] Mary Annaise Heglar: Mm

[00:33:36] Amy: you don't really decide that. That gets decided for you. That's how that, that's how that whole thing works, you know? But secondly, like, the whole reason that like, that that backlash is happening right now is because Um, it was starting to be effective. It was actually growing the movement to be more intersectional and more inclusive and all those things.

And that is scary because a more, you know, broad based movement is going to be more effective. You don't, the reaction, you don't go, Oh no, we better stop doing that. You know what I mean?

[00:34:12] Mary Annaise Heglar: Right. Also, for me, it's like, what name something that matters that doesn't become part of the culture war.

[00:34:20] Amy: Also It's been part of it for, I'm like, the entire, like, basis of climate denial is culture war shit. Like, if you look at those strategy memos from, you know, the late 80s and early 90s, it's all like, figuring out who to target, and it's completely based on identity. And figuring out what kinds of messages to push around climate in terms of making it seem elitist, making, you know, all of this stuff, I'm like, this has been, Been the strategy for a while, guys.

Like, you know, um, yeah,

[00:34:56] Mary Annaise Heglar: And whenever you bring people of color into it Uh, it's always like, racism is always going to be part of their culture war. It always is. Um, but also it's just, yeah, like what matters that isn't part of the culture war. That just means it's trending.

[00:35:13] Amy: That's right. That's right. It means it's important and that they're and that and that like there's a fight going on over it, which like, yeah, that's very true. You know, yes.

[00:35:26] Mary Annaise Heglar: quit being a punk and stand up and fight, right? Like, Oh, we want to do this without getting bullied. Like, like now I want to take your lunch money. Um, exactly.

[00:35:39] Amy: I'm just, it is honestly, it shouldn't be shocking to me, but it is shocking to me. The number of people that I still, you know, hear some version of, I really just want to keep it about science and technology as though science and technology are somehow divorced from politics and culture.

Like, I'm like, this is so interesting that you think that like, Yeah. If you think of it that way, it is that way. You know, and like, I'm gonna be honest here, no surprise, it's mostly men I hear from thinking like this, uh,

[00:36:15] Mary Annaise Heglar: yeah. Is it mostly white men?

[00:36:18] Amy: it's mostly white men, yes, who are just like, totally confused by the fact that their thoughts don't constitute reality, um.

I just, yeah, it's, it's really something really something.

[00:36:31] Mary Annaise Heglar: head hurts. Um, but Yeah. Also, a hot take question for you. How do you feel about like the overall state of climate media at this point? Because you've seen trends come and go. What trends do you feel like you're seeing return? And which ones are you seeing emerge?

[00:36:49] Amy: Well, I'm, I'm unfortunately kind of seeing, you know, a lot of the commitments that were made, walked back as, as media, you know, to be fair, like we still haven't figured out the business model for. Digital media in particular. And

[00:37:07] Mary Annaise Heglar: Mm hmm.

[00:37:07] Amy: of places are struggling to figure out how to stay afloat.

I'll tell you one troubling, very troubling trend I'm seeing is that all of the client, there's like several climate foundations, right. That are interested in funding media. And the way that they're going about this is like, instead of funding. actual reporting. They like to, like, it's like they want to fund it, but they also want to control the story.

And this is always like the big struggle, right? It's like that they, um, like in order to do that, they're just sort of starting like their own. Little research organizations and then doing this thing where they're like, we'll fund this research and then that can get fed to journalists and that way we get to control what the journalists are seeing, what the story is, and like where the story turns up because we're going to gatekeep this research.

So that we can, like, parse it out as this, like, exclusive thing that, you know, I'm only giving to you at the Guardian, or you at the Washington Post, or you at the New York Times. And like, because I have such a window into this and I know how the sausage gets made, I'm seeing these stories everywhere where I'm just like, oh, this is basically like a manufactured story.

By an NGO that, you know, did the research and handed it to this reporter and like, you know, the reporters do their due diligence and check the facts and stuff like that. But I'm just like, okay, like, I get how this is. This seems like a successful strategy, right? Because like, it's working, they get to control the story and they're getting Yeah.

Stories into like big outlets. Right. So they get to put in their little impact report at the end of the year that they had X number of New York times stories this year or whatever, you know, but at the end, like long term, I'm like, can you just like zoom out for a brief second here and, and like, think about how.

Bad for the general health of not just journalism, but democracy it is to like train reporters not to do their own reporting and to train newsrooms to just rely on your research instead of building out their own investigative capabilities like you're, uh, I don't know. I just, I'm like, this is not how we're gonna like save climate media.

Um, it's gross. I had someone just at a, um, at a conference recently, I met someone who, you know, is one of these like kind of pseudo journalistic outlets. And he described himself as quote, an activist pretending to be a journalist. And I was like, dude, it's so. fucking hard for those of us who've been climate reporters for a long time to like bat away the accusations of being activists all the time and like you're just like fully playing into it it's not helpful it's not helpful at all yeah yeah

[00:40:30] Mary Annaise Heglar: That's frustrating.

[00:40:32] Amy: because what it does is like then it makes everybody double down on all these dumb rules that also don't help like around supposed objectivity or, you know, quote unquote, unbiased coverage or whatever it is, you know, it's like, it's not, I don't know.

I just feel like, um, it would, you know, it would be cool is if like a foundation wants to invest in media, they would actually talk to like a journalist about it and like maybe even ask a couple of questions about how media actually works. I mean, that would be great.

[00:41:10] Mary Annaise Heglar: yeah, I think that plays into something else I see in like the broader climate community, right? Because there's like, there's The journalism community and there's writers community and the climate community. And there's like overlap in certain places, right? But in the broader climate community, something I think I'm, I see a lot is like, if you don't quite understand what.

writing is in a lot of ways. Um, so I might be about to go into a little bit of a rant. Um, but like, I will often get like, Mary's a climate journalist or Mary's a climate reporter. I'm neither one of those things. Like I'm a writer. And then like, I remember when, when I say that, I mean that like journalism is a specific type of writing and.

Essays are a different type of writing. Opinion is a different type of writing. Like we need to let words mean things. And as a writer, it drives me insane when words are stripped of their meaning. So like another thing I've gotten when I announced the books was, uh, you were always an author to me. Do you know what author means? Author means that you have authored books. It's specific to books. You can't author, uh, an essay. You can't author, you know, one standalone poem. Author means books. And that's fine. That's okay. Like, you know, it doesn't comfort me to be like, you were always an author in my eyes because what, what are you looking at?

Or another time I said that I wasn't an organizer. Don't you think your words organize people into certain ways? What? No.

[00:42:55] Amy: Yeah, or an organizer is a specific job and a specific thing and it's, yeah, like you said, it's okay for there to be like requirements involved with that, you know?

[00:43:08] Mary Annaise Heglar: It's okay to have division of labor, you don't need to be all things, right? And I think, in particular, there seems to be this, this like, confusion about what it is to be a writer or what writing is, um, or that there are different types of it, um, because like, you wouldn't expect someone to be an expert on tornadoes and wildfires at the same time, but for some reason, if you're a writer, that means you're every single type of writer that's ever existed.

[00:43:38] Amy: It's

[00:43:38] Mary Annaise Heglar: Right? Like, Amy, you're a poet.

[00:43:41] Amy: I just had this issue recently on LinkedIn, a place I now hang out sometimes, thanks to Elon Musk. Um, I, I posted something on there cause we did a big story with the Center for Climate Reporting and the Intercept about Sultan al Jabr and the UAE and Adnok and the most recent Conference of the Parties COP that was in Dubai last year.

And, um, and you know, it was like a, an investigative piece about their use of US. PR firms over the last 10 years to kind of like make this whole thing happen where you get the president of an oil company presiding over a climate summit, right? So I posted about it on LinkedIn and this woman was like, Why aren't you talking about the positive things that are happening at COP?

You know, or like, why aren't you talking about the fact that, why are you talking about the fact that he has a woman on the bleeding? You know, and I'm like, I don't give a shit if a woman makes bad policy or a man makes bad policy, ma'am. Like,

[00:44:49] Mary Annaise Heglar: It's bad policy.

[00:44:51] Amy: yeah, like the fact that it's a woman, you know, perpetuating. Uh, this, this, like the status quo does not make it like innately feminist or something, you know, but also I'm not that type of reporter.

Like I'm an investigative journalist, investigative journalists, like by, by definition are not doing like puff pieces. On, you know what I mean? Like, I'm like, that's not, you know, um, and it's not that I don't think there's anything, like, she kind of was like, why aren't you ever writing, like, positive stories?

I'm like, because I'm an investigative reporter.

[00:45:26] Mary Annaise Heglar: Oh my god, stop reading me. Stop reading my shit. If that's, like, if that's what you're looking for, I'm not the writer for you.

[00:45:32] Amy: I'm not the, yeah, there's lots of people doing that and they do great work at it. Like, if I'm investigating something, it's because, like, something smells wrong about it, not because I think it's awesome, you know what I mean?

Like,

[00:45:46] Mary Annaise Heglar: like you should do like some sort of like deep dive investigation into a theme park and find out it's actually awesome and everything runs on solar power and they give you free cotton candy. Um,

[00:45:58] Amy: Yes. I'm like, I would love it if like I went to dig into something and I found that actually it was way better than I thought, but that's literally never happened. And it probably won't, you know, but also again, this is a different type of like, this is one very specific type of journalism. What you're looking for is not what I do.

And that's fine. Go, go elsewhere. You know, like, Okay. We don't all have to do solutions journalism, you know, like we don't all, just like we don't all have to do investigative journalism. It's, you know, there are many different types and like, um, it's very irritating. Okay.

[00:46:37] Mary Annaise Heglar: so irritating. Yeah.

[00:46:38] Amy: I love that we like went off in a million directions and I'm going to bring it back to the book and I'm going to ask you, um, what were, did you have any like inspirations for yourself when you were writing this book?

Were there other, you know, kids books that you were thinking of or other books in general that you, um, admired or, or other like communicators on climate that you were thinking of? What were your inspirations?

[00:47:04] Mary Annaise Heglar: Um, I went to look at different children's books, um, up on the shelves and like children's books that tell children about things that we think of as, as difficult. So there was this explosion of children's books about, uh, racism. Um, there's a children's book about, uh, Julian is a mermaid, I think is the name of it, where it's like he, uh, it's a little boy who is, you know, most.

is questioning his gender. Um, and so, um, and finding acceptance

[00:47:37] Amy: Whoa, whoa. We're not trying to do culture war stuff on this podcast, Mary.

[00:47:45] Mary Annaise Heglar: I know. Of course not. Of course not. Um, yeah, I kind of looked at those conversation at those books that broached, uh, difficult conversations with Children. I also thought a lot about, um, just poetry, right? Like, just noticing that a children's book, especially for this age group that I'm going for, which is like the youngest of the youngest, um, it's basically just the poem.

Um, it's a child appropriate poem. And so I wrote the first draft in an, in one day. Um, and that did not wind up being the final draft. Um, but it's just like, you have to follow your, your emotions. Um, and so I was also thinking about poets like Langston Hughes, Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Um, I started reading their poetry when I was like seven.

Um, so. Not to brag, but I did. Um, and so I went back to some of those, some of those, uh, inspirations and like how to describe nature and make all of that child appropriate.

[00:48:51] Amy: That's cool. That's awesome. Awesome. Well, I'm excited. I appreciate the help that this book will provide me in talking to my kids about climate change. Thank you.

[00:49:03] Mary Annaise Heglar: I want updates, by the way.

[00:49:08] Amy: So yeah, and people can, where should people buy it that's like, you know, your preferred place.

[00:49:14] Mary Annaise Heglar: Bookshop. org, uh, you can go to bookshop. org and look up your, uh, local bookseller and then buy it through them, um, which I think is the best way to do it. Um, and I have one last question for you. Uh, what hap what are you if you love dad jokes but you don't have kids?

[00:49:34] Amy: Oh, Mary.

[00:49:37] Mary Annaise Heglar: Wow. Wow. Try again.

[00:49:45] Amy: You love dad jokes, but you don't have kids. Uh, I don't know. What? I love it. That is actually good. I like it.

[00:50:05] Mary Annaise Heglar: Thank you. Thank you so much.

[00:50:10] Amy: Amazing. All right. Thank you so much. I'm so excited that we got to do another little podcast here and, uh, yeah, go buy the book, people.

[00:50:21] Mary Annaise Heglar: Yeah. Please. Okay. This was fun.