Author of The World is Ours to Cherish (children's book) & Troubled Waters (novel). On IG (way more often):
@mary
.heglar 📚:
@adamschear
, 🗣️:
@tuesdayagency
Just watched a documentary on the Nuremberg trials and they talked about how the big game-changing moment was when they showed footage of nazi crimes. And I can’t stop thinking about how we now have a live-streamed genocide and the world continues to spin.
Has it occurred to anyone that the main reason people are having trouble working from home this week is because there’s a global pandemic and an economic meltdown all against the background of ecological collapse?
I don’t know what’s more disturbing: this guttural, primal instinct that everything is falling apart everywhere, that the world is literally on fire...or the fact that I woke up, got dressed, left for work and am now on a very normal train on a very normal day.
So sick of hearing that government "inaction" brought about climate change. They acted: they subsidized fossil fuel companies, gave them leases, spouted their misinformation, criminalized protest. Nothing about that is passive.
All the people in this photo are the same generation - activists and segregationists. Stop saying youth automatically breeds enlightenment. It doesn't. Young people will not save us. Rather, they will choose whether or not to join what King called "the beautiful struggle.”
If you're worried that it's too late to do anything about climate change and we should all just give up, I have great news for you: that day is not coming in your lifetime. As long as you have breath in your body, you will have work to do.
if you're gonna have a climate protest at a museum, I feel like it ought to be about returning stolen art/artifacts to colonized nations and pointing out the connections between climate change and colonialism, not... this...
If you were wondering how badly we're doing on communicating the climate crisis to regular people, I talked to a woman yesterday who fully knew climate change was a clear and present danger and she turned to me and asked, in all sincerity, "so what do you think is causing it?"
As much as we talk shit about Twitter, it really is a space where people have been able to organize and build community and push the discourse around things like prison abolition and climate justice so... idk... maybe tanking it is the point?
I'm getting real sick of this framing of climate change as the "challenge of our generation." Ain't gone be no more generations if we fuck this up. This is the challenge of our species.
It’s fucking wild to me that the fossil fuel industry convinced folks that digging up FOSSILS and setting them on FIRE and POISONING people in the short and long term was cool, but getting energy from wind and the sun is just “too radical” and “too hard.”
Yesterday my friend in California texted randomly to see how I was doing. She had no idea about the hurricane because she’d been preoccupied with the fires. This is climate change.
The time has come to switch support from Liz to Bernie. The hardest thing about this decision is knowing Liz deserved better. But I’m enthusiastic about Bernie and I feel great about this choice.
It’s really disconcerting to see people going after each other in light of today’s awful climate news so I’d like to remind you that the earth is not “dying,” it’s being kill and the people doing it have named and address…and Twitter handles.
A lot of people are warning about my idea being stolen. People, this was a joke I thought of while I was finishing my coffee this morning. I’m not about to do this shit. If someone else wants to, all I ask is that you let me know so I can book a room.
I think we need to talk about how all these compounding crises are affecting the aging process. Because every “elderly millennial” I know is in the throes of a midlife crisis.
"Seeing" is supposed to be "believing." But that hasn't been true in our world for a long, long time. From climate change to election results to pandemics and, now, to genocide.
a reminder that the amazon forest has been on fire for 3 weeks now and because of the lack of media coverage people don’t know about it. this is one of most important ecosystems on earth
To be clear: I am not going to work today because I want to escape the crisis or because I don't care. I'm going because, like presumably most of you, I have bills to pay and that doesn't disappear because the world is on fire. That, my friends, is where the absurdity lies.
Two big differences between today's protests and this summer's protests in DC....
1. the police were way more violent this summer.
2. the protesters are way more armed today.
I just want people to understand that the people who tell you a very clear injustice—from climate change to Israeli apartheid—is too complicated for you to understand are usually the people who benefit from your silence. It’s not complicated. They just want you complicit.
“You’re so emotional” is not an insult. It’s a compliment.
Why, yes I am in tune with my emotions. Yes, I have managed to resist societal pressure to sacrifice my humanity and become dead inside. Thank you for noticing.
Not to mention the performative listening, where they “hear you” and they hen go do the exact same shit they were going to do but now they can tell everyone they “talked” to you before they did it
As much as it’s fun to make fun of other people and to fancy yourself morally or intellectually superior, we are not still in this pandemic because of individual character flaws. We are here because of catastrophic systemic failures.
Seaspiracy is such a frustrating documentary. Like how do you look at a systemic problem like plastics in the ocean and come to the bottom line of....everybody should go vegan?
I suspect that people’s “shut down” around the climate crisis has less to do with the enormity and severity of the problem than with the overemphasis on personal responsibility for such a severe and enormous problem. Just a hunch.
If you point out a clear problem (like being excluded from meetings or passed over for promotion), they respond with how they feel about you (we all like you and value you)
Tom Steyer, sweetie, honey, pudding pop... if you want to “fight” for racial justice and climate justice, drop the fuck out and put your money to good use.
And I’d like to remind you that those people in those blue counties have been told for literal decades that their vote didn’t matter cause they were in a red state. Lot of the time the Dem party doesn’t even run candidates down there. Imagine if that changed?
One time, when my former boss found out where I went to college, she exclaimed “good for you! You broke that barrier!” And I had to tell her that I’m fifth generation college and both my parents had advanced degrees from Ivy League schools. I think about that a lot.
Ladies, I’ve been trying this thing out where every time I’m about to say “sorry,” I correct it to “actually.” Instead of “sorry, I have a question,” I say “actually, I have a question.”
Gotta say, it’s changing the game.
I don't think we talk enough about how surreal it is for the planet to be on fire, everyone knows it's on fire, but the people in power can't be bothered to do anything meaningful about it
I have such a problem with this framing. There were teen climate activists BEFORE Greta. And, I cannot ignore that those activists were—AND ARE—largely young women of color. You can celebrate Greta without erasing them. It is very possible.
Climate deniers be like: I see you’re railing against fossil fuels, but typing on an iPhone. How quaint.
Well, Charles, I notice that you breathe air and drink water, but could give a fuck about a livable planet. So...who’s the real hypocrite here?
I hit 20k followers today and that feels like a lot. I assume at least some of y’all hit follow because you want to hear a black womans perspective on climate. If that’s you, I have great news for you: I’m not alone. Thread of other black climate ladies coming NOW!
I met bell hooks in college. she had come to visit oberlin (where she had been writer in residence shortly before). when one of the students asked her why she left, she sighed and said "there was just nobody here i wanted to fuck!" she was hilarious and brilliant. RIP.