By P Gosselin
Climate alarmists have been brainwashed to feel existential dread, says ex-climate activist Lucy Biggers in a new interview.
Ms. Biggers, once a leading climate activist until recently, provides the details regarding why she changed her mind and views on current climate alarmism, discussing a progressive timeline between 2020 and 2025 where she deprogrammed herself from climate alarmism.
Schellenberger and Koonin
One of the major turning points came around 2020, when she began secretly reading books that directly challenged the apocalyptic climate narrative. Specifically, she cites Michael Shellenberger’s Apocalypse Never and Steve Koonin’s Unsettled, the latter of which opened her eyes to the idea that extreme weather patterns are not matching the catastrophic claims pushed by the media.
Glimpse at dystopia
Secondly, the 2020 lockdowns provided a massive wake-up call regarding what “Net Zero” measures actually look like in practice. She realized that despite the global economy completely shutting down and individuals losing their freedoms, global carbon emissions only dropped by about 5%. This made her question the authoritarian nature and feasibility of the movement’s goals.
Realization it’s a destructive mindset
Thirdly, having her first son in 2022 forced her to establish healthier emotional boundaries and take stock of her values. She realized she did not want to pass down a destructive mindset of existential dread and perpetual guilt for consuming resources in a modern world to her children.
What’s really driving the alarmists?
Lucy notes several overlapping psychological, social, and ideological reasons why activists adopt an alarmist mindset, explaining that within left-wing spaces, the prevailing narrative is that being Western, white, or privileged makes you inherently complicit in historical oppression. For many activists, the climate movement serves as a psychological mechanism to “atone for the sins of their birth” by fighting for oppressed or indigenous groups against “evil fossil fuel companies.”
Attention-seeking
Another factor is social pressure and the algorithmic fgeedback loop: Social media and workplace communication tools (like Slack) create an intense “groupthink” environment. Activists get hooked on a constant dopamine feedback loop of validation, moral superiority, and professional accolades when they post alarmist content.
I just started covering that as a 25-year-old… and all the videos that I made went really viral and so there was a feedback loop of I’m getting a lot of professional success from this and so I just made climate change my kind of whole personality and beat for my 20s…”
Conversely, pushing back causes severe social anxiety and the fear of being ostracized as an “enemy.”
Addiction to self-importance
Lucy highlights that the apocalyptic thinking has deep religious undertones, satisfying a modern craving for meaning and legacy. Activists become “addicted to the nihilism” and the intoxicating self-importance of believing they are saving the world from an end-times scenario.
…you get the nihilism, you get addicted to the nihilism, you get addicted to your your own sense of self-importance, you get addicted to the fact that you are right and other people are wrong and then the engagement you receive on social media—it’s a constant feedback loop.”
Biggers adds:
I remember anytime I used to get a critique when I was still in this groupthink, I would spiral… because my sense of self was built on sand. Like I truly was just constantly pinging the group to be like ‘What are my opinions, am I a good ally, am I a good ally, am I doing everything right to show that I’m like part of this movement?’ And it was so exhausting…”
Gore’s propaganda led to “existential dread”
According to Lucy Biggers, her intense anxiety and worry about the climate at an early age was triggered by watching the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore, explaining that she was a sophomore in high school (16 years old) in 2006 when her school played the film during a widespread high school assembly. Lucy describes the overwhelming psychological impact it had on her, which included existential dread and the feeling of having been handed a death sentence
Based on what she took away from the movie, she calculated a timeline for her own survival, stating, “I’m 16, I have till I’m 26… I have 10 years to live… I was racked by anxiety like in my nervous system”.
