I’m great at parties. I’m not saying I enjoy them, but after years of doing comedy I’m confident that I can read, and sometimes even charm, a room. In groups big or small, I generally know what to say, how to put people at ease, and when to change the subject.
I love small talk, the inessential stuff that lets everyone off lightly. At least I used to, back in the period of my life I refer to as “that blissful time when I could think and talk about things that weren’t climate change.” Today, my little brain is consumed with the greatest existential threat our species has ever faced, and I can’t help thinking that’s made me a little less . . . fun?
There is no man intriguing enough, no snack delicious enough, and no anecdote disarming enough to divert me from this topic. I open with, “Hi, I’m Maeve and there’s hardly any coral left.” They smile, and sidle on by. A friend will admire my shoes and that sets me off: “Do you know there are people in Miami Beach who wear plastic bags on their feet to go to the store on sunny days. The city is routinely flooded because of rising sea levels. It’s already here!”
I open with, “Hi, I’m Maeve and there’s hardly any coral left.”
Where you’d once find me blithely discussing my favorite Bette Davis outfits from Now, Voyager (the cape on the cruise, duh), I’m now reciting lines from Peter Brannen’s writing on past extinctions, talking about sickly tides suffused with sulfur dioxide, fogs of neurotoxins, and mega-storms made of poison swamp gas.
“Obsessed” is a word I lean on a little too heavily. I use it for things that captivate me, for any reason. Those Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies? Obsessed. The way Stephen Miller retains his White House position through every sort of failure known to man? Obsessed.
I care about issues and I’m a talker, but in the past I’ve been able to take a breath and switch focus. Not now.
In the last year, since I began working on a climate justice podcast, I have become completely obsessed.
Perhaps my newness to the reality is what’s got me in a twist. This climate crisis we are in is as urgent as ever, but not new. One of the books inducing my panic was written before I was even born. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, by William Robert Catton Jr., published in 1980, persuasively argues that our unwillingness to accept the effect humans have on the world’s ecosystem will be what kills us in the end.
Some days, when I learn more about activists and communities who have been in this fight forever, I feel like it’s almost laughable how late I am. I worry that it’s guilt or shame that’s making me want to transmit my panic to innocent bystanders. I don’t want to be a poor woman’s Elon Musk, coming in with high emotions, unearned vigor, and empty promises.
The climate movement doesn’t need white saviors, or billionaires, or celebrities—at least, not only them. It needs everybody, but I’m figuring out when to take a backseat and listen, too. For many marginalized people, climate change isn’t the first existential battle they’ve faced. I’ve found people glad to see me show up as they continue working.
Every morning, I walk my dog through Prospect Park, in Brooklyn, where I live. We pass by three saplings that are growing strong now that it’s spring. Those trees were planted to mark the spot where a man set himself on fire last April. David Buckel, a civil rights lawyer turned environmentalist, self-immolated to ring the alarm, to wake people up.
“My early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves,” he wrote in an email to media. “Pollution ravages our planet . . . . Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result.” His email ended with, “Here is a hope that giving a life might bring some attention to the need for expanded actions.”
I’m a talker by nature, so I’ll keep talking. Even if it doesn’t feel like a choice to me right now, I’m lucky to have the time and energy to talk about climate change and climate justice. Just pray you don’t get stuck with me at a party.