Fricking Becky,
The Whistleblower
By Kate Alexander
February 25, 2022
It’s like when my old arch-nemesis (Becky) told Christopher Albany in the first grade that she saw me drawing hearts around his name in math class. I didn’t want to believe it. HE didn’t want to believe it! And my not-so-secret admirer, Rueben? He sure as hell didn’t want to believe it.
But I did do it. It happened. Just like when you were first told that climate change was caused by burning fossil fuels... None of us wanted to believe it. The government didn’t want to believe it… And your grandparents, Gramps and Grammie? They sure as hell had no interest in that garbage fire of a mess.
But it turned out that like Becky, the climate change whistleblowers were telling the truth. I did write quirky love letters to Christopher Albany in my notebook while Mr. Gray attempted to teach
my classmates basic subtraction. I had an older sister, so subtraction was old news for me. But Christopher? He sat in front of me in class and learned new concepts quickly. I was intoxicated by his blonde hair and the kindness that he showed to the other students when they didn’t understand Mr. Gray’s arithmetical concepts.
Like my elementary crush, climate change was and still is happening in real time, becoming more dire with every passing day. Christopher knowing that I had a huge fat crush on him was horrifying… And climate change? It’s also like that.
There are many reasons why it has become popular over the past six decades to deny climate change and what is causing it. A lot of those reasons are similar to why I pretended not to recognize Christopher Albany for the rest of that mortifying month - even though we were assigned to sit across from each other in Mrs. Gray’s art class. Yes, my first grade teacher and art teacher were married. I assume that they fell in love due to close proximity in the workplace and having to share exasperatingly outspoken young students like myself. But that’s neither here nor there.
Like the consequence of writing love notes to Christopher, accepting the reality of climate change and its causes is another gut-wrenching internal conclusion. We know that the causes are human-made, causing worsening storms, more frequent wildfires, increased coastal erosion, drought.. We are all living this truth, whether we like it or not.
Many Conservatives in the United States fear the economic consequences of the transformation to drastic green energy transportation and industry changes. Many of those Conservatives spread the narrative that “climate change” was a hoax created by liberals to redistribute wealth and government-funded social welfare programs.
If you ask the Heartland Foundation, a very influential American organization involved in lobbying for fossil fuels and anti-climate action, climate change makes some kind of left-wing revolution virtually inevitable. I can see how people with conservative values would want to deny the fundamental reality of climate change when they believe that addressing the coming environmental impacts will require a huge change in wealth distribution that seemingly opposes their political agenda. But whether climate deniers want to or not, we will all inevitably have to face this humanitarian crisis.
It’s a peoples’ problem and we as the people must come together to fight to stop Fortune 500 CEO’s, the real climate criminals, as well as the vocal climate deniers lobbying to Congressional members for them. Together, with truth, we rise.
Some twenty two years after first grade, I’m still a mess romantically. I choose men that need fixing and can’t seem to learn that people can’t be helped if they don’t want the help. We can’t prevent the oceans from further ocean acidification, coral bleaching, and mass extinction of uncountable marine species from increasing global mean ocean temperature unless we all take a part in the solution and organize.
Unlike in my love life, I can’t fix this astronomical mess of climate warming all on my own. We can protect our future and the wild blue yonder, together.