Following the North American premiere of Just Look Up at the Tribeca Festival, Jeremy Strong moderated a panel discussion with journalist and author David Wallace-Wells (“The Uninhabitable Earth”), psychologist and Climate Emergency Fund Board Chair Margaret Klein Salamon, Climate Defiance Founder Michael Greenberg, and Climate Defiance activist Cheyenne. What followed was a conversation about the state of climate activism under the second Trump administration, the gap between public alarm and political action, and what it means to act in proportion to the scale of an emergency.
The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Jeremy Strong: So I just want to thank you [Betsy Hershey and Emma Wall] for making this movie. I am so moved by it every time I see it, and I have the honor to be here now to talk for a few minutes with some of the leading voices in our country today who are helping us understand and respond to the climate crisis. I want to start with Cheyenne and Michael. The thing I always think after seeing this film is: now what? On the first day of this [Trump] administration, we pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, we revoked the climate legislation that had just been passed, and the EPA rescinded the fossil fuel endangerment finding. Michael [Greenberg], I heard you say recently that the terrain has gotten harder. What does climate activism look like under the second Trump administration, and what are the biggest challenges you face under this monolithic opposition?
Michael Greenberg: It has gotten tremendously harder, but at the same time, there is so much we can do. We can go directly after the administration. For example, we found EPA Chief Lee Zeldin getting honored at a cancer gala and shut the whole thing down. We can go after governors in blue states. For example, we found Maryland Governor Wes Moore at the kitchen table of an Exxon lobbyist and marched in and shut down the whole breakfast. We can go after the CEOs. It is absolutely a hard time to be a climate activist, but the winds shift, and what we are working to do right now is to really elevate climate change to a top-tier issue so that when Democrats take power again, they will know there is a mandate from the public and from the movement for real action.
Cheyenne: In this political landscape, it is definitely scary. It was scary before, it is even scarier now, and I do not think it is ever going to get any easier. Under the Trump administration, we have seen so many things pulled back, things that we worked so hard to get, disappear in the blink of an eye. The fact that this administration does not even believe in the climate is a huge factor. It is hard to fight against people who do not think what you are fighting for is real. But you just have to keep going, even if they do not believe it.
I actually feel like they do believe it. I think in the back of their heads, they know. They just do not care. And so you have to get in, you have to fit in where you can, and you have to make whatever sacrifices are necessary in order to keep fighting, because it is only going to get harder and more difficult. You have to keep putting yourself out on the line and doing what you can to fight for what you believe in.
Jeremy Strong: One of the ideas Climate Defiance is predicated on is that elites do not change course based on evidence; they change course when the political cost of inaction becomes too uncomfortable. What happens when you are faced with an establishment that simply cannot be made uncomfortable? Does that make you revise your strategies, or do you feel the answer is to double down?
Michael Greenberg: Your question is really asking whether the current administration is susceptible to pressure at all. The answer is, to an extent. During the Biden years, we had a much better opening because they could feel shame. With [John] Podesta, for example, we chased him out of a fundraiser, and then he brought us into the White House. We got what we wanted: a pause on all new fracked gas exports. It is a lot harder with this administration. On the other hand, even the Trump administration feels political pressure sometimes. You have seen them moderate on reproductive rights, and you saw them moderate on Israel-Palestine. It is harder, but even in a fascist dictatorship like this, pressure does reach them.
Cheyenne: Shame is definitely a big part of it, but I think it ultimately comes down to power and money. As we garner more people behind the climate movement and the climate criminals start seeing lower vote counts, as they stop winning office and stop being popular with the general public, that affects their power and their money. When they see those things start to happen, they may not change their stance, but they will probably try to placate the majority when they see how important climate is to the people who put them in power in the first place.
Jeremy Strong: David, in 2017, you wrote an essay called “The Uninhabitable Earth” that you then turned into a book, which for me became life-altering and transformative, and it became the most widely read article in the history of New York magazine. Since 2017, public awareness and understanding of climate risks have increased dramatically. This may be an impossible question, but we can talk about it. Why do you think political action has not increased commensurately, or has not increased at all?
David Wallace-Wells: I think it is worth considering in two phases. There was a period, around 2018, 2019, 2020, when in America and all around the world people were learning about climate change, growing alarmed, getting engaged, and demanding much more. You saw incredibly inspiring mass protests around the world, motivated by and led by people so far from political power that any objective analysis would have told them they had no dream of affecting global policy. And then you heard those voices echoing in the corridors of power in Europe and the United States. You heard their speeches repeated by prime ministers, presidents, and CEOs. A lot of that was empty, and the commitments being made by the people in power were quite limited.
But it was still an incredible moment of political consciousness-raising and, to me, pretty inspiring global solidarity. Not to say that there weren’t villains or obstacles, there were. But, at the time, many of us speaking about climate change were saying this is not nearly enough. So now that we are in a period of cessation or some withdrawal from that, it is depressing to think that at the moment of recent peak global concern and activism, those of us most engaged were saying this is pathetic, we need to do so much more. Nevertheless, that awakening was real. Many people grew alarmed and felt urgent about what needed to be done.
What we tend to do is look at the present moment and say that is not where we are now. That concern has subsided, and other political priorities have climbed up the pecking order, displacing climate change, not just in the US but really all around the world. Something that had been a top-shelf political priority for a brief period has been demoted, and the hope of large-scale political action seems much smaller and more fugitive than it did then. But I actually think that is somewhat of an illusion, and that is why the work of Climate Defiance is so important. Every time you look at a survey, we are still at peak climate alarm. People are still quite worried, as worried and anxious as they have ever been globally and in the US. They want to do as much as they ever wanted.
What we are seeing is not a cessation of interest on the part of the public. It is a turn away from that energy by elites in media, in politics, in culture. The work of climate activists, especially of this kind, is to break that illusion and to say, we care, you see us caring, you see us throwing our lives on the line out of that conviction. The hope is that not just what we saw five years ago can be rebuilt, but something much bigger, because those trend lines, despite what it looks like on Elon Musk’s algorithm, are still going up. They are going to continue going up because the climate crisis is not stopping. We are going to keep getting reminders of just how bad the future looks, and they are going to come more intensely and more regularly. The worst thing we can do is assume that because nothing is being done at the highest levels, nobody cares.
Jeremy Strong: So you are saying the illusion of burnout or receded urgency is being perpetuated by media inattention, but that at a ground level, on a human level, that is not the case?
David Wallace-Wells: There are plenty of people who have burned out. That happens to people who put their lives into political causes, and other people cycle through commitments. I just think at the level of the mass public, climate is as present a concern as it ever was. If we thought we could leverage that same level of concern from five or six years ago into mass climate action through policy, that path is still available if we have the courage to demand it from the people who are actually running the show.
[At this point, an audience member interrupted the panel. Jeremy Strong acknowledged that it was unplanned and that the same activists had previously disrupted a play he performed in.]
Jeremy Strong: Margaret, as executive director of the Climate Emergency Fund, which provides bridge funding for disruptive nonviolent activism, you gave Climate Defiance 90% of their budget in their first year. Besides them being young and lively, what was it that you saw in Michael as a founder that made you want to support them?
[Note: Margaret Klein Salamon has served as board chair of the Climate Emergency Fund since February 2026, having previously served as executive director from 2021 to 2026.]
Margaret Klein Salamon: Thank you, and thank you for this wonderful film. One thing I really appreciated, [in the film] and about Climate Defiance in general, is that there was talk about fundraising, about money, because in movements nobody wants to talk about money. This is about people power; we are fighting the money, but activists do need money, and they especially need it at the very beginning. The Climate Emergency Fund is a kind of venture capital for disruptive nonviolent climate activism. Providing seed funding to groups just getting started, like Climate Defiance, is really our highest and best use of money. I believe that the first-year grant was $250,000, which is not a huge amount of money when you look at the big green organizations like the Nature Conservancy or the Environmental Defense Fund, which are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. A relatively small amount of money allowed them to launch and do such amazing things. And of course, we could not make those investments without the support of our donors. We are a non-endowed fund, so we are always raising money.
Michael had applied for and received two earlier grants from the Climate Emergency Fund in 2021 and 2022, to take a group of activists to Line 3, where the pipeline was under construction and being fought in Minnesota, and to take a group to West Virginia to protest at the coal plant owned by Joe Manchin, which I think was really important in getting the Inflation Reduction Act passed. So when Michael said he wanted to build a group and not do one-off actions anymore, it was an easy decision. And just other than being young and livid, which is about 90% of it, they were also unafraid, or actually willing to feel that fear and move through it, because what they are fighting for is more important. I also just love the explicit calling out of fossil fuels. Sometimes, climate groups want to just talk about renewables or climate in the abstract. But there is an industry, the most profitable industry in history, that is actively causing this crisis, and we should talk about it. We should chase their CEOs off of the stage at every chance we get. This film portrayed one thing that Climate Defiance does really well, which is holding these fundraising gatherings with a lot of people. Giving money to activists is a really important way to be part of this movement.
David Wallace-Wells: It is also so powerful the way this film illustrates the crackdown on dissent and protest. I think that’s hugely important. One of the things that has happened over the last few years is that many people have decided that protest is annoying and intrusive, and that significant measures are justified to crack down on it, so we do not have delays on our way to work, or so we do not have our panel discussions interrupted. Those are really ugly impulses that have grown far too common in American culture. One of the things I most admire about the work all three of you do is taking that challenge head-on, and in addition to everything you are fighting for in terms of the climate, also fighting for the future of freedom of speech in this country and around the world.
Jeremy Strong: Most of the climate conversation is about politics, science, technology, economics, and policy. But it is culture. Literature, art, storytelling, film, music. Culture largely shapes the ground in which change becomes possible and shapes what we believe to be normal or desirable or admirable or possible. I feel an absence of this in our cultural moment. Do you think this is a cultural problem as well as a policy and technological problem, and what can people as culture-makers do to help change that?
Michael Greenberg: Yes, it is a culture problem. On one hand, the CEOs and the senators are tremendously guilty. On the other hand, there is something of a sickness in our culture. Everybody is buying SUVs and cheap “Made in China” fast fashion and flying overseas to see Taylor Swift perform. Individual actions are not the solution, but yes, there is a sickness in our culture. Margaret actually writes in her book about mass delusion. We suppress our climate grief because it feels too painful to talk about or think about, so instead we ignore it and endlessly scroll through our phones. We do need to change culture, and that is a big part of what we do. When we chased Darren Woods [CEO of ExxonMobil] off of the stage, we did not necessarily think we would change Darren Woods. We thought we could reach millions of people who, if not for this, would not be thinking about climate change that day. We bring it to the front of mind.
Jeremy Strong: This is Margaret’s book, Facing the Climate Emergency. It is also an incredible book that I recommend.
Margaret Klein Salamon: Thank you. Just acting normal, I believe, is a kind of climate denial. We are in an emergency. It is like there is a fire in this room, but we do not want to talk about it because it is inconvenient. What social psychology shows is that we are such social creatures that if one person in the room says there is a fire, it affects everyone else. But if nobody is talking about it, you start to wonder if you are crazy. With climate change, it works the same way. It could not be that bad, because if it were as bad as I am afraid it is, then people would be acting like it was that bad. But everyone is acting normal, so it must be normal.
So what would it look like to act in accordance with the actual scale of the problem? It looks a lot like what they do. They break social norms. They put themselves on the line. Their willingness to take those risks, to literally be tackled, is a powerful demonstration that says, “You are not crazy. It is that bad. And we need to fight.”
Jeremy Strong: For everybody, or anybody: say it is the year 2050, and the generation being born right now is looking back at this moment. What decisions are we failing to make right now that will be hardest for them to understand?
Michael Greenberg: A few things. Obviously, on climate, it will be impossible to understand that people were driving Hummers and living in McMansions as the earth reached its tipping points. I think in 2050 it will also be impossible to understand animal agriculture as it exists today, confining billions of animals to conditions where Congress is right now trying to pass a bill that would outlaw state laws that allow pigs enough room to literally turn around. I think the genocide in Gaza will be viewed in 2050 as a genocide. And AI, if we let it go unchecked, could cause a tremendous pandemic and ruin a whole generation of minds. There is a lot that we are actively fucking up right now.
David Wallace-Wells: What worries me most is that we follow the course we are on more or less, and we end up living in a very different world full of much more human suffering than was necessary, much more conflict and strife. But it will not seem confusing. It will seem normal. And I think the job of people like all of you is to make sure that we know the future we are choosing, and that we do not go forward acting as though it is all inevitable and all normal, to Margaret’s point.
Wherever we are in 2050, at whatever temperature level, with whatever amount of climate impacts we are dealing with, people will be walking around on the planet making meaning in their own ways. There will be more suffering, there will be more strife. But what I want to be able to say in 2050 is that we did not just follow the same greased lane, that we did what we could to stop that course. How wonderful it would be to look back, marveling at the change we made rather than looking back confused.
Cheyenne: I just want to say that I’ve noticed, it even happened with me when I joined Climate Defiance, that it is scary to get involved, and I have noticed that a lot of people who are well educated and are worried about the climate crisis do not know how to get involved, or think they are too inexperienced, or think things look too scary. I can understand that. You do not have to be an experienced activist to spread the word, to educate yourself, to go to a protest or two. I got started with Climate Defiance, and I was super scared. I had to get on a stage and yell at people, and I do not do very well being disliked, so it was definitely a learning curve. But you do not have to do that. That is not the only thing there is to do when it comes to fighting for a better climate now and in the future. Do not hold yourself back by thinking you have to do something big and scary in order to make a difference, whether that is just with yourself individually, with your friends, your family, and maybe one day you work yourself up to wanting to get on a stage and yell at people for free.
Margaret Klein Salamon: Your question about looking back from 2050 calls to mind the scene in Schindler’s List after the war is over and he is breaking down, saying, “This ring, I could have sold this ring and saved two more people. I could have sold the car and saved more.” I think when you are looking back on your life, you will not regret what you gave for this cause.
Jeremy Strong: Thank you all so much for being here tonight, and thank you, Emma and Betsy, for giving us this really important movie. I have so much admiration for you, and thanks for letting me talk with you.
Coverage Courtesy of Danny Jarabek