Eight years ago, I was in my mid-20s, and like many of my colleagues at NowThis News, I was completely aligned with the company’s left-wing content. As a social video producer, each day I logged on and searched my newsfeed for stories and videos that would appeal to our millions of Facebook followers. I called myself a journalist but really, I was an early social media influencer, pushing a very specific point of view.
The stories that got the most engagement were ones that elicited strong emotions, either happiness or anger. A “happy” story was one in which the good guys—LGBTQ activists, BLM protesters, climate change warriors, and the like—won some battle against greedy capitalists, cops, or (insert white authority figure here). An “angry” story was one in which those oppressors screwed over the good guys. When I came across a story I thought could go viral, I quickly edited the video and added subtitles and music. Then I’d sit back and wait for the reaction from our like-minded followers.
So, in October 2016, when the actress Shailene Woodley popped up on my computer screen, I knew she was going to generate a whole lot of views.
The clip showed her speech after she won an award from the Environmental Media Association. For months, she had been deeply involved in trying to block the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. Flanked by several members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, she spoke emotionally about the importance of stopping the oil pipeline.
“What we are seeing right now at Standing Rock is that thousands of people are committed to fighting and winning a battle against corporate greed with nothing but love and compassion, prayer, and ceremony,” she said. “I’m calling out to everyone in this room tonight, show up. Don’t just tweet about it. . . Go to Standing Rock. Go to Standing Rock.”
I quickly did my thing: I ran the video through my editing software, moving the best moments to the beginning. I added emotional music by searching “heartfelt” and “somber” in our music library. I wrote some subtitles. Then I posted it.
Within 24 hours, the video had over 1 million views. By December, that number was up to 17 million.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe opposed the pipeline because it was going to be routed underneath Lake Oahe, where the reservation gets its water, which they consider sacred. Even though the pipeline would be 95 feet below the lake, the tribe feared a leak could contaminate it. The protests began in April 2016, when some 60 members of the tribe rode on horseback for miles to set up the Sacred Stone Camp, which soon became known as Standing Rock. They vowed to stay until the pipeline was stopped.
Over the next few months, thanks to the viral clips shared by NowThis and other left-leaning social media sites, hundreds and then thousands of people joined the camp. The Native Americans led the protests, sometimes locking themselves to pipeline machinery or trespassing on the construction sites. Every day, protesters uploaded videos of these “acts of resistance” to Facebook.
Woodley was a regular at Standing Rock, often livestreaming on Facebook. In one grainy video, she talked about the evils of capitalism, the threat of climate change, and out-of-control corporate greed. She talked about her vegan diet and the increasing difficulty of finding nontoxic foods. In my mind, all of these issues were connected. Late-stage capitalism, colonialism, commercial agriculture, and corporate greed were all part of the mindset that was leading a greedy pipeline company—Energy Transfer Partners—to desecrate Native American land.
For months leading up to Woodley’s speech, I had watched videos of the Standing Rock protests every day, all day long. The term doomscrolling hadn’t been invented yet, but that’s what I was doing. In mid-October, I had watched footage of the police clashing violently with Standing Rock protesters. I quickly edited the footage for NowThis. The next day, Senator Bernie Sanders reshared my video to his millions of followers. Talk about validation!
Around the same time, the senior correspondent at NowThis landed an interview with President Obama. Near the end of the interview she asked him for his position on the pipeline. Obama responded, “I think as a general rule, my view is that there is a way for us to accommodate sacred lands of Native Americans. And I think that right now, the Army Corps is examining whether there are ways to reroute this pipeline.”
The next day his quote ran in a New York Times article under the headline “Obama Says Alternate Routes Are Being Reviewed for Dakota Pipeline.” Later, when I ran into the correspondent, she told me, “Lucy, I asked the question about Standing Rock because of the videos you’ve been making.”
l remember swelling with pride.
Here’s the thing, though. There was always a small pit of anxiety in my stomach—the thought that maybe this issue wasn’t as black and white as I framed it for our audience. I was always quick to suppress that thought, reminding myself that I was on the “right side of history.” It was okay to make the story less complicated if that meant the protesters’ message reached more people. I knew my coverage of the Standing Rock activists was one-sided. I didn’t care.
Thinking back on it, I can see now that the story played on the sense of “white guilt” that I had developed while working in such a left-leaning news environment. By highlighting the marginalized voices of these Native American activists, I could make up for my privilege. Besides, there was no upside in seeking different perspectives. Our viewers were on the side of the protesters, so I felt the need to paint their cause in a good light.
In December 2016, the online buzz was that the protesters were going to have a big standoff with the Bismarck police. By then, the NowThis videos about Standing Rock had been viewed 98 million times.
That’s when I went to Standing Rock myself.
By the time I arrived, the camp was enormous, eclectic, and colorful. We went live on the NowThis Facebook page from a hillside and reported on the scenes to our followers from the camp. I knew it was a protest, but I was having fun. I posed proudly with a sign that said, “Standing Rock Awakens the World.”
While we were there, we learned that President Obama had ordered the pipeline construction to stop. A celebration erupted across the camp.
Victory was ours!
But victory was also short-lived. Not long after I left Standing Rock, Donald Trump was inaugurated and the pipeline’s construction started up again. By then, the protesters had left. In February, I was back at my desk when I saw a video of all the trash being cleared from the campsite. Forty-eight million pounds of garbage had been left behind by the protesters, sticking North Dakota’s taxpayers with a $1 million cleanup bill. Did I post a video of the cleanup? I did not. Why complicate the story of good vs. evil? Standing Rock had inspired the world, and though the activists had moved on, I wasn’t about to crush the illusion.
I wish I could say that the garbage video—and the unthinking hypocrisy it represented—caused me to listen to my own doubts. But it didn’t. Instead, I doubled down. My coverage won the approval of my colleagues and helped my personal following on Instagram to grow to some 50,000. I kept it up because that’s what got me “likes” and engagement. Besides, I didn’t want to be called a traitor to the cause and face the backlash I knew would come with going against the group. I didn’t want to lose my friends—or fall out of favor with my coworkers.
It really wasn’t until 2021, by which time I was 31 and had left NowThis, that I was finally willing to confront the complications I’d avoided during all those years as a sustainability influencer. I began reading books and news sources that strayed from the progressive party line, titles like Unsettled by Steve Koonin, Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger, and Fossil Future by Alex Epstein. I realized that the environmental causes I had so breathlessly championed were much more complicated than good versus evil.
Do fossil fuels cause our planet to warm? Yes. They also make modern life possible, freeing women from hours of labor and empowering us in a million different ways. They’re singularly cost-effective and versatile as an energy source. This is something that the “keep it in the ground” climate activists never acknowledge. Nor do they admit that the promised panacea of renewable energy, like solar and wind, are nowhere near close to replacing fossil fuels and in fact, have their own dark environmental footprint.
Sometimes, being on the “right side” of environmental issues means looking past some truly terrible practices. For instance, electric vehicles are driving up the demand for cobalt mining which, as Siddharth Kara wrote in his book Cobalt Red, has led to the “utter destruction of the environment of the Congo,” with foreign mining companies dumping toxic substances into the environment and clear-cutting millions of trees. Just as bad, cobalt mines use child slave labor.
As for the Dakota Access Pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners has been operating it for seven years and it has done a lot of good—including for the environment. It carries 570,000 barrels a day of crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois, which means hundreds of fewer trains and trucks are needed to transport the fuel, leading to fewer accidents, spills, and emissions. The chances of the pipeline despoiling Lake Oahe are exceedingly slim. There are 13 pipelines currently running under the Missouri River—and not one of them has ever intersected with the water that the Standing Rock Sioux tribe relies on. In fact, three tribes in North Dakota use the pipeline to transport the oil drilled on their land.
I’m 34 now, married and a mother, and I understand the importance of being realistic about the world we all share. Where I once gave sustainability tips to my Instagram followers, I hardly ever post now. I’ve been hesitant to talk about my new, more complex views on energy, climate, and sustainability because I’ve been too afraid to face the inevitable backlash. I’ve watched these past few years as the climate movement has become increasingly radical, defacing famous pieces of art, blocking traffic and even ambulances, and cementing their hands to roads.
The activists have moved away from the “Standing Rock Awakens the World” slogan of 2016 and taken on a darker edge. Their solutions have become less about conservation and lowering carbon emissions and more about freeing Palestine and tearing down not just capitalism but, it seems, civilization itself. I wonder as I watch the latest videos: Is this the inevitable outcome of a movement powered by social media? And I also can’t help but wonder how my videos, my work, helped get it all started. Where does it end? How do people with fewer radical ideas counter irrational, destructive goals? While I have stayed silent for many years, I’m doing what I can now to speak out and take responsibility for the part I played in helping fuel the movement.
Am I still afraid of speaking out? I am. But I’m also afraid of staying silent.
Lucy is a retired sustainability influencer. She runs The Free Press’s social media accounts; you can find her personal account @lucybiggers on Instagram where she occasionally posts her unpopular opinions.
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