While I was scrolling through the app recently, the algorithm pointed me to science communicator and sustainability scientist Alaina Wood, better known on TikTok as The Garbage Queen. She’s part of a collective of activists known as EcoTok. Since joining TikTok at the beginning of the pandemic, she’s amassed more than 265,000 followers and has even interviewed Bill Nye the Science Guy as part of TikTok’s Earth Day celebration.
The video of Wood’s that initially caught my attention featured her debunking another viral video that she classifies as “climate doom.” Wood goes on to say that videos like this are exacerbating the climate anxiety that many are struggling with today.
On TikTok, The Garbage Queen stands out because she, as a scientist, understands the gravity of the climate problem better than most. But at the same time, she spreads a message of hope and possibility to a large and growing following of the climate-curious.
I can see being encouraging, and suggesting useful and doable changes in people’s lives, but this is how you talk to a five-year-old:
“You won’t run out of food and water.”
Increasing numbers of people are running out of food and water now.
As crop failures overlap more and more, malnutrition and famine will affect more people. We know about mined-out aquifers and emptying reservoirs, and while Cape Town never hit the feared Day Zero it was pretty damned close.
Ongoing aridification of Australia, the US Southwest, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Sahel definitely means more people will run out of water in those areas decade after decade, and any existing agriculture in those regions will take a hit.
https://hungermap.wfp.org/