Online petitions are built around getting as many signatures as possible. But the experience of taking them and forgetting about them degrades the importance.

There are a lot of reasons people don't talk about climate change. One of them has to do with the language of science, and people feeling not competent about this issue.

My grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. Some heroes of mine have long been the Jewish Partisans, these young people who just went into the woods with whatever guns and bombs and what not they could get their hands on, and just would fight Nazis, and try to help people escape.

Psychologically speaking, the rational, healthy response to climate change is to say to oneself, "What can I do about this?" But that question is often answered through individual action.

I think 99% of climate scientists would agree that we need to reduce emissions as quickly as possible, and then begin removing greenhouse gasses and carbon from the air. And if we don't do that we are looking at some range of catastrophe.

With climate change, of course there are things to grieve. I certainly grieved that the vision that I had for my life, that I would be a clinical psychologist and write books and have a family, that that was not going to happen, because if the world is collapsing around you, it just doesn't seem that appealing anymore.

Taking fear seriously is not easy. A lot of people's response to fear is "Don't worry so much, it's crazy." But some things absolutely deserve our fear, and climate change is first among them.