How The World Stopped Caring About The Environment

In this eye-opening conversation, Simone Collins and Malcolm Collins declare 2025 the year climate activism collapsed—and they’re not mincing words. From Greta Thunberg’s pivot to Palestine solidarity, Bill Gates’ major memo shift (”Three Tough Truths About Climate”), Matthew Yglesias rethinking his past positions, and even progressive New York walking back aggressive climate mandates... the movement that once dominated headlines is fading fast.

We dive deep into why: overhyped apocalyptic predictions that never materialized, market forces solving “crises” like peak oil, historical moral panics (Satanic Panic, video games, comics), and the bigger question—what panics are actually justified?

Simone shares her personal journey from hardcore climate activist (saving sea turtles, Earth Day Network, custom environmental major) to realizing many doomsday claims were overblown. We contrast climate with real existential issues like demographic collapse (aka “TISM”), water shortages in major cities, and AI disruption—plus why some panics (ozone hole, Y2K, leaded gas) were worth the freakout and actually got solved.

If you’ve ever donated to climate causes, worried about the apocalypse, or wondered why the vibe shifted from “save the planet” to class conflict & human dignity... this episode is for you.

We also riff on everything from Kylie Jenner housekeepers to hag-maxing Karens channeling maternal energy into Earth-worship, why young men stopped caring when the hot activists aged, and how the prenatal movement avoids the same pitfalls as old climate hysteria.

Episode Transcript:Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because 2025 was the year that climate activism died.

And I don’t think enough people are talking about it, but major activists and donors and even states are dropping climate change like it’s hot. So we’re, we’re talking about Matthew Glacia, Greta Thunberg, bill Gates, and even the state of New York, which is insane what even New York lost climate change.

I’ll, I’ll go into it. It, it’s, I’m like, okay. I mean, it’s clear we’re, it’s over. It’s over. We, we we’re not trying to make fetch happen anymore.

Speaker: You only fight these causes cause caring cells All you activists can go yourselves That was so inspiring! What a wonderful message!

Simone Collins: And in general that the sentiment has shifted. From saving animals and the earth to class conflict and human dignity. And this is ex exemplified by Fels, like Kylie Jenner being criticized for watching her animal cruelty-free makeup on her housekeepers.

No one cares that it’s animal [00:01:00] cruelty free. They’re like, how dare you? Yeah, I love, I love that you a

Malcolm Collins: housekeeper. She, she got it all cheap or whatever. The, the, this office that was able to do animal testing really cheap, and then they found out it was just because they were doing it on interns.

Simone Collins: There’s, I think there’s that, I heard about that separately, but this, this was this was a, I think a more prominent kerfuffle, but I just think it’s really funny because she, she pays her housekeeper.

The housekeeper obviously consented to it. But I think just mere, I think it’s exemplified because what, what really people are freaking out about is basically in any way using a paid employee, I guess, you know, for anything. And, and to not do it.

Malcolm Collins: It’s a fascinating phenomenon, how hard, how fast and how completely the climate movement was abandoned.

Yeah.

Speaker: Alright, that does it! I f ed it!

Malcolm Collins: We will be teaching our children about the climate movement as a historic movement.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And speaking [00:02:00] of, of historical movement, I think this, this is a there’s a wider question that this development, the 2025 crash of climate activism brings to light, which is, this is of course not the first panic we’ve had.

And I think it’s really important to ask ourselves in light of current panics that are actively going on current things, people are like, we have to spend money on this. We have to change our lives around this. We have to learn. How to better divine what is worth our time because I spent a huge portion of my youth dedicated to climate activism.

That’s what her degree is in. I save the sea turtles. I like spent a summer volunteering to help the baby, sea turtles make it to the ocean and measure the giant sea turtles. And by the way, do you know the secret to stopping a giant sea turtle as they’re making their way back to the ocean? So you can measure her, you stick your knee, you need two people, but you stick your knee behind her front fin and then she can’t move forward.

And then that, that frees you up. Interesting. Yeah. But it doesn’t always work when you get a big enough [00:03:00] turtle, you just can’t stop them. At one point I just watched that one of the Italian volunteers just ride her straight into the ocean. He just like gave up and got on top of her and was like, I mean, like, you’re not supposed to do that, but he’s just like, screw it.

Like I’m going for it. And it was a beautiful thing to watch because there was bioluminescence in the ocean at the time and we’re doing all this overnight, so it’s like dark and just watching an Italian ride into a glowing ocean on a turtle. It is one of those things you’ll never forget in your life.

But the point being is, is you dedicating the point being is that we, we need to, we learn. We need to learn. Yeah. I, I, yeah. And then I studied environmental business. My, I tried to build an entire custom college major around this. I worked for Earth Day Network. This is the group of people who created Earth Day.

I, I worked for the American Council on Renewable Energy. I was extremely dedicated to this. And there are a lot of people now that are extremely dedicated to working on, on AI related apocalyptic organizations and, and working on all sorts of other panics. And so what I wanna do is also go through some historical panics and we’ll also discuss climate change more, and we’ll also discuss the [00:04:00] current crash, because I just think it’s amusing.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and it’s also interesting to talk about from the perspective of you and myself as Yeah, the figureheads of the prenatal movement. Like yeah, demographic

Simone Collins: collapse

Malcolm Collins: is

Simone Collins: another one of those

Malcolm Collins: we’ve gotta freak out about this. And, you know, we should, but the point being is just because something is like. A big problem for civilization or something that’s going to affect everyone.

Yeah. It does not mean that you can turn it into a movement or that it will stay a movement in any point of time. Yeah. Like, right, right. Now that climate chain has crashed out doesn’t mean that anything existential has changed about I mean, depending on, like deforestation for example, is like.

Happening at, it’s still happening, right? Oh, and,

Simone Collins: and I’m gonna get into it too, but also like a lot of major cities Mexico City, I think it’s Sao Paulo South Africa for sure. They’re just running outta water. They’re just drawing down their water tables. I mean, you talked about Iran too, there is going to get a point where they do not have more groundwater to pull from.

There’s going to be nothing left. So some of these are like [00:05:00] existential questions for civilization. Mm-hmm. Well, and so I, I think we, we, yeah. The, the, the larger discussion of