Talking to ... Zion Lights

What do you do when you’re a public relations spokeswoman sitting
in a BBC studio, being grilled by a relentless host who is
insisting that you defend Extinction Rebellion founder Roger
Hallam’s absurd claim that climate change will claim billions of
lives in just a few years? In actuality, her answer would have
been simple — she needed only to follow the group’s creed,
drilled into her before the broadcast: just break down in tears.
»People need to see crying mothers...« That Zion Lights didn’t
bow to the activists’ peer pressure in this situation is a sign
of great intellectual integrity — which may have something to do
with her family’s history: her parents were Indian rice farmers
before moving to the UK, a background that taught her energy
poverty is even worse than CO2 emissions — and how technology has
done more to liberate women than any hand-wringing or crocodile
tears ever could. And this was precisely what prompted us to
start a conversation with her, tracing the path of this woman who
went from being the press spokesperson for Extinction
Rebellion—perhaps the most radical of all Environmental
Movements—to becoming an advocate for Nuclear Power: a
coming-of-age story that highlights the internal doctrine of this
cult — as Zion Lights herself now calls it — while reminding us
that demonizing technology is a luxury belief that few people can
afford — and one that, as off-grid societies have shown, leads to
the worst cognitive dissonance imaginable.


Zion Lights is a writer who was an early environmental activist
and press spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion from 2018 to
2020. After parting ways with the group, she shifted toward a
pragmatic, technology-oriented environmental movement. She
recently published her journey from »grassroots activism to
becoming one of the UK’s leading advocates for nuclear energy,«
titled Energy is Life: Why Environmentalism Went Nuclear. She has
contributed to the Huffington Post for several years and has
recently begun writing for Quillette and Human Progress.


Zion Lights has published


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