Interview with Rebekah Jones, climate and disaster scientist
I was radicalised by the social fallout after Hurricane Katrina
Welcome to What’s Left! I’m Amy Hoggart, a writer/comedian with the ideals of a radical but the risk-aversion of a moderate. Each week, I interview someone interesting on the left about their personal politics and the state of the left today.
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Rebekah Jones is a geographer and scientist specializing in climate change, best known for building Florida’s COVID-19 dashboard and for her whistleblowing on political interference in public health data. She is the founder and editor of MesoscaleNews.com, where she covers climate, disasters, civil liberties and the misuse of power through data-driven reporting. Her work sits at the intersection of science, accountability, and activism, with a focus on making complex systems legible—and impossible to ignore.
Welcome, Rebekah!
Hi, Amy, thanks for having me.
The first question I always ask everyone is this: if there was a version of the political spectrum where 0 means you’re a total centrist, -100 a fascist and +100 a radical leftist, where would you put yourself?
85.
Pretty far left! What makes you say that?
I honestly can’t remember a point in my life, even in childhood, where I wasn’t of that political leaning.
A big part of it is that I grew up as the second of four kids to teen parents in South rural Mississippi. My parents were together all of my childhood, but there was a lot of fighting, mostly over money. There are elements of living in the deep rural South that—if you’re a person who pays attention—clue you into some of society’s lesser elements.
Mississippi is a rough place to grow up. Most of what I believe and what drives me in my academic work comes from growing up there.
It’s such a conservative and religious state. Were your family also like that?
No. I was raised by a very far-left, loyal Democratic feminist mother. Although she didn’t have the opportunity to go to college, she’s still the smartest person I’ve ever met. My mom was really the inspiration for much of my politics and why I worked so hard to get out and pursue higher education.
Anecdotally, doing these interviews, I’ve noticed that people from financially insecure backgrounds are likely to skew pretty far left. One guest talked about the impact of realising firsthand that the system will not necessarily catch you when you need it. Would you agree that financial struggles can push you away from defending the status quo?
Absolutely. I was housing insecure as a child. I’ve slept on a park bench. There was a point where we didn’t have enough money to eat. That’s not unusual for people who grew up in my family’s income bracket. I’m so far beyond thinking, The welfare system is flawed. There was no system. The welfare state didn’t exist for us at all.
However, we did have privileges other families nearby didn’t because we were white. My mom was resourceful and we were smart, attractive kids. That sounds uncomfortable to say, but it’s real. In a town where half the county was Black, there were advantages we had that Black families in the same situation didn’t.
So how did you end up working in climate science?
The summer before we moved down to South Mississippi, we were still living in Pennsylvania and a tornado hit near our house and killed a couple of people. We lived on a farm, so we had to run outside and go to the cellar area. It was terrifying and exhilarating for me, and that really piqued my interest in weather.
We moved down to Mississippi in 1998, and then Hurricane Georges—one of the worst hurricanes to hit the Gulf Coast—came through. Hurricanes were a completely new concept to me. I hadn’t learned about them in school yet.
I remember hurricane parties were really fun. That was how it was introduced to me by our redneck cousin.
Hurricane parties? What do you mean?
You load up on junk food and snacks and adults load up on beer, and then you hang out without power. We used to play Yahtzee and enjoy the time off. It was like a snowstorm up north: you’re prepared, you’re not afraid you’re going to die, and mostly it’s just a few days off from school and work.
The water was still very high after Georges because it was a category four on approach. It weakened quickly, but there’s a lot of physics involved in storm surge, so it was catastrophic.
There was an alligator farm in Gautier, Mississippi, and I remember watching the news and seeing that the alligator farm had flooded. The alligators had gotten out of their enclosure and were swimming down the street. I remember thinking, Where did we just move? Is this real? There are dinosaurs swimming down the street!
That is absolutely mad!
Also, before that hurricane hit, we went to Ship Island which is a barrier island in Mississippi. A couple months later, we went back after the hurricane and the storm had split the island in half and completely reshaped it in a day. That’s when I knew I wanted to understand this power. I wanted to know how something could do that.
You wanted to learn about the mechanics of storms?
Yep. I wanted to understand how such a dramatic, overnight, lasting change could happen.
But then my interest changed during Katrina. I lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast during Katrina and I was 16 which is an age where something like that permanently alters you. We stayed during the storm and that experience was terrifying, fascinating and world-changing. But what really affected me was the social fallout.
I hated society after that. Not just because of the failures to get aid, but because of how people talked about it.
We left about four or five days later when we ran out of water. It was the drive out that radicalized me against the average American. We were listening to the radio, and people were calling in saying things like, ‘They know where they live. Why should we spend money helping them?’.
Oh my god.
I’ll never forget it. We had family in New Orleans and one of them died. I realised then that my belief that people fundamentally cared about each other was wrong. And not just a little wrong.
We had no power, no money, barely any gas. It took almost a day and a half to get out of Mississippi and we couldn’t afford a hotel. We stopped at a Walmart where the Red Cross was raising money for Katrina victims. But when my dad went to them and asked for help, they didn’t help at all, they actually treated him like he was a loser. Eventually, a guy in the parking lot overheard and gave my dad $100 so we could leave. Otherwise, I don’t know what would have happened.
Every step after the storm showed me how selfish and cruel people could be. That devastated me.
I decided then that I wanted to tell people about what was happening, because the media coverage was grotesque: painting survivors as looters and prioritizing property over human life. It made me realize something was deeply wrong with how we communicate about disaster.
A visually-glitchy moment but a vocally-important one when Rebekah absolutely destroys this horrible woman. Watch full vid here!
In terms of climate change, what would you like to see change in order to protect people? I know that’s such a big question.
Right, it’s not one thing; it’s a million things.
The organization I work with now as an advisor is a UN-backed NGO. If you look at the people who are active in these spaces and the countries taking leadership, it becomes clear that America has never really been a leader on climate change. Not since Jimmy Carter.
One way to look at it is to see what other countries are doing and model after that. We’re not without examples. Many Asian, South American, and African countries are breaking molds and doing things very differently.
What are they doing differently?
So, within the Western world, everything is framed as an economic problem. At some point, some consultant said, ‘People care about money more than anything. If you frame climate change as something that impacts wallets, people will care.’ That’s been the drumbeat, especially in America, since the 1990s.
And it’s unfortunate, because a lot of people don’t care if rich investors lose money.
Ha ha.
They care about the planet. They care about their kids. They care about animals going extinct and about suffering caused by more frequent and intense disasters.
People in South Mississippi aren’t worried about stock dividends. They’re worried because they’ve had three Category 5 storms in six years and their house has flooded eight times. That’s what they care about.
I understand why there’s such a focus on economics, but it’s consumed the debate so much that unless a solution is highly profitable within our capitalist system, it’s not considered viable. That affects which projects get funded, what research people pursue, and how priorities are set at every level of government.
Geography is really fragmented between social science and hard physical science. As a physical scientist, I’ve always argued that research improving public safety—like learning how to build better dams or prevent flooding—should be prioritized over purely cultural or observational studies.
I took a lot of heat for saying that, but I stand by it. Our definition of ‘solutions’ has become so tied to economics that we skip over massive opportunities for development simply because there isn’t already a company positioned to profit from them.
That’s such a fascinating angle. I hadn’t noticed that before, but I can really see how much of this conversation is framed through an economic lens.
And it doesn’t stop there. The way things are framed—especially in journalism—has become a form of self-censorship.
When I worked for the state in Louisiana, I was never told there were words I couldn’t use or things we couldn’t publish. It was simple: we have a huge problem and this much money, and we need to protect people and property as effectively as possible.
When I later started working for the state of Florida, one of the first things I was told was that they did not use the term ‘global warming,’ and they preferred we not say ‘climate change.’
Oh wow.
It was insane to me that you’d hire a climate scientist and then tell them they can’t say climate change or global warming. Looking back, that was a massive red flag. It foreshadowed everything that came later.
Then COVID happened, and I learned the consequences of saying things you’re not supposed to say in this country.
Are you optimistic at all about humanity’s response to climate change?
I’m mixed. I think we’ll see a patchwork of places willing to take risks and act meaningfully, and others that won’t. Countries will enter and exit that space, the way America has.
I don’t see aggressive, enforceable international action anytime soon. I’d love to be wrong, but given how weak international institutions have been—even on basic human rights—I don’t see a mechanism for accountability.
Climate change is far more complicated than past global crises. The Montreal Protocol [international treaty that protected the ozone layer] worked because one industry caused one problem, and we could stop producing one thing.
But climate change affects every industry. Addressing it would require comprehensive changes that would initially shock society. Eventually, things would be better. That is, until we found a new way to exploit the planet and each other, which I have complete faith humanity would manage to do.
Ha ha, I also trust that we’d find a way to do that….
I really wish we were the same society that faced the Montreal Protocol problem. Because there was—and this is what’s lacking today—a willingness to acknowledge that a problem was happening, and to listen to the people who understood why it was happening and what needed to be done to rectify or at least limit its impact.
That willingness—not just in America but globally—has all but evaporated. That’s concerning.
We need people to become more empathetic: aware of how their own lifestyle impacts someone else and about what is happening more broadly. But I think we’d need something like a revolution for that to happen.
We’ve been crawling toward solutions, making concession after concession, and that has rendered most of what we’ve done easily erasable. That’s a problem.
Ok, quicker questions now, do you have any secret conservative beliefs?
Yes. I support the death penalty in very rare, very extreme cases and under specific conditions. The biggest problem with the death penalty is the execution of innocent people or people who were mentally impaired or didn’t have proper legal defense. But in the most heinous crimes, where there is absolutely no doubt, yes. If there were indisputable proof—caught on video—that someone raped and killed a child, for instance.
Have you ever knowingly dated or slept with a conservative?
Not knowingly, no. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if some people fell down the rabbit hole later.
Could you make up a fake marginalized community that you belong to?
Intelligent, attractive, over-educated millennial blondes who are whiter than a North Dakota blizzard, yet identify more with marginalized communities than their own. That’s my marginalized group.
I grew up in a place where most of my friends weren’t white. The white kids where I grew up were mostly deeply religious and extreme, and I connected more with people who had experienced hardship like me. You can see struggle in people: in how they view problems, how they talk, how they treat others. Upper-class white culture just wasn’t something I connected with.
Do you have any reading you’d recommend?
Yes. I have a big list of recommended climate reading on my website, and it’s very accessible.
Do you have any recommendations for action—what people should actually do?
Pay attention and be an informed citizen. Follow people who cover these issues consistently. Climate communication has come a long way. We now have legitimate experts who are also excellent communicators. There are experts out there for every level: from generalists to highly technical specialists. Pick who you want to learn from.
And be politically engaged. Vote in the primaries where differences in climate policy can be massive even if they seem subtle.
Thank you so much, Rebekah, It’s been great talking to you.
Yeah, you too. Sorry, I know I talk a lot. Climate will do that.
That’s exactly what I wanted, so thanks!
Watch or listen to our full conversation here!
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