Mikaela Loach: 'Oil workers are not the enemy of a greener future'

She has also heard from followers who have told her, “I only followed you because I liked your pink outfits. Now I’ve changed my entire career to work in climate because I learned lots of stuff I never would have expected to learn. Maybe I wouldn’t have followed you if I hadn’t seen the fluffy pink outfits.”

The clothes may lure them in, but there's something about her particular style of tough climate activism and heartfelt influence that makes people stay: 163,000 of them on Instagram and rising.

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Here is a young woman who has chained herself to buildings and taken the government to court, but who also wells up when she speaks about her Jamaican grandmother and the tides rising around Hellshire Beach, near Kingston.

Pink enough to do Instagram and a popular podcast, titled Yikes!, but serious enough to have written a handbook that tackles not just climate, but race, class, capitalism, and justice.

When she arrives at the Meadows Pavillion café, buzzing from the previous day in which she both graduated from Edinburgh University and spoke to a packed audience of friends and fans at the launch of her book, Loach is wearing a pink jumpsuit and matching fake nails, which she says feels like coming “full circle”. Back in 2018, she was wearing a different pink jumpsuit for the photos that accompanied the diary of a climate activist piece she wrote for the Herald, documenting her Extinction Rebellion protest that year. “It feels very like, 'Oh gosh a lot has happened since then',” she says.

A lot has indeed happened, in the world and in her life. Not least that she spent a year writing a book, It's Not That Radical: Climate Action to Change Our Word, whilst living in Jamaica with her grandmother. And then there’s that high court case, in which she was one of three plaintiffs from a group called Paid to Pollute, who took the UK government to court for an oil and gas strategy that it argued conflicted with net zero goals.

Mikaela Loach, interviewed by Vicky Allan for the Herald, credit Amber Parsons

But we talk about Jamaica first. Loach had been burnt out when she got there – and it’s not surprising given the run-up year she describes of 12.5-hour shifts on clinical placement as a medical student throughout the pandemic, followed by the frenzy of COP26 and hot-on-its-heels a high court action.

That visit was the first time she lived in Jamaica as an adult, but when she got there, she had to stay on her own whilst her grandmother waited for a vaccine to kick in. She recalls suggesting, excitedly, on the phone with her grandmother about going to Hellshire Beach, which was where her family had often gone when she was a child.

“My grandma just said, ‘That beach doesn’t exist anymore. It's disappearing more and more every year and now the water is up at the level of the restaurant’. I remember having this sinking feeling in my stomach. I think we can intellectualise this climate crisis and make it seem quite distant, but this was a reminder that it was happening. Sea levels are rising, but this was a real place that I knew that had been a huge part of my childhood and it’s one of those places that kind of forms who you are.”

So many, she says, of her memories of Jamaica are caught up with Hellshire. “All the pictures of me as a baby are of sitting on that beach. I thought that if I have kids they won’t be able to have those same experiences. And there are so many communities living right there who must be thinking, every day, what’s going to happen to our homes that are getting closer and closer to the sea? My grandmother is only ten minute drive from there. It felt very personal and scary. I had to channel that fear – to think what am I going to do about this? Because it can be too easy just to sit in that fear. But, in that moment I think I allowed myself the grief of it all.”

Later, she would go to Hellshire with her grandmother and she recalls "standing on the edge of all the restaurants and I could see water splash into the restaurant where there was previously a whole beach out front.”

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Loach describes herself as “a soft black girl”. She wears emotions on her sleeve, talks about having been so bullied, as an 11-year-old, she had to switch secondary schools, and describes tears over climate change. But at the same time, she is fiercely eloquent and well-researched. She is also part of an international network of climate activists – amongst them Greta Thunberg and Vaness Nakate – all of whom are friends and, she says “a tight-knit community”. She and Thunberg recently messaged each other to exchange books. 

The pink, she says, is part of her life for multiple reasons - one of them being the desire to come to her work as her "full self". "The work that I do is very serious and sometimes quite draining and heartbreaking. I think I have to find those bits that I can do every day to mend my heart a little bit, and bring a little bit of joy in. For me wearing ridiculous pink outfits is that."

"When I was younger," she also recalls, "I was made because of this mix of misogyny and anti-blackness that black women experience, that to be taken seriously I think I thought I had to be a certain person or wear smart dress. I think in my adult life I’m trying to allow my child self who maybe didn’t get to be as whimsical because of bullies or because of difficult stuff, to have some joy.”

Loach began her journey in activism while she was at school in Surrey, with migrant justice and volunteering at the Calais camps, where she recalls “just folding clothes and chopping wood to support the displaced communities that are living there”.

She recalls that, at first, looking in on the climate movement, she had thought it wasn’t for her. “From my perspective, though I did grow up with class privilege I also grew up as a black person in the UK. For a long time, I saw the climate movement as solely white, middle-class, privileged, and that climate action was for those groups and not for the majority of people.”

That, she says, is changing – and this book is partly about inviting people in who otherwise might have thought they did not have a place or a role.

Mikaela Loach in the Meadows, image Gordon Terris

Climate activism of the type she has done has its critics – and not just over its image of privilege. What about the oil and gas workers - are we going to throw them under the bus? And, come on, isn’t it just impractical to turn off the taps on oil and gas?

Loach is a reminder that there is a section of the climate movement that is fiercely trying to be inclusive and push for a just transition. She talks about the oil and gas workers not being the enemy. Rather the shared foe, she says, is “the bosses and their higher-ups in the industry who don’t care about the planet or the workers. And are kind of screwing over both of them.”

Asked what she would say to an oil and gas worker who might be put out of a job, she delivers a considered speech.

“I would just want to say,” she says, “that we as a climate movement will be advocating for your rights as a worker as well as the rights of the planet and the rights of people because those are so interconnected. We want to advocate for a real just transition which means funding that kind of training and skilling up into renewable industries and not abandoning entire communities – and creating more and safer jobs for people who are currently in insecure jobs and worried about their future.”

Loach also appears resolutely non-judgemental on lifestyle choices - though that hasn’t always been the case. 

As a first-year student at Edinburgh University,  she got caught up in trying to cut down on plastic waste, then lying in bed thinking how awful everything was before getting up in the morning and making her own oat milk. “But I was already," she recalls, "thinking this is not enough. I became obsessive about my own lifestyle because I thought that was what we were being told was the solution. That all came from a profound misunderstanding of the connection of this crisis to other issues. “

Even then, it was already clear to her, she says, that the only reason she was able to pursue this lifestyle was because she was a student and had time. “I kept thinking most people can’t do this. What if you have a full-time job? I was aware that when I’d be on my doctorship I would not be able to do this.”

A key turning point was her joining Extinction Rebellion Scotland – which she describes as “a big moment in my life”. It was then that she started getting involved in actions, from occupying the streets in London to chaining herself to a stage, one of them being an occupation outside the Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy. It had aimed to draw attention to the fossil fuel subsidies given by the UK Government, which, she says, “amounted to around £4 billion at the time, in tax breaks and direct payment“.

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Following that, Loach wanted to do more and connected up with activist Kairin van Sweeden and former refinery worker Jeremy Cox, who were, she says “also passionate about these fossil fuel subsidies”. With lawyers Leigh Day, they started to talk about a legal strategy.

“I had changed my lifestyle and used social media," she says. "I had even put myself in arrestable positions, chaining myself to infrastructure. I felt I’d done all the things and yet they still had these huge subsidies. So it felt like let’s try and use the law to create a change.”

Hence it was, she found herself calling her father and delivering the killer line, “Hey, I just thought I’d let you know. I’m taking the government to court.”

Paid Pollute's action argued that the oil and gas strategy conflicted with the government's net zero goals. They lost, but she believes the group's strategy was nevertheless successful. “Before the court case the government had denied that these subsidies existed. Our strategy was to get it in the public consciousness and I think that we succeeded in that.”

By the time the high court delivered its decision, Loach was already in Jamaica with her grandmother, which was where she decided to write a book. “I wasn’t sure if writing a book was the right thing to do in a world that’s on fire and in which everything seems very urgent. But I reflected on how books have impacted me a lot and also after having conversations with my grandma, I just started writing not thinking it was going to become anything, but writing about our conversations.”

She was then, she says, burnt out. “COP26 was one of the most intense times of my life. Two weeks of hardly sleeping. I remember going to bed at about 3 am and then waking up at 6 am and then putting on all the eye cream I could and then running through Glasgow and doing many interviews every day and trying to lobby politicians. Then it was straight into our court case  And also bear in mind that all of this happened after doing one of my first clinical years as a med student, during the pandemic.”

When she got to Jamaica, she felt she could finally relax. “But the burn-out was very serious. I would just lie on the sofa in our little flat in Jamaica and cry for days at a time."

In that context, she says, writing the book felt like therapy. “It also meant having to force myself to have hope every morning. Because I felt,  don’t want people to be dragged into a doom spiral while reading this. I was forced to have hope whilst writing every single day.” She was clear that she didn’t want to write, she says, another “we’re all screwed” book. ”I don't think anyone wants to spend ten hours with that kind of book."

And It’s Not That Radical is clearly not that. It's a book of hope and inclusiveness. At Loach's Edinburgh launch all of that was on show – as well as the pink. She pitched up in a rented fuchsia dress that would have wowed any red carpet. The buzz was strong because she was among friends, her university and activist peers, and at the heart of a movement. But also because of her warmth and empathy.

The room was packed with twentysomethings and what struck me was that here was Generation Z’s climate justice movement turning out for one of its heroes, complete with standing ovation at the end.

As a Gen-X outsider, I had the feeling that if the future lies with people as emotionally literate as Loach, there is real hope.

Mikaela Loach, It's Not That Radical Edinburgh launch at Lighthouse Bookshop

Loach however isn't all that keen on being considered a star or hero - she is keen to point out the role of everyone else, including the person who compiles the spreadsheets, in the climate movement.

She has, she says, “a difficult relationship with social media” and is well aware that it exists “to colonise our attention”.

“It’s obvious that I use it a lot," she says, "and I try and use it as a tool for good, but it is a platform that revolves around individuals. If a group is on social media they’re going to get way less attention than if they are individuals. That’s just how it works.  

“You can think that the person who has the most followers is doing the most work – and that’s ridiculous. I am so aware that I know so many incredible wonderful people who do far more work than I do in different ways – and work that isn’t celebrated. I know it’s not about me, it’s about a collective struggle.”  

What she wants is for people to get involved - and to see how climate justice could lead to a better world. “It’s very possible to tackle this crisis in an eco-fascist way, restricting resources from people. But it’s also very possible to tackle it in a way where we give more to people so that we all have more of what we actually need to survive. I just want people to understand that that is a possibility too.”

And that links, she says, to her key message, which is that “we are not just fighting to preserve this world as it is, we are fighting to transform it.”

“So many people," she says," have been told that the best that we can hope for with climate action is this world as it is exactly now but worse. But the world as it is now is completely messed up. The majority of people are left in very insecure lives. We've been told that the best we can hope for is a possible chance of becoming a millionaire.”

She wants, therefore, to reframe what is possible. “And that,” she says, “ is about all of us being able to live in dignity and have a better life. That requires us to imagine that and then act on that imagination. I think that’s what I see my role as, opening people up to what is possible.”

It's a possible in which all are welcome, pink or not. 

It's Not That Radical: Climate Action to Transform Our World is published by Dorling Kindersley