Morris, Sloane, and their cheerleaders envision an economy-wide tax on carbon pollution, no exemptions, with 100 percent of the revenues returned to citizens in quarterly rebate checks that will dwarf any rise in energy prices, similar to Canadian policy. The tax will begin at $50 a ton but be tied to emissions reductions, so it increases if emissions goals are not met. It will also include a border adjustment tariff to link carbon policy globally.
“We’re making sure the fossil fuels have nowhere to go. No market left,” Morris explains. “The carbon lobby is a big bad dog, so first we’re going to tame it, then we’re going to put it down.” Morris’s smile is vicious. “That’s why we call it the ‘shock collar.’ ”
Morris’s partner, Matthew Stanton, was not what I expected. He is tall, slender, boyishly handsome with high, delicate cheekbones and mournful eyes. He spends a lot of time during our interview sweeping thick brown locks from his brow. He comes across as shy, amused, unassuming, and melancholy. Morris calls him “Tar Heel,” a nod to his North Carolina roots.
Though he is a writer and photographer, he says, “Mostly my real gig is being Kate’s amanuensis.”
Stanton joined FBF in 2022 and now serves as assistant to the executive director and helps coordinate her speaking engagements and public outreach. He explains his own internalization of the climate threat.
“When we first came to D.C. I was pretty much like, ‘Global warming, sure, whatever. Maybe someday you can get back to the bison, Crazy Lady I Love.’ But suddenly I was living with a woman who gave me homework, and it really was like a religious conversion. I get why sometimes even smart people can’t look directly at it. The implications are just so profound and frightening.”
I ask if he worries about the constant barrage of criticism, outrage, death threats, rape threats, and defamation that Morris collects, especially now that she has become a topic of obsession in right-wing media.
“Nothing we can do about it,” he says. “It fazes me more than it does her. If she reads them, she’s like, ‘Look at this masturbating idiot.’ She puts the funny ones on a corkboard.”
Though it’s a touchy subject, I bring up the rumors, mostly circulating in said right-wing media, that Morris was detained in a New York City restaurant for having sex in the bathroom with Lucas Frisk, the lead singer of Dead Patriots. Frisk, the rumor goes, paid off the management to avoid indecency charges.
“I won’t comment on that,” says Stanton. “Except to say that Kate and I trust each other, and that’s our bottom line.”
Morris slinks back into the conversation, wrapping an arm around his neck. “Want to also tell Vanity Fair about our last ménage à trois?”
Levine, Sloane, and Yudong snicker at this. Stanton’s face turns the color of sunburn, and he adds an embarrassed smile that his childhood orthodontist should advertise. “Jesus, Kate. That’s off the record. See, she’s just an unrepentant show-off.”
Morris falls into his lap, tugging him by his thick head of hair and graphically sticking her tongue in his mouth. In our time together, I’ve often wondered how much of Kate Morris is calculation—even her crude jokes—and how much is simply an unfiltered expression of the drive within her. Here with her mates, as my recorder goes off and the inside jokes and old stories proliferate, I watch her happy-warrior armor fall away, plate by plate, and there is only her joy at being in the world, among people she clearly loves quite profoundly.
IN PHOENIX, THE DAY IS BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL, A PLEASANT sixty-seven degrees, making Armageddon feel very distant. On July 12 this past summer, Sky Harbor International Airport—where planes are now regularly grounded during the summer because the heat won’t allow the aerodynamics of the wings to achieve lift—hit a record temperature of 125 degrees Fahrenheit. The Salt River Project, Arizona’s largest utility, buckled under the energy demand and rolling brownouts ensued. Maricopa County reported at least twenty-five deaths, mostly infants and the elderly who roasted without power. Heat is not the only agent of chaos. The dust storms that have befallen the region in recent years are specters of biblical proportions. These ratcheting circumambient storms—known as haboobs—swamp Phoenix for days at a time. Six weeks after the brownouts, ninety-mile-per-hour winds blew a light orange fog of loose desert soil across Maricopa. Highways shut down and sand scoured windows until holes melted in the panes. The dust hung in a purple-mustard haze for several days.
Despite this, the state legislature remains a hotbed of climate denial intent on keeping the unchecked growth in the Phoenix Basin going any way it can. The state’s troubles also manifest as xenophobic zeal, as migrants fleeing heat, drought, storms, collapsing crop production, and violent cartels in Central and South America arrive to find a police state on the Arizona border. This provides ample oxygen for the likes of far-right VR star Jennifer Braden, who’s based out of Prescott. Braden continues to propose that men caught sneaking across the border should be chemically castrated and women forced into hysterectomies before deportation. She has the third-most-visited “worlde” on the popular new social VR platform Slapdish. Attendees log in so they can sit for three hours in an airplane hangar from the 1940s while Braden spews invective through a vintage retro microphone. A silver dual-propellered plane gleams in the background. CGI bodyguards wear sharp black suits with red accents in their lapels. Sepia-tinted American flags hang behind her, but one questions what aesthetic she’s invoking.
Pushing back against the weather and the rage is A Fierce Blue Fire’s South Phoenix campus. Across the street from its auditorium on the day of Morris’s speech, men wear flak jackets and carry AR-15s with the muzzles pointed at the ground. They hold signs decrying global warming as a hoax, and there is Braden’s face and a quote often attributed to her about undocumented migrants and those who want to protect them (“Hunt All Traitors to Extinction”). There is also a surprisingly strong anarchist-type contingent with signage proclaiming KATE MORRIS = CORPORATE STOOGE and images of the three-eyed nuclear fish from The Simpsons. Many wear FREE MILES KROLL T-shirts with the pristine face of that Mormon eco-revolutionary.
Inside, all two thousand seats of the auditorium are vouched for, and screens have been erected in every classroom and office to accommodate spillover. When the local director introduces Morris, the crowd—young, multicultural, eager—breaks into a rowdy welcome. Morris beams as she takes to the podium, flipping open a tattered spiral-bound notebook, and waits through several waves of applause.
“Okay, okay, sit the hell down,” she says when she can finally get a word in. “Man, this is the best-looking audience I’ve seen in my life. Not kidding, I’d sleep with everyone in this room, gender agnostic.”
Her choice of outfit is beyond casual. She wears sand-coated hiking boots, khaki cargo pants, and a sky-blue tank top that exposes the smoky brown of her shoulders. There’s an immense screen behind her with the organization’s blazing blue logo.
The laughter is genuine but also imbued with a bit of, Really? Would you, please?
“Now I’m sorry to say that’s probably our last laugh for the evening.” The crowd whispers itself to silence. She turns to the screen. “So. Here is my whole presentation. Soak it up.”
The logo switches to 430 PPM.