By Avery Roberts
Growing up amid climate disasters like Hurricanes Sandy or Irma, I didn’t know I had ADHD or autism. My strong emotions made me a “drama queen.” My deep care made me “too sensitive.” My passion and hyper-fixations, such as climate change, made me “obsessive.” Since I knew nothing else, eventually I bought the narratives that others constructed about me.
Since I was diagnosed with ADHD and since my knowledge of autism has grown, I’ve begun to question my old judgments. I wasn’t “being dramatic” or “too sensitive” when I expressed fear over climate change. My emotions are simply stronger than a neurotypical person’s, which makes them harder to ignore. Why were these traits penalized?
Intentionally or not, my family’s ableist actions were influenced by capitalism — the same force extracting fossil fuels and burning our planet. Capitalism rewards emotional numbness and compartmentalization: all work, no time to feel. However, my deep emotions and focus disrupt that practice. And I might be wearing down before a neurotypical person would, yet the national minimum wage hasn’t increased since it was set at $7/hr. Even then it wasn’t truly livable — and with taxes and inflation, neither is the $20 it’d be if it had increased with worker productivity. So, why tell me to “just work harder or “keep grinding?” Capitalism commodifies everything, from oil to trees to clean water. For me, neurodivergence is a way of experiencing the world that resists commodification.
“Capitalism rewards emotional numbness and compartmentalization: all work, no time to feel.”
Now, before anyone throws a fit over me “getting political,” let’s consider Audre Lourde’s concept of the personal as political. My neurodivergence, for instance, isn’t just personal. In a world that values productivity and sameness, neurodivergence is inherently political. The same is true when it comes to gender — since I was socialized as a woman, my anger was “hysterical” (no matter how justified: take fossil fuel CEOs lying for decades). Distress, excitement, or any kind of passion became “she’s crazy.” As a woman, my emotions were policed; as a neurodivergent person, they were pathologized. To feel deeply, to think differently — the same traits that make me a better activist — were treated as both a liability and a rebellion.
I’m not the only one with this experience: capitalism undervalues and exploits women and femmes’ emotions and labor. And as it does them, capitalism treats nature not as integral or even sacred but as a collection of objects. Every object is disposable — no matter the cost. People protecting nature, like Climate Defiance or the Indigenous Oceti Šakowiŋ, are shamed as “outrageous” or violently suppressed by law enforcement.
Under capitalism, neurodivergence becomes a diagnosis; gender becomes a task list; and the Earth becomes a resource. Like my childhood anger, activists’ justified rage is pathologized and even villainized.
My strong emotions mean great fear of the record-breaking summers and severe weather battering my home state, Florida. Meanwhile, sorrow and anger for those we’ve lost drives me forward. Autism and ADHD’s sensitivity to justice means I struggle to “turn off” concern for injustice. Take capitalism — an economic system built on infinite extraction. How can Earth’s finite resources survive that? How can humans survive without clean air and water, or food? My intense focus on “climate science,” storytelling, or advocacy, like my neurodivergence, is not a superpower. It is survival in a collapsing, unsustainable system. And why must my differences be a “superpower”? Why must neurodivergent people be “extraordinary” to be accepted?
“My intense focus on ‘climate science,’ storytelling, or advocacy, like my neurodivergence, is not a superpower. It is survival in a collapsing, unsustainable system.”
The people that have accepted me, while respecting my right to be ordinary, are ending our old system and building new, better ones. For example: neurodivergent or not, connecting with fellow environmental activists empowers me to do more and trust myself. And if lots of people care deeply about the worsening weather, it can’t just be me who’s “the weird one.” Instead, trusting my emotions and the passion of fellow activists pushes me to do great things — like pressure the Biden Administration into pausing LNG exports.
Finally, capitalism does more than emotional harm to neurodivergent people. Our sensory overwhelm parallels how Earth has nearly maximized its Ocean Heat Content. As constant socializing drains our energy, fossil fuel use drains our planet. Both neurodivergent burnout and climate destruction are symptoms of systems that demand endless extraction without rest or reciprocity. Since both struggles have the same cause, they require inclusive solutions.
To tackle the climate crisis, we must utilize neurodivergent-inclusive and anti-patriarchal feminist climate justice. We must embrace ways of being that capitalism devalues: slowness, sensitivity, care, and connection. “Unproductive” as these phrases may sound, they make us better activists: taking time off when we’re overworked keeps our minds sharp. Care for others helps us heal injustice like environmental racism.
Since connecting with Zero Hour, I’ve accomplished more than I ever could alone. To continue that empowerment, we must center marginalized voices — neurodivergent, BIPOC, queer, disabled — in building a movement rooted in justice and liberation. How can we create a just world without just movements?
My strong emotions are right. My intuition — that climate change was a real threat, despite no one I knew treating it as one — is right. I am disabled, not evil. All my experiences have been true. What the world dismissed in me — my questions, my care, my way of thinking — has been the most radical gift of all, not because it makes me exceptional, but because it connects me to others fighting for a world where difference is valued. Take liquefied natural gas, for example: is it really “clean”? Or is it another false solution, which my pattern recognition skills and attention to science let me recognize? We won’t progress by “fitting in” or perpetuating ableism. Rather, when we examine how power systems pathologize or exploit difference, we can and must envision movements that honor humanity in all its forms. It is by embracing emotion, passion, and everything else our unique minds give us that we will save the world and ourselves.
