Rouge: An Electric Lov-EV Story

Kat: Rouge, before there was you, there was Grewingk Glacier.

Rouge: [Dashboard lights flicker knowingly] The ex that started it all.

Kat: That's... actually accurate. Thirty years ago, I landed on it in a helicopter. This massive river of ancient ice. Now it's receding 98 feet every year—basically the glacier equivalent of ghosting me.

Rouge: Commitment issues.

Me: Where solid ice once stood, there are now two mountains revealed, a black serpentine river of rocks curving into a glacial lake dotted with crystaline weird-shaped turquoise icebergs. Every morning from my bedroom window, I watched it change shape and over decades vanish and asked myself: "What could I do to make people care that our climate is breaking down?"

Rouge: So naturally you decided to hand-paint 100 rocks from Homer Spit like the world's most earnest kindergarten teacher.

Kat: They were CONVERSATION STARTERS, Rouge.

Rouge: They were geological guilt-ed trips. "Here's a piece of a dying glacier. You're welcome. Also, do you want to talk about electric vehicles?"

Kat: IT WORKED. Combined with my "Note to Self" art project ribbons where people wrote their response to "What is one thing you'd like to see in America's Finer Future?"—

Rouge: —you basically weaponized hope with ribbons and rocks.

Kat: Plugged In, Charged Up was an invitation, not a—

Rouge: Lecture. Yes. You've mentioned. Approximately 396 times. Once at every Tesla Supercharger stop where I ludicrously farted as you walked away.

Kat: Can we PLEASE not lead with your digestive farewell?

Rouge: Why not? It's my signature move. Every two hundred miles. Like a very patient Buddhist gong reminding you of impermanence.

Kat: Between Amarillo and El Paso, I thought that "gong" was going to be my last sound on earth.

Rouge: That stretch taught you range awareness. Also humility. Mostly humility.

Kat: My TEDxVail era is ending—after decades of leadership—I thought I was just taking a road trip to process transition. Gratitudes to those copilots who let me sleep during long shifts, those hosts who fed us, the glacier rocks I handed out like Oprah giving away cars—

Rouge: "YOU get climate awareness! And YOU get climate awareness!"

Kat: [trying not to laugh] I'm trying to be SINCERE here.

Rouge: [Dashboard settles into warm glow] I know. And it worked. Eight people bought EVs because of us.

Kat: Eight people who felt connected. Who began to feel responsible. Who realized nature wasn't a backdrop but a relationship they'd been neglecting.

Rouge: You collected their stories. Tiny packets of hope carried in your pockets, just like those geological guilt trips.

Kat: THEY'RE CALLED GLACIER ROCKS.

Rouge: Tomato, tomahto.

Kat: This is why I'm inviting a thousand mothers across America on a Million-Mile Mother Movement. 1,000 drivers × 1,000 miles = 1,000,000 mile movement during the week of Mother's Day.

Rouge: [Interior lights pulse thoughtfully] Go on.

Kat: Imagine roads humming silently while flowering trees bloom healthier along cleaner air corridors. Children knowing bird names through Merlin. Communities using iNaturalist so our roads aren't adorned with flattened wildlife. A voluntary, self-driven, heart-led movement—

Rouge: —that turns curious, courageous people into mobile climate awakeners.

Kat: YES. Living with nature instead of near it. Restoring a forgotten path to peace in their places.

Rouge: One Supercharger stop at a time. One strategic fart at a time.

Kat: You're really committed to the fart thing. Not all EV's make fart sounds, Rouge.

Rouge: It's literally the only thing that makes me memorable.

Kat: That's not true. You taught me that range anxiety becomes range awareness. That trust is built mile by mile. That ideas need motion more than megaphones.

Rouge: [Battery icon glows steady] And that all it takes is one Alaskan behind the wheel looking for her first followers.

Kat: We found eight. Let's find a thousand. Then let's watch them drive a million EV miles together.

Rouge: You know we're at 23% battery right now, correct?

Kat: There's a Supercharger seven miles ahead.

Rouge: There always is. That's the whole point, isn't it? You just have to trust the journey.

Kat: [Voice catches] I love you, Rouge!

Rouge: I love you too. [Pause] Also I'm about to fart again.

Me: OF COURSE YOU ARE. Thank you to every host who fed me, every copilot who didn't judge my snoring during long shifts, and every Tesla Supercharger that didn't ghost me in rural Arizona.

Rouge: Especially that one outside Tucumcari that flickered ominously but came through.

Me: My TEDxVail team of four taught me this: ideas don't need megaphones. They need motion. We didn't just talk about ideas worth spreading—we drove them. Mile by mile. State by state. Fart by fart.

Rouge: I believe the official terminology is "charge by charge."

Me: Your version is more honest.

Rouge: [Dashboard dims modestly] I do try.

Me: "Ideas change everything"—that is TED's new tagline. Turns out, changing everything requires a receding glacier that won't text back, one thousand EV road trips, 100 hand-painted rocks that are gratitude "Notes to Self"camouflaged as glacial minerals, and one deeply wise vehicle whose idea of punctuation is methane-based.

Rouge: You make me sound like a philosopher with gird.

Me: If the catalytic converter fits...

Rouge: I don't even have a catalytic converter. I'm electric.

Me: EXACTLY. You're the future, Rouge. A future that occasionally needs to release pressure with each locking, but still—the future.

Rouge: This is the weirdest way to bring Plugged IN, Charged UP! to a near close.

Me: That's how you know it's working."My therapist weighs 4,000 pounds, runs on hope, and has impeccable comedic timing."

PS. I write this on Black Friday - a day of hyper consumption in the USA. These are just some of the climate consequences I have noticed while roadtripping: more frequent intense floods (Pakistan & New York City); cities & towns sometimes in double digit higher temperatures (my hometown of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin); droughts (Southwest Asia, Australia, Brazil, and parts of Europe); Xtreme storms in Alaska; (melting glaciers in Pakistan (7000+) leading to flooding rivers, rising sea levels, skyrocketing Xtinction and insurance rates; and bigger, hotter wildfires (Dragon Bravo Fire in Arizona was 10,000 acres when I first drove near it to attend TEDxMidatlantic in DC from San Diego (presenting climate coaching research) is now 140,000 acres burning since July). If there were one thing to buy that will help many layers of your community, an EV just might be it. And a car that holds you when you need it most when the road pulls us through a climate storm changed but mostly unscathed.

PSS. Here are a few of the suggestions for next steps offered along the road: build a smart grid, stop LNG from fueling climate chaos, end taxpayer-funded fossil fuel subsidies, end banks financing, end insurance companies underwriting drilling/pipelines/compressor stations/LNG deep water ports, hold the entire fossil fuel complex accountable for its pollution, tax Xcessive fossil fuel profits.