If you get off the Metro at Capitol South, pass the wall to wall ads for Koch Industries that plaster the station and ascend the escalator, you’ll meet a man with a different message at the top.

Outside the station closest to Congress, Andrew Feeney, 71, has been staging his own campaign every weekday that Congress has been in session since July, taking the Metro from his Mount Pleasant home to hold up handmade signs that highlight the dangers of climate change.

On Tuesday, his sign read “ASK THE AUSTRALIAN FIREFIGHTERS IF CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL.”

If it seems blunt, that’s the point. Feeney is a veteran environmental activist, having played a “very small” role in the Earth Day demonstrations of 1970. Now retired, he remains active with the Democratic Socialists of America and is especially excited about their eco-socialist caucus.

Feeney says he spends about an hour every night making new signs, which he bases on research and news he comes across daily, changing them regularly in order to better tell the full scope of the climate change story.

The Australian firefighter message was written in neat stencil on posterboard. He makes it clear he’d rather be using a dry-erase board instead of paper because of the waste, but he hasn’t found a practical way to fully erase the board without leaving smears.

I met Feeney at a nearby coffee shop where, paper coffee cups aside, he’s happy to tell me why he’s taken a stand. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Why are you doing this?

I’m a radical environmentalist. I’m radical economically, too. But I really believe in democracy. Not that I’m always happy with it, but I don’t think there’s a better or more practical way to do things. And I think if we want to have a better world environmentally, it will require really significant changes with what we’re doing as an economy and as a society, and vast numbers of people have to buy in. You know the joke, how many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? It’s only one. But the light bulb has to want to change.

I think the vast number of Americans, and people around the world have to want to change and they have to have some awareness of what the issues are. And what I’m doing is trying to promote that awareness.

It’s so easy for climate change to just drop off the radar screen. One thing I can do with my little sign is remind people: this is real.

What has the reaction been from people?

It’s mostly positive.

Although today, I had a sign that says “Ask the Australian firefighters, is climate change real?” And this guy comes up to me and he says, “no, it’s not!” Most people though, more and more people are nodding. I think I got 20 positive responses, if not more, today.

I’ve had individuals come up to me and say “thank you” or “the flooding problem you’ve pointed to is a problem in my district or in the district of the guy I work for. Can I take your picture?”

I’m not much of a militarist, but I have one sign that says, the “US Department of Defense is significantly under prepared for climate change.” And it’s from a report by somebody writing in the Army War College. And at the bottom of my sign it says “Congress are you listening?” And this giant guy who looks like a Green Beret comes over and puts his arm around me and says to his friend “I want you to take a picture of me and my friend.” Because it’s an issue for him.

I haven’t had very many Republicans come up, but I had one guy working for a Republican in the Midwest asking me: “Why are you out of here? What are you about? My member is from a farming district in Ohio and no, he’s not for the green new deal, but you know, he’s kind of concerned about this.” Well, he should be.

Do you ever worry that what you’re doing isn’t having an impact?

Do you remember the parable in the gospel about the kingdom of heaven?

The entire kingdom of heaven is like a man who is walking along sowing seed in the ground. Some of the seed falls by the road and carts run over it and crush it, some of the seed falls on the side of the road in the weeds and the weeds grow up and choke it. Some of the seed falls on stony ground or dry ground and it can’t establish its roots and it doesn’t grow. Some of the seed falls on good soil and the rains come at the right time and it multiplies 10 fold or 30 fold or a hundred fold. In Jesus’s parables, the seed is the word of God and the sower I guess is the evangelists going out.

I’m not a very Orthodox Christian to say the least. I don’t know if I would even call myself Christian, but I am sowing the word of truth. And some of it is going to fall on the roadway get run over by trucks. Some of it is going to fall on stone and nobody’s going to deal with it. Some of it may fall on good soil and grow and that gives me hope.

What else gives you hope?

I think Greta was huge. Obviously she is not popular with everybody, but AOC was huge. Extinction Rebellion—although I have some questions about their tactics—but they’ve made a splash.

I think people are waking up. Is it going to be enough? I don’t know, but it’s very encouraging. I’ve been writing about climate change for 40 years and a lot of people are beginning to get it, and I think that’s hopeful.

Other than time, obviously, who’s your enemy in this? 

I think ignorance is the big enemy. Ignorance and illusion are complacency. There are all kinds of individuals I could mention [laughs]. But I fall back on my Christianity, such as it is, to keep myself from being really bloody minded. Saint Paul at one point says we have to remember that “we’re not battling against men. We’re battling against principalities and powers,” you know, “demons in high places.” Well, I think that’s part of it.

From a Marxist point of view, a big enemy is alienation. It’s human beings having to a significant extent lost control of our lives, of our technologies, and our market system. I’m not saying markets are completely bad, but we’ve lost sight of what we need to do to cope with nature in a way that is sustainable.

In many ways, young people will be the ones dealing with the effects of climate change, and those who work on the Hill tend to skew quite young. What message do you have for them?

I tend to say to young people, there’s one perspective that says that great men make history. The other perspective says historical events make it necessary for people to become heroes. Lincoln is great because he had to face the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt is great because he had to deal with the Great Depression and World War two. The hero is somebody who responds in a good way to a really serious situation and helps society through it.

Your curse as a generation is that you have an opportunity to be a hero and you have an opportunity to self-actualize. You know your mission if you choose to accept it, is to learn the social skills, the science, political skills, and organizing skills to help our society change in ways that it has to change.

I think people who are informed on the science and informed on the politics of climate change are always fighting against a kind of fatalism. How do you not succumb to that fatalism? 

What’s the fucking use?

There’s a dead Italian communist, Antonio Gramsci. You know the quote, right? “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”

And it’s not just Gramsci. I’m not a big fan of Norse mythology, but you know, the Norse heroes go out, knowing that they may lose, in fact, they know they’re going to lose in the end of the world, right? But you still do what you should do.