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0:00:59 Hi, I’m Brian Walsh. I run the Future Perfect section at Vox.
0:01:02 The Future Perfect team tackles the big stuff.
0:01:06 We report on the world’s most important and underappreciated problems,
0:01:08 the focus on how we can solve them.
0:01:12 Last week, we released our third annual Future Perfect 50 list,
0:01:17 a roundup of 50 of the most important and influential people in our world.
0:01:21 These are the men and women who are working to make the future a better place for everyone.
0:01:25 People who are taking grand, visionary, sometimes weird ideas,
0:01:29 ideas that might seem utopian, but are actually achievable,
0:01:31 and putting them into practice.
0:01:34 That desire to not shy away from the big questions
0:01:37 is what makes the gray area and Future Perfect best buds.
0:01:39 Turns out that one of the first people we added to the list
0:01:42 was also one of Sean’s favorite interviews from this year,
0:01:45 marine biologist Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson.
0:01:48 Author of the new book, “What If We Got It Right?”
0:01:51 Vision is the most important thing in the world.
0:01:53 Visions of Climate Futures.
0:01:57 Dr. Johnson brings a unique perspective of informed optimism to climate change,
0:02:03 a subject too often split between unwarranted demerism and empty-headed denialism.
0:02:06 In the run-up to the November 5 presidential election,
0:02:11 Dr. Johnson warned that all the optimistic progress and climate policy of the past few years
0:02:15 was at risk should Donald Trump return to the White House.
0:02:18 Which is exactly where we find ourselves now.
0:02:22 But that reality only makes Dr. Johnson’s message all the more vital.
0:02:27 How we can adjust our systems, our ways of life, to deal with the change in climate,
0:02:29 that’s maybe the biggest problem we have right now.
0:02:34 And Dr. Johnson is focused on solutions, even now.
0:02:36 Here’s Sean’s interview with Dr. Johnson.
0:02:36 I hope you enjoy it.
0:02:38 And when you’re done listening,
0:02:41 come check out the 49 other visionaries in our list this year
0:02:46 at vox.com/future-perfect-50.
0:02:52 [Music]
0:02:57 If I asked you to tell me the one issue that makes you feel the most pessimistic,
0:02:58 what would it be?
0:03:02 [Music]
0:03:05 I feel pretty confident saying that the most popular response,
0:03:08 certainly one of the most popular responses,
0:03:09 would be climate change.
0:03:12 [Music]
0:03:16 But is climate despair really as tempting and reasonable as it seems?
0:03:17 [Music]
0:03:20 The problem isn’t imaginary.
0:03:23 Climate change is real and terrifying.
0:03:27 But even if it’s as bad as the worst predictions suggest,
0:03:32 do we gain anything by resigning ourselves to that fate?
0:03:38 What effect might our despair have on our ability to act in the present?
0:03:40 More to the point,
0:03:47 is our fatalism undercutting our capacity to tackle this problem?
0:03:49 I’m Sean Elling, and this is the Gray Area.
0:03:59 [Music]
0:04:03 Today’s guest is Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson.
0:04:04 She’s a marine biologist,
0:04:09 a co-founder of the non-profit Think Tank Urban Ocean Lab,
0:04:14 and the author of a new book called “What if We Get It Right?”
0:04:18 It’s a curated series of essays and poetry
0:04:20 and conversations with a wide range of people
0:04:25 who are all in their own ways trying to build a better future.
0:04:28 It’s not a blindly optimistic book.
0:04:32 The point is not that everything is fine.
0:04:38 The point is that we have to act as though the future is a place we want to live in.
0:04:44 According to Johnson, there are already many concrete climate solutions.
0:04:48 If we were motivated by a belief in a better tomorrow, not a worse one,
0:04:53 we would implement more of those solutions and find new ones.
0:04:59 So if you’re someone looking for inspiration or reasons to feel hopeful,
0:05:05 or even better, for guidance on what to do and where to start,
0:05:09 this book and this conversation with Ayanna is for you.
0:05:17 Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson, welcome to the show.
0:05:19 Thank you. It’s great to be here.
0:05:22 You’re actually a marine biologist,
0:05:25 which I think is a standard top five dream job for kids.
0:05:27 Super common dream job.
0:05:35 Like many five to 10 year olds are very into marine biology as a life path.
0:05:40 Was marine biology your gateway to environmentalism?
0:05:43 Is that why you do this work?
0:05:49 I just was a kid who loved nature, which is honestly not very unique.
0:05:55 How many kids like bugs and fireflies and shooting stars and octopuses
0:05:58 and autumn leaves and all the rest of it.
0:06:00 I was just like, this all seems very cool.
0:06:07 And that innate curiosity, that biophilia, as E.O. Wilson calls it,
0:06:13 the magnificent entomologist, is just part of who we are as humans.
0:06:15 It’s normal to love the world.
0:06:18 It’s less common to make that your job.
0:06:23 But of course, once you fall in love with nature with one ecosystem
0:06:28 or a few specific species and you find out that they’re threatened,
0:06:31 you’re like, wait a second, what are we doing about this?
0:06:33 Is there a grown up who’s already on top of this?
0:06:34 Is this not sorted?
0:06:39 Seems like we should protect forests and coral reefs and all the rest.
0:06:41 It’s funny, my mom was cleaning out the closet
0:06:43 and found these old school papers.
0:06:48 And apparently I was writing the same essays since I was like 10
0:06:50 about nature being great and how we should protect it.
0:06:53 So it wasn’t always going to be the ocean.
0:06:57 I wanted to become a park ranger at one point or an environmental lawyer.
0:06:59 But yeah, the ocean seemed like it needed more advocates
0:07:03 at the particular moment I was thinking about graduate school.
0:07:09 You open your book by saying that anytime you tell people
0:07:14 that you do climate work, they invariably ask, and I’m quoting,
0:07:16 how fucked are we?
0:07:17 Yeah.
0:07:21 Well, Ayanna, how fucked are we?
0:07:25 Well, we’re pretty fucked.
0:07:31 But there’s a lot we could do to have a better possible future.
0:07:36 And I think it’s important to always hold both of those things together.
0:07:38 We have already changed the climate.
0:07:44 We are already seeing the intense heat waves and floods and droughts
0:07:46 and wildfires and hurricanes.
0:07:51 All of that is already supercharged by our changed climate.
0:07:53 But there’s still so much we can do.
0:07:56 We basically have the solutions we need.
0:08:02 We’re just being really slow at deploying them, at implementing them, right?
0:08:05 We already know how to transition to renewable energy
0:08:07 and stop spewing fossil fuels.
0:08:12 We know how to protect and restore ecosystems that are absorbing all this carbon.
0:08:15 We know how to green buildings, insulate buildings,
0:08:20 shift to better public transit, improve our food system.
0:08:24 Like, the solutions are all right there.
0:08:28 So, as you know, this book has a reality check chapter
0:08:31 where I lay out all the bad news.
0:08:33 But that’s like three pages.
0:08:37 And then the rest of the book is like, OK, what are we going to do about it?
0:08:42 There’s no point anymore in talking about how to solve the problem of climate change, right?
0:08:43 I mean, that ship has sailed.
0:08:45 It’s all about adaptation now.
0:08:48 Yeah. I mean, the climate has already changed.
0:08:53 There’s not a time machine back to before we put
0:08:57 a completely mind-boggling amount of excess carbon into the atmosphere.
0:09:02 Whether and how well we address the climate crisis
0:09:08 determines the outcomes of life on Earth for all eight million species
0:09:12 and whether hundreds of millions of people live or die
0:09:13 and how well we all can live.
0:09:18 So even though perfection is not an option,
0:09:22 there’s such a wide range of possible futures
0:09:25 and we just need to make sure we get the best possible one.
0:09:27 Well, that seems like an important point, right?
0:09:29 This is really about degrees of suffering
0:09:35 and the consequences of specific choices we make or won’t make as it might be, right?
0:09:39 The difference between temperature spikes of two and four degrees
0:09:43 is the difference between lots of people living and dying, right?
0:09:48 Yeah. I mean, it’s easier for me to think about it in terms of the human body
0:09:53 running a fever because we can think of one or two degrees as not that big a deal.
0:10:00 But the difference between you having a fever of 100 and 102 or 103 is a huge difference.
0:10:07 And that’s the level of sensitivity to temperature that all species and ecosystems have.
0:10:12 If we can prevent a half a degree of warming or a degree of warming,
0:10:16 that actually makes a big difference. It’s worth the effort.
0:10:21 People like to use different words to describe the project ahead of us.
0:10:25 Words like sustainability or revolution.
0:10:28 You like to use the word transformation.
0:10:32 Why is that a better way to frame this?
0:10:37 There’s two words that I pair together and their possibility and transformation.
0:10:41 And I think possibilities for what we’ve just been talking about, right?
0:10:45 This wide spectrum of possible futures.
0:10:46 I’m not an optimist.
0:10:50 I’m not particularly hopeful given human history.
0:10:57 We don’t have a great track record of addressing collectively major challenges that we face.
0:11:01 There’s some important exceptions to that, like dealing with the ozone hole
0:11:04 through the Montreal Protocol, et cetera.
0:11:09 But this sense of possibility really drives me because the future is not yet written.
0:11:15 Like what if we just wrote a better one than the trajectory that we’re on?
0:11:25 So pairing this possibility with transformation and transformation is a word
0:11:29 I’ve gravitated towards because it indicates the scale of change.
0:11:30 Similar to revolution that you mentioned,
0:11:37 but revolution sort of implies a more tumultuous, violent, upheaval kind of thing.
0:11:43 Yeah, maybe it’s not that great in the process of it.
0:11:47 But transformation is a, I don’t know, maybe it’s slightly more poetic in some way,
0:11:55 but it’s how do we reshape and reimagine how we live on this planet and with each other?
0:12:04 And to me, that’s a question about design and culture and society and economy and politics, right?
0:12:10 It’s about the context within which we’re making all these more technical decisions.
0:12:14 And I don’t know, I can get excited about possibility and transformation.
0:12:18 Like what kind of future do we want to create together?
0:12:24 And in this book, there’s a whole bunch of what if questions that I find really captivating.
0:12:29 And one of them is what if climate adaptation is beautiful?
0:12:36 And that I think about in a pair with what if we act as if we love the future?
0:12:36 Yeah, I love that.
0:12:43 And there’s just so much, I don’t know, I’m like wiggling my fingers around
0:12:47 sort of like gesturing, like possibility, like excitement, sparkles.
0:12:54 Like what if I just feel like we need to be asking more big questions of ourselves
0:12:59 and each other in this moment because we’re at this inflection point in human history.
0:13:03 We either like get our shit together or we don’t.
0:13:05 And obviously I would like us to at least try.
0:13:09 But you don’t like the word sustainable, right?
0:13:11 You feel like that’s setting the bar too low?
0:13:14 I mean, it’s sort of just an everywhere word now.
0:13:17 It’s useful, but it doesn’t have a lot of meaning.
0:13:20 It’s very general.
0:13:28 And the sort of analog use that I’ve heard is if someone asked you how your marriage
0:13:31 was going and you were like, eh, it’s sustainable.
0:13:35 It’s like, okay, well, don’t want to trade lives with you.
0:13:37 Doesn’t sound terribly romantic.
0:13:44 So yes, I would say we should set a higher bar than sustainability, especially given that
0:13:48 we’ve already degraded nature so much that I don’t want to just sustain what we have.
0:13:50 I want to protect and restore.
0:13:59 So what if, to use your phrase just now, what if climate adaptation is beautiful?
0:14:00 What then?
0:14:04 Are we, is it rainbows and sunshine we have to look forward to?
0:14:07 Well, I think we will always have rainbows and sunshine.
0:14:09 That’s the good news.
0:14:13 But one of the, I’m just going to flip to this page.
0:14:19 There’s a section called if we build it about architecture and design and technology.
0:14:26 So imagine if we were just deliberate about building things that were
0:14:31 aesthetically pleasing and durable and could be deconstructed and reuse the parts instead
0:14:33 of demolishing things, right?
0:14:37 There’s so many, you know, and what materials are we choosing?
0:14:44 There’s so many choices that we’re making that are shaping our societal trajectory.
0:14:48 And like every day we are building a piece of the future, something that will be here
0:14:51 in 10 years or a century or more.
0:14:55 So let’s just be really thoughtful about all that and make it nice.
0:15:02 Like some cities and towns are now passing essentially deconstruction
0:15:07 ordinances that say you have to take apart buildings instead of demolishing them.
0:15:10 Instead of just pulverizing everything and sending it to the landfill,
0:15:14 you have to take it apart so the pieces can be reused like Legos,
0:15:16 which seems obvious almost.
0:15:19 Like why wouldn’t we always have been doing that, right?
0:15:26 The way that people are reusing old barns to make like reclaimed wood floors and wall panels
0:15:26 and whatever.
0:15:31 We should be doing that with all parts of building materials that we can.
0:15:39 So big picture wise, are you encouraged by the direction of the climate movement as it stands
0:15:41 at the moment?
0:15:43 What are your major concerns?
0:15:47 My primary concern is that we’re just not moving fast enough.
0:15:51 Given that we have basically all the solutions that we need,
0:15:57 it’s just incredibly frustrating how politics is holding us back.
0:16:04 I mean, in this country we have a division between the two major parties about whether
0:16:08 climate change exists and whether it’s something we should address,
0:16:13 which is just so retrograde, I don’t even know where to start.
0:16:21 And it’s especially frustrating because most Republican politicians are literally just pretending
0:16:22 they don’t think it exists.
0:16:25 Like they are fully aware that climate science is real,
0:16:29 but it’s untenable politically for them to admit that.
0:16:32 And that’s a huge part of why we’re in this mess,
0:16:38 as well as the fact that the fossil fuel lobby is ridiculously powerful in this country.
0:16:42 And so many politicians are bought and paid for in one way or another,
0:16:46 even though that’s not very many jobs.
0:16:52 And then you have the banking sector, which is funding all these fossil fuel corporations
0:16:57 to continue expanding their extraction and infrastructure.
0:17:02 You have, since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015,
0:17:08 60 banks have provided $6.9 trillion in financing to fossil fuel companies,
0:17:16 but the top four U.S. banks alone, JP Morgan Chase, City Bank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America,
0:17:24 have provided almost $1.5 trillion to finance fossil fuel companies.
0:17:26 So yeah, if you have your money in any of those banks,
0:17:32 I would move your retirement savings, etc., to a place that does not make the problem worse.
0:17:41 And there’s analysis showing that the impact of you moving your money out of fossil fuels
0:17:49 is a bigger impact than any amount of eating only plants and only walking and biking
0:18:01 could do, because it is that bad to be investing in the expansion of fossil fuels.
0:18:12 Support for the gray area comes from Givewell.
0:18:17 There are over one and a half million nonprofit organizations in the U.S.
0:18:19 and millions more around the world.
0:18:23 So how do you know which ones can make the biggest impact with your donation?
0:18:27 Well, Givewell was founded to help people figure that out.
0:18:32 They pour over independent studies and charity data to help donors direct their funds to
0:18:35 evidence-backed organizations that are saving and improving lives.
0:18:38 This really is a terrific organization.
0:18:44 According to their data, over 100,000 donors have used Givewell to donate more than $2 billion.
0:18:49 You can find all of their research and recommendations on their site for free.
0:18:54 You can also make tax-deductible donations to their recommended funds or charities,
0:18:56 and Givewell says they don’t take a cut.
0:19:01 If you’ve never used Givewell to donate, you can have your donation matched up to $100
0:19:05 before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last.
0:19:11 To claim your match, go to Givewell.org, pick podcast, and enter the gray area with Shawn
0:19:13 Elling at checkout.
0:19:17 Make sure they know that you heard about Givewell from the gray area to get your donation matched.
0:19:21 Again, that’s Givewell.org to donate or find out more.
0:19:27 Fox Creative
0:19:31 This is advertiser content from Zell.
0:19:35 When you picture an online scammer, what do you see?
0:19:40 For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer
0:19:43 with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night.
0:19:45 And honestly, that’s not what it is anymore.
0:19:49 That’s Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter.
0:19:54 These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists,
0:19:56 and they’re making bank.
0:19:59 Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion.
0:20:04 It’s mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure that’s been built
0:20:07 to facilitate scamming at scale.
0:20:12 There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scam centers all around the world.
0:20:14 These are very savvy business people.
0:20:16 These are organized criminal rings.
0:20:20 And so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better.
0:20:25 One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face
0:20:30 is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them.
0:20:33 But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple.
0:20:36 We need to talk to each other.
0:20:38 We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do
0:20:41 if you have text messages you don’t recognize?
0:20:44 What do you do if you start getting asked to send information
0:20:45 that’s more sensitive?
0:20:49 Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam,
0:20:52 but he fell victim and we have these conversations all the time.
0:20:57 So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other.
0:21:03 >> Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com/zel.
0:21:05 And when using digital payment platforms,
0:21:08 remember to only send money to people you know and trust.
0:21:13 >> Support for this episode comes from AWS.
0:21:17 AWS Generative AI gives you the tools to power your business forward
0:21:21 with the security and speed of the world’s most experienced cloud.
0:21:31 [MUSIC]
0:21:34 >> What would be the difference between a Harris administration
0:21:36 and another Trump administration?
0:21:39 What are the stakes on the climate front?
0:21:41 >> The stakes are sky high.
0:21:47 There are actually graphs projecting the difference in greenhouse gas emissions
0:21:52 between the two and it’s really remarkable because you have on one hand,
0:21:57 Vice President Harris, who was the deciding vote in passing the Inflation Reduction Act,
0:22:02 which was the largest ever investment in climate solutions in world history.
0:22:07 This Biden-Harris administration has created the American Climate Corps,
0:22:12 we’re just putting tens of thousands of young people to work implementing climate solutions
0:22:18 from reducing wildfire risk to installing solar panels to replanting wetlands.
0:22:25 We have a loan program office in the Department of Energy that has hundreds of billions of dollars
0:22:30 that they’re giving out to businesses that are figuring out this renewable energy transition.
0:22:36 All of that could be completely wiped out essentially on day one of a Trump administration.
0:22:42 You have in Trump a candidate who has offered two fossil fuel executives
0:22:46 that if they donate a billion dollars to his presidential campaign,
0:22:49 he will basically do their bidding once he gets into the White House.
0:22:51 That is how stark a difference this is.
0:22:58 >> Yeah. You have a podcast episode called, “How much does the president matter?”
0:23:00 And I guess the answer is a lot.
0:23:06 >> A lot. I mean, but at the same time, a president can only do so much without Congress,
0:23:14 right? So making sure you have we’re electing politicians for Senate and the House that get it,
0:23:19 that actually are going to do something on climate is also critical.
0:23:22 But the president is staffing all the federal agencies,
0:23:27 the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
0:23:33 and NASA and the Department of Energy and the Department of Interior
0:23:38 that are all making these decisions about permitting for fossil fuels
0:23:41 or offshore renewable wind energy, right?
0:23:48 But I’ll also give a shout out to local politics because it is at the city council level,
0:23:54 it is at the public utility commissions, it is at the school boards where we’re deciding,
0:23:58 are we teaching our children about what we can do about climate change?
0:24:04 Are we investing in municipal composting? Composting makes a really big difference
0:24:09 because rotting food in landfills emits tons of methane, a super potent greenhouse gas.
0:24:14 Are we building out bike lanes and all of this public transit infrastructure
0:24:18 that we need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels?
0:24:21 All of these local decisions really matter too.
0:24:26 So for those who are sort of overwhelmed with what’s happening at the presidential level,
0:24:30 it is absolutely worth your effort to think about local elections
0:24:33 and how you can support climate leaders down ballot.
0:24:42 I initially wanted to ask you what gives you the most hope right now,
0:24:45 but then I got to the part of the book where you write and I’m quoting again,
0:24:51 “Fuck hope, what’s the strategy? Do you feel like we, the royal we,
0:24:56 actually do have a clear concrete strategy for that better future?”
0:25:00 Because the path to the shitty future is crystal clear.
0:25:02 It is just keep doing what we’ve been doing.
0:25:10 And this is where I think media, Hollywood, music, art, culture makers broadly
0:25:18 really need to dive in with us because I cannot literally show you
0:25:21 what the future could look like. I can talk about it.
0:25:25 I can write about it. I can interview people about it.
0:25:29 I can, as I did for this book, commission art about it.
0:25:33 But I feel like if it’s possible to go through our day to day
0:25:37 and not encounter anything about climate, which it currently is,
0:25:44 I mean, for example, less than 1% of the minutes on major TV news stations are about climate.
0:25:47 And that’s actually gone down. I think it was 1.3%.
0:25:53 In 2022, and now it’s down to 0.9% in 2023, right?
0:25:54 So we’re going in the wrong direction.
0:26:00 If this is not part of our day to day exposure,
0:26:02 then it’s just always on the back burner.
0:26:04 There’s always something more important.
0:26:09 And we’re thinking about climate as something separate from our other concerns.
0:26:13 Whereas it’s actually just the context within which everything else
0:26:20 right now is playing out. So there’s a chapter in the book called “I Dream of Climate Rom-Coms,”
0:26:25 where I interview producer Franklin Leonard, founder of The Blacklist out in Hollywood,
0:26:31 and Adam McKay, filmmaker, writer, director, about the role of Hollywood in this.
0:26:36 Because basically, to date, Hollywood has just shown us the apocalypse,
0:26:40 the fire and brimstone, the day after tomorrow kind of stuff.
0:26:46 And there are very few examples of not like utopian rose-colored glasses stuff,
0:26:52 but like literally, what if we just used the solutions we had and projected that forward?
0:26:54 What would that look like?
0:27:01 I always loved Nietzsche’s idea that we have art in order not to die of the truth.
0:27:05 And you can interpret that in different ways, I guess.
0:27:11 But for me, it means that the job of art isn’t to hold up a mirror and tell us what is.
0:27:13 We have science for that.
0:27:19 Great art points to what could be before it is.
0:27:21 And man, do we need more of that right now.
0:27:24 Yes, yes, yes. We need so much more of that.
0:27:31 Anyone who’s listening who can create art, who can help us see the way forward,
0:27:32 we absolutely need you.
0:27:39 Can we just say at this point that the clean energy transition is inevitable?
0:27:40 Don’t know what the timeline is exactly,
0:27:44 but clean energy is the future full stop.
0:27:45 It’s a question of how long it takes.
0:27:49 Yeah, and that transformation is already well underway,
0:27:53 despite all the lobbying efforts from the fossil fuel industry, etc.
0:27:57 Because at this point, it just makes economic sense.
0:28:02 The reason that Iowa and Texas are leading the country in wind energy
0:28:04 is not because they’re a bunch of hippies.
0:28:09 It’s because it’s profitable and they’re good jobs
0:28:12 and people are excited about having those industries there.
0:28:18 Solar and wind, I mean, these are now the cheapest forms of energy on the planet.
0:28:21 I mean, photons, catch them, use them.
0:28:23 Why not? Yeah.
0:28:29 The thing I think people do not talk about enough what we’re talking about electricity
0:28:34 is that regardless of the source, we absolutely also need to focus on energy conservation.
0:28:41 This is not about just like willy-nilly running a lot of electrical stuff all the time,
0:28:46 because now we have solar panels, because it takes energy to make solar panels.
0:28:50 It takes raw materials to make solar panels.
0:28:55 We still want to rein all that in and live more lightly on the planet.
0:29:00 So I would just put in a plug for energy conservation
0:29:04 being an estimated like 30 to 50% of the solution.
0:29:07 We will need to build a lot less renewables
0:29:11 if we are just more frugal with our electricity.
0:29:14 And what about carbon capture technologies?
0:29:17 I feel like all of our optimistic scenarios include
0:29:21 an assumption that we’re going to get increasingly better
0:29:27 and more efficient at removing existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
0:29:28 Is that a safe assumption?
0:29:29 Well, we’re really bad at it now.
0:29:32 So I’m sure we’ll get better at it.
0:29:35 Okay. Are we going to get better enough is maybe what I’m asking?
0:29:36 I have no idea.
0:29:37 Because we have to, right?
0:29:43 Like there’s just, this has to be part of the solution or part of the strategy.
0:29:47 I mean, the first interview in the book is with Dr. Kate Marvel,
0:29:50 who’s a NASA client scientist who says, “Sure, great.
0:29:54 Like we should pursue carbon capture and storage.”
0:30:00 But it’s important to note there that this is not like a get out of jail free carbon.
0:30:03 We can keep burning fossil fuels and just catch it back.
0:30:06 It takes a lot of energy to do carbon capture.
0:30:11 So we basically need to focus that effort only on taking out carbon
0:30:13 that is already in the atmosphere.
0:30:17 We can’t just use that as an excuse to not change our ways.
0:30:21 So I think, again, that brings us back to energy conservation
0:30:23 and the shift to renewables being fundamental.
0:30:27 And if we figure out carbon capture, that’s a bonus.
0:30:32 But also we need to give a lot more credit to the OG,
0:30:34 the original gangster of carbon capture,
0:30:40 which is photosynthesis and plants and protect and restore ecosystems,
0:30:47 forests, wetlands, mangroves, all of that are a critical piece of this too.
0:30:50 And we just absolutely do not give enough credit to nature,
0:30:55 which by some estimates is 30 or 40% of the solution we need
0:30:57 if we are restoring ecosystems.
0:31:02 You know, I’ve had conversations with people like Andreas Maum.
0:31:03 He was a guest on the pod.
0:31:08 He says, which sounds bad on the surface, but is actually encouraging.
0:31:11 And I think you were hinting at this earlier.
0:31:13 We don’t have a science problem.
0:31:14 We don’t have a knowledge problem.
0:31:17 We know everything we need to know to do what we need to do.
0:31:21 And there are already viable alternatives to move us in that direction.
0:31:24 What we have is a political economy problem.
0:31:29 Certain financial interests are invested in locking us in this paradigm.
0:31:30 This is obviously a big obstacle,
0:31:32 but at least we know what the problem is.
0:31:34 If we lack the knowledge or the technologies,
0:31:36 there’s not much we can do about that.
0:31:37 But we know.
0:31:40 And if we’ve learned anything about markets,
0:31:43 is that they’ll move in the direction of profit.
0:31:45 So maybe we can’t change the economic system,
0:31:49 but we do understand its incentive structure and we can work within that.
0:31:52 So we’re going to have to find a way to make non-fossil fuel energy sources cheaper
0:31:54 and more efficient and lucrative.
0:31:55 So just tell me that’s the case.
0:31:58 Tell me there’s a shit ton of money to be made in green energy,
0:32:00 because if there is, that’s good news.
0:32:04 There is a shit ton of money to be made in green energy.
0:32:07 I can say that unequivocally.
0:32:11 I think this is probably a McKinsey study that found getting to net zero,
0:32:14 net zero greenhouse gas emissions,
0:32:18 is a more than $12 trillion business opportunity.
0:32:24 And in 2023, $1.8 trillion was invested in the clean energy transition,
0:32:26 which was a new record.
0:32:29 It’s worth saying also that also in 2023,
0:32:32 over a trillion dollars was invested in additional fossil fuel,
0:32:36 but renewables are ahead as a global investment amount.
0:32:40 And also last year, for the second year in a row,
0:32:45 banks generated more revenue from environmentally friendly investing,
0:32:50 about $3 billion, than they did from fossil fuel investing, which is 2.7.
0:32:51 I think those are still too close.
0:32:58 But yes, the economics are absolutely turning in favor of clean energy,
0:33:01 which is great because we would need to do it anyway.
0:33:07 But it’s certainly easier when the balance sheet is in your favor.
0:33:12 Yeah, and look, I bring all this up not to make the overly simple point that
0:33:15 capitalism is bad.
0:33:17 I think it’s a little more complicated than that.
0:33:20 And even if you believe that, it’s not helpful to leave it there.
0:33:23 Well, even if you believe in pure free market capitalism,
0:33:30 I mean, I think a free market folks need to just acknowledge that the market is not free.
0:33:35 So right now we have a completely insane amount of subsidies
0:33:39 still going to fossil fuels.
0:33:44 And if we just reformed fossil fuel subsidies and put a price on pollution,
0:33:46 which is all this greenhouse gas stuff,
0:33:49 we could generate trillions of dollars in government revenues,
0:33:54 which could be used to address the climate crisis, right?
0:33:58 So subsidizing all the bad stuff is not a free market.
0:34:03 We haven’t been giving renewables a fair chance at this.
0:34:08 The game has been rigged for the continuation of fossil fuels.
0:34:12 All those lobbying dollars have really paid off.
0:34:16 And so we’re now just starting to see that shift a bit,
0:34:18 which is evening the playing field.
0:34:20 And guess who wins when it’s a fair fight?
0:34:24 Photons is the answer.
0:34:27 Wind, the stuff that’s free and just out there.
0:34:28 And we can just catch it.
0:34:32 So okay, so wait a minute.
0:34:36 I can’t quite tell if you agree with me or not in the big picture sense, right?
0:34:41 Do you actually agree that we can work within capitalism,
0:34:47 we can use the internal logic of capitalism to get on the right path here?
0:34:47 No, I do.
0:34:48 And I think we must.
0:34:54 We do not have time to completely take apart and put back together a new economic system
0:34:57 within the next decade, which is when we need to basically
0:35:00 make this huge leap in addressing the climate crisis.
0:35:05 So yeah, what I’m saying is that already renewables make economic sense.
0:35:12 Already green buildings and the shift to electric transportation, etc.
0:35:14 are making economic sense.
0:35:21 So if we can just stop subsidizing fossil fuels within our existing capitalist system,
0:35:28 we could just stop giving extra bonus money to people who are massively polluting the
0:35:31 planet and destroying things for life on earth.
0:35:34 That would help things go even faster.
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0:38:56 You say the best thing we can do when confronting an existential crisis
0:38:59 is imagine what could be on the other side.
0:39:02 What’s the most realistic best-case scenario for you?
0:39:05 Big picture?
0:39:06 Yeah.
0:39:13 The dream for me when I think about getting it right really starts with nature,
0:39:18 starts with putting photosynthesis on the pedestal it deserves.
0:39:22 And thinking about, you know, how we are shifting our food system,
0:39:26 how we are shifting transportation, how I mean,
0:39:32 I imagine like all of Gen Z just refusing to work for the fossil fuel industry, right?
0:39:35 Or as Jane Fonda says, like, you know,
0:39:37 don’t sleep with anyone who works in fossil fuels,
0:39:40 just like ice out that whole sector.
0:39:46 Just turn all of that into something that’s really unappealing.
0:39:50 I imagine a future where our homes are not drafty
0:39:52 because they’re well-insulated, right?
0:39:57 Where we don’t have traffic in cities and on highways
0:39:58 because we have much better transportation.
0:40:00 We have high-speed rail.
0:40:05 I mean, for the love of God, can we get like some fast trains in America?
0:40:07 Sort of embarrassing that we don’t have that.
0:40:11 Where we have just delicious local foods,
0:40:14 where we have restored coastal ecosystems
0:40:17 that are buffering us from the impacts of climate change.
0:40:19 Where we actually have fewer desk jobs
0:40:22 because more of us are out in the world doing this stuff,
0:40:25 which is so gratifying.
0:40:29 And where we can actually just slow down
0:40:36 and enjoy life a bit more because we have our shit together
0:40:41 and because culture has caught up with this climate reality
0:40:46 and the status quo and what is aspirational have changed.
0:40:52 I mean, it’s worth a shot, no?
0:40:53 Oh yeah, no.
0:40:59 I’m just gathering my thoughts and I’m also trying to
0:41:01 summon all the hopefulness that I can.
0:41:04 Well, here’s the thing.
0:41:06 You don’t actually need to be hopeful.
0:41:07 I’m not hopeful.
0:41:11 I think that hope is insufficient even if we have it.
0:41:12 We need a plan.
0:41:16 We need to each find our role to play in climate solutions.
0:41:20 One of the major things that I sort of encourage people to do
0:41:23 is think really specifically about what you can do.
0:41:28 Not the generic list of like march, protest, donate,
0:41:31 spread the word, lower your individual carbon footprint,
0:41:35 which is all good and well to do and I do it.
0:41:39 But if you and I and teachers and doctors and farmers
0:41:42 and project managers and web designers
0:41:44 were all doing exactly the same thing,
0:41:45 that would be a total waste.
0:41:50 So instead of thinking about hope, whether you have it or not,
0:41:51 it doesn’t really matter.
0:41:57 Just do something and you’ll feel good regardless of the outcome
0:41:59 because you will have contributed to making things
0:42:02 slightly better than they would otherwise have been.
0:42:05 And if we each do that, it sounds corny,
0:42:09 but it is factually accurate that all that stuff adds up.
0:42:11 And if you need a place to start,
0:42:15 I offer this concept of a climate action Venn diagram,
0:42:18 which is three circles, sort of a simplified version
0:42:22 of the Japanese concept of Ikigai for finding your purpose,
0:42:25 which is one circle is what are you good at?
0:42:27 So what are your skills, resources, networks,
0:42:30 like what can you specifically bring to the table?
0:42:34 What is the work that needs doing is the second circle.
0:42:37 What are the climate and justice solutions you want to work on
0:42:39 because there are hundreds of them?
0:42:43 And the third circle is what brings you joy or satisfaction?
0:42:46 Like what gets you out of bed in the morning?
0:42:49 And how can we each find our way to the sweet spot
0:42:52 in the center of that Venn diagram
0:42:57 and just live there for as many minutes of our lives as we can?
0:43:02 Well, to do this, one thing we clearly have to do
0:43:07 is make people feel emotionally the stakes of this
0:43:12 without also pushing them into quietism or despair.
0:43:15 And so the question is, how do we do that?
0:43:20 I mean, I have to say there’s a reality here that sucks,
0:43:20 but it’s true.
0:43:24 And maybe this has changed marginally in one direction
0:43:26 or the other, but poll after poll that I’ve seen
0:43:30 shows that a lot of Americans simply don’t care
0:43:32 about climate change that much or they might care,
0:43:35 but it’s nowhere near the top of their list of priorities,
0:43:38 which is why politically it just doesn’t move the needle.
0:43:40 And that makes it difficult for legislators
0:43:41 to deal with the problem.
0:43:43 I mean, I lived in Louisiana for a decade.
0:43:45 The coast there is disappearing.
0:43:48 Cultures and ways of life and towns and communities
0:43:50 are disappearing.
0:43:51 And still a lot of people in that state
0:43:54 refuse to connect the dots.
0:43:57 So how do we help them do that?
0:43:58 How do we make them feel this?
0:44:02 First, I think it’s important to acknowledge
0:44:05 that the majority of Americans are concerned
0:44:07 about climate change and would like our government
0:44:08 to do more about it.
0:44:11 We hear so much about climate deniers
0:44:13 that we think it’s like half the country.
0:44:14 It’s like 12%.
0:44:17 So yeah, just because I tried to correct that and say
0:44:19 that they just, it’s not that they don’t care,
0:44:22 but they just care about many other things before.
0:44:23 Absolutely.
0:44:25 And so I think what you’re referring to
0:44:28 is the sort of pulling on political priorities,
0:44:30 like what determines who you’re voting for,
0:44:32 like what, you know, what is that ranking?
0:44:37 And climate rarely breaks the top five or 10 issues
0:44:43 when you’re thinking about jobs, economy, housing, wars,
0:44:45 all of this other stuff, right?
0:44:49 And I get that we have these day-to-day concerns
0:44:52 that are critical to our quality of life,
0:44:54 to our well-being.
0:44:58 And I don’t fault people for ranking those higher,
0:45:01 but I do fault us for not understanding
0:45:03 that those are connected to climate change
0:45:06 in some very significant ways.
0:45:07 There’s an incredible organization
0:45:09 called Environmental Voter Project,
0:45:11 and this is what they do.
0:45:14 There are something like 10 million Americans
0:45:16 who actually have environment
0:45:19 as their number one issue politically,
0:45:22 and they are already registered to vote,
0:45:24 and they simply do not go to the polls.
0:45:29 Can you imagine if we had another 10 million climate voters
0:45:32 who were voting in every election,
0:45:34 and then politicians were like,
0:45:36 “Oh, shit, I guess there’s a whole demographic
0:45:39 that cares about this that’s very active politically.
0:45:41 We’re going to have to earn their votes.”
0:45:43 That would absolutely change the game.
0:45:47 And so all of their work on turning out environmental voters
0:45:50 is making a very big difference.
0:45:53 So for those who are like, “Ah, climate and politics,
0:45:55 it’s like such a mess.”
0:45:57 I would say, “Join me in volunteering
0:45:59 with Environmental Voter Project,
0:46:02 helping to get people who care engaged
0:46:04 and having their voices heard,
0:46:08 because once we have a larger constituency
0:46:11 of active climate voters, that will shift the politics.”
0:46:14 And the politics follows culture,
0:46:17 so it’s not politicians that are leading the way.
0:46:19 They are followers.
0:46:21 So the more of us speak up
0:46:24 about this as a political priority for us,
0:46:27 the faster we’ll get these changes that we need.
0:46:31 Do you have thoughts about how we can convince skeptics
0:46:37 or even just outright deniers that this work must be done?
0:46:41 Do we even need to engage with skeptics and deniers?
0:46:44 Is that fruitless or is it necessary?
0:46:48 I personally am not out there on Al Gore’s internet
0:46:49 debating climate deniers.
0:46:52 I just, it’s not my jam.
0:46:56 But again, that’s a small portion of Americans.
0:47:00 It’s an even smaller portion of the global population.
0:47:02 And so where I focus my effort
0:47:04 is for the people who already care,
0:47:08 who are already concerned, to saying, “We need you.
0:47:10 We need you working on solutions.
0:47:11 Welcome.
0:47:12 Roll up your sleeves.
0:47:15 We’ll help you find ways to plug in
0:47:16 and do something that’s useful.”
0:47:21 And to circle back to our point earlier,
0:47:24 which is the economics of a lot of these climate solutions,
0:47:26 are just really favorable.
0:47:29 So we don’t actually need to debate whether greenhouse gases
0:47:32 being spewed by burning fossil fuels
0:47:34 and blanketing the planet and warming it
0:47:37 is a thing that’s happening, even though it’s very clear.
0:47:39 It’s been for 50 years.
0:47:40 That’s what’s happening.
0:47:44 We just need to say, “Hey, who wants a good job
0:47:47 in engineering and manufacturing?
0:47:55 Let’s build some more battery, wind, solar, plants, and installation.”
0:47:59 And so the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act
0:48:02 are mostly being experienced in red states
0:48:05 that are getting all this manufacturing capacity,
0:48:07 all these green jobs,
0:48:09 even though all of their representatives
0:48:11 voted against that funding.
0:48:13 So I think with that shift,
0:48:18 with those benefits going to politically conservative areas
0:48:20 where climate denial is higher,
0:48:25 we may start to see an even more rapid
0:48:28 and strong embrace of climate solutions
0:48:31 even without talking about climate change.
0:48:33 We do not actually have to agree on the problem
0:48:35 to collaborate on the solutions.
0:48:37 And so that we have in our favor.
0:48:39 Yeah.
0:48:45 You seem very angsty and nervous and concerned.
0:48:47 My therapy appointment is in two weeks, I don’t.
0:48:49 I’m not your therapist,
0:48:52 but there is a whole burgeoning sector, actually,
0:48:54 of climate therapy,
0:48:56 because climate anxiety is a real thing,
0:49:01 and people are understandably grappling with it, right?
0:49:03 The prospect of life on Earth
0:49:06 ceasing to exist in the way that we have always known it
0:49:09 is freaking terrifying.
0:49:13 But I think, and there’s sort of like this term,
0:49:17 like climate sad boys that those of us working
0:49:20 are like, the climate sad boys are back again.
0:49:23 Here come the doomers, like always asking us how bad it is.
0:49:25 I’m not sobbing in my corner.
0:49:27 All right, hold on, all right.
0:49:30 Look, I’m also trying to speak to the angst
0:49:32 of people listening as well.
0:49:34 I hear it, and I feel it,
0:49:36 often, I don’t want to minimize it.
0:49:39 But I think the more we just focus on possibility
0:49:41 and what we can each do,
0:49:44 and just acknowledge that we as individuals
0:49:48 cannot control the future of life on Earth,
0:49:51 but we can do our part and kind of like,
0:49:53 I don’t worry about it day to day.
0:49:56 I spend very little time thinking about the problems,
0:50:01 because that doesn’t actually change what I need to do.
0:50:03 I need to do what I need to do.
0:50:06 I need to do my work at Urban Ocean Lab,
0:50:09 this policy think tank for the future of coastal cities
0:50:09 that I co-founded.
0:50:13 We need to help cities adapt to sea level rise
0:50:16 and build out offshore renewable energy
0:50:19 and restore and protect the coastal ecosystems
0:50:22 that will help buffer the impacts of storms.
0:50:24 Like, that’s how I spend my days.
0:50:28 And so my days are full of creativity and problem solving,
0:50:29 great collaborations,
0:50:32 and like, punctuated with moments of delight
0:50:33 and tiny victories.
0:50:37 And what more could we expect out of life?
0:50:42 I think to me, that’s enough to just do my part.
0:50:48 Something we’ve seen in recent years are climate activists,
0:50:52 blocking traffic, throwing paint on artworks and museums.
0:50:56 I think that’s stupid on purely strategic grounds.
0:51:01 But I do wonder how you think about the role of activism
0:51:05 and protest and how that can be most beneficial.
0:51:08 I mean, I think Bill McKibbin said to you
0:51:09 in your interview with him
0:51:11 that he doesn’t think there’s any scenario
0:51:14 where we don’t have to march in the streets.
0:51:16 And that seems probably right to me,
0:51:17 but is that how you feel?
0:51:19 Bill McKibbin is a wise man.
0:51:21 I definitely agree.
0:51:23 I mean, we have to voice our objection
0:51:26 to things that make no freaking sense.
0:51:27 We have to voice our objection
0:51:30 to continuing to subsidize fossil fuel companies
0:51:31 with our dollars.
0:51:35 We have to voice our objection to people
0:51:38 who deny climate change, calling the shots.
0:51:41 Some of the more extreme forms of protest,
0:51:45 if we’re honest, make people like me seem more reasonable.
0:51:47 And I’m grateful for it, right?
0:51:50 Those works of art that had soup thrown at them are fine.
0:51:51 They were covered with glass.
0:51:52 They were wiped off.
0:51:53 Everything’s fine.
0:51:56 So I think we need to just, for one,
0:51:57 keep things in perspective,
0:51:59 but also if we’re acknowledging
0:52:02 that the future of human life on this planet,
0:52:05 the quality of life for our species
0:52:08 is literally being determined
0:52:10 by what we do in the next decade,
0:52:12 then is throwing soup at a painting
0:52:14 really the worst thing we can imagine?
0:52:17 Is it the most effective messaging?
0:52:20 Well, I think we could have done better.
0:52:22 I think there’s obviously
0:52:23 much better climate communication
0:52:27 that can be layered on top of protest,
0:52:31 but I absolutely see a value for protest.
0:52:35 And it opens the door to a lot of policy conversations.
0:52:39 And that is the role to shift the Overton window,
0:52:42 to make politicians and executives
0:52:45 feel like they have to do more and faster
0:52:48 by just exerting that social pressure
0:52:52 and removing the social license to operate,
0:52:53 to say we are watching you.
0:52:56 We are voting at the ballot box
0:52:57 and we are voting with our dollars
0:53:00 and we will name and shame the bad actors
0:53:03 and welcome you onto the side
0:53:06 of climate solutions whenever you’re ready.
0:53:10 Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson,
0:53:14 thank you for outing me as a climate sad boy.
0:53:18 And honestly, seriously,
0:53:22 I do feel better after conversations like this.
0:53:25 I do feel better after reading your book.
0:53:26 All right, there we go.
0:53:30 Fill in your Venn diagram and get to work.
0:53:33 Thanks for existing and thanks for coming in.
0:53:35 Thanks for having me.
0:53:49 All right, thanks for hanging out with me
0:53:50 for another episode.
0:53:52 I hope you enjoyed it.
0:53:54 As always, you can tell me what you think of the episode.
0:53:58 You can drop us a line at thegrayarea@vox.com.
0:54:00 I read those emails, so keep them coming.
0:54:03 And please rate, review whenever you get a chance.
0:54:07 This episode was produced by Travis Larchuck
0:54:10 and Beth Morrissey, edited by Jorge Just,
0:54:12 engineered by Patrick Boyd,
0:54:14 backchecked by Anouk Dussot,
0:54:16 and Alex Overington wrote our theme music.
0:54:20 New episodes of the Gray Area drop on Mondays.
0:54:21 Listen and subscribe.
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0:00:59 Hi, I’m Brian Walsh. I run the Future Perfect section at Vox.
0:01:02 The Future Perfect team tackles the big stuff.
0:01:06 We report on the world’s most important and underappreciated problems,
0:01:08 the focus on how we can solve them.
0:01:12 Last week, we released our third annual Future Perfect 50 list,
0:01:17 a roundup of 50 of the most important and influential people in our world.
0:01:21 These are the men and women who are working to make the future a better place for everyone.
0:01:25 People who are taking grand, visionary, sometimes weird ideas,
0:01:29 ideas that might seem utopian, but are actually achievable,
0:01:31 and putting them into practice.
0:01:34 That desire to not shy away from the big questions
0:01:37 is what makes the gray area and Future Perfect best buds.
0:01:39 Turns out that one of the first people we added to the list
0:01:42 was also one of Sean’s favorite interviews from this year,
0:01:45 marine biologist Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson.
0:01:48 Author of the new book, “What If We Got It Right?”
0:01:51 Vision is the most important thing in the world.
0:01:53 Visions of Climate Futures.
0:01:57 Dr. Johnson brings a unique perspective of informed optimism to climate change,
0:02:03 a subject too often split between unwarranted demerism and empty-headed denialism.
0:02:06 In the run-up to the November 5 presidential election,
0:02:11 Dr. Johnson warned that all the optimistic progress and climate policy of the past few years
0:02:15 was at risk should Donald Trump return to the White House.
0:02:18 Which is exactly where we find ourselves now.
0:02:22 But that reality only makes Dr. Johnson’s message all the more vital.
0:02:27 How we can adjust our systems, our ways of life, to deal with the change in climate,
0:02:29 that’s maybe the biggest problem we have right now.
0:02:34 And Dr. Johnson is focused on solutions, even now.
0:02:36 Here’s Sean’s interview with Dr. Johnson.
0:02:36 I hope you enjoy it.
0:02:38 And when you’re done listening,
0:02:41 come check out the 49 other visionaries in our list this year
0:02:46 at vox.com/future-perfect-50.
0:02:52 [Music]
0:02:57 If I asked you to tell me the one issue that makes you feel the most pessimistic,
0:02:58 what would it be?
0:03:02 [Music]
0:03:05 I feel pretty confident saying that the most popular response,
0:03:08 certainly one of the most popular responses,
0:03:09 would be climate change.
0:03:12 [Music]
0:03:16 But is climate despair really as tempting and reasonable as it seems?
0:03:17 [Music]
0:03:20 The problem isn’t imaginary.
0:03:23 Climate change is real and terrifying.
0:03:27 But even if it’s as bad as the worst predictions suggest,
0:03:32 do we gain anything by resigning ourselves to that fate?
0:03:38 What effect might our despair have on our ability to act in the present?
0:03:40 More to the point,
0:03:47 is our fatalism undercutting our capacity to tackle this problem?
0:03:49 I’m Sean Elling, and this is the Gray Area.
0:03:59 [Music]
0:04:03 Today’s guest is Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson.
0:04:04 She’s a marine biologist,
0:04:09 a co-founder of the non-profit Think Tank Urban Ocean Lab,
0:04:14 and the author of a new book called “What if We Get It Right?”
0:04:18 It’s a curated series of essays and poetry
0:04:20 and conversations with a wide range of people
0:04:25 who are all in their own ways trying to build a better future.
0:04:28 It’s not a blindly optimistic book.
0:04:32 The point is not that everything is fine.
0:04:38 The point is that we have to act as though the future is a place we want to live in.
0:04:44 According to Johnson, there are already many concrete climate solutions.
0:04:48 If we were motivated by a belief in a better tomorrow, not a worse one,
0:04:53 we would implement more of those solutions and find new ones.
0:04:59 So if you’re someone looking for inspiration or reasons to feel hopeful,
0:05:05 or even better, for guidance on what to do and where to start,
0:05:09 this book and this conversation with Ayanna is for you.
0:05:17 Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson, welcome to the show.
0:05:19 Thank you. It’s great to be here.
0:05:22 You’re actually a marine biologist,
0:05:25 which I think is a standard top five dream job for kids.
0:05:27 Super common dream job.
0:05:35 Like many five to 10 year olds are very into marine biology as a life path.
0:05:40 Was marine biology your gateway to environmentalism?
0:05:43 Is that why you do this work?
0:05:49 I just was a kid who loved nature, which is honestly not very unique.
0:05:55 How many kids like bugs and fireflies and shooting stars and octopuses
0:05:58 and autumn leaves and all the rest of it.
0:06:00 I was just like, this all seems very cool.
0:06:07 And that innate curiosity, that biophilia, as E.O. Wilson calls it,
0:06:13 the magnificent entomologist, is just part of who we are as humans.
0:06:15 It’s normal to love the world.
0:06:18 It’s less common to make that your job.
0:06:23 But of course, once you fall in love with nature with one ecosystem
0:06:28 or a few specific species and you find out that they’re threatened,
0:06:31 you’re like, wait a second, what are we doing about this?
0:06:33 Is there a grown up who’s already on top of this?
0:06:34 Is this not sorted?
0:06:39 Seems like we should protect forests and coral reefs and all the rest.
0:06:41 It’s funny, my mom was cleaning out the closet
0:06:43 and found these old school papers.
0:06:48 And apparently I was writing the same essays since I was like 10
0:06:50 about nature being great and how we should protect it.
0:06:53 So it wasn’t always going to be the ocean.
0:06:57 I wanted to become a park ranger at one point or an environmental lawyer.
0:06:59 But yeah, the ocean seemed like it needed more advocates
0:07:03 at the particular moment I was thinking about graduate school.
0:07:09 You open your book by saying that anytime you tell people
0:07:14 that you do climate work, they invariably ask, and I’m quoting,
0:07:16 how fucked are we?
0:07:17 Yeah.
0:07:21 Well, Ayanna, how fucked are we?
0:07:25 Well, we’re pretty fucked.
0:07:31 But there’s a lot we could do to have a better possible future.
0:07:36 And I think it’s important to always hold both of those things together.
0:07:38 We have already changed the climate.
0:07:44 We are already seeing the intense heat waves and floods and droughts
0:07:46 and wildfires and hurricanes.
0:07:51 All of that is already supercharged by our changed climate.
0:07:53 But there’s still so much we can do.
0:07:56 We basically have the solutions we need.
0:08:02 We’re just being really slow at deploying them, at implementing them, right?
0:08:05 We already know how to transition to renewable energy
0:08:07 and stop spewing fossil fuels.
0:08:12 We know how to protect and restore ecosystems that are absorbing all this carbon.
0:08:15 We know how to green buildings, insulate buildings,
0:08:20 shift to better public transit, improve our food system.
0:08:24 Like, the solutions are all right there.
0:08:28 So, as you know, this book has a reality check chapter
0:08:31 where I lay out all the bad news.
0:08:33 But that’s like three pages.
0:08:37 And then the rest of the book is like, OK, what are we going to do about it?
0:08:42 There’s no point anymore in talking about how to solve the problem of climate change, right?
0:08:43 I mean, that ship has sailed.
0:08:45 It’s all about adaptation now.
0:08:48 Yeah. I mean, the climate has already changed.
0:08:53 There’s not a time machine back to before we put
0:08:57 a completely mind-boggling amount of excess carbon into the atmosphere.
0:09:02 Whether and how well we address the climate crisis
0:09:08 determines the outcomes of life on Earth for all eight million species
0:09:12 and whether hundreds of millions of people live or die
0:09:13 and how well we all can live.
0:09:18 So even though perfection is not an option,
0:09:22 there’s such a wide range of possible futures
0:09:25 and we just need to make sure we get the best possible one.
0:09:27 Well, that seems like an important point, right?
0:09:29 This is really about degrees of suffering
0:09:35 and the consequences of specific choices we make or won’t make as it might be, right?
0:09:39 The difference between temperature spikes of two and four degrees
0:09:43 is the difference between lots of people living and dying, right?
0:09:48 Yeah. I mean, it’s easier for me to think about it in terms of the human body
0:09:53 running a fever because we can think of one or two degrees as not that big a deal.
0:10:00 But the difference between you having a fever of 100 and 102 or 103 is a huge difference.
0:10:07 And that’s the level of sensitivity to temperature that all species and ecosystems have.
0:10:12 If we can prevent a half a degree of warming or a degree of warming,
0:10:16 that actually makes a big difference. It’s worth the effort.
0:10:21 People like to use different words to describe the project ahead of us.
0:10:25 Words like sustainability or revolution.
0:10:28 You like to use the word transformation.
0:10:32 Why is that a better way to frame this?
0:10:37 There’s two words that I pair together and their possibility and transformation.
0:10:41 And I think possibilities for what we’ve just been talking about, right?
0:10:45 This wide spectrum of possible futures.
0:10:46 I’m not an optimist.
0:10:50 I’m not particularly hopeful given human history.
0:10:57 We don’t have a great track record of addressing collectively major challenges that we face.
0:11:01 There’s some important exceptions to that, like dealing with the ozone hole
0:11:04 through the Montreal Protocol, et cetera.
0:11:09 But this sense of possibility really drives me because the future is not yet written.
0:11:15 Like what if we just wrote a better one than the trajectory that we’re on?
0:11:25 So pairing this possibility with transformation and transformation is a word
0:11:29 I’ve gravitated towards because it indicates the scale of change.
0:11:30 Similar to revolution that you mentioned,
0:11:37 but revolution sort of implies a more tumultuous, violent, upheaval kind of thing.
0:11:43 Yeah, maybe it’s not that great in the process of it.
0:11:47 But transformation is a, I don’t know, maybe it’s slightly more poetic in some way,
0:11:55 but it’s how do we reshape and reimagine how we live on this planet and with each other?
0:12:04 And to me, that’s a question about design and culture and society and economy and politics, right?
0:12:10 It’s about the context within which we’re making all these more technical decisions.
0:12:14 And I don’t know, I can get excited about possibility and transformation.
0:12:18 Like what kind of future do we want to create together?
0:12:24 And in this book, there’s a whole bunch of what if questions that I find really captivating.
0:12:29 And one of them is what if climate adaptation is beautiful?
0:12:36 And that I think about in a pair with what if we act as if we love the future?
0:12:36 Yeah, I love that.
0:12:43 And there’s just so much, I don’t know, I’m like wiggling my fingers around
0:12:47 sort of like gesturing, like possibility, like excitement, sparkles.
0:12:54 Like what if I just feel like we need to be asking more big questions of ourselves
0:12:59 and each other in this moment because we’re at this inflection point in human history.
0:13:03 We either like get our shit together or we don’t.
0:13:05 And obviously I would like us to at least try.
0:13:09 But you don’t like the word sustainable, right?
0:13:11 You feel like that’s setting the bar too low?
0:13:14 I mean, it’s sort of just an everywhere word now.
0:13:17 It’s useful, but it doesn’t have a lot of meaning.
0:13:20 It’s very general.
0:13:28 And the sort of analog use that I’ve heard is if someone asked you how your marriage
0:13:31 was going and you were like, eh, it’s sustainable.
0:13:35 It’s like, okay, well, don’t want to trade lives with you.
0:13:37 Doesn’t sound terribly romantic.
0:13:44 So yes, I would say we should set a higher bar than sustainability, especially given that
0:13:48 we’ve already degraded nature so much that I don’t want to just sustain what we have.
0:13:50 I want to protect and restore.
0:13:59 So what if, to use your phrase just now, what if climate adaptation is beautiful?
0:14:00 What then?
0:14:04 Are we, is it rainbows and sunshine we have to look forward to?
0:14:07 Well, I think we will always have rainbows and sunshine.
0:14:09 That’s the good news.
0:14:13 But one of the, I’m just going to flip to this page.
0:14:19 There’s a section called if we build it about architecture and design and technology.
0:14:26 So imagine if we were just deliberate about building things that were
0:14:31 aesthetically pleasing and durable and could be deconstructed and reuse the parts instead
0:14:33 of demolishing things, right?
0:14:37 There’s so many, you know, and what materials are we choosing?
0:14:44 There’s so many choices that we’re making that are shaping our societal trajectory.
0:14:48 And like every day we are building a piece of the future, something that will be here
0:14:51 in 10 years or a century or more.
0:14:55 So let’s just be really thoughtful about all that and make it nice.
0:15:02 Like some cities and towns are now passing essentially deconstruction
0:15:07 ordinances that say you have to take apart buildings instead of demolishing them.
0:15:10 Instead of just pulverizing everything and sending it to the landfill,
0:15:14 you have to take it apart so the pieces can be reused like Legos,
0:15:16 which seems obvious almost.
0:15:19 Like why wouldn’t we always have been doing that, right?
0:15:26 The way that people are reusing old barns to make like reclaimed wood floors and wall panels
0:15:26 and whatever.
0:15:31 We should be doing that with all parts of building materials that we can.
0:15:39 So big picture wise, are you encouraged by the direction of the climate movement as it stands
0:15:41 at the moment?
0:15:43 What are your major concerns?
0:15:47 My primary concern is that we’re just not moving fast enough.
0:15:51 Given that we have basically all the solutions that we need,
0:15:57 it’s just incredibly frustrating how politics is holding us back.
0:16:04 I mean, in this country we have a division between the two major parties about whether
0:16:08 climate change exists and whether it’s something we should address,
0:16:13 which is just so retrograde, I don’t even know where to start.
0:16:21 And it’s especially frustrating because most Republican politicians are literally just pretending
0:16:22 they don’t think it exists.
0:16:25 Like they are fully aware that climate science is real,
0:16:29 but it’s untenable politically for them to admit that.
0:16:32 And that’s a huge part of why we’re in this mess,
0:16:38 as well as the fact that the fossil fuel lobby is ridiculously powerful in this country.
0:16:42 And so many politicians are bought and paid for in one way or another,
0:16:46 even though that’s not very many jobs.
0:16:52 And then you have the banking sector, which is funding all these fossil fuel corporations
0:16:57 to continue expanding their extraction and infrastructure.
0:17:02 You have, since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015,
0:17:08 60 banks have provided $6.9 trillion in financing to fossil fuel companies,
0:17:16 but the top four U.S. banks alone, JP Morgan Chase, City Bank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America,
0:17:24 have provided almost $1.5 trillion to finance fossil fuel companies.
0:17:26 So yeah, if you have your money in any of those banks,
0:17:32 I would move your retirement savings, etc., to a place that does not make the problem worse.
0:17:41 And there’s analysis showing that the impact of you moving your money out of fossil fuels
0:17:49 is a bigger impact than any amount of eating only plants and only walking and biking
0:18:01 could do, because it is that bad to be investing in the expansion of fossil fuels.
0:18:12 Support for the gray area comes from Givewell.
0:18:17 There are over one and a half million nonprofit organizations in the U.S.
0:18:19 and millions more around the world.
0:18:23 So how do you know which ones can make the biggest impact with your donation?
0:18:27 Well, Givewell was founded to help people figure that out.
0:18:32 They pour over independent studies and charity data to help donors direct their funds to
0:18:35 evidence-backed organizations that are saving and improving lives.
0:18:38 This really is a terrific organization.
0:18:44 According to their data, over 100,000 donors have used Givewell to donate more than $2 billion.
0:18:49 You can find all of their research and recommendations on their site for free.
0:18:54 You can also make tax-deductible donations to their recommended funds or charities,
0:18:56 and Givewell says they don’t take a cut.
0:19:01 If you’ve never used Givewell to donate, you can have your donation matched up to $100
0:19:05 before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last.
0:19:11 To claim your match, go to Givewell.org, pick podcast, and enter the gray area with Shawn
0:19:13 Elling at checkout.
0:19:17 Make sure they know that you heard about Givewell from the gray area to get your donation matched.
0:19:21 Again, that’s Givewell.org to donate or find out more.
0:19:27 Fox Creative
0:19:31 This is advertiser content from Zell.
0:19:35 When you picture an online scammer, what do you see?
0:19:40 For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer
0:19:43 with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night.
0:19:45 And honestly, that’s not what it is anymore.
0:19:49 That’s Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter.
0:19:54 These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists,
0:19:56 and they’re making bank.
0:19:59 Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion.
0:20:04 It’s mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure that’s been built
0:20:07 to facilitate scamming at scale.
0:20:12 There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scam centers all around the world.
0:20:14 These are very savvy business people.
0:20:16 These are organized criminal rings.
0:20:20 And so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better.
0:20:25 One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face
0:20:30 is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them.
0:20:33 But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple.
0:20:36 We need to talk to each other.
0:20:38 We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do
0:20:41 if you have text messages you don’t recognize?
0:20:44 What do you do if you start getting asked to send information
0:20:45 that’s more sensitive?
0:20:49 Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam,
0:20:52 but he fell victim and we have these conversations all the time.
0:20:57 So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other.
0:21:03 >> Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com/zel.
0:21:05 And when using digital payment platforms,
0:21:08 remember to only send money to people you know and trust.
0:21:13 >> Support for this episode comes from AWS.
0:21:17 AWS Generative AI gives you the tools to power your business forward
0:21:21 with the security and speed of the world’s most experienced cloud.
0:21:31 [MUSIC]
0:21:34 >> What would be the difference between a Harris administration
0:21:36 and another Trump administration?
0:21:39 What are the stakes on the climate front?
0:21:41 >> The stakes are sky high.
0:21:47 There are actually graphs projecting the difference in greenhouse gas emissions
0:21:52 between the two and it’s really remarkable because you have on one hand,
0:21:57 Vice President Harris, who was the deciding vote in passing the Inflation Reduction Act,
0:22:02 which was the largest ever investment in climate solutions in world history.
0:22:07 This Biden-Harris administration has created the American Climate Corps,
0:22:12 we’re just putting tens of thousands of young people to work implementing climate solutions
0:22:18 from reducing wildfire risk to installing solar panels to replanting wetlands.
0:22:25 We have a loan program office in the Department of Energy that has hundreds of billions of dollars
0:22:30 that they’re giving out to businesses that are figuring out this renewable energy transition.
0:22:36 All of that could be completely wiped out essentially on day one of a Trump administration.
0:22:42 You have in Trump a candidate who has offered two fossil fuel executives
0:22:46 that if they donate a billion dollars to his presidential campaign,
0:22:49 he will basically do their bidding once he gets into the White House.
0:22:51 That is how stark a difference this is.
0:22:58 >> Yeah. You have a podcast episode called, “How much does the president matter?”
0:23:00 And I guess the answer is a lot.
0:23:06 >> A lot. I mean, but at the same time, a president can only do so much without Congress,
0:23:14 right? So making sure you have we’re electing politicians for Senate and the House that get it,
0:23:19 that actually are going to do something on climate is also critical.
0:23:22 But the president is staffing all the federal agencies,
0:23:27 the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
0:23:33 and NASA and the Department of Energy and the Department of Interior
0:23:38 that are all making these decisions about permitting for fossil fuels
0:23:41 or offshore renewable wind energy, right?
0:23:48 But I’ll also give a shout out to local politics because it is at the city council level,
0:23:54 it is at the public utility commissions, it is at the school boards where we’re deciding,
0:23:58 are we teaching our children about what we can do about climate change?
0:24:04 Are we investing in municipal composting? Composting makes a really big difference
0:24:09 because rotting food in landfills emits tons of methane, a super potent greenhouse gas.
0:24:14 Are we building out bike lanes and all of this public transit infrastructure
0:24:18 that we need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels?
0:24:21 All of these local decisions really matter too.
0:24:26 So for those who are sort of overwhelmed with what’s happening at the presidential level,
0:24:30 it is absolutely worth your effort to think about local elections
0:24:33 and how you can support climate leaders down ballot.
0:24:42 I initially wanted to ask you what gives you the most hope right now,
0:24:45 but then I got to the part of the book where you write and I’m quoting again,
0:24:51 “Fuck hope, what’s the strategy? Do you feel like we, the royal we,
0:24:56 actually do have a clear concrete strategy for that better future?”
0:25:00 Because the path to the shitty future is crystal clear.
0:25:02 It is just keep doing what we’ve been doing.
0:25:10 And this is where I think media, Hollywood, music, art, culture makers broadly
0:25:18 really need to dive in with us because I cannot literally show you
0:25:21 what the future could look like. I can talk about it.
0:25:25 I can write about it. I can interview people about it.
0:25:29 I can, as I did for this book, commission art about it.
0:25:33 But I feel like if it’s possible to go through our day to day
0:25:37 and not encounter anything about climate, which it currently is,
0:25:44 I mean, for example, less than 1% of the minutes on major TV news stations are about climate.
0:25:47 And that’s actually gone down. I think it was 1.3%.
0:25:53 In 2022, and now it’s down to 0.9% in 2023, right?
0:25:54 So we’re going in the wrong direction.
0:26:00 If this is not part of our day to day exposure,
0:26:02 then it’s just always on the back burner.
0:26:04 There’s always something more important.
0:26:09 And we’re thinking about climate as something separate from our other concerns.
0:26:13 Whereas it’s actually just the context within which everything else
0:26:20 right now is playing out. So there’s a chapter in the book called “I Dream of Climate Rom-Coms,”
0:26:25 where I interview producer Franklin Leonard, founder of The Blacklist out in Hollywood,
0:26:31 and Adam McKay, filmmaker, writer, director, about the role of Hollywood in this.
0:26:36 Because basically, to date, Hollywood has just shown us the apocalypse,
0:26:40 the fire and brimstone, the day after tomorrow kind of stuff.
0:26:46 And there are very few examples of not like utopian rose-colored glasses stuff,
0:26:52 but like literally, what if we just used the solutions we had and projected that forward?
0:26:54 What would that look like?
0:27:01 I always loved Nietzsche’s idea that we have art in order not to die of the truth.
0:27:05 And you can interpret that in different ways, I guess.
0:27:11 But for me, it means that the job of art isn’t to hold up a mirror and tell us what is.
0:27:13 We have science for that.
0:27:19 Great art points to what could be before it is.
0:27:21 And man, do we need more of that right now.
0:27:24 Yes, yes, yes. We need so much more of that.
0:27:31 Anyone who’s listening who can create art, who can help us see the way forward,
0:27:32 we absolutely need you.
0:27:39 Can we just say at this point that the clean energy transition is inevitable?
0:27:40 Don’t know what the timeline is exactly,
0:27:44 but clean energy is the future full stop.
0:27:45 It’s a question of how long it takes.
0:27:49 Yeah, and that transformation is already well underway,
0:27:53 despite all the lobbying efforts from the fossil fuel industry, etc.
0:27:57 Because at this point, it just makes economic sense.
0:28:02 The reason that Iowa and Texas are leading the country in wind energy
0:28:04 is not because they’re a bunch of hippies.
0:28:09 It’s because it’s profitable and they’re good jobs
0:28:12 and people are excited about having those industries there.
0:28:18 Solar and wind, I mean, these are now the cheapest forms of energy on the planet.
0:28:21 I mean, photons, catch them, use them.
0:28:23 Why not? Yeah.
0:28:29 The thing I think people do not talk about enough what we’re talking about electricity
0:28:34 is that regardless of the source, we absolutely also need to focus on energy conservation.
0:28:41 This is not about just like willy-nilly running a lot of electrical stuff all the time,
0:28:46 because now we have solar panels, because it takes energy to make solar panels.
0:28:50 It takes raw materials to make solar panels.
0:28:55 We still want to rein all that in and live more lightly on the planet.
0:29:00 So I would just put in a plug for energy conservation
0:29:04 being an estimated like 30 to 50% of the solution.
0:29:07 We will need to build a lot less renewables
0:29:11 if we are just more frugal with our electricity.
0:29:14 And what about carbon capture technologies?
0:29:17 I feel like all of our optimistic scenarios include
0:29:21 an assumption that we’re going to get increasingly better
0:29:27 and more efficient at removing existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
0:29:28 Is that a safe assumption?
0:29:29 Well, we’re really bad at it now.
0:29:32 So I’m sure we’ll get better at it.
0:29:35 Okay. Are we going to get better enough is maybe what I’m asking?
0:29:36 I have no idea.
0:29:37 Because we have to, right?
0:29:43 Like there’s just, this has to be part of the solution or part of the strategy.
0:29:47 I mean, the first interview in the book is with Dr. Kate Marvel,
0:29:50 who’s a NASA client scientist who says, “Sure, great.
0:29:54 Like we should pursue carbon capture and storage.”
0:30:00 But it’s important to note there that this is not like a get out of jail free carbon.
0:30:03 We can keep burning fossil fuels and just catch it back.
0:30:06 It takes a lot of energy to do carbon capture.
0:30:11 So we basically need to focus that effort only on taking out carbon
0:30:13 that is already in the atmosphere.
0:30:17 We can’t just use that as an excuse to not change our ways.
0:30:21 So I think, again, that brings us back to energy conservation
0:30:23 and the shift to renewables being fundamental.
0:30:27 And if we figure out carbon capture, that’s a bonus.
0:30:32 But also we need to give a lot more credit to the OG,
0:30:34 the original gangster of carbon capture,
0:30:40 which is photosynthesis and plants and protect and restore ecosystems,
0:30:47 forests, wetlands, mangroves, all of that are a critical piece of this too.
0:30:50 And we just absolutely do not give enough credit to nature,
0:30:55 which by some estimates is 30 or 40% of the solution we need
0:30:57 if we are restoring ecosystems.
0:31:02 You know, I’ve had conversations with people like Andreas Maum.
0:31:03 He was a guest on the pod.
0:31:08 He says, which sounds bad on the surface, but is actually encouraging.
0:31:11 And I think you were hinting at this earlier.
0:31:13 We don’t have a science problem.
0:31:14 We don’t have a knowledge problem.
0:31:17 We know everything we need to know to do what we need to do.
0:31:21 And there are already viable alternatives to move us in that direction.
0:31:24 What we have is a political economy problem.
0:31:29 Certain financial interests are invested in locking us in this paradigm.
0:31:30 This is obviously a big obstacle,
0:31:32 but at least we know what the problem is.
0:31:34 If we lack the knowledge or the technologies,
0:31:36 there’s not much we can do about that.
0:31:37 But we know.
0:31:40 And if we’ve learned anything about markets,
0:31:43 is that they’ll move in the direction of profit.
0:31:45 So maybe we can’t change the economic system,
0:31:49 but we do understand its incentive structure and we can work within that.
0:31:52 So we’re going to have to find a way to make non-fossil fuel energy sources cheaper
0:31:54 and more efficient and lucrative.
0:31:55 So just tell me that’s the case.
0:31:58 Tell me there’s a shit ton of money to be made in green energy,
0:32:00 because if there is, that’s good news.
0:32:04 There is a shit ton of money to be made in green energy.
0:32:07 I can say that unequivocally.
0:32:11 I think this is probably a McKinsey study that found getting to net zero,
0:32:14 net zero greenhouse gas emissions,
0:32:18 is a more than $12 trillion business opportunity.
0:32:24 And in 2023, $1.8 trillion was invested in the clean energy transition,
0:32:26 which was a new record.
0:32:29 It’s worth saying also that also in 2023,
0:32:32 over a trillion dollars was invested in additional fossil fuel,
0:32:36 but renewables are ahead as a global investment amount.
0:32:40 And also last year, for the second year in a row,
0:32:45 banks generated more revenue from environmentally friendly investing,
0:32:50 about $3 billion, than they did from fossil fuel investing, which is 2.7.
0:32:51 I think those are still too close.
0:32:58 But yes, the economics are absolutely turning in favor of clean energy,
0:33:01 which is great because we would need to do it anyway.
0:33:07 But it’s certainly easier when the balance sheet is in your favor.
0:33:12 Yeah, and look, I bring all this up not to make the overly simple point that
0:33:15 capitalism is bad.
0:33:17 I think it’s a little more complicated than that.
0:33:20 And even if you believe that, it’s not helpful to leave it there.
0:33:23 Well, even if you believe in pure free market capitalism,
0:33:30 I mean, I think a free market folks need to just acknowledge that the market is not free.
0:33:35 So right now we have a completely insane amount of subsidies
0:33:39 still going to fossil fuels.
0:33:44 And if we just reformed fossil fuel subsidies and put a price on pollution,
0:33:46 which is all this greenhouse gas stuff,
0:33:49 we could generate trillions of dollars in government revenues,
0:33:54 which could be used to address the climate crisis, right?
0:33:58 So subsidizing all the bad stuff is not a free market.
0:34:03 We haven’t been giving renewables a fair chance at this.
0:34:08 The game has been rigged for the continuation of fossil fuels.
0:34:12 All those lobbying dollars have really paid off.
0:34:16 And so we’re now just starting to see that shift a bit,
0:34:18 which is evening the playing field.
0:34:20 And guess who wins when it’s a fair fight?
0:34:24 Photons is the answer.
0:34:27 Wind, the stuff that’s free and just out there.
0:34:28 And we can just catch it.
0:34:32 So okay, so wait a minute.
0:34:36 I can’t quite tell if you agree with me or not in the big picture sense, right?
0:34:41 Do you actually agree that we can work within capitalism,
0:34:47 we can use the internal logic of capitalism to get on the right path here?
0:34:47 No, I do.
0:34:48 And I think we must.
0:34:54 We do not have time to completely take apart and put back together a new economic system
0:34:57 within the next decade, which is when we need to basically
0:35:00 make this huge leap in addressing the climate crisis.
0:35:05 So yeah, what I’m saying is that already renewables make economic sense.
0:35:12 Already green buildings and the shift to electric transportation, etc.
0:35:14 are making economic sense.
0:35:21 So if we can just stop subsidizing fossil fuels within our existing capitalist system,
0:35:28 we could just stop giving extra bonus money to people who are massively polluting the
0:35:31 planet and destroying things for life on earth.
0:35:34 That would help things go even faster.
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0:38:56 You say the best thing we can do when confronting an existential crisis
0:38:59 is imagine what could be on the other side.
0:39:02 What’s the most realistic best-case scenario for you?
0:39:05 Big picture?
0:39:06 Yeah.
0:39:13 The dream for me when I think about getting it right really starts with nature,
0:39:18 starts with putting photosynthesis on the pedestal it deserves.
0:39:22 And thinking about, you know, how we are shifting our food system,
0:39:26 how we are shifting transportation, how I mean,
0:39:32 I imagine like all of Gen Z just refusing to work for the fossil fuel industry, right?
0:39:35 Or as Jane Fonda says, like, you know,
0:39:37 don’t sleep with anyone who works in fossil fuels,
0:39:40 just like ice out that whole sector.
0:39:46 Just turn all of that into something that’s really unappealing.
0:39:50 I imagine a future where our homes are not drafty
0:39:52 because they’re well-insulated, right?
0:39:57 Where we don’t have traffic in cities and on highways
0:39:58 because we have much better transportation.
0:40:00 We have high-speed rail.
0:40:05 I mean, for the love of God, can we get like some fast trains in America?
0:40:07 Sort of embarrassing that we don’t have that.
0:40:11 Where we have just delicious local foods,
0:40:14 where we have restored coastal ecosystems
0:40:17 that are buffering us from the impacts of climate change.
0:40:19 Where we actually have fewer desk jobs
0:40:22 because more of us are out in the world doing this stuff,
0:40:25 which is so gratifying.
0:40:29 And where we can actually just slow down
0:40:36 and enjoy life a bit more because we have our shit together
0:40:41 and because culture has caught up with this climate reality
0:40:46 and the status quo and what is aspirational have changed.
0:40:52 I mean, it’s worth a shot, no?
0:40:53 Oh yeah, no.
0:40:59 I’m just gathering my thoughts and I’m also trying to
0:41:01 summon all the hopefulness that I can.
0:41:04 Well, here’s the thing.
0:41:06 You don’t actually need to be hopeful.
0:41:07 I’m not hopeful.
0:41:11 I think that hope is insufficient even if we have it.
0:41:12 We need a plan.
0:41:16 We need to each find our role to play in climate solutions.
0:41:20 One of the major things that I sort of encourage people to do
0:41:23 is think really specifically about what you can do.
0:41:28 Not the generic list of like march, protest, donate,
0:41:31 spread the word, lower your individual carbon footprint,
0:41:35 which is all good and well to do and I do it.
0:41:39 But if you and I and teachers and doctors and farmers
0:41:42 and project managers and web designers
0:41:44 were all doing exactly the same thing,
0:41:45 that would be a total waste.
0:41:50 So instead of thinking about hope, whether you have it or not,
0:41:51 it doesn’t really matter.
0:41:57 Just do something and you’ll feel good regardless of the outcome
0:41:59 because you will have contributed to making things
0:42:02 slightly better than they would otherwise have been.
0:42:05 And if we each do that, it sounds corny,
0:42:09 but it is factually accurate that all that stuff adds up.
0:42:11 And if you need a place to start,
0:42:15 I offer this concept of a climate action Venn diagram,
0:42:18 which is three circles, sort of a simplified version
0:42:22 of the Japanese concept of Ikigai for finding your purpose,
0:42:25 which is one circle is what are you good at?
0:42:27 So what are your skills, resources, networks,
0:42:30 like what can you specifically bring to the table?
0:42:34 What is the work that needs doing is the second circle.
0:42:37 What are the climate and justice solutions you want to work on
0:42:39 because there are hundreds of them?
0:42:43 And the third circle is what brings you joy or satisfaction?
0:42:46 Like what gets you out of bed in the morning?
0:42:49 And how can we each find our way to the sweet spot
0:42:52 in the center of that Venn diagram
0:42:57 and just live there for as many minutes of our lives as we can?
0:43:02 Well, to do this, one thing we clearly have to do
0:43:07 is make people feel emotionally the stakes of this
0:43:12 without also pushing them into quietism or despair.
0:43:15 And so the question is, how do we do that?
0:43:20 I mean, I have to say there’s a reality here that sucks,
0:43:20 but it’s true.
0:43:24 And maybe this has changed marginally in one direction
0:43:26 or the other, but poll after poll that I’ve seen
0:43:30 shows that a lot of Americans simply don’t care
0:43:32 about climate change that much or they might care,
0:43:35 but it’s nowhere near the top of their list of priorities,
0:43:38 which is why politically it just doesn’t move the needle.
0:43:40 And that makes it difficult for legislators
0:43:41 to deal with the problem.
0:43:43 I mean, I lived in Louisiana for a decade.
0:43:45 The coast there is disappearing.
0:43:48 Cultures and ways of life and towns and communities
0:43:50 are disappearing.
0:43:51 And still a lot of people in that state
0:43:54 refuse to connect the dots.
0:43:57 So how do we help them do that?
0:43:58 How do we make them feel this?
0:44:02 First, I think it’s important to acknowledge
0:44:05 that the majority of Americans are concerned
0:44:07 about climate change and would like our government
0:44:08 to do more about it.
0:44:11 We hear so much about climate deniers
0:44:13 that we think it’s like half the country.
0:44:14 It’s like 12%.
0:44:17 So yeah, just because I tried to correct that and say
0:44:19 that they just, it’s not that they don’t care,
0:44:22 but they just care about many other things before.
0:44:23 Absolutely.
0:44:25 And so I think what you’re referring to
0:44:28 is the sort of pulling on political priorities,
0:44:30 like what determines who you’re voting for,
0:44:32 like what, you know, what is that ranking?
0:44:37 And climate rarely breaks the top five or 10 issues
0:44:43 when you’re thinking about jobs, economy, housing, wars,
0:44:45 all of this other stuff, right?
0:44:49 And I get that we have these day-to-day concerns
0:44:52 that are critical to our quality of life,
0:44:54 to our well-being.
0:44:58 And I don’t fault people for ranking those higher,
0:45:01 but I do fault us for not understanding
0:45:03 that those are connected to climate change
0:45:06 in some very significant ways.
0:45:07 There’s an incredible organization
0:45:09 called Environmental Voter Project,
0:45:11 and this is what they do.
0:45:14 There are something like 10 million Americans
0:45:16 who actually have environment
0:45:19 as their number one issue politically,
0:45:22 and they are already registered to vote,
0:45:24 and they simply do not go to the polls.
0:45:29 Can you imagine if we had another 10 million climate voters
0:45:32 who were voting in every election,
0:45:34 and then politicians were like,
0:45:36 “Oh, shit, I guess there’s a whole demographic
0:45:39 that cares about this that’s very active politically.
0:45:41 We’re going to have to earn their votes.”
0:45:43 That would absolutely change the game.
0:45:47 And so all of their work on turning out environmental voters
0:45:50 is making a very big difference.
0:45:53 So for those who are like, “Ah, climate and politics,
0:45:55 it’s like such a mess.”
0:45:57 I would say, “Join me in volunteering
0:45:59 with Environmental Voter Project,
0:46:02 helping to get people who care engaged
0:46:04 and having their voices heard,
0:46:08 because once we have a larger constituency
0:46:11 of active climate voters, that will shift the politics.”
0:46:14 And the politics follows culture,
0:46:17 so it’s not politicians that are leading the way.
0:46:19 They are followers.
0:46:21 So the more of us speak up
0:46:24 about this as a political priority for us,
0:46:27 the faster we’ll get these changes that we need.
0:46:31 Do you have thoughts about how we can convince skeptics
0:46:37 or even just outright deniers that this work must be done?
0:46:41 Do we even need to engage with skeptics and deniers?
0:46:44 Is that fruitless or is it necessary?
0:46:48 I personally am not out there on Al Gore’s internet
0:46:49 debating climate deniers.
0:46:52 I just, it’s not my jam.
0:46:56 But again, that’s a small portion of Americans.
0:47:00 It’s an even smaller portion of the global population.
0:47:02 And so where I focus my effort
0:47:04 is for the people who already care,
0:47:08 who are already concerned, to saying, “We need you.
0:47:10 We need you working on solutions.
0:47:11 Welcome.
0:47:12 Roll up your sleeves.
0:47:15 We’ll help you find ways to plug in
0:47:16 and do something that’s useful.”
0:47:21 And to circle back to our point earlier,
0:47:24 which is the economics of a lot of these climate solutions,
0:47:26 are just really favorable.
0:47:29 So we don’t actually need to debate whether greenhouse gases
0:47:32 being spewed by burning fossil fuels
0:47:34 and blanketing the planet and warming it
0:47:37 is a thing that’s happening, even though it’s very clear.
0:47:39 It’s been for 50 years.
0:47:40 That’s what’s happening.
0:47:44 We just need to say, “Hey, who wants a good job
0:47:47 in engineering and manufacturing?
0:47:55 Let’s build some more battery, wind, solar, plants, and installation.”
0:47:59 And so the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act
0:48:02 are mostly being experienced in red states
0:48:05 that are getting all this manufacturing capacity,
0:48:07 all these green jobs,
0:48:09 even though all of their representatives
0:48:11 voted against that funding.
0:48:13 So I think with that shift,
0:48:18 with those benefits going to politically conservative areas
0:48:20 where climate denial is higher,
0:48:25 we may start to see an even more rapid
0:48:28 and strong embrace of climate solutions
0:48:31 even without talking about climate change.
0:48:33 We do not actually have to agree on the problem
0:48:35 to collaborate on the solutions.
0:48:37 And so that we have in our favor.
0:48:39 Yeah.
0:48:45 You seem very angsty and nervous and concerned.
0:48:47 My therapy appointment is in two weeks, I don’t.
0:48:49 I’m not your therapist,
0:48:52 but there is a whole burgeoning sector, actually,
0:48:54 of climate therapy,
0:48:56 because climate anxiety is a real thing,
0:49:01 and people are understandably grappling with it, right?
0:49:03 The prospect of life on Earth
0:49:06 ceasing to exist in the way that we have always known it
0:49:09 is freaking terrifying.
0:49:13 But I think, and there’s sort of like this term,
0:49:17 like climate sad boys that those of us working
0:49:20 are like, the climate sad boys are back again.
0:49:23 Here come the doomers, like always asking us how bad it is.
0:49:25 I’m not sobbing in my corner.
0:49:27 All right, hold on, all right.
0:49:30 Look, I’m also trying to speak to the angst
0:49:32 of people listening as well.
0:49:34 I hear it, and I feel it,
0:49:36 often, I don’t want to minimize it.
0:49:39 But I think the more we just focus on possibility
0:49:41 and what we can each do,
0:49:44 and just acknowledge that we as individuals
0:49:48 cannot control the future of life on Earth,
0:49:51 but we can do our part and kind of like,
0:49:53 I don’t worry about it day to day.
0:49:56 I spend very little time thinking about the problems,
0:50:01 because that doesn’t actually change what I need to do.
0:50:03 I need to do what I need to do.
0:50:06 I need to do my work at Urban Ocean Lab,
0:50:09 this policy think tank for the future of coastal cities
0:50:09 that I co-founded.
0:50:13 We need to help cities adapt to sea level rise
0:50:16 and build out offshore renewable energy
0:50:19 and restore and protect the coastal ecosystems
0:50:22 that will help buffer the impacts of storms.
0:50:24 Like, that’s how I spend my days.
0:50:28 And so my days are full of creativity and problem solving,
0:50:29 great collaborations,
0:50:32 and like, punctuated with moments of delight
0:50:33 and tiny victories.
0:50:37 And what more could we expect out of life?
0:50:42 I think to me, that’s enough to just do my part.
0:50:48 Something we’ve seen in recent years are climate activists,
0:50:52 blocking traffic, throwing paint on artworks and museums.
0:50:56 I think that’s stupid on purely strategic grounds.
0:51:01 But I do wonder how you think about the role of activism
0:51:05 and protest and how that can be most beneficial.
0:51:08 I mean, I think Bill McKibbin said to you
0:51:09 in your interview with him
0:51:11 that he doesn’t think there’s any scenario
0:51:14 where we don’t have to march in the streets.
0:51:16 And that seems probably right to me,
0:51:17 but is that how you feel?
0:51:19 Bill McKibbin is a wise man.
0:51:21 I definitely agree.
0:51:23 I mean, we have to voice our objection
0:51:26 to things that make no freaking sense.
0:51:27 We have to voice our objection
0:51:30 to continuing to subsidize fossil fuel companies
0:51:31 with our dollars.
0:51:35 We have to voice our objection to people
0:51:38 who deny climate change, calling the shots.
0:51:41 Some of the more extreme forms of protest,
0:51:45 if we’re honest, make people like me seem more reasonable.
0:51:47 And I’m grateful for it, right?
0:51:50 Those works of art that had soup thrown at them are fine.
0:51:51 They were covered with glass.
0:51:52 They were wiped off.
0:51:53 Everything’s fine.
0:51:56 So I think we need to just, for one,
0:51:57 keep things in perspective,
0:51:59 but also if we’re acknowledging
0:52:02 that the future of human life on this planet,
0:52:05 the quality of life for our species
0:52:08 is literally being determined
0:52:10 by what we do in the next decade,
0:52:12 then is throwing soup at a painting
0:52:14 really the worst thing we can imagine?
0:52:17 Is it the most effective messaging?
0:52:20 Well, I think we could have done better.
0:52:22 I think there’s obviously
0:52:23 much better climate communication
0:52:27 that can be layered on top of protest,
0:52:31 but I absolutely see a value for protest.
0:52:35 And it opens the door to a lot of policy conversations.
0:52:39 And that is the role to shift the Overton window,
0:52:42 to make politicians and executives
0:52:45 feel like they have to do more and faster
0:52:48 by just exerting that social pressure
0:52:52 and removing the social license to operate,
0:52:53 to say we are watching you.
0:52:56 We are voting at the ballot box
0:52:57 and we are voting with our dollars
0:53:00 and we will name and shame the bad actors
0:53:03 and welcome you onto the side
0:53:06 of climate solutions whenever you’re ready.
0:53:10 Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson,
0:53:14 thank you for outing me as a climate sad boy.
0:53:18 And honestly, seriously,
0:53:22 I do feel better after conversations like this.
0:53:25 I do feel better after reading your book.
0:53:26 All right, there we go.
0:53:30 Fill in your Venn diagram and get to work.
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In this episode, host Sean Illing speaks with marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson about her book What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures.
Johnson approaches climate change with informed optimism, encouraging us to stop waiting for the worst to happen. She doesn’t reject the realities of a warming planet but reminds us that doomerism is paralyzing us into inaction. In short, having a better climate future begins with envisioning one and then mapping the road to get there.
This unique perspective earned Johnson a place on Vox’s Future Perfect 50 list, an annual celebration of the people working to make the future a better place. The list — published last week — includes writers, scientists, thinkers, and activists who are reshaping our world for the better.
In honor of the Future Perfect 50 — and to remind us all that a better climate future is possible — The Gray Area team is sharing Sean’s interview with Johnson, which originally aired in September 2024.
Click here to find out more about the 2024 Future Perfect 50.
And click here to read Johnson’s profile.
Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)
Guest: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, marine biologist and author of What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures.
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