Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to It's Open with Alana Glazer. Hi, thank you for joining me and us today. I had such a great conversation with Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson that I'm very excited to share with you. She is the author of What If We Get It Right? And she's talking about the earth, baby. She is a marine biologist and the leading voice in culture on climate solutions.
I couldn't help but ask her, Dr. Johnson, are we fucked? And the answer may surprise you. Come on in. It's open. Ayana, thank you for joining me today.
My absolute pleasure.
You know, we've been friends for a while now, maybe five or six years from the neighborhood in Brooklyn where you grew up. But you have since moved to Maine.
Yeah. I feel great about that.
Holy moly.
I'm actually trying to write an essay about that for a magazine. Because part of the reason is climate change. Where do you want to be? Where feels safe?
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Chapter 2: How does Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson view the urgency of climate solutions?
Where do you want to build community? Where do you want to put down roots? Knowing everything that I know. For people who do have the freedom of choice, which is not very many, sadly, what are some good places to be? How do we even... think about that when the past is like no longer the perfect proxy for the future. Sorry, I just went straight in on you.
In the past, let me just like catch up. In the past is no longer the perfect proxy for the future, which I suppose within our entire lifetimes has been a lie, a lie narrative, right?
Well, everything's changing so quickly, right? Like when I grew up in Brooklyn, we had snow days in a different way, right? We had to wear turtlenecks under our Halloween costumes and coats over them. We're always arguing with our moms about like how many layers we had to wear because we were ruining our costume. And now it's like, 70 degrees on Halloween, right?
It's just a totally different climate, literally. We're in this different phase of life on Earth, hotter than it's ever been in human history, and all this extreme weather. And so the question is like... Well, we can't just assume that everything's going to be the same and we can just like putter along. Something's got to give, right?
We have to shift, we have to adapt our lives to the world as it now is. And I feel like most people are a little slow jumping on that.
I think of you as someone who has done... planet-saving work for so many years, I had perhaps fantasized about this move as like, she's doing it for herself. Taking back the Earth for herself.
Also, yes. Also, yes. Yeah, cool. I just need to have green out of every window. And Maine's got the ocean and the mountains and the forests and all these. Wow. practical humans with real world skills. And I just thought, I think this is a good place to be.
Totally. Yeah. How's it, how's it feel? You lived in New York city your whole life. Is that right?
Um, through high school and then left and lived around the Caribbean and California and DC and Austin and, um, came back and then we met and I was like, well, I've met the last person I needed to meet in New York. Let me just bounce. And my mom and I moved in together and she brought her chickens. So we've got a little kind of homestead thing going on.
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Chapter 3: What role does community play in addressing climate change?
Like you got to like not be a jerk because everyone will know. Wow. And Maine is, I think this is true, maybe the first state that's been like really pumping the brakes on data centers until we have a plan for where all this electricity is going to come from. Maine has high electric bills already. And yeah, people are really concerned. And that's actually been one of the most exciting new
Sort of social activist things to watch because it came out of nowhere and it could so easily have been like we all just sleepwalk into this era. And people were like, actually, we're not super down with these huge data centers in our communities using all our electricity, polluting the air as they like fire up gas turbines and using all of our electricity. Drinking water.
While taking away our jobs. Let's pause on this. And so a bunch of states are doing that now. But Maine's, yeah, charging ahead on all sorts of creative legislation. Just passed a bill for plug-in solar, so people can plug in solar panels at their house and not have to go through crazy permitting procedures. Just really practical approach, I think, to what makes sense in terms of policy.
The practical minutia is what gets me so excited. That is what I'm loving about Mayor Zoran Ramdhani's policy. Track record so far, the minutia, the four-foot shoveled sidewalks.
I know. The pothole filling. The pothole filling. It's been a bummer for a lot of us that he hasn't really talked about climate that much. Like, pushing for public transit, obviously, great. Climate solution. We love bikes. We love buses, subways, all of that. Like, that's great.
But he has really he's talked about it all through the lens of affordability and not so much about like, also, this is good for the earth, which is good for the humans. And the most vulnerable ones are the ones who get screwed. the most by climate change. And his track record is one of like very strong advocacy for climate.
But in this political moment, he has just chosen not to emphasize that or talk about it. And it's part of this like trend of green hushing that we're seeing. It used to be like greenwashing, like companies pretending to do all this good stuff that they were, was like nonsense. And now it's like people aren't even talking about it at all.
which is a problem because the majority of Americans are, like, super concerned and would like to see politicians do more. But there's always a question of, like, how do you win versus how do you govern? Fundamentally, just get it done, right? Like, do the work.
Right.
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Chapter 4: What are the most effective renewable energy solutions available?
To shift to renewable energy. And I haven't heard... Mayor Mamdani say anything about like, no, we need to stick to this. And I get that he's like building an alliance with the governor. And like, I'm sure there's a lot of strategy going on around it.
But like, we got to keep plowing ahead on our climate goals instead of just letting them fall by the wayside without even a public conversation happening about that. There is actually urgency. And we have, I mean, I think to take a step back, I feel like the one thing I want people to understand about climate change is we have the solutions we need. We know how to transition to clean energy.
We know how to do public transit and electrify our transit. We know to do green buildings. We know how to improve our agriculture. We know to protect and restore ecosystems. It's not like... We need to wait for magic or fusion or whatever. Right. We could just do it.
And it truly is this challenge of political will just not being there and having like an entire political party in this country that's like. climate denial as a core policy and drill baby drill in their literal GOP platform. And the other piece of it is your fault. It's your people. It's the culture part. Like we just don't have enough people talking about
the challenge, but also specifically the solutions and helping people see that making those solutions happen in the world, like leads to a better world for all of us. Like who doesn't want cleaner air and cleaner water and like green jobs and all the good stuff that comes with addressing this head on. And I just, I...
So in this like midterm election moment, I'm like vote for people who get it on climate, please. Like pick a campaign and help win it, right? Up and down the ballot. Like school board, who's approving like do kids get to learn about climate in school? And your city council deciding whether to invest in municipal composting and bike lanes and all that stuff. It all is super important, right?
All these people with cultural influence are not talking about it. Oh, they're not talking about climate. They're just not. I mean, a few people here and there, but like it's not in movies. We have the apocalyptic versions of the future. We don't have. That's right.
That's right.
As is my greatest wish, the rom-com with the hot shirtless solar installer. Right. It's almost like you could miss it. It's as if it's not happening because it's not reflected in the cultural products that are reaching the most people.
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Chapter 5: How do cultural perceptions affect climate action?
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so let's talk about your book what if we get it right visions of climate futures this is your second book but the first you've penned all your own yeah right yeah so all we can save when we met that came out because i like randomly dm'd you on instagram and was like hey could you read some essays for this audio book that was such a good experience i loved it so much and the book is so good and
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Chapter 6: What impact does political will have on climate policies?
Yep. Right? Because we have the climate solutions we need, essentially. Are we going to do them or not? And how quickly are we going to implement them? And how justly are we going to implement them? That's going to decide what kind of world we get.
What is the most exciting solution? Talking about like digging into minutia and loving it as a fucking nerd.
I'm so old school. I'm like, could we protect and restore wetlands? Talk about it. They absorb three to five times more carbon per acre than a tropical forest. They're protecting our shorelines. They are habitat for so many other species. And they can actually, like, grow in some cases to keep up with rising sea levels. How do you do it? They're dope. You just protect them.
And, like, you can restore them, like, replant. But there's, like, 15% of the original wetlands that are still intact today. In the New York area. And that bit that was left prevented over $600 million in damage. So like it really matters that we do that, that we protect and restore those ecosystems. And yes, I love solar panels and electric cars and like.
networked geothermal like I'm not anti technology those solutions are incredibly valuable and we need to build more transmission lines and like battery storage and all of it right but nature is a huge part of the solution and we often forget that and our food system as well like Reducing food waste is a huge climate solution. Eating a plant-based diet.
These are in the top 10 if we shift culture, society.
I just want to kind of capture and hold one second some things you've already said, which is that we have the solutions that we need. It's just a matter of a timeline and fighting bad people, essentially, who are in positions of power. But also, like... I'm hearing jobs and profitability.
I just really want people to understand that we basically have the climate solutions we need and that they are affordable, right? Like solar is cheaper than oil, right? Like we could just have solar panels capturing photons, powering our lives, storing that in batteries overnight, right? We have all these there's more jobs in renewable energy than in coal, for sure. Right.
There is this opportunity to shift to an economy based on renewable energy. And the transition is happening. Most of the new electricity that's been brought onto the grid in the last few years is renewable. in terms of newly added sources of electricity. So that's the direction we're going in.
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Chapter 7: What solutions does Dr. Johnson propose for climate justice?
As soon as we get the power back, we can re-implement these things. I know it's like so dumb and like Pollyanna to say it. No, it's not dumb. It was just right there.
It was right the fuck there. I re-interviewed Abby Dillon. Abby runs Earth Justice. Love it.
sues the federal government for violating its own environmental laws basically um like the clean air act no we actually have a right to clean air you guys you gotta enforce this etc and so they in addition to suing this administration are doing what's called project phoenix which is you know the mythical bird rising from the ashes if they're gonna burn it all down What are we going to rebuild?
And so this is absolutely a time for that kind of imagining, right? If we are being forced into a bit of a blank slate, like let's be creative about the kinds of policies, laws, regulations, societal structures that would help us get to where we need to go. And a lot of organizations are in this phase.
You know, doing the split between like the defensive work of like hold the line as much as we can and like planning for the next window of opportunity to open or, you know, force it open. Because there are some things people agree on, like across the political spectrum, people want clean water. And they don't want a lot of data centers in their communities, right?
And they want the green jobs no matter who they vote for. They want those good jobs in their communities. So there's a lot of opportunities still to move things forward. And we've got to just find that possibility.
When you say across the political spectrum, I think politicians. And then I'm like, no, you mean the people. No, the people. The voters. The citizens. Voters want mostly the same thing, I think.
Hey!
It wouldn't go quite that far.
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Chapter 8: How can individuals contribute to climate action in their daily lives?
So like. come on.
Yeah. Welcome. Let's do this. Yeah. How have you seen the role of women in climate science change over the course of your career?
In climate science?
Um,
There are so many incredible women climate scientists.
You know, like when I started commenting, it's like you're the girl on the lineup. You're the girl in the improv group. Were you the girl in the room when you were studying climate science or was it?
I was studying. So my PhD is in marine biology, obviously the ocean, a very big part of our climate system. A third of the solutions are found in the ocean. And that has had this generational shift where a lot of the professors are men, but a lot of the students and early career people are women. There's been sort of like a gender inflection. Like most science PhD world, very masculine.
And now it's much, many, many more women up and down.
That's exciting. Yeah, in that one. What would you say to... A young woman, or I'm sure you do talk to young women all the time in the space, but like, what do you say to young women when you are in a role to sort of advise or guide young women in climate justice and climate science?
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