What if we get climate solutions right? (w/ Ayana Elizabeth Johnson)

Summary

Podcast Summary: “What if we get climate solutions right?” with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

How to Be a Better Human, hosted by comedian Chris Duffy, delves deep into personal and collective transformations necessary to address the climate crisis. In the episode titled “What if we get climate solutions right?”, released on April 21, 2025, Chris engages in a profound conversation with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a renowned marine biologist and author of the inspiring book What if We Get It Right?. This episode transcends traditional climate discourse by exploring not just the dire consequences of inaction, but also envisioning a thriving, sustainable future.

1. Introducing Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Her Vision

Chris begins by highlighting Ayana’s unique approach to the climate crisis. Unlike many narratives that oscillate between denial and doom, Ayana emphasizes the positive transformations possible through effective climate action. Chris recounts how Ayana shifted his perspective from merely preventing negative outcomes to imagining and striving for a better, more connected world.

2. The Essence of Transformation over Mere Prevention

At [03:01], Ayana articulates the magnitude of the climate challenge and the comprehensive transformation it demands:

“We need to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, transportation, agriculture, industry, and buildings. We need to protect and restore ecosystems. We need to change society, policy, economy, and culture.”

She emphasizes that the response to climate change must be holistic, addressing not just environmental factors but also societal and economic structures.

3. Moving Beyond Carbon Footprint: Leveraging Individual Talents

At [04:47], Ayana critiques the common focus on individual actions like lowering one’s carbon footprint—a term she notes was popularized by fossil fuel corporations to shift responsibility onto individuals. Instead, she advocates for utilizing personal talents and “superpowers” to contribute meaningfully to climate solutions:

“All too rarely are we asked to contribute our special talents, our superpowers, to climate solutions. And what a failing for that would actually enable the radical changes we need.”

4. The Climate Action Venn Diagram: A Practical Tool

Discussing practical strategies for climate action, Ayana introduces the Climate Action Venn Diagram at [13:16]. This tool consists of three overlapping circles:

• What are you good at? (skills and resources)
• What is the work that needs doing? (specific climate and justice solutions)
• What brings you joy? (sustaining motivation)

By identifying intersections within these circles, individuals can find tailored ways to contribute effectively and sustainably to climate initiatives.

5. Embracing Biophilia and Preventing Shifting Baselines

Ayana underscores the innate human connection to nature, a concept termed biophilia by scientist E.O. Wilson, at [07:32]. She warns against shifting baselines, where diminishing expectations of nature's abundance lead to complacent policies and inadequate restoration efforts:

“We have essentially lowered expectations for what abundance and diversity of life should be around us. If we think seeing one bee a year is normal, then we've lost touch with what a healthy ecosystem should look like.”

6. Cultural Change Precedes Policy Change

A significant portion of the discussion at [19:53] revolves around the pivotal role of cultural narratives in shaping policy. Ayana draws parallels to the Scully Effect, where strong female characters in media inspire real-world aspirations. She argues that similar cultural saturation around climate solutions can galvanize public support and influence policymakers:

“We haven't had the cultural saturation that would need from Hollywood to show us not just the climate problem, but climate solutions. This was my motivation for creating this book.”

7. Redefining Hope: Focusing on Usefulness

At [10:38], Ayana addresses the concept of hope, expressing skepticism about its reliability as a motivator. Instead, she advocates for a focus on usefulness—embracing the role of contributing to solutions regardless of fluctuating feelings of optimism:

“Instead of thinking about having hope or not, if we just take the option of quitting off the table, then the question just becomes, what can I do to make things better than they would otherwise be?”

8. The Blue New Deal and Policy Advocacy

Delving into policy, Ayana discusses her initiative, the Blue New Deal, aimed at integrating ocean conservation into federal climate policy [36:30]. She highlights the challenges of influencing large-scale policy changes and emphasizes the importance of local and state actions in fostering resilience and sustainability:

“Cities and states are close to their constituents, thinking about these adaptation questions. There’s so much room for productivity there.”

9. Generational Change and Long-term Commitment

Drawing inspiration from Martin Luther King Jr., Ayana stresses the necessity of generational commitment to effecting lasting change. She likens the climate crisis to civil rights movements, underscoring that transformative societal shifts require enduring effort across generations [36:30]:

“This is work of generations. The climate crisis requires a similar, if not greater, level of transformation.”

10. Personal Reflections: Legacy and Impact

Ayana shares a poignant personal story about her father, a black architect in New York City, and the realization of his lasting impact through subsequent generations of architects [39:16]. This narrative underscores the theme that meaningful change often manifests through subtle, enduring influences rather than immediate recognition:

“It's not about the glory, it's about the ripples. All of us can only hope to have our work make meaningful ripples in the world.”

11. Envisioning a Positive Climate Future

In the concluding sections, Ayana and Chris explore the importance of visualizing a positive climate future. Ayana emphasizes that while the challenges are immense, envisioning and striving for a flourishing, interconnected world provides the necessary motivation to drive impactful actions [23:52]:

“If we can't imagine something good coming out the other end, it's hard to muster the energy and fortitude to work on climate solutions.”

Conclusion: Empowering Action through Vision and Collaboration

This episode of How to Be a Better Human with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson serves as an empowering call to action. By shifting the focus from mere survival to proactive, transformative solutions, Ayana invites listeners to reimagine their roles in shaping a sustainable future. Through practical tools like the Climate Action Venn Diagram, a focus on personal utility over abstract hope, and the integration of cultural narratives with policy advocacy, the conversation provides a roadmap for individuals and communities striving to contribute meaningfully to the climate movement.

Listeners are encouraged to engage deeply with Ayana’s work, particularly her book What if We Get It Right?, which encapsulates these transformative ideas through interviews and collaborative insights. As Ayana aptly puts it, the future is not predetermined; it is a collective endeavor shaped by our actions, creativity, and unwavering commitment to a better world.

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Notable Quotes:

• Ayana Elizabeth Johnson [03:01]: “We need to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, transportation, agriculture, industry, and buildings. We need to protect and restore ecosystems. We need to change society, policy, economy, and culture.”

• Ayana Elizabeth Johnson [04:47]: “All too rarely are we asked to contribute our special talents, our superpowers, to climate solutions. And what a failing for that would actually enable the radical changes we need.”

• Ayana Elizabeth Johnson [10:52]: “I do not have this blind faith that it will all be okay in the end. Optimism... doesn't apply to me now.”

• Ayana Elizabeth Johnson [19:53]: “We haven't had the cultural saturation that would need from Hollywood to show us not just the climate problem, but climate solutions.”

• Ayana Elizabeth Johnson [13:16]: “It’s what are you good at? What is the work that needs doing? What brings you joy?”

• Ayana Elizabeth Johnson [34:19]: “There’s a big difference between 1 foot and 5 feet of sea level rise.”

• Ayana Elizabeth Johnson [39:40]: “It's not about the glory, it's about the ripples.”

Transcript

[Unknown Speaker 1]

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[Chris Duffy]

How can advertising on TikTok help jumpstart sales for your small business?

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

Thanks to TikTok ads, I was able to open up a business with my childhood friend, get a warehouse, and even hire employees. My name is Julian and I am one of the founders of the Snacks Lab. We are an exotic snack company. We had over $100,000 in sales from our TikTok ads in the first month, so our orders went from five a day to over 250 orders a day. You definitely have to use TikTok ads and you gotta start now.

[Chris Duffy]

Head over to getstarted.TikTok.com TikTok ads we all belong outside.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

We're drawn to nature. Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to or the succulents that adorn our homes, nature makes all of our lives, well, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it, but the outdoors is closer than we realize. With alltrails, you can discover trails nearby and explore confidently with offline maps and on trail navigation. Download the free app Today.

[Chris Duffy]

You're listening to how to Be a Better Human. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and today on the show we have Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson. Now, Ayanna is someone who has completely changed the way that I think about the climate crisis. And that's not because she convinced me that it's not a big deal. It's also not because she convinced me that it is such a big deal that we are all completely doomed and there's no way to possibly do anything about it. No, what Ayanna has done for me is to get me to think about how much better and more incredible our world would be if we make the changes that we're going to. So often I've thought about climate change and climate action as just preventing a bad thing from happening. But Ayanna really made me think about how it's also creating a good thing that we could be transforming our lives and our societies and our cities and our world in a positive way, that we would be building a safer, cleaner, more connected world while also addressing these challenges. Ayanna's book is called what if We Get It Right? And it is a truly inspiring look at what climate action is necessary and what climate action could look like. But I'm actually getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning. This is a clip from Ayanna's TED Talk about what we need to do and what it's going to take.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

People often ask me what they can do to help address the climate crisis, but what they usually mean is, what's one quick, easy, simple thing they can do? Well, that particular ship has sailed. The climate challenge is gargantuan, thanks largely to fossil fuel executives and the PR firms and politicians doing their bidding. We need to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, transportation, agriculture, industry and buildings. We need to protect and restore ecosystems. We need to change society, policy, economy and culture. This is about transformation, and the stakes for humanity are greater than my heart and mind can fully fathom. So I find the best way to cope with this is to avoid dwelling on the terrifying scientific projections and instead pivot quickly to solutions. Now, the climate movement and the media all too often ask each of us to do the same things. To vote, protest, donate sports, spread the word, lower our carbon footprint. That term, by the way, carbon footprint was popularized by fossil fuel corporations in an attempt to put the blame on us as individuals. But yes, it is good to do those things. I do those things. However, all too rarely are we asked to contribute our special talents, our superpowers, to climate solutions. And what a failing for that would actually enable the radical changes we need. So where do we each begin?

[Chris Duffy]

We are going to try to answer that question and so many more in this conversation. Here's Ayana.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

Hello, my name is Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson. I'm the author of the book what if We Get It Right?

[Chris Duffy]

First of all, I loved what if We Get It Right? My first question is, you know, they say not to judge a book by its cover, but I actually feel like this cover is really unique and very intentional. This does not have a cover that is like, fancy, intimidating. I am an expert cover. Instead, it has like an artistic mostly Blank cover that kind of looks like a kid could color on it or something like that. So tell me about, like, the design choice that went into how you wanted this book to look and how you wanted people to approach it.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

At first glance, this is an iteration of something I drew on the back of a napkin at an oyster bar. So I was intimately involved with the crafting of the COVID and trying to design something that would be part of communicating the message of the book. So I'm glad you picked up on that. And the amount of white space is certainly intentional too. Like you said something a kid could pick up and color in. The idea is that when we're asking big questions like, what if we get it right? Visions of climate futures, it's an invitation to imagine. This book is not like, here's how we get it right, it's a question mark. And so I wanted to make sure there was enough blank space to invite people into that. There were many different iterations of the COVID until we found the right designer to help us land this and that same sense also of primary colors being an important way to go. Also, I'm a marine biologist. So the earth is like emphasizing oceans instead of layers.

[Chris Duffy]

Yes, that's true. You talk about how you had, like, as a child, this dream that was first sparked when you saw through a glass bottom boat, a coral reef, of becoming a marine biologist, which I think a lot of us had that dream. Right. Like, I know that when I was in third and fourth grade, if you'd asked me, I would have said, I will be a marine biologist, because one time a super common dream job, and it's so incredible. And then you have become a marine biologist, you kept the dream job. But the reason I ask that is you do this dream job that you had as a kid and that a lot of people had as a kid. But you also, when you're thinking about policy and you're thinking about these really adult problems, you've talked about how one of the issues is that for a lot of us, we kind of mute our love of nature. As we get older, we feel like that's something we have to lose a little bit. And for you, you've tried really hard to not mute the love of nature, to keep it just as intense and as powerful as when you were a kid and decided to do this in the first place. So I'm curious if you could talk about that a little bit.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

Yeah, I'm really grateful to the scientist E.O. wilson for giving us a word for that, which is biophilia that we have each of us, this innate love of life, of nature. I think that's important because why are we doing this if it's not for getting to live on this magnificent planet that has, like, ants and fireflies and shooting stars and forests and like rocky coastlines and octopuses and like, just a bunch of cool stuff. Like, I want to live on a living planet with a lot of cool other species and with humans too, I guess. I mean, it's just a question of, like, what motivates us, right? And for me, loving being a part of nature, loving ecosystems, feeling like I'm a part of an ecosystem is a. Is integral to that. And as you mentioned, like, this is a sensibility that can get muted as we age, that we lose as we get so caught up in our to do lists and our inboxes and all of this stuff of modern life that we forget, like, that we are one of 8 million-plus species living on this planet and that's on this rock, hurtling through space. And so I think it helps to also ground ourselves and have a bit more humility about the context within which we're trying to solve these problems that humanity has also created for all these species.

[Chris Duffy]

I feel like for me personally, maybe because I grew up in a small apartment in New York City and we didn't have a yard, obviously there's parks and stuff. But because my main interactions with animals were rats and pigeons, now living in a place in Los Angeles where a hummingbird just flies by, or when you go to the beach and you see a dolphin jump out of the water, I am so shocked. I'm flabbergasted all the time when nature comes by in a way that I think a lot of other adults that I spend time with are like, yeah, that's actually kind of normal. And I always feel like this is not normal. This is unbelievable. And reading your book, I got the sense of, like, it's good to believe that this is not normal. Like, we want to keep this, that energy to.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

But I think there's two sides of that, right? Like, it should be normal because we should be interacting with nature regularly in such that it can always delight us. But it shouldn't surprise us that these things exist. In fact, there's a phenomenon called shifting baselines which says that, like, we have essentially lowered expectations for what abundance and diversity of life should be around us. And that is a problem because if we think, like, seeing one bee a year is normal and we get super excited about it, then we've Actually lost touch with what a healthy ecosystem should look like, which means we're maybe setting our standards too low in terms of policy or restoration or protection as well. So having some sense of what nature would be if humans backed off is also really important.

[Chris Duffy]

You talk in the book about how you hate to be asked about what makes you hopeful or what makes you optimistic, that that is a terrible thing to ask, especially when we're talking about climate change and climate futures.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

It's also presumptuous that you are hopeful. Yeah.

[Chris Duffy]

Yeah.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

I mean, I'm not actually, is the awkward answer to that. Right. Like, I am determined. I know that we have essentially all the solutions that we need. I know that there are ways I can be part of making those solutions happen in the world. But do I have like, faith in humanity to get it together and implement all these solutions with the urgency that the climate crisis requires? Like, I do not have this blind faith that it will all be okay in the end. And optimism. I'm like, frequently tagged as an optimist just because I think there's stuff we could do to make the world better than it would otherwise be. But I don't actually assume that it's all going to be okay. So that part of the definition doesn't apply to me now. The alternative is to be like, whatever, it's all going to fall apart anyway, so I don't have to try and think that's absolute nonsense. Like, giving up on the future of life on Earth, honestly, just seems dumb to me. And like, who are all these quitters who are like, oh, well, I guess it was nice to try to try living here on Earth because I feel like there's never a point where you get to give up on the future and on each other. And that's to me, very, very sad that I think more and more people are just giving up. And that's not part of my family history. That's not part of really any successful movement for change. Right. Like, I think back to the civil rights movement and if people were just like, eh, seems too hard to try to get rights, like, let's just quit. That's not the viable way forward. So instead of thinking about having hope or not, if we just take the option of quitting off the table, then the question just becomes, what can I do to make things better than they would otherwise be that finding where we can each contribute is the question, not do I feel hopeful or optimistic, but what's my part of this work?

[Chris Duffy]

You're a scientist, but you're really focused on practical ways that people can actually put this into place in their own lives. And one of those things that I know you do at your live events and is in the book is this idea of a climate Action Venn diagram. Can you walk us through that?

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

It's very simple. It's three circles overlapping and the first circle is what are you good at? What are the skills, resources, networks, dollars that you can bring to the table? The second circle is what is the work that needs doing? So we have hundreds of climate and justice solutions we could be working on. So pick one or two. There's also like, you know, that we need to change culture and politics, not just the technical solutions that people think of about like solar panels and electric cars, Right? And then there's what brings you joy. Because why would we choose to do something that makes us miserable when there's like an endless number of things that need doing? And that's what will keep us going in this work is finding joy in it. Not like I sit around all day giggling while I answer emails, not that kind of joy, but like these moments of like satisfaction. Like it can be so gratifying to do this work. It can feel so good to be contributing to climate solutions and people should be able to design their, their piece of this in a way that, and for me a big part of that is who I do this work with. Not just what I do, but who I do it with. So no jerks.

[Chris Duffy]

We're going to take a short break and then we will be right back.

[Unknown Speaker 1]

I want my dog to live a long happy life, maybe even hit 19. So I feed them Ollie. Ollie's fresh and nutritious human grade meals are made to support their health and happiness with protein packed recipes dogs go crazy for like beef with sweet potatoes Turke blueberries or lamb with cranberries. Honestly, you might start thinking, dang, my dog eats better than I do. And that's probably true when it comes to ollie. Head to ollie.com healthy pup and use code healthy pup to get 60% off your first box of meals. Plus they offer a clean bowl guarantee on the first box. So if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back. That's O l l I e.com Healthy Pup and enter code Healthy Pup to get 60% off your first box. Feed your forever friend with Ollie.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

Hey, it's me, Paige Desorbo and I'm so excited to share my new shoe collection at DSW filled with my favorite styles and trends for spring. Because if you know Me, you know, I'm kind of obsessed with shoes. And by kind of obsessed, I mean head over heels. You're going to love these shoes. So snag super cute styles like cute flats, fun heels and cool sneakers from the Paige DeSorvo Collection right now at your DSW store or dsw.com when you're.

[Unknown Speaker 1]

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[Chris Duffy]

And we're back. I come at this as a comedian from the world of comedy and I.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

Find that like the climate crisis is hilarious and you have such a sense.

[Chris Duffy]

Of humor about it. Well, there are funny. You know what I do, I actually think it is in some ways, right?

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

I think it is in a bunch of different ways. One, I feel like we absolutely need to figure out how to take climate seriously without taking ourselves seriously.

[Chris Duffy]

Exactly.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

Like this is my entire vibe. Like homies just stop being so serious about yourself because that's not helping us. So I feel like definitely more of this irreverence also, especially when we think about like who's causing the problem. Like we didn't all equally cause this problem. We should absolutely be roasting fossil fuel companies, big ag executives, like PR executives, politicians who are like creating this fast track to hell for us all. And so I feel like there's some roasting to be done, some irreverence, some like plenty of room for goofiness in how we talk about and engage people in solutions. And as you saw in the book, like lots of sassy footnotes for sure.

[Chris Duffy]

And you know, one of the things in a non sassy footnote and just an interesting footnote in your book is you talk about the story of the peach crayon and how the color for the peach crayon used to be called flesh toned. And then as a result of civil rights pressure, the crayon color was changed to peach because that's actually not everyone's flesh tone. That's only some people's flesh tone. And it is peach color is the color that it actually is all the time. So. And you use that as an example of how small Changes in culture can lead to big cultural shifts and big policy shifts as well.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

Yeah, I mean, I brought that up because as I was trying to figure out how to write about my formative experiences with the ocean and nature, the book opens with me describing seeing a coral reef for the first time and seeing these colors, right? These turquoise, teal, magenta, goldenrod, fuchsia colors, the form of fish swimming around. I was like, wait, what nature can do this? Like, tell me more. Also, maybe this is my job, but then also, like, thinking about that in the context of my own family, my black Jamaican father, my white Irish mother, and how, like, their relationship was essentially illegal in most states when they found each other, and how this, you know, this is also the lens through which I approach this work is just, like, who I am, right? I'm this, like, biracial girl from Brooklyn, New York, who fell in love with the ocean in Florida, who was just like. And worms in my backyard and autumn leaves and all of it.

[Chris Duffy]

There's a moment where you're having a conversation about the role that cultural change can play in climate futures with Franklin Leonard and Adam McKay to people who are deeply involved and powerful in Hollywood, and they talk about the Scully effect. The idea that having a female film.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

I've never seen the X Files. I'll take your word for it.

[Chris Duffy]

Oh, but having a strong female lead on the X Files, who was a scientist, that. That actually inspired thousands or millions of women to go into science.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

This idea that cultural change precedes policy change is so important. It's something that people are familiar with. When we think about, say, like, gay marriage, how there are all these cultural touchstones, these sitcoms that just showed us that gay people, gay partnerships were normal. This was something that's happening. It's not a threat to anyone. And that those sorts of shifts in pop culture preceded certainly the Supreme Court being like, okay, you guys can get married now. And what does that kind of thing look like on climate? And we honestly, like, haven't had the cultural saturation that would need from Hollywood. Tv, music, art, showing us not just the climate problem, but climate solutions. And that was my motivation for creating this book. This what if we get it right? This visioning of climate futures. And then, of course, realizing that I couldn't write the book myself, I had to talk to all my smart friends in all these different sectors. So the book is, at its heart, these 20 interviews. And this one that you point to about the role of Hollywood was really interesting to me because Franklin and Adam are explaining how hard it is to get anything made in Hollywood and that really it's about like, making the financial case that people will watch it. And so how do you create climate content that people want to watch, but also not to fall into this trap that it hasn't been made before, so clearly it couldn't be successful and that's why it hasn't been made. This sort of like circular logic. But the thing about that conversation that stuck with me the most is that they said, well, Hollywood can't get it right until the news gets it right. Because until the executives in Hollywood are seeing the kind of news that properly frames our climate challenge and starts to talk about the solutions, they're not going to bring that understanding and urgency into their decision making when they're thinking about which projects to greenlight. And so it was based on that conversation with them that I went back and added another interview to the book with a climate journalist, Kendra Pierre Lewis, who's worked at the New York Times and Spotify and Bloomberg and all these different places. Popular Science about how would newsrooms have to change if newsrooms have to get right for Hollywood to get it right? Like, what does that look like? And so this book was really a process of me sort of following my nose and talking to all of these incredible people that I get to collaborate with. Part of that joy, part of my Venn diagram and offering packaging up their, their wisdom for everyone else. So in a way, this book is like a 20 episode podcast season, because the audiobook, you could hear everything in their own voices.

[Chris Duffy]

Even for a lot of people who are kind of bought in, I would consider myself to be someone who, like, I believe the science. I care about climate change, I care about the future. But before reading your book and before engaging with your work, I actually don't think I had realized how little I had like, an image of what it looks like, what it could look like in a good way. I had an image of like, I want to avoid bad. I don't want to die. I don't want to, you know, have my house be on fire or underwater. But I didn't have this vision of like, you can work towards something that is amazing and better than what we have now, where it's, you know, full of these things that are full of joy and beauty and connection and there's a reason to work for it, not just against the worst, but also like, you can raise the ceiling and not just the floor.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

It's so hard to, like, muster the energy and like, fortitude to work on climate solutions if you can't imagine something good coming out the other end. Right. And I think that's part of what's been holding us back is a lot of the images, most of the images we see in popular culture about climate are terrifying and awful. And there's good reason for that, right? Like those things are real. But the question is then like, okay, so what world do we want to create? And I don't think there's really been enough of a public conversation about that. It's like, so if we agree that the status quo is not working and continuing on the path that we're on is increasingly dangerous, what does the alternative look like? What world do we want? And I think this was my attempt to offer, you know, offer something to that conversation, a collective, some collective wisdom.

[Chris Duffy]

Okay. We are going to have much more in this conversation right after this. But first I would like to offer you some podcast ads.

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[Unknown Speaker 1]

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[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

Paige Desorbo and I'm so excited to share my new shoe collection at dsw filled with my favorite styles and trends for spring. Because if you know me, you know I'm kind of obsessed with shoes. And by kind of obsessed, I mean head over heels. You're going to love these shoes. So snag super cute styles like cute flats, fun heels and cool sneakers from the Paige to Sorbo collection right now at your DSW store or dsw.com.

[Chris Duffy]

And we are back with Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson AUTHOR of what if We Get It Right? You talk about many times in the book, you frame this as problems versus possibilities. So here are the problems, but there's also these incredible possibilities. I think that's a really helpful way for listeners to think about this stuff and to think about it not just in the scared way, but the generative way.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

And for people who are watching instead of listening to this, there's this two page spread that opens every section of 10 problems and 10 possibilities. So like on nature and agriculture, or on design in the built environment or on policy. I was the creative director for the book too, the art director. So thinking about, like how to visually lay that out in terms of never list the problems without the possibilities. So it's this literal centerfold, this spread of showing those side by side.

[Chris Duffy]

On page 68 you have, you've literally printed out an email exchange from your mom in the book. And it's just you saying, why can't you ever send me a 10 minute video? As she sends you a link to an hour long video. It's so good.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

This just happened again yesterday. She's like, you should watch this three hour. I'm like, is there an article about this?

[Chris Duffy]

Maybe we could summarize that somewhere. I got things to do, mom. I love that your mom moved out of the city and started a homestead farm. So your mom made a pretty dramatic life change in line with thinking about what it means to be sustainable, means to be living in one of these positive climate futures. It makes me wonder how, how much do you think that the rest of us, the people who are listening and watching, how much should we be thinking about those kinds of dramatic shifts in our lives versus how much should we be thinking about shifts to our daily kind of status quo life, like changing the things at the edges versus changing it from the ground up.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

I think this is a time for transformation, right? Little tweaks to the way that we exist are not going to get us the kind of transformation of our society, economy, culture, policy, politics that we need in order to address the climate crisis. So once we set the bar at transformation, I think that opens up all different types of thinking. And there's an interview in the book with someone named Brian Donahue, which is his imagining of what it would look like to have people in cities start to repopulate small towns and rural areas. Because in the US we have a lot of small towns that are emptied out, right, because of any number of factors of industrialization or globalization or consolidation of big box stores and that kind of thing. And to improve our food system in terms of sustainability and food security, making sure that we have a next generation of farmers is really important. The average age of farmers in America is like, in their 60s. You know, we don't have a next generation of people who are eager to go into it, or they don't have the money to buy farms because land is too expensive. And there's all these barriers to getting it right in terms of agriculture. But one of them is just like, we need more people living in rural areas again. And that would also start to rebalance some of our political divide. And having people interacting with each other as neighbors who don't share politics would actually be really helpful too. So he's written a whole manifesto about this, which is brilliant and lovely. And I talked to him about that in our interview, and he's done a lot of work imagining what that would look like for New England. So I think it's. Yeah, for people who are like, I don't know about this Brooklyn life, I think it's totally reasonable to think about where else we could live in order to contribute to some of the societal changes that we want to see.

[Chris Duffy]

Whenever I'm reading a book, I try and pay close attention to word choices and to, you know, words that stand out at me that maybe are used more frequently or less frequently than in other books and reading. What if we get this right? The words that jumped out at me were adaptive and maladaptive.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

I think what you're picking up on is that we need to change, right? Because the world is changing and to just continue doing things the way we've been doing things as the world dramatically changes around us, right? As extreme weather events become more frequent and more intense, as wild fires and floods and hurricanes and droughts and all of these, sea level rise, et cetera, are all happening as our federal climate policy structure crumbles. To just be like, I'll just keep doing things the same way I've always done them just is absolutely maladaptive, Right? Like, the world has changed, so we need to change. It is a message of the book that something's gotta give, right? The more we just try to hold on and pretend that everything's more or less fine. That's maladaptive because it diminishes because it's out of touch with reality and diminishes our ability to even think about visions of climate future that require transformation. Instead of, like, edits. I also try to think about it as, like, just useful or not useful.

[Chris Duffy]

Okay, tell me about that.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

The question that I ask myself repeatedly is how can I be most useful? And in the context of this climate action Venn diagram, that answer is different for everybody. And that's okay, right? And that's why I needed to talk to all these different experts to create this book. And that's why I do what I do from the perspective of a marine biologist, a policy nerd, a kid from Brooklyn who's really enamored with design, who's pract just how to communicate. Like this set of things that I have to offer is, that's my set of things. And so how can I offer those in service of climate solutions? There's a poem in the book called To Be of Use. It's one of my all time favorites, something that I come back to a lot because I think that's the big question, like, how can we be of use in this moment in human history? Going back to this question of hope and my relationship with it, I kind of sometimes feel like hope is a very flimsy motivator because it's something, it's a feeling, right? And we can't always feel hopeful, and we can sometimes. And if hope become, if feeling hopeful is a precursor to action, then we're screwed. To me, because I don't feel hopeful a lot of the time, but I can consistently try to be useful. And to me that feels so good, right? To put it more simply, instead of focusing on how to be hopeful, I think we can just focus on how to be useful.

[Chris Duffy]

You have a part in the early part of your book where you talk about reality check and you just say one of the biggest questions that people ask you is how fucked are we?

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

Oh, you want me to answer this?

[Chris Duffy]

Well, the answer is like pretty fucked, but we don't have to be right.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

But there's a whole bunch of stuff we could do to make it better. And I think sometimes that sounds boring and incrementalist to people, but you know, like, oh well, if we can't like solve climate change, then what are we even doing? And I think it's so important to remember that there's actually a really big difference between 1 foot and 5ft of sea level rise. There's a very big difference between 3 degrees Fahrenheit and 7 degrees Fahrenheit of planetary warming. Right? There's a big difference between like having snow in the future and not having snow in the future. When the change is at this planetary magnitude, these increments become more important than ever. So I don't Say things like solve climate change because the climate has already changed, it's continuing to change. Like we have changed the chemistry of the atmosphere and the ocean because of all the fossil fuels we've burned. Like that is just a fact. How much more it changes and how quickly that happens and if we adapt to those changes or not, that is still an open question. Like, the future is not fully written yet. And so every day I wake up and I'm like, all right, how are we going to have the best possible future that's available to us? Because hundreds of millions of lives hang in the balance. I mean, within the US alone, we're talking about 13 million people having to relocate because of sea level rise alone in the next few decades. Hundreds of millions of people globally. Right. Like that's a big deal. How much we can rein in sea level rise, for example. As an ocean policy nerd, this is the lens through which I see some of these things is often oceany, salty examples.

[Chris Duffy]

I thought one of the most eye opening parts of the book for me was you walk through this idea for a policy change, this Blue New Deal, and you go through the nitty gritty timeline of what does it actually take to get politicians to pay attention to something, to put a policy through. And it's not a short timeline and it's not a straight line in any way.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

Yeah. And this is a very different conversation to be having now than it was when I wrote the book a year ago. Right. Because we have a completely different federal policy context within which it seems like really challenging to think of how to be constructive. And so actually a lot of my work on the policy side right now is thinking about what cities and states can do, because cities and states are close to their constituents thinking about this adaptation question. Right. And a lot of people are going to have to relocate. There's all sorts of stuff that people can do at a local level. If we're thinking about building codes for the future, or zoning laws or efficiency standards, or public transit or food systems, what kind of things are we supporting with our local tax dollars? And how can town councils, mayors, state representatives help to support more resilience in the communities that they represent? There's so much room for productivity there. But yeah, I mean, this idea of a Blue New Deal was just how do we make sure the ocean is included in federal climate policy? That's a conversation that people were having in Congress and in nonprofits and in communities and in the scientific disciplines. And so I've teamed up with a bunch of colleagues who I really find delightful to start to put this on paper. Right. Like, me and the head of Surfrider foundation and an ocean seaweed and oyster farmer and a policy wonk who worked in Congress for dozens of years were just like, what would it look like if the vision doesn't exist? What do we think it should be? And how do we keep moving these ideas forward, regardless of who's in office and are all the different roles to play in making that happen? So this is. These kinds of things are like lifetime projects. What I realized doing the book is that we need to be thinking more in terms of generations. And I do. There's this. This phrase from Martin Luther King that comes into my mind a lot, which is, he said, I may not get there with you. He wasn't like, we're solving civil rights tomorrow. It's going to be so great. We're going to have a big party. It was. This is the work of generations. Like, this is a huge challenge to transform society in this way. And the climate crisis requires a similar, if not greater, level of transformation. And so thinking about it in that context, that longer arc, I think is also really helpful for me.

[Chris Duffy]

A part that I also found really moving is the story that you tell of your father as a black architect in New York City and feeling like he hadn't maybe accomplished what you would have hoped for him to accomplish, that he didn't have these skyscrapers in his name or in all of that stuff. And then talking to a younger generation of a younger black architect and realizing that your father had actually paved the way in ways that you hadn't fully realized.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

Yeah, that was such a powerful moment. Hearing that he knew about my father's firm, that he'd heard of him and he had, in fact, opened lots of doors. And that I had been thinking about the whole thing. Wrong. Right. That it's not about the glory, it's about the ripples. All of us can only hope to have our work make meaningful ripples in the world, the way we live, make meaningful ripples in our communities.

[Chris Duffy]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you making time to be on the show. This was so fantastic.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for reading the book.

[Chris Duffy]

Oh, thanks for writing it. That is it for this episode of how to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Thank you to our guest, Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson. Her book is called what if We Get It Right? I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other [e-mail] how to be a Better Human is put together by a team that gets it right shockingly often. On the TED side we've got Daniela Balorazzo, Banban Cheng, Chloe Shasha, Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Lainey Lott, Antonio Ley and Joseph De Bruyne. This episode was fact checked by Julia Dickerson and Mattea Salas who both believe in and support scientific consensus. On the PRX side, they are forces of nature. I am talking about Morgan Flannery, Norgill, Patrick Grant and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks again to you for listening. Please share this episode with a friend, with a family member, with someone who you think gets it right. We will be back next week with even more how to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much for listening and take care.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

No matter how you travel, it's good.

[Chris Duffy]

To have a plan.

[Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson]

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[Unknown Speaker 1]

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