Transcript

Bridget Todd (00:04):

There Are No Girls On The Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls On The Internet. My favorite Mr. Rogers saying goes like this. Whenever things are scary, look for the people who are helping. There are always helpers. And what's happening on our planet right now is scary. The climate is warming. Sea levels are rising in coastal cities like New York and Miami. The West coast has literally been on fire for weeks. Local species everywhere are threatened with extinction. And around the world, millions of people have already been displaced because of climate change. But as scary and hopeless as that all seems, we should look for the helpers. And even though traditionally marginalized people didn't create this problem, they're the ones who are helping the fix it. Black women like Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.

Bridget Todd (01:03):

Dr. Johnson is on a mission to do something about climate change. Outside Magazine called her the most influential marine biologist of our time. In 2017 she helped organize the March for Science in part because she wanted to bust the myth that science is something that happens in a lab that doesn't really impact anyone's life. She takes audiences through accessible conversations about climate solutions on her podcast with Alex Blumberg called How to Save a Planet. And this fall she published All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, an anthology of writing from women climate activists at the frontline of climate change.

Bridget Todd (01:43):

Now instead of doom and gloom, Dr. Johnson wants everyone to feel like they have a stake in conversations around climate. How? By doing what black women always do, through creating culture. When we spoke last fall, a profile of Dr. Johnson had just been published in the New York Times. Not in the science section or the new section, but in the style section. Dr. Johnson uses culture to create conversations around climate that everyone can see themselves reflected in. The daughter of first and second generation immigrants. Dr. Johnson's mission first began when she was a little girl who fell in love with the ocean.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (02:24):

Why oceans? I just love the ocean. It's really lovable. It's really important too in terms of the climate system, but that's certainly not what made me decide to become a marine biologist at the age of five. I think for so many people, we have this moment where we fall in love with nature, whether it's in the park or in your backyard or hiking or at the beach. And for me, it was at the beach. When I was five, when I learned to swim, when I went on a glass bottom boat and saw coral reef for the first time. When I held a sea urchin in my hand and was like, "What, there's a whole other world happening under the water and I want to know everything about it." So that wonder and awe became concern as I learned how threatened ocean ecosystems were, and then became determination as I realized that I might be able to help be part of ocean conservation solutions and figure out how we could start to turn things around.

Bridget Todd (03:30):

So I watched a video of you, I think in the Caribbean, talking about your work with the oceans. You were driving around the beach in a Jeep, you were scuba diving. You looked very, very happy. You made being a marine biologist, looking very cruel and very fun.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (03:44):

I mean some of that's not true, right? This work is hard. When that video was filmed, I was diving four times a day for an hour or so each. The water's like 80 degrees and you're still shivering because your body temperature drops because you're in water of that temperature for so long, even wearing a wetsuit. So you're like shivering in 80 degree water. And you're just salty and wrinkled and your skin and your hair and everything is just angry at you. And it's exhausting. It's physically really was extremely hard work that I was doing, trying to do this experiment to see how we could redesign fish traps to make them more sustainable so they were only catching the fish that the fishermen wanted. And I'm so glad I did that work and I love being outside and being in the sun and in the water, but I'm sure some of those smiles where for the camera> it's not as glamorous as it looks.

Bridget Todd (04:45):

Something I really like about your work is that you focus on people. You talk about overfishing and climate change and habitat destruction, and the ways that it disproportionately impacts poor people and marginalized people on coastal cities. So how can we get people to understand that this is an actual issue that impacts actual people and their lives? It's not a pet issue for wealthy people who just own beach houses by the ocean, nor is it an issue that's really abstract. When I was coming of age, the big slogan around the environment was save the whales, and yes, save the whales, but also save us, save the people whose actual lives are at risk. Allow people to live actual stable lives and not worry that everything they love and know is going to be washed out by some super storm.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (05:32):

Yeah, I think it's just talking about it more. So when we think about hurricanes, for example, which are getting stronger and wetter because of climate change, and we think about the coastal communities that are most effected, it is often poor communities and communities of color along the coast who are impacted the hardest. And those are not their vacation homes. They don't have another place to go. So there's a real need to think through more proactively because we know the storms are going to keep coming. We know the sea level is going to continue rising. Even if we stopped all emissions today, we've already baked in a certain amount of change that we're going to continue to see. So we owe it to each other to start to think through how to adapt to this changing world.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (06:25):

And for coastal communities, the term that's being used right now is called managed retreat, and managed retreat is this idea, or planned retreat, that we can't just fortify our coastlines and hold back the entire ocean. It's just not going to work. There's not enough money. There's not enough resources. There's not enough time. We can't build a wall around all of the United States of America and other countries to protect ourselves from the rising waters. So that becomes a question of like, "Well, the waters are rising. How do we plan for that? How do we adapt for that? How do we move people out of harm's way? How do we try to keep communities together in that process?" Because people are really strongly tied to the places where they're from, and to the people who they share that place with.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (07:18):

So there's a deep cultural conversation that needs to be had around our relationship with the coastline. And I think it's just really critical that we start having it sooner than later and not have this... Not continue to live in denial of the fact that like, "Oh, we'll just rebuild after every storm. We'll just rebuild stronger." Because then we're just putting ourselves and each other continually in harms way, instead of actually thinking through what would it look like to adapt this new normal, which is a really sad conversation to have to have, but ignoring it doesn't make it go away and ignoring it means that the people with the fewest resources to move or to rebuild will continue to bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change, because what we've seen all over the world is that the people who did the least to cause it, who use the least fossil fuels, who have the least money, are the ones who are disproportionately impacted.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (08:22):

So this idea of climate justice and a just transition, and really needing to think through how we take care of each other, as we figure out how to adapt to climate change is just so critical. Otherwise we can imagine this world in which we're just implementing these techno utopian Silicon Valley solutions that don't actually take into consideration people and culture and race and class and access to resources as we think about what we want to do.

Bridget Todd (08:59):

What is the link between racism and climate change?

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (09:03):

One way to think about the link between racism and climate change is who lives where. And often when we think about New Orleans or we think about New York, poor people and people of color live in the most low lying, most vulnerable areas. In New York City, when hurricane Sandy hit, that became really apparent. A lot of housing projects were right on the coast in these really dangerous spots. And a lot of those people were renters and didn't have insurance that would help them put their lives back together. And certainly the same was true in New Orleans as that absolute travesty played out.

Speaker 3 (09:46):

I'm told that the New Orleans police put out a call to all its officer saying, "If you have a boat, bring it here, help us." These are people who did not have the wherewithal to get out of town. They didn't have cars. There's no way they could pay for a hotel room. They stayed in their houses because they had to, and then the water came up.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (10:04):

And I think what people don't realize when we think about these storms is that a lot of the damage is done afterwards. It's not the wind, it's the water, and it's how long we wait to clean things up. It's how long it takes to start the recovery effort. It's whether or not we foolishly rebuild in the same place. And those are all decisions that are made by people in power who prioritize certain demographics or others often. We've seen that play out time and time again. Certainly New Orleans is a prime example of that. Just the utter neglect of the communities down there and what they would have needed to get back on their feet.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (10:55):

It's hard to think through these things in general terms, sometimes, these connections between climate change and racism, but it's the same system. It's the same neglect. It's the same overlooking that you see in education or healthcare when we think about who we're prioritizing as we move forward as a society and who we're okay leaving behind. I've just been really pleased in the last year to see this term climate justice really become a major rallying call for the broader climate movement, and environmental justice advocates have been working on these issues for a really long time, but they haven't been brought into the mainstream environmental movement until the last few years, and now when you go to a climate march, one of the major chants that you hear is "What do we want? Climate justice. When do we want it? Now." And to hear that being the most popular chant to me signals that we may actually be at a really important inflection point in the climate movement where people realize that we can't separate the injustices of who's bearing the brunt of these climate impacts with the need to address the climate problem more generally.

Bridget Todd (12:28):

When I first heard the term of climate injustice or climate justice, that blew my mind. It really helped me understand the depth of the issue in a way that I feel like climate change doesn't really encompass.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (12:40):

I mean, when you think about who created the problem, it's fossil fuel companies, it's politicians who were in their pockets and not actually representing the best interest of their constituents. It's actually a pretty small group of people with a lot of money and a lot of power who created this mess. So it's insanely unjust when we think about poor communities and communities of color who are just slammed with all of the impacts of that. The heat waves. I mean, just thinking about people who can't afford to run their air conditioners all the time and whose electricity bills are going through the roof because the temperatures are changing. When we think about farmers who the seasonal changes are impacting their ability to grow food and the floods that are Coming and damaging all the farms in the Midwest.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (13:34):

I mean, all of these things, those people didn't cause them. We didn't cause this individually. There's a whole system set up to, to subsidize the fossil fuel industry. And until just recently, it's worked way too well. I mean, the development of solar and wind and all these renewable energies has been slowed down by people who are worried about it impacting their profits to see these other cleaner, renewable approaches become more common. so when we think about it in those very stark terms of who caused the problem and who's getting screwed, it becomes so clear that this is just a massive injustice.

Bridget Todd (14:20):

More after a quick break. Let's get right back to it. Does the massive scale of the climate injustice happening on our planet make you feel a certain kind of dread about our collective future? If so, you're not alone. Do you ever feel a massive sense of existential dread when you think about this? How do you stave that off? How do you not feel complete ennui, I guess, all the time?

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (14:57):

It's really tiring. It's really scary. I mean, I read the scientific projections and I'm deeply concerned about the future, and not just because of how much the climate is changing, but also because humans can be really terrible to each other in times of crisis. There are these beautiful moments where people come together and help each other in a moment of crisis, and then if the crisis is prolonged, people start to fight for limited resources and scarcity drives all sorts of conflict. I'm not just worried about like the changes to the physical climate and what the impact of that has, but I'm worried about how we're going to treat each other. Are we going to have the generosity that we need and the collective spirit that we need to get through this together?

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (15:50):

So yeah, I'm really worried and I'm really scared and the thing that keeps me going is trying to just figure out how I can contribute, because we really do have a lot in our hands of how bad it gets. The climate has already changed, we can't stop climate change. But we certainly can think about and act on how do we minimize the impacts? How do we actually transform our society into one where we can continue to thrive? If that will look very different, that could be more egalitarian and safer and healthier, because the fossil fuel industry has also just absolutely been damaging to public health and air quality, and we think about all of the inner city communities or communities near power plants that are breathing in all of these emissions. That's environmental racism too.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (16:50):

So not only do we have to think about the long-term impact of our current system, but also there are some really short term benefits of getting it together. So I guess what the science says is that there's a huge range of possible futures still. We can't go back to the past climate, but we still have massive influence over what the future climate looks like. Are we going to warm one and a half degrees or two degrees or three degrees global average? Are we going to have three feet of sea level rise or three meters of sea level rise? That's within our control. And I know that we have all the solutions we need. We literally have them, from transforming our agriculture to regenerative practices to absorb more carbon, to renewable clean energy, to electrifying transportation. We already have the solutions we need. We could certainly use more technological advancement, but we could do it now with what we already know. It's just a matter of getting corporations and politicians and finance all headed in the right direction.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (18:08):

So although I'm really, really scared, and sometimes I read the latest scientific reports and just cry on the subway, I also know that it's way too soon to give up, and there's so much that we can shift and influence and shape. If black people are not part of the conversation of policy-making and the direction of financing and how we're going to adapt locally to all these impacts, then we won't come up with the solutions we need and we won't be protecting the people that we love. So I feel like it's... I started out as a marine biologist and now I work on climate basically, full-time, I'm not scuba diving and counting fish anymore. I'm thinking about how do we leverage all this amazing science and information we have to make really good decisions about the future and about how we can protect each other and minimize the risks that we're facing.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (19:13):

I think if I weren't participating in the solutions, I would be totally overwhelmed. but there's a way that everyone can be part of a solution. There's a way that we can do it by voting and holding our elected officials accountable, making sure they are pushing through the strongest possible climate policy, and that's not just at a presidential level, that's at a state and local level where a lot of these decisions get made about what are the sources of energy, how are we adapting to these changes in weather, how are we making buildings more energy efficient, how are we transforming our public transit systems? A lot of these are local decisions and making sure that our politicians know that we are holding them accountable and that they have our permission to charge ahead with all these important things. That's one way that people can be involved.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (20:10):

Another one is certainly thinking about how you can vote with your dollars. Every dollar we spend is an investment in the future that we want to see. And that makes me feel really powerful sometimes, even though I don't have as many dollars as other people for sure, but I think... When I think about what bank I use or where I have my retirement fund, or which funds that's invested in, am I investing in the continuation of the fossil fuel economy, or am I putting my money where my mouth is and actually making sure that that money is going towards renewables and other shifts towards the future that we need? And then I also love to think about how we use our networks and our time, everyone is super influential in their sphere, whether that's their family or their school or their church or their sports team and or their office. And I think the transformations that we can make in those areas can be really influential.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (21:18):

If we can shift a place that we work towards reducing waste and renewable energy, that's massive. If we can change our school, our church to investing in renewable energy and different transportation systems, that makes a really big deal. So I think there's this middle ground between individual actions. People like to think of it as like, "I'll reduce my carbon footprint as an individual." Or you think about it as massive social change that's like... How can you even think about how to participate in that? But there's this whole middle ground of things that we can do to shift whatever our sphere of influence is. And everyone's got these special skills.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (22:10):

So if you're a podcast host, obviously you, we should be talking about this everywhere all the time. If you're a lawyer, there's so much work to be done. If you're an artist, there's so much cultural work that needs to be done to shift the status quo and just change the public discourse. If you throw great parties, we need to be bringing people together around these issues. If you're good at getting people to open their wallets, we need to fund this transformation. So whatever it is that people are good at, they can bring that to this work. And we don't have to create something new. We can collaborate under existing structures. We can join existing organizations, and there's just lots of different ways to plug in.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (22:55):

So I really want people to understand that everyone can be a part of the solution. There's a role for everyone to play, no matter how much money you have or how much time you have or what your area of expertise is. This is this incredible all hands on deck moment and we have to completely transform society and we need everyone to be a part of that. And thankfully this movement is finally diversifying, so it's a more welcoming home for everybody too.

Bridget Todd (23:29):

As big and scary as climate change feels, there are still reasons to be hopeful. Our climate movement is becoming bigger and more inclusive with more and more people feeling that they can meaningfully take part in it. And whereas climate was once treated like a niche issue a few years ago, now politicians are actually incorporating it into their plans. During the Democratic presidential primary, Dr. Johnson helped then presidential primary candidate Elizabeth Warren draft the first ever Blue New Deal, a plan for our oceans.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (24:03):

In the same way that this election cycle has seen every Democratic presidential candidate release climate policy proposals, I'd love to see more people step up and think about their ocean policy proposals as a part of that and more broadly, because we've seen this really beautiful race to the top in terms of who has the best climate policy being a thing that people are now competing for, which is totally unprecedented. It used to be a side issue. And now, even though the moderators at the debates aren't really asking enough questions about it, and even though it's not really getting enough coverage on major news outlets, the Green New Deal in particular, the candidates are talking about it anyway, because they know that the voters are super concerned.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (24:54):

Climate is the number one issue for a huge number of voters, and communities of color are more concerned often than their white counterparts about how this will impact them because communities of color know they're on the front lines of these changes. So we have now, for the first time, reached this tipping point where the majority of Americans are concerned or alarmed about the impacts of climate change. So politicians are following our lead to try to address these concerns, so culture leads politics. So there's this great opportunity to combine art and culture, to think about how do we want to envision and design the world we want to live in, and then how can we push policy to help facilitate that transition that we need.

Bridget Todd (25:49):

Absolutely. That's exactly what we want to do, be part of that cultural shift, because not everybody is a scientist, not everybody can get involved on that level, but just like what you were saying, everybody has their role to play, whether you're a podcast host, or you're just like the mouthy person in your family who's going to make your mom stop using single use plastics or whatever.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (26:12):

And I think that's really important, that we talk about it because a lot of people think that other people aren't concerned. They don't want to bring it up. You don't want to have an argument with a climate denier. But the vast majority of Americans know that climate change is happening and are really concerned, and the more that we can talk about it and talk about what we want to do about it, the faster we can get these solutions up and running. So I just want to encourage everyone listening to talk about this with your friends and your family and your coworkers, because if we ignore it, that's certainly not going to help. And if, and if we don't talk about it, other people don't know that it's okay to talk about it. It's okay to be concerned. And if people don't hear others talking about it, you think, "Well maybe it's not that big a deal. Maybe I'm just freaking out for no reason." So that is one thing that absolutely everyone can do is just start talking about it so we can all just work through this crazy mess together

Bridget Todd (27:14):

For a long time, the climate movement felt so overwhelmingly white. How does it feel to know there are so many amazing black women leaders in this space? I think some folks might be surprised to find that out.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (27:24):

I mean, who is surprised that black women are leaders? Those people who haven't been paying attention to American history. I think this intersection of climate change and social justice means that... To people who are in this field or related fields it's so stark, and we need to do what we can to address that. So the NAACP has had a climate and environmental justice program for over a decade, led by Jackie Patterson, which is amazing and doing really important work. There's Kendra Pierre-Louis, who's on the climate desk at the New York Times, writing some of the most important stories about this work. Rhiana Gunn-Wright, who's one of the policy leads for the Green New Deal.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (28:18):

There's a whole crew of incredible, brilliant, and generous, and big hearted women of color doing this work, and it's just such a joy to get to collaborate with them and see how they're doing this work and approaching it in a much more nuanced way. And that gives me a lot of... It makes me really happy. It's really beautiful. And the sass and the joy and the creativity that black women are bringing to this space is just overwhelmingly beautiful. So if anyone else wants to get in the game, there's plenty of room and there's so much work to be done.

Bridget Todd (29:10):

Dr. Ayana Johnson, saving the planet while also talking style in the pages of the New York Times.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (29:17):

Oh my God, that was bananas.

Bridget Todd (29:19):

Which, by the way, the coolest thing I've ever seen. So awesome.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (29:24):

Trying to get this in the center of culture. If climate and ocean issues are just in the science section, then we lose. This has to be in the style section. Help me make this cool, Bridget.

Bridget Todd (29:36):

Well, I think you're doing a great job. I'll do what I can. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello@tangoti.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoti.com. There Are No Girls On The Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.