ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The title of a new book by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson asks a provocative question. "What If We Get It Right?" The it there is the climate crisis. Johnson structures this book around 20 interviews with experts ranging from architects to farmers to investors, and she asks all of them what getting it right on climate looks like in their slice of the world. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: Thanks so much for having me.
SHAPIRO: This book is big and sweeping, and also, it gets into some very specific details. So I want to start very small.
JOHNSON: All right.
SHAPIRO: There is a phrase that comes up early in the book that totally stuck with me. The phrase is, bring the seeds. Can you explain what that means and how it applies to the work you are doing to help us imagine our planet's future?
JOHNSON: It's literally about seeds, about agriculture.
SHAPIRO: It's not a metaphor.
JOHNSON: Not a metaphor, but - actually, it's both. I mean, that comes from a conversation with Leah Penniman, who's a farmer, upstate New York, a Black woman who is really thinking about food sovereignty and what that would look like, especially in the context of a changing climate. But she also talks about seeds as possibility, of course, as a metaphor, as essentially the planting of hope for the future. And she relays this incredible story of ancestral grandmothers from West Africa who braided seeds into people's hair. So when they crossed the middle passage, they would have something to plant on the other side, thinking about seeds as insurance, as a commitment to the future.
SHAPIRO: And the thing that stuck out to me was the idea that people leaving West Africa, enslaved on ships, with no idea of what the future held, had perhaps the bleakest outlook of anyone we can imagine and yet insisted on the faith that someday, decades or generations in the future, perhaps, there would be ground that they could plant seeds in, this faith that things would someday be imaginable in the future.
JOHNSON: Also just that we don't get to give up - we don't get to give up on...
SHAPIRO: That's it. Yeah.
JOHNSON: ...Our communities. We don't get to give up on life on Earth. Like, we don't get to just quit because it's hard or the odds seem long. You know, one of the what-if questions I pose in the book is, what if we act as if we love the future?
SHAPIRO: Yeah. And I think bring the seeds is such a beautiful distillation of that into just, like, three words. So there are a lot of disagreements among the people you talked to in this book. And, like, one that stuck out to me is a question of whether capitalism is more of a problem or a solution. Like, from all these conversations, what conclusion did you reach? Can profit motives and markets get us where we need to be, or is that what is driving us down the wrong path?
JOHNSON: I think we need to make major advances in addressing the climate crisis, in moving from an extractive to a regenerative economy, like, this decade. And the chance of being able to completely unwind capitalism and build something else in its place within the next five or 10 years while also solving the climate crisis just seems unlikely. If someone, someones, would like to take that on, I'm all ears.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
JOHNSON: But I think there's this - you know, these people are very practical, right? These...
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
JOHNSON: ...Are people out there doing the work, and they're like, well, you know, this is the system we have.
SHAPIRO: Yeah, like, is it better to lead with, solar and wind and electric vehicles can make you lots of money, and they can help the U.S. defeat China, and they can create jobs? Or is it better to lead with an argument of, if we want to have any hope for a long-term future of human life flourishing on Earth, we need to lean into solar, wind, electric vehicles, etc.?
JOHNSON: I mean, it depends on your audience, right? It's both the message and the messenger need to match up. So if I'm talking to an investor, I'm going to be like, would you like more money?
(LAUGHTER)
JOHNSON: Here are some ways you could get more money.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
JOHNSON: I think that, you know, one of the things that perhaps we don't talk about enough is how much opportunity there is to collaborate on the solutions to climate change without even talking about the problem, right? The U.S. states with the most wind energy are Iowa and Texas.
SHAPIRO: Red states.
JOHNSON: And it's not because there's a bunch of hippies there.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
JOHNSON: It's because it's profitable. They're good jobs, right? It is a growing industry because it makes financial sense.
SHAPIRO: OK. At one point, you tell us what you believe is the sexiest word in the English language, and I am guessing that if I surveyed every NPR listener, not one of them would choose your word. What is the word?
JOHNSON: Really. I don't know. I feel like there's some, like...
SHAPIRO: Maybe one.
JOHNSON: ...People here - implementation...
SHAPIRO: Why?
JOHNSON: ...Is the word.
SHAPIRO: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson...
JOHNSON: (Laughter).
SHAPIRO: ...Why is implementation the sexiest word in the English language?
JOHNSON: I mean, what if I told you that we basically already have all the solutions we need - right? - that we know how to green buildings, and we know how to shift to renewable energy, and we know how to build public transit? And, like, what is sexier than high-speed rail, you know, and composting and bike lanes and restoring and protecting ecosystems and the power of photosynthesis? Like, we could just do all that stuff.
SHAPIRO: One of the people you interview in the book, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, helped craft the proposal known as the Green New Deal. And she said something that I found helpful, which is - she said, if you want people to make a different choice, you have to change the story they tell themselves. You have to change the conversations they're having on the regular, and you have to change the boundaries of what's seen as feasible and possible and smart and what's not. And this book feels to me like your attempt to do that, to change the story we tell ourselves. So how would you describe what the old story was and what you'd like the new story to be?
JOHNSON: I think the old story was, oh, climate apocalypse is nigh, right? Like...
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
JOHNSON: ...That's really too bad. Let's just keep doomscrolling, right?
SHAPIRO: Yeah. We're drowning.
JOHNSON: It's too...
SHAPIRO: We're burning.
JOHNSON: The challenge is too big.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
JOHNSON: The entrenched interests are too powerful. The fossil fuel executives, the big ag, the banks, the politicians in their pockets - like, how would we even make any progress? And that sort of doomer, quitter mentality, I just - I have no patience for. And I just bring the seeds, you know? Like, don't come at me with your sad face and just sit there. Like, figure out what you can do. And so that's, in part, what this book is aiming to offer - is answers to this "What If We Get It Right?" question? And it also aims to put something forward on this question of, like, show me that it's worth it.
SHAPIRO: Towards the end of the book, you rephrase the question in your title. You ask, what if we are right now getting it right? Do you think we are?
JOHNSON: In some ways - I mean, there are 20 interviews in this book with people who are all, in their own way getting it right, who are winning court cases, who are changing the way that we do landscape architecture, who are organizing their communities for climate resilience, who are bringing the seeds literally and figuratively. And it's just a question of, like, how many more people will join these efforts and how quickly we'll be able to implement, like, the plethora of solutions we already have at our fingertips. So we are getting it right but, like, not fast enough or big enough yet. So, I mean, that's why I wrote this book. I'm like, it's worth the effort, you guys. Like, come on. Be on the winning team. Be on this side of history.
SHAPIRO: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist and founder of the Urban Ocean Lab Think Tank. Her new book and Substack are both called "What If We Get It Right? Visions Of Climate Futures." Thank you so much.
JOHNSON: Thank you for having me.
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