the internship was nothing less than incredible––i was thrust right into the swing of things as soon as my first day started. that first week, i shadowed a segment that would become the largest part of my internship, “experts on camera”––one-on-one broadcast quality interviews that we arranged between scientists and reporters in order to facilitate conversation and increase availability. we decide on an overarching theme and three subtopics for that month’s round of “eoc,” as we called it, and then go searching for experts to contact. if they accept our invitation to participate, we schedule a 90 minute window, and the reporters simply sign up for a 15 minute slot. on the day of, we jump into a set of questions we come up with for a general video that will be edited and posted on the website for those who couldn’t attend. 

my first round of “eoc,” i edited one of the three videos. the second round, i edited all three videos, as well as helped brainstorm topics and assisted in finding experts. my third round though, i did everything, from deciding on a whole topic and subtopics to finding experts, pitching them to our team, contacting them, writing all promotional material and general video questions, interviewing them, and editing the videos together. 

the biggest challenge that i experienced was that many people didn’t respond, so we always had to be prepared––backups had to be ready to go at all times. for one segment, we went from zero reporters signed up to all four slots being filled in less than 12 hours. it was nerve-wracking, but it was the most rewarding process i’ve ever experienced. i watched myself go from a shadow to successfully leading a whole “eoc” round myself. i can go look at my segments about climate change––specifically species extinction, children’s health effects of wildfire smoke, and agricultural yields––and know that i am the reason they exist and can be reported on more effectively.

born and raised in tampa bay, florida, fears attended a segregated school until sixth grade and studied art at st. petersburg college. he fell in love with journalism once he joined the school’s newspaper but found that there weren’t many opportunities for a young african american man to become a reporter in florida. in 1981, fears began studying at howard university where he majored in journalism and minored in both english and history.  

fears has covered wildlife, climate change, natural disasters, environmental racism, and so much more. he also has written about race, immigration, and the criminal justice system for the washington post, bringing extensive experience from his work at the los angeles times, the detroit free press and as the city hall bureau chief for the atlanta-journal constitution. recently, he and the team of climate journalists at the washington post won the 2020 pulitzer prize for explanatory reporting for the “2°c: beyond the limit” series, which breaks down how quickly the planet is warming and the resulting consequences. fears’ story focuses specifically on australia and how rising temperatures are threatening not only essential natural resources but an entire culture struggling to survive after centuries of persecution. 

in a conversation in late july, fears walked me through his experiences covering the environment and his pulitzer prize-winning work. he also gave insight on the decadeslong issue of excluding people of color in both the conservation movement and in newsrooms.  

this interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

q: when did you decide to pursue environmental journalism? 

a: i came to the post from the l.a. times and came in as a general assignment reporter. and a year after that, i started writing about race and ethnicity and that evolved into a number of things from criminal justice to immigration…a colleague of mine, david fahrenthold, who was covering the environment, decided that he wanted to cover congress and david left a void on the desk. 

i had expressed interest — just really sort of a passing interest — in covering the environment and an editor of mine remembered it and he thought i would be a good fit. i didn’t know at the time that i would be. and so i would say the long answer to your question is…i was assigned a position that i had a passing interest in. and i’ve been doing it now for 10 years because it has become one of the loves of my life.

q: was there a vocabulary or learning curve that you had to navigate when turning toward environmental journalism?

a: yes. scientists speak in an entirely different language from the rest of us. that was a huge learning curve to sort of understand how these research papers work, and what they were meant to say, and how they can inform journalism — and then how you had to sort of figure them (out), to read them, so that the average reader could understand that stuff. because you look at the papers we write about and you look at the stories and it couldn’t be more different. the other challenge was getting some scientists to speak in plain language about what they were saying, because scientists speak to other scientists. they don’t necessarily speak to you and me.

q: how did you overcome the challenge of taking scientific language and making it something absorbable for your audience?

a: lots of time. so, it would take me a long time to read these studies. i would spend lunch hours and time after work understanding not just the summary and the conclusions of the studies, but also the guts of them, the explanations for the types of lab work and models they use to make their case. and all of that reading sort of went into forming questions. when i approached the scientists — this is the thing — that i would find the authors, of course, and not just one author, but two authors and i would talk to at least two authors for each study and then talk to a scientist who wasn’t involved in the study to sort of inform me about what actually the study is trying to say. 

some scientists are patient, some aren’t, but … you have to be willing to look really stupid to them because these are very smart people. but you’re trying to answer (the) questions you have. i really didn’t care that some scientists might think that i wasn’t a scientist or i wasn’t up to speed  with certain things. i needed them to break down their information as much as they possibly could. sometimes, the scientists were surprised at their answers and were surprised at how they were explaining the science. they began to see that there was another way that they could explain what they were trying to say. so, it was a bit of give and take. it was sort of symbiotic. i would say that (it) took at least six years before i was truly comfortable with reading studies. i think i’m much better at it now. 

q: how would you describe your own experiences as a journalist of color covering this particular beat?

a: when i started on the beat, obviously, i went to numerous engagements hosted by conservation groups and i was astonished to find that the sector, this field of conservation, was even whiter than my own industry, journalism, which is pretty white itself. but conservation was really white and i found that intriguing. and i think that two or three years in, i was like, i just can’t believe that. i can’t believe that african americans and latinos and asian americans aren’t interested in the environment. 

so what’s happening here? and that led to my first story about diversity within green groups. and through writing that story, i learned a lot more about the environmental justice movement and how people in that movement had seen long before, that these groups weren’t just white, but they were racist. and they were sucking up (funding), and the foundations that basically gave them their marching orders and funded them also sort of left these groups without funds. 

when i went to the society of environmental journalists … you could almost count the number of black environmental reporters on your hand — on one hand, not both. and, that is itself frustrating because white journalists just weren’t writing about these communities, and although there’s an explosion of interest in environmental journalism because of the environmental justice issues now — because of this racial reckoning we’re in — those stories are few and far between. i don’t recall any. i couldn’t find any story when i wrote about diversity in these green groups. 

i couldn’t find that any white journalists had even thought to write that story. and that sort of tells you right there that they’re not engaged in these issues. they’re engaged in the way that these groups are engaged. it’s like, you know, we care more about the buffalo than about some area in some black community or latino community in los angeles that’s a heat zone, or that doesn’t have any green space, a park where children can play. so, those types of things, i think that that’s why black journalists or black environmental journalists are important because we see those things right away — those things that aren’t apparent to white journalists. 

i don’t want to disparage all white environmentalists or conservationists or white journalists. it’s just, they have serious blind spots and they don’t see everything and they don’t write with urgency about some of the things that people of color care about. … environmental justice is about to get some serious coverage. and i’m glad that i’m going to be a part of that.

q: can white journalists be effective storytellers now that this trend has been increasingly discussed and covered?

a: yeah, i think that they can be. i think that white journalists are fully capable of telling the story once they are engaged. and i think that they are capable of empathy and understanding, and i think that they can write good stories when they ask the right questions and follow the right signs. so, i think that nowadays, that is possible. so if we’re talking about right now, i believe that they can, but they have to first be engaged. they have to first care. and i think that they are coming around to that, but slowly.

q: you had mentioned the article you wrote in 2013 about the lack of diversity in the conservation movement. you recently wrote a story about the terrible history of the sierra club and many other organizations. how do you feel in this moment the conversation has progressed?

a: bob bullard said it best: it’s like baby steps. i think that the conversation right now around those stories that i wrote — the conversation around the story i wrote in 2013 is no different now than it was then. so these groups said that they would do more outreach and environmental justice work in 2013. the problem is they didn’t know how. they didn’t even know how to treat the employees. they hired black employees to come in and do the work. and so i think that they need to look at that. 

i think that the sierra club is drawing a straight line from its lack of diversity to its origins in white supremacy. and so, if that’s not enough to get you going, then nothing can. so, this is just a start. i know i’ve spoken to people who have no confidence that the sierra club will change. and the only way the sierra club can give them confidence is to change — a dramatic change. as michael brune, the executive director, said, “transformational change,” and that’s not just the sierra club. it’s the national wildlife federation, it’s the nature conservancy. it’s all these gigantic groups that get billions of dollars a year to do work that they do and cut black and brown people out of that. and so they have to learn that, one, their workforce needs to reflect the country, and two, that they have to learn how to do the work and give these people space to do the work. if they can’t, then they need to give the money to the groups that can.

q: in 2016 you wrote a piece called “racism twists and distorts everything.” i just want to read you a quick quote from that story, and pose the same question for you, now that we’re in 2020. you wrote, “black lives matter was trying to force a difficult conversation that many americans refused to have: how does racism drive inequality and fear, and how can we overcome that problem?”

a: racism creates the other and, let’s face it, it was created by white people long ago in order to sort of collectivize people who weren’t white and make them inferior and make white people superior. and when you’re operating with that belief, and then the stereotypes that come with that belief — that these people are more prone to crime, and these people are more prone to things that are anti-society — you create fear.

environmental racism is just under the entire umbrella of racism and you can go back to the way environmental racism essentially started with redlining — how white planners and the federal government, the federal housing administration and the public works administration, basically created black communities and basically also created white communities and made one group a pariah and the other group safe. when you’re making one group, the white group, safe, you sort of set aside the other group — largely black groups — for the most dangerous things. and so these black communities were redlined around the worst areas of cities and suburbs — areas where there were power plants and waste facilities, incinerators and refineries.

when city planners planned or zoned areas, they zoned them in and around black communities, or when they zoned housing areas for racial minorities, they zoned them in the worst places. and that’s how environmental racism came to be. how do you solve that problem? you recognize what happened, you recognize the zoning issues around this, and you have to tear it down. and i think that’s what environmental justice activists are doing.

q: you had mentioned how it’s so important to have climate journalists of color as part of the solution. why do you think environmental journalism is a beat that is predominantly covered by white journalists?

a: um, every beat is predominantly covered by white journalists. so i think, once again, when you talk about a lack of diversity in the field of conservation, there is a parallel lack of diversity within media, and that’s all forms of media — that’s television, magazines, and newspapers. and often, when african americans and asian americans are hired into these organizations, they’re siloed into particular beats and they’re not expected to cover certain things. and so, environmental science and environmentalism is just among those things.

covering this issue…it’s not something that i would have seen for myself. and i think that years ago, a lot of african american journalists would not have seen this for themselves, but the editor who thought that i would do a good job at this because i’m really able to translate difficult information and make it readable for a lot of people, was a black man. i don’t think that a white editor would have looked at me and said, ‘hey, darryl, you go handle that.’ it just doesn’t happen. so, just diversity in an editing position led to diversity in coverage of environmental issues at the washington post. 

q: i do want to talk about your story as part of the “2°c: beyond the limit” series. i was wondering if you could walk me through how you went about writing it.

a: the story in australia came about because australia happened to have a hotspot in it for 2°c…which is the so-called tipping point that the ipcc (intergovernmental panel on climate change) said is irreversible climate change. and so that area in australia was the tasman sea. i was looking at the assignment and i was like, interesting, interesting, interesting…then i tied the (dying) seaweed to an environmental justice issue to involve the first peoples of australia, which are so-called aboriginal people of australia — a white name provided to these people because white people thought that they were abnormal. 

i began telling their story about how they were tied to the sea and their origin story about being in australia (for) so long — 40,000 years — that they were able to walk to what is now an island. and also the story of their persecution. i used that as a narrative to drive the overall story — these people who were disenfranchised, who were trying to sort of reconnect to their culture and show australia that they have a unique place in australia’s culture, are losing their connection to the sea, which is their only way to demonstrate that they are a special people.

to me, that was just compelling. i just wasn’t prepared to discover all the horrible things that happened to the first people of australia, the palawa, as i later learned, and how they were wiped out essentially, by war and by persecution and basically bounties on their heads and (from) disease. and then the few that survived, the few that made it…white people began to lighten their skin color and take away their language and culture and were basically farmed out to white families as an attempt to breed the black out of them so that they can be white, like other australians. so i was like, ‘oh man, what a story here!’ and i think that story, because of the way i told it, because i’m a black journalist interested in the black diaspora, and how aboriginals fit into that and how they fit into australia’s history…it became one of the most important stories of the series.

q: what advice would you give to people, during an unstable job market to say the least, who want to get into journalism and environmental journalism?

a: first of all, you need to be grounded in journalism. you first need to be a good researcher, a good reporter, and a good writer. you also have to be bold. you have to rely on your perspective and your point of view and sort of claim stories and make them different and tell a bigger story. and you have to be really, truly passionate about the environmental issues that are out there. i was fortunate enough to have this passion for it. the environment is the most important thing on the planet going right now. what’s happening with the environment will determine whether we survive as a species, as human beings. have a passion for the work and be bold and represent. 

—

as two 20-somethings watching our food bills rise, we thought little of the food waste produced. it was just one of the growing sources of money sapping lifestyle inflation we had. we were adding convenience foods, eating out, and generally doing what two middle-class americans do once they’re out of school and starting careers: spend! as our budget ballooned, so too did our carbon footprint and waste.

but what if we could rethink our relationship with food in a way that would cut waste and save money?

food and individual empowerment

many ideas we think about on planet forward are nuanced, distant concepts. we don’t personally have much direct control over them. but, there is something we all individually do that has a real effect on the environment, society, and even our own wealth. we eat, and sometimes not with great efficiency.

it’s been close to a decade since we started looking — bleary-eyed with student loan debt — at our finances and the consumerism that blew holes in our budget. we’ve been fortunate to turn the tide, and then some, through lots of small purchasing decisions along the way. 

while writing about financial independence as one of a duo of 35-year-old early retirees, i’ve spent copious amounts of time researching how to reduce our grocery expenses. reducing food waste became a central theme of our expert guide to saving money at the grocery store.

ultimately, we cut our monthly grocery expenses from $575.80 to $339.85 in 2019 — a more than 40% savings.

in the process, we found the fortunate side effect of a reduced carbon footprint and a dramatic drop in food waste. put in place our strategies and do the same today. cutting food waste can lead to favorable outcomes for society and the environment.

it can even save you money — and you have full control over it.

reducing food waste can save you money

when food is wasted, so too are the resources used to produce that food.

an average u.s. household spends about $5,850 per year on food, according to the aaea.

reducing waste is an opportunity for households to directly improve the environment and strengthen their own financial position. while landfills are overflowing with wasted nutrition, food banks run out of resources to provide for those in need. in the time of a global pandemic, those most vulnerable tend to be those most in need of resources like food banks.

food waste in the united states

the average u.s. household wastes 31.9% of the food it purchases. consumer‐level food waste was valued at $240 billion in a single year, according to the aaea. the average u.s. household loses $1,866 on wasted food per year, according to a recent penn state study. this food waste is all-encompassing within a household: groceries, restaurants, and fast food. 

the money you might be wasting in the food you throw away

penn state’s study is based on u.s. households, which the census defines as 2.5 people. that means there’s $746.40 per person, per year or $62.20 per month in wasted food for just one person! cutting your personal food waste in half could put enough money into your budget for your netflix subscription and cell phone bill combined. not to mention all the knock-on effects to the environment.

so what can you do?

it’s easy to say we can reduce our food waste to help the environment and ourselves. but what actual steps can we take to make this change? here are five ways to reduce food waste and save money.

1. rethink what a meal is

if you’re like me, you grew up with a dinner plate that was nicely divided between three sections. it was a little pie chart of meat, a “starch,” and hopefully a vegetable. eggs were for breakfast. cereal was a complete meal. sandwiches with cold cuts were for lunch.

it doesn’t have to be that way. it can be any way you want, you’re an adult!

you don’t have to eat meals the way that we’ve decided they should be in the last 1% of the timeframe of human existence (and 1% is very generous). your goal is to satiate yourself and provide adequate nutrition, at a reasonable cost.

2. rethink your diet from zero

that doesn’t mean you need to switch to a diet of rice and beans. but, it does mean you should rethink your diet: start from the ground up rather than trying to remove things from your current diet. consciously add dishes that meet nutritional requirements along with foods you enjoy! devise how they can fit into your meal plan.

if you couldn’t care less how you eat it, identify the healthiest ingredients at the lowest cost, stick them in a blender, and go to town. kale and peanut butter in a smoothie? i mean, have you tried it? 

no one said you have to use a fork!

3. don’t let time be the master of your meals

you can eat dinner things for breakfast. leftover beans from last night’s dinner? mix them in with your eggs! just because you don’t normally eat green beans with your breakfast doesn’t mean you can’t. 

if you’ve run out of your typical breakfast foods, don’t force yourself to run out and restock the eggs just because they’re the normal accompaniment. challenge yourself to incorporate the beans with breakfast instead. you’ll help prevent your leftover food from going to waste and make your tongue a little more flexible.

having flexibility in your diet and your idea of what a meal is will permit you to be more efficient by maximizing your food use and reducing waste. flexibility saves you money, and not only with food.

4. don’t buy bulk when you don’t eat bulk

i don’t know about you, but our household is just two people. we’re decidedly averaged sized, too. i don’t know why we so often wind up with “family-sized” multi-packs of oatmeal that might be intended to feed horses. actually, i think i know why.

for years, we’ve read those repetitive “10 grocery tips to save money!” type of articles. they typically include:

• buy in bulk

• pay the lowest per unit/ounce price

here’s the thing. that’s great starting advice when you’re just trying to get an idea of how to save money on groceries. but, if you’re not in a household of four people, bulk buying could be more expensive. we’ve followed that simple starting advice and wound up with more than our fair share of big-bottle condiments sitting in the bottom fridge shelf slowly changing colors. 

i thought ketchup was supposed to be a brighter red?

here’s the advice when you’re concerned about your food budget and waste: buy what you need!

put that optimizing part of your brain to work on figuring out how much of the product you actually use over time. purchase the size that’ll be consumed before it begins to crawl out of the fridge on its own.

reduce waste, save money.

5. grocery price-shop online; avoid driving

most grocery stores have their in-store pricing available online either through their website or app. if the brand itself doesn’t, you might have luck getting an idea of the prices by using contracted shopper services like instacart (though their prices tend to be marked up a bit). this also lets you compare pricing with online grocers like amazon or boxed from the comfort of your home.

if you want to get the absolute lowest price for your grocery list and are willing to make multiple trips to do it, do your price comparisons online. 

generally, it’s probably not worth it to go to multiple locations (especially when a car is involved) to save a few extra dollars. if you can live in an urban environment that’ll let you walk to pickup your food, that makes it easier to locally price-shop.

save money and improve the environment by reducing food waste

altering your perceptions of what a meal can be, when to have it, and not giving into marketing hype will let you rethink what food means to you. using the tactics outlined in this article, along with a few extras focused on reducing costs, let us save over 40% on our monthly grocery budget while eating a healthful diet.

a pleasant side effect has been a much lighter trash bag with barely any food waste in sight. it’s taken us some time, but our grocery spending reduction has lead to more efficient use of resources and a small improvement to the environment we had full control over.

you have the ability to make the same changes as we did, today. you can add to your wealth while taking less from the world around you.

what do you intend to do to help solve food waste in america? reach out to tictoclife on twitter with your ideas!

in addition to writing about climate change, deaton also runs a website called climate chat, which aggregates research on climate change communication. climate chat began as his thesis project in grad school at gw, and now he uses it to keep people informed on the latest research, sending monthly updates via a newsletter.

we recently spoke to deaton about how to overcome the struggles in communicating the gravity of climate change and why climate change denial is a problem in the u.s. 

q: generally, how informed is the american public on climate change and climate issues?

a: i would say that the public is not as informed as scientists and advocates would hope it is. when you look at what people think of the causes of climate change, we are at the point where a little more than half of americans say that humans are causing climate change. but when you break that question down and ask, “do you think humans are the sole cause? do you think humans are the primary cause? do you think that humans are causing climate change, but also nature is causing climate change?” — that is a lot more confusing. and it seems that not enough americans understand that humans are the primary driver of warming. 

q: do the american people have an understanding of the mechanism behind climate change? it can be a relatively abstract concept at times, and what is your feeling on americans understanding of this?

a: i think that people, generally, have a pretty vague understanding of the mechanism of climate change. i think they understand that industrial pollution– pollution of carbon from cars and trucks and planes and factories and power plants–is making the earth warmer. but if you ask people to name as many greenhouse gasses as they can, i imagine that people might say co2, but they wouldn’t get to methane or hydrofluorocarbons or some of the other more obscure gases.

but i also don’t think it’s really important that americans understand the mechanism of climate change. i don’t think they need to understand the nitty-gritty of the science. i think they need to understand the basics — that pollution from cars and trucks and planes and factories and power plants, pollution from agriculture — from specifically raising livestock — pollution from deforestation is warming the planet, and that is a catastrophic risk. 

q: while only 5% of americans, in recent polling, fully deny climate change is occurring. why is there still a relatively large chunk of americans who are not willing to pin climate change on human activity? what do you think the root cause for that is? are there things that are causing that?

a: let me break that answer down into a couple of parts. one, i think it is tempting to divide climate change deniers into these many different groups, depending on what their specific views are… i think it is functionally fine to just group together anyone who denies that climate change is an overwhelming problem that requires an immediate and drastic response. you can just put them all together. if someone acknowledges that the planet is warming but denies that we need to do anything about it, that is functionally the same as someone denying that the planet is warming. 

as for why people would deny the need for drastic action for climate change, i think the answer is tribalism. for 30 years now, fossil fuel companies have been aligning with conservative politicians and conservative media to persuade conservative americans that climate change is a liberal conspiracy to create a global government, and you have gotten to the point where climate denial is a shibboleth for conservative politicians. membership to this group is now contingent upon denying the need to take drastic action to address climate change. it is really hard to change that. it is completely entrenched, and is really hard to form a new norm, particularly when you have all these forces that are reinforcing the current norm. 

i think there has been a lot of time and attention and energy devoted to trying to convert conservatives on climate change. the environmental movement has spent a lot of time and energy and money on that cause in the last couple of decades. and i think that energy would be better devoted to trying to mobilize people who are already inclined to care about the problem. and i think that the movement we’ve seen in public opinion in the last few months or last year, where you see more americans caring about climate change, and it has risen in importance among liberals and democrats, i think it has to do with the fact that you see more movement on the left.

you have charismatic politicians like (alexandria ocasio-cortez) who are making this an issue. you have advocates like the extinction rebellion that are making this an issue, and you are pulling from the left, and it’s having an effect on the whole spectrum of public opinion. you see progressives care about it more, and you see swing voters starting to pay attention. and, as a result, you’ve got republicans starting to — or at least trying to — sound sensible on climate change. mitch mcconnell acknowledges that it’s a thing. i don’t think he should get any credit for that, but i think that it is a result of pulling from the left.     

q: if drastic measures are necessary to make the impact that needs to be made to save the planet and try to mitigate as many problems as possible, wouldn’t you need that percentage of people on the right to be on board, especially when it comes to policy?

a: i think that in our system of government you need consensus to make policy, because of the way electoral votes are distributed across the country and what you need to win a presidential election and because of the way the senate works. you have to win in conservative-leaning states and you have to persuade people in conservative-leaning states because in the senate, at least currently and for the foreseeable future, you need 60 votes to pass anything.

so when i look at that, and i consider that fact, one conclusion you could draw would be that environmental advocates need to win over conservatives. now i think that is a reasonable conclusion, but i think that that is actually much harder than trying mobilizing progressives, mobilizing people to care about this problem. our system of government may be such that it is difficult to pass policy without bipartisan cooperation, but it is easier to imagine democrats taking unified control of government and passing climate policy than it is to imagine that conservatives will come along with that policy.   

q: we talked about what you believe should be done when it comes to tackling this problem of acceptance of the problem and understanding of the problem on a macro level, what about on a micro level? let’s say you are going to thanksgiving and your more conservative family members are there, and climate change comes up. what do you think the best way to deal with a situation like that? you are addressing someone face to face instead of a constituency or instead of a whole population, what would you suggest someone do?  

a: first, i would say, i wouldn’t get your hopes up. even if you are able to persuade someone to care about climate change — and there are a lot of conservatives who do — climate change still ranks pretty low as an issue for conservatives. they are going to vote on issues like terrorism, or fears of immigration, or concerns about national security, and those issues will likely supersede any concerns they have about climate change.

that doesn’t mean you can’t try. if you are going to try, then the way to do it is to make climate change a local and personally relevant problem. there is a lot of research that, in particular, points to the efficacy of highlighting the health risks of climate change.

let’s say you live in arizona, and you have historic heat waves, record-setting heat waves, that are making life miserable and are also a life-threatening risk for elderly people, and the infirm, and children. and those heat waves also make pollution worse, and that pollution is a threat to children. it’s a threat to your kids. it raises the risk of asthma, or it exacerbates existing asthma, those are the kinds of arguments that resonate with people.

one thing i would add to that is that there is a temptation to think that extreme weather on its own is going to change minds about climate change, that when people see and experience severe storms, drought, wildfires, heat waves, that they will be converted by virtue of their experience. but the research tends to suggest that extreme weather does not have a lasting impact on public opinion. people may be more concerned for a short time, but that is not going to convert them over the long term.

the things that do convert people are the efforts of advocates, cues from political elites, and the volume and quality of news coverage. those are the things that tend to change minds. you can point out to that, “hey, scientists say that burning fossil fuels has made this heat wave worse, and is a threat to your health,” and that might make someone more concerned about climate change, but you can’t assume the heat wave will do that on its own. you have to consistently repeat the message. it has to be present in the mind of the person you are talking to. it has to be a salient concern for it to matter.  

q: what science is saying now is that we need to start taking drastic and immediate action, not just in our county, but around the world. do you think that the level of support for something that drastic is possible to get in the timeframe that it needs to happen?

a: i don’t know the answer to that. i am a bit pessimistic, but i will also say i have been surprised by the shift in public opinion the last few months and the last year. so it is certainly possible. but whether or not it is possible doesn’t really have any bearing on what advocates or elected officials do. it has to be done, and we have to make every effort to persuade the public and persuade policymakers… we have no other choice.

q: the first democratic debate was last night, and there was a question about climate change, but there has been some criticism that climate change should be the first and biggest issue that anyone running for president should be addressing, because of the gravity of it. do you think that the issue of climate change should be more elevated in the current campaigns and current political discourse?  

a: yes, absolutely. i think there are moral reasons for that, as you suggested. climate change is the defining issue of our time. it is the biggest issue. it is the literal end of the world, and it is the thing we should be talking about more than anything else. it is also an issue that encompasses every other issue. it is an issue of public health and national security and inequality and injustice and so forth.

in addition to the moral argument, there is a pragmatic argument. across several polls and according to different methods of trying to determine what is important to democrats, we find that climate change is the number two or three ranked issue. it’s something democratic voters want to talk about. it is something democratic voters care about.

at the first debate, i think that moderators waited more than an hour to ask the first question about climate change, and the questions weren’t great. they were questions that tend to focus on the politics of climate change instead of the policy of climate change. i think that journalists who are going to be asking politicians about climate change, particularly in a debate setting, should understand this is something that democratic voters want to talk about. 

i like to do a little thought experiment sometimes when i think about the news coverage of climate change. we know that climate change is a problem that threatens the health and safety and lives of hundreds of millions of people — billions of people over generations. and we know that it is a problem that demands a world war ii-scale mobilization to solve. that’s a comparison scientists have used again and again. so we have a problem on the order of world war ii. are we talking about this problem the way that we would talk about world war ii? are we talking about this problem the way we would talk about the threat of japanese imperialism or nazi fascism? no, and we should be.

what would that actually look like? climate change would be the first question in the debate, and then the next 12 questions would also be about climate change, and they would be substantive questions about what candidates would actually do to solve the problem. 

civilization as we know it depends on a diversity of plants, animals and bacteria for crop pollination, food from land and sea, medicines, and for maintenance of livable temperatures. our over-consumption of earth’s resources has destroyed animal habitats, polluted the environment, and decimated wildlife populations.

humans created this crisis. we are also able to stop it. the first step is to immediately lower the levels at which we consume the earth’s limited resources. we must also break the mold of our existing approach to animal species conservation, and implement more effective solutions, ones based on the reality that the health of human beings, wildlife and the planet itself are inextricably linked. it is essential that we forge new partnerships that break the silos which currently constrain conservation efforts.

health in harmony is a planetary health organization whose conservation programs are driven by an understanding that human wellbeing is fundamentally linked to the health of surrounding wildlife, and vice-versa. to help in our efforts, we have forged critical partnerships with the places where more americans learn about our natural world than from any other: zoos.

zoos accredited by the association of zoos and aquariums (aza) provide a connection to the natural world for nearly 180 million people every year, including 51 million students. in fact, more people visit zoos annually than attend every major league professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey game in the unites states, combined.

the idea that zoos are nothing more than arks for animal species doomed to extinction is antiquated and untrue. aza zoos are at the forefront of conservation efforts that save animals in the wild from extinction. with the support of their local communities, north american zoos and aquariums have helped bring the whooping crane, the california condor and the black-footed ferret back from the brink of extinction.

this year, zoos have funded $220 million worth of conservation initiatives like health in harmony’s in indonesian borneo. zoos are critical partners in health in harmony’s efforts to preserve rain forest coverage for orangutan populations and hundreds of other species.

more than a decade ago, borneo’s gunung palung national park was losing tree cover at an alarming rate. this was mostly due to illegal rain forest logging by people in marginalized communities bordering the park, who had no other way to afford food and health care for their families. because of the resulting habitat loss, innumerable species were completely lost, while others, such as the bornean orangutan, became endangered.

health in harmony spent over 400 hours listening to people in 40 villages bordering the park. what emerged was a greater awareness of the critical connection between their health and the health of the surrounding rain forest. during our listening exercises, members of these communities designed a holistic intervention that combined health care with jobs training and a reforestation program. in the decade since, there has been an 88 percent reduction in the number of households logging rain forest inside gunung palung national park. the loss of primary rain forest has stabilized, 20,000 hectares are growing back, and – significantly – habitat for 2,500 endangered bornean orangutans has been protected.

our partner zoos around the united states are now able to integrate the story of our success within their own extraordinary orangutan exhibits. guests learn how the merger of human development and rainforest conservation protects these charismatic animals. and the zoo’s orangutans themselves magnify that understanding: guests learn through these exceptional ambassadors what is needed to protect their wild cousins, as well as other animal and plant species.

news of biodiversity loss and climate change is too often apocalyptic and dire. we have the ability to avoid a sixth mass extinction and must shine a light on these success stories. unique partnerships like the one between aza zoos and organizations like health in harmony represent an untapped resource for galvanizing efforts to reverse species extinction. zoos connect game-changing conservation efforts like ours to millions of zoo guests each year, renewing hope for a world where all people respect, value and conserve wildlife in wild places.

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jonathan jennings is the executive director of health in harmony. jeff wyatt, dvm, is chair of the aza accreditation commission.

in this podcast, frisbie speaks with colin boyle, a planet forward environmental correspondent out of chicago, about the past, present and future of the river.

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in many ways, the sustainability story of the american farmer mirrors that of every other american. farmers genuinely care about doing their part to protect our planet, for all the same reasons as anyone else. they want to leave behind a world that’s just a little bit better than how they found it.

this is the refrain we hear again and again from the agricultural community at every meeting, conference, hearing and media appearance. while it’s a worthy sentiment, i believe it’s time to update our message to reflect the changing reality of our industry.

recently, i spoke at george washington university’s planet forward summit, an event focused on effective communication and compelling sustainability storytelling. i was pleased that the organizers included not only myself, but nebraska farmer roric paulman, to share sustainability stories from the agricultural perspective.

my message is simple: to move our planet forward, farmers must lead the charge. but they can’t do it alone.

coordinated action on sustainability across the food supply chain is the only way to achieve lasting progress. the rest of the food supply chain can and should do more to support farmers. and that starts with expanding how we talk about sustainability.

here’s why: more than any other person, organization, company or government agency, american farmers have daily and near-constant contact with the land. every day, american farmers make conservation decisions that impact 915 million u.s. acres – nearly half of the land in the continental united states.

we’ve all heard the statistic that we’ll need to feed 9 billion people by 2050, and that harsher drought, severe weather, and more pests will make this increasingly difficult. we sometimes fall into the trap of talking about these challenges as though they’re a generation away. but for farmers, they are happening right now.

that’s why it’s time to start thinking and talking about sustainability differently. in order to achieve lasting progress, we must connect big-ticket goals – the increasingly common company commitments to slashing emissions and saving kilowatt hours of energy – to the daily reality of what farmers face, acre-by-acre and field-by-field.

that’s why land o’lakes has made a major investment in this idea of farmer-owned and -driven sustainability – including, but not limited to, standing up our land o’lakes sustain business unit.

as a farmer-owned cooperative, we exist to add value for our member-owners. the thousands of farmers who own us recognize the value of sustainability and are invested in its future.

as a fortune 200 cpg company, we have the connections and the credibility to rally the energy and scale of the entire food supply chain around farmer-driven sustainability – including farmers, marketers, ag retailers, non-governmental organizations, food companies, government, and consumers.

our products are staples in grocery stores across america, and we do business in many other nations around the world. every move our farmer members make to improve sustainability on their farms has a positive ripple effect down the entire supply chain.

through our farmer-owned approach, we are unlocking the greatest potential from farm-to-fork, using our network to deliver precision conservation tools, data and services to farmers, and rooting it all in our expertise and 96-year heritage as a farmer-owned cooperative.

a great example of this is the work that we are doing with walmart. land o’lakes was one of the first suppliers to join project gigaton, walmart’s goal to remove 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases from its supply chain by 2030. as part of this effort, we have committed to assessing all of our milk supply for emissions and working with farmers across 20 million acres to improve fertilizer optimization, soil health and water management.

bringing together big-picture, company-level sustainability commitments and the acre-by-acre conservation efforts of farmers makes both more effective. it engages farmers in advancing conservation solutions across millions of acres of farmland in a more coordinated way. it allows us to collect and then translate data that not only helps farmers continuously improve their stewardship, but also helps consumers access clear information about how their food was produced.

coordinated action on sustainability across the food supply chain that puts farmers in the drivers’ seat is the only way to achieve lasting progress on the sustainability challenges we face as an industry and as a country. it is the best way to move our planet forward, together.

***

this op-ed originally was published on agri-pulse. published with permission.

dr. matthew schneider-mayerson received his ph.d. in american studies at the university of minnesota before spending two years as the cultures of energy postdoctoral fellow at rice university’s center for energy and environmental research in the humanities. his first book, “peak oil: apocalyptic environmentalism and libertarian political culture” (university of chicago press, 2015), explores the american ‘peak oil’ movement in the context of contemporary responses to environmental crises (such as climate change), fossil fuel dependency and the spread of neoliberal ideals throughout american political culture. he is currently engaged in research projects on climate change fiction; the role of art and literature in the ongoing energy transition; and novel forms of happiness for the age we live in: the anthropocene, where human activity is now driving planetary processes.

alaine johnson: your journey in higher education began when you were recruited to play soccer at yale, and now you’re singapore as an environmental studies professor, ph.d. in american studies. can you tell me a bit about what influenced this journey, and what choices were made to bring you here?

matthew schneider-mayerson: all the bad choices, all the places where it went wrong? (laughs) i’ve been heavily involved in social justice movements since i was in college, starting with anti-sweatshop organizing, and then union organizing, and then globalization movements. i went to grad school in american studies, which is a pretty leftist and politically-engaged field, combining history and politics especially around race, class gender, and sexuality. i read elizabeth’s kolbert’s “field notes from a catastrophe” – she’s a writer for the new yorker – and then i read tim flannery’s “the weathermakers,” and i just felt like this was an issue i had to be involved in. all the things i cared about were going to be potentially swept away by climate change. i somehow needed to turn my academic and activist and life interests in that direction, if possible. it was a bit tricky because american studies at that point, and still today, was really not that engaged in environmental issues, especially compared to fields like literature and to some extent history. so i don’t know if my advisors really knew what the hell i was doing! they didn’t quite understand why i was focusing on these weirdos who thought the world was ending because we were running out of oil – the peak oil subculture – or what “anthropogenic” meant. at that point i was working in the field of energy humanities, which is now an emerging field, that didn’t really exist. so it was sort of charting new territory. there’s freedom with doing interdisciplinary work. you can pick what are the most appropriate lenses for any given project.

q: a lot of your research has fascinating intersections with the humanities, pop culture, and literature. so this buzzword: anthropocene. where did you first chance upon it, and what does living in the anthropocene mean to you?

a: i’m glad that i can’t remember where i first chanced upon it – it would be quite sad if that were one of my really memorable moments in life! i echo others’ criticisms of the term; it is indeed universalizing and flattening. it doesn’t pay enough attention to the way that a very small group of humans is mostly responsible. so in that sense i like “capitalocene” better, but i think it’s useful as serving as a formal announcement of how we’re living in a fundamentally different world. i think of it as an echo in what bill mckibben was doing in his 2010 book, “eaarth,” to announce that we’re on a different planet. it’s also useful in making people aware of how we’re shaping the world.

q: it seems a bit anthropocentric, or anthropogenic – with good cause of course.

a: that’s why some scholars like donna haraway says our goal is to make the anthropocene as short as possible, to the ecocene or phronocene, or whatever’s coming next. environmentalism and environmental scholars need to pay attention to things like branding. so the anthropocene could be misused, it could be like hey this is our age, so let’s party. but it can also be useful. for terminology there’s the academic critique, the linguistic critique, but what makes most sense is what you can get most out of it.

q: i know you did a project before about climate fiction. maybe you could explain briefly about the project and whether you think this literature is useful for envisioning or if it’s mostly just apocalyptic?

a: environmental literature is a growing area. i’ve written that i think in the near future, all fiction will be climate fiction; if it doesn’t acknowledge climate change, it’s fantasy, essentially. over the last 25 years, eco-criticism, the study of environmental literature, has become one of the main areas of environmental humanities. people have highlighted climate fiction as one of the ways that the humanities can contribute to responding to climate change. but there has been no methodologically rigorous attention to reception. people have interesting and brilliant analyses of literature and climate fiction: what happens on page 264, what different narrative techniques do – but nobody is really looking at what happens when actual people pick up the book. when it comes to environmental literature in 2017, given the problems that we’re facing and the future that we’re facing, i’m most interested in the cultural and political work that it does. i conducted one survey on americans who are reading climate fiction, asking them what they make of that reading experience, what actions they’re taking, what kind of emotions they’re feeling in response to the narratives. and i’m doing a quantitative study measuring people’s environmental beliefs, and then having them read a short story and then measuring them again. the idea is to really figure out, what are these narratives doing? are they helping or are they hurting? how? if you look at these authors like barbara kingsolver, who wrote “flight behavior,” or nathaniel rich, who wrote “odds against tomorrow,” or ian mcewan, who wrote “solar” – in most of their interviews, these authors have an admirable desire to contribute in some way, to help people envision the future by dramatizing the dangers, the worst possibilities. but sometimes it can backfire. if you’re painting a really dystopian picture, maybe that just leads people to wanting to ignore or avoid climate change, because it’s always bringing up these really terrible, anxious emotions.

q: what did you mostly find from these surveys?

a: i’ll mention two things. conservatives don’t read these books. there were only a handful of conservatives and, of those conservatives, only one or two seemed to even take the book seriously. a couple of people said, “it was entertaining, but god said he would never flood the earth, so i’m not worried about it.” which isn’t terribly surprising, because if you look at the jacket covers or amazon descriptions of these books, it’s pretty clear that they’re about climate change. so if you think climate change is a hoax, you’re probably not going to read the book. if authors, critics, or activists think these kinds of narratives are going to transform conservatives, it’s probably not going to happen. the other point i would mention is that most of the narratives of the climate futures that people are writing now are pretty apocalyptic, pretty dark. in a book chapter i have coming out soon, i describe them as devastated, depopulated, and denatured worlds. they’re quite dark, and the idea is that they’re going to serve as cautionary tales. but i think it’s worth authors and literary critics looking at the scholarship in environmental communication and environmental psychology. we need a lot more stories of struggle and resilience.

q: my next question is about teaching climate change. i remember in your course, energy humanities, i was moved to think, everything that i care about is affected by this. and every time i would leave class i would feel like my future was a bit darker.

a: you’re welcome.

q: yeah, tough semester! it was in that class that i first heard the term climate depression, which is a real thing climate scientists undergo. so what do you think about happiness in the anthropocene? can you explain a bit about the research project you’re doing now?

a: i’m trying to do some research on what happiness should mean in the time of climate change. happiness on one hand seems to be the most obvious, natural thing – we feel it in our bodies. we know when we’re happy. but it’s also socially and culturally constructed. every culture has a slightly different version of happiness, and that’s true across cultures today but also looking back historically. so if happiness is the ultimate goal for most people in life, it should take us somewhere we want to go. my supposition is that the current version of western happiness, american happiness specifically, is not helping us. it’s comparatively individualistic, materialistic, and hedonistic. it’s obviously not solely responsible for the environmental ills we’re facing, but i think it’s fair to say that it’s contributing to them. so i’m trying to look at what would be a better version of happiness.

q: are there any examples you think we can follow?

a: people have pointed to buddhism as a belief system that seems particularly appropriate to the present moment, in its emphasis on ridding oneself of attachment or clinging, and its acceptance of the inevitability of suffering. that may not be a great sell for some people. there seems to be a commonality among indigenous conceptions of happiness or well-being – a lot of them place emphasis on interconnectedness and social stability, and i think that those are valuable, underrated things. it’s difficult to generalize because you have very different versions of happiness even within a given culture. you have what the happiness books are saying, and then what  religious or philosophical texts are saying, and then you have what people call folk happiness, which is what people actually experience and what’s lived by people. but given that happiness is the ultimate goal of life for a lot of people, it’s how you evaluate whether you’ve lived a good life, it’s worth looking at as one potential battlefront for facing climate change and other issues.

q: what would be your words of wisdom to fresh grads who are interested in getting involved in environmental issues and activism?

a: we’re facing a really dangerous future, and there’s no guarantee that action now will stave off bad things from happening. those are baked into the future. we need to shift rapidly. people need to be willing to take risks. i was interviewing a 75-year-old man last night who has gotten arrested four times. after retiring, he’s spent the last four years as a climate activist. he’s now retired, relatively comfortable, he has grandkids. but he’s basically dedicated his life to climate activism. he isn’t scared of going to prison. it’s difficult to ask for that level of commitment from anybody, but we’re in that place in the movie where ‘the aliens are coming! the aliens are here!’ it doesn’t get any more dramatic than this. it’s unfortunate that it’s a slow-moving crisis. it’s not as visible as an alien attack. but there’s no question that dramatic action is necessary. there are ways to do that which are more or less effective than others, of course. there are forms of dramatic or direct action that look principled and attract supporters, and there others that could potentially lose support. and no matter what you do, joy and community sustain. the people that i’ve interviewed find a lot of joy in what they do, they feel like they’re in the right place at the right time, and that there isn’t better place for them to be at this moment. there’s a lot of social and cultural pressures that push you away from thinking that way, and that’s why joy and community are so important. without community, if you’re just acting alone, you’re never going to see it through.

q: lastly, what’s the most interesting thing/person/initiative that has stood out to you in this field, and how would you like to see the planet move forward?

a: i love what the folks at liberate tate are doing in the u.k., fighting to get museums to divest from fossil fuels. chipping away at the social license to operate that a lot of fossil fuel companies and other damaging companies have is really important. there are ways to do that which is not just like targeting corporate headquarters. i love the creativity they display. it’s inspirational, it’s culturally specific, so it’s not necessarily something you can imitate, but it’s a model for action so i’m pretty inspired by them. how should the planet move forward… i don’t know – on its axis? not too close to the sun? the planet is such an interesting concept. in some ways it’s part of the problem, thinking of things in terms of the planetary, because it distances us from the little bit of it that we live on and can legitimately influence. in some ways it’s an annoying academic critique to say the planet will be fine, it’s humans and other animals that are vulnerable. but i think it’s important because ultimately what we’re concerned about is the habitability of the planet for us, and species like us that have been living for the past couple hundred millions of years on a fairly stable weather system. so it’s important to make that point; if you actually care about conserving the status quo, then you should get involved. what would it actually mean if the planet went forward? there’s a wonderful short story by liu cixin, “the wandering earth,” in which i think the sun is expanding. a global unity government installs boosters on one side of earth, turns the planet into a spaceship, and sends it out of its orbit into a different solar system. the journey takes thousands of years. so that’s really the planet moving forward! maybe that’s where we’re headed – damn the milky way, onto alpha centauri.

what dr. schneider-mayerson talks about here rings true for anyone studying in the environmental realm; this is the era of the anthropocene that we are now driving, and we must understand how to best stay joyful, active, and empowered to 2022年卡塔尔世界杯官网 and away from the forecasts of apocalyptic speculative fiction.

planet forward: can you tell us a little bit about your work at the delaware riverkeeper network and how you got involved in this group?

maya van rossum: my official title is the delaware riverkeeper. my job is to be the voice of the delaware river. what that means is that i work hard to make sure that any time decisions are being made, or actions are being taken that would impact the delaware river or any of its contributory streams, that the delaware river has a voice in the room. [i make sure] its needs and goals of protecting it are given the highest priority in the decisions that are being made. now of course that’s not the job of one person. there’s no one person that can protect an entire river or, certainly, an entire river’s watershed. it really requires a community effort. and so, i do have a wonderful community that works with me. i have a staff of 20 at the delaware riverkeeper network… and then we have nearly 20,000 members throughout the watershed that help us fight the good fight for the river.

planet forward: in your book, you talked a lot about the failures of the pennsylvania department of environmental protection. can you tell us why these environmental agencies tend to fail at fulfilling their basic duties? would you equate these failings to regulatory capture [that is, where a regulatory agency doesn’t act in the public interest]?

van rossum: so it’s not just in the commonwealth of pennsylvania, it’s really every environmental agency at the state level and at the federal level across the nation. they are not doing anything and everything that needs to be done to protect our natural resources, [and] in order to protect people’s health safety and the quality of their lives. a fundamental reason why that’s the case is because the laws in the united states of america, whether we’re talking local, state, or federal law, are not written to prevent environmental degradation or to protect people’s rights to a healthy environment. [these laws] are actually written to allow pollution. they just put in place a process to identify: how much, when, and where that pollution or environmental degradation will be allowed. the implications for community health, individual health, and individual and community quality of life isn’t given independent consideration in that legal process. it’s presumed that people’s right to a healthy environment or the concept of the right to a healthy environment will be protected by virtue of the fact that you’re going to regulate the how, when, and where environmental degradation takes place. it’s not really considered, legally, on its own as an overall concept that needs to be achieved. in some cases, such as the federal energy regulatory commission, regulatory capture is absolutely taking place. that is a federal agency responsible for reviewing and approving pipelines and fracking infrastructure projects. in over 30 years, ferc has only denied one pipeline project brought before its commissioners for approval. there are a handful of ways we can demonstrate that that agency really does suffer from regulatory capture. and i’m sure there are others depending on the state you’re talking about. however, broadly speaking you don’t have to have regulatory capture for agencies to day in and day out be making decisions that really side with industries ability to pollute, over the health and safety of people.

pf: you also talk about the overbearing power that industries and corporations have when it comes to forming policy in the united states. do you think the u.s. has reached a point in our democracy where it is dominated by oligarchical forces, especially after citizens united v. fec?

van rossum: i think we’ve reached a very problematic situation in the united states, were people’s rights, people’s needs, people’s voices really are subservient to the desires, goals, and greedy nature of industry. many politicians prioritize their own political careers and desires to advance and make money, over their obligation to protect the health and safety of people and the environmental resources we depend upon. i think that the u.s., for a long time, has been suffering from this reality that people are subservient to the goals and desires of industry, who [are able to] capture politicians. i do think that it is getting worse and worse every year. part of it is because of legal decisions such as citizens united that make it easier for industry to co-op with politicians and hold the power of the purse over their heads — if they want to continue their political careers. that being said, i think we’re at a tipping point, a moment in which the overreach by industry and self-serving politicians, is now blatantly obvious to an increasing number of people. no longer are people counting on their representatives to do the right thing and prioritize people’s needs over industry’s needs. people are now trying to find ways to hold government officials accountable. so while rallies, protests, and certainly voting are important ways to do that, i think that the passage of constitutional provisions to protect our environmental rights is a high priority way to hold government accountable for protecting people’s right to a health environment.

pf: can you tell us more about this constitutional approach to environmentalism and why that would be more constructive than our current legislative approach?

van rossum: so our constitutions, whether you’re talking about the state constitution or federal constitution, are above the law. so when you have a constitutional right, like the right of free speech, it’s a higher level of protection. government officials have to prove they are complying with the law but also have to prove they are complying with the constitution. in the case of the environment, if you have a situation where an industrial operator is spewing pollution into a waterway, and the people downstream are upset about it, these citizens may not be able to do anything because the operator has a permit to pollute backed by standing law. but if there’s a constitutional provision in place, the industrial operator and the government official stating that they complied with the law on the books is not good enough. [a constitutional right] is another layer of review and another obligation for protection. if a constitutional right to a healthy environment is violated, or a person believes their right has been violated, they can go to the courts to vindicate their right. they do not need a law written by a legislature… they can go straight to the courts.

pf: if a concerned citizen does notice environmental degradation occurring in their community, how should they go about defending their right to a clean and healthy environment?

van rossum: if you’re seeing pollution, you’re going to want to contact your local regulators. this might be your local town or the police if it’s a significant danger. all state agencies and federal agencies have pollution hotlines you can contact to request for a survey of damage that may be taking place. you may even have a constitutional issue if you live in pennsylvania or montana which do have constitutional protections for the environment. if your state doesn’t have a constitutional protection, then you’re really going to have to count on your regulatory agencies or state law. and if these avenues fail, that might just inspire a person to fight for a constitutional right for a clean environment within their state.

while burns helped host a workshop for ngos on carbon dioxide removal/negative emissions at the george washington university, planet forward sat down with him to discuss the paris climate agreement and other climate change policies. read on to see an edited version of our conversation:

planet forward: how did you become involved in climate policy research?

wil burns: i started off working on the impacts of climate change on small island states, specifically how small island states might either adapt to climate change or how they might use legal mechanisms to try to “press” the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases to reduce their emissions. then, about 12 years ago, i became interested in climate geoengineering. i had just happened to read an article, [while] on a plane, from usa today and i thought it was an interesting topic for teaching because it’s a topic that’s an interface of law and science and ethics and technology and politics.

while teaching about this i got excited about doing more research and ultimately, at john hopkins, simon nicholson from american university and i decided that there should be a think tank that would try to ensure that if we do decide to look at climate geoengineering as a society, that we include all of the stakeholders … that was one of the fears we had, so the purpose of these kind of forums are to ensure that other stakeholders like ngos and the general public — who would be affected by these technologies — are a part of the conversation.

pf: while human ingenuity seems almost endless, do you think it’s harmful to rely solely on technology to confront the challenges that global warming poses?

burns: well, i certainly think it’s harmful to rely on technologies that seek to mask the warming that’s associated with emissions. for example, [there is] one kind of geoengineering, which is carbon-dioxide removal. there’s another kind called solar radiation management. the effort there [with the solar radiation management] is to just reduce the amount of incoming sunlight. so if there’s less solar radiation to be trapped by the greenhouse gases, it reduces the warming. but that’s a short term sort of palliative [technique]. and the long term, if emissions continue to rise, it will at some point overwhelm those options. plus, those options are extremely risky for a number of other reasons. so, i think that type of technological hubris is wrong. i think the kind of technologies we’re looking at have potentially a supplementary role, but in many ways it’s because they have risks [so] they’re not necessarily permanent either. the best thing we need to do is reduce our emissions. but in a lot of cases when you think about reducing emissions through things like renewable energy or energy efficiency methods, there’s certainly a role for technology in that context also. solar, geothermal, wind power are based on technology also, so there is a role for technology.

pf: how hopeful are you then that geoengineering technology can reduce the worst case scenarios that climate change could produce?

burns: i think the jury is definitely out. i think that, ultimately, carbon dioxide removal strategies, things like bioenergy and carbon capture (beccs) or direct air capture will have a modest role to play. but even a modest role is good. the difference between, for example, a temperature increase of 3.0 and 2.5 degrees or 2.5 to 2.0 can be substantial in terms of the impacts on ecosystems or human institutions. even if the role is relatively modest, which i think it will [be], it could be important. carbon capture involves trapping the carbon dioxide at its emission source, transporting it to a storage location — usually deep underground — and isolating it. this means we could potentially grab excess co2 right from the power plant, creating greener energy. 

pf: you’ve done a lot of research on the paris climate agreement. what are some steps that countries are currently taking? and do you think the paris climate agreement is effective?

burns: well, again, the jury is going to be out on the paris until we start seeing whether the pledges that are made are implemented, first of all. then when the parties reassess their claims they have a process called “stock-taking” where they’re supposed to say: are we on path to meet this goal to holding temperatures well below 2.0° celsius and if we’re not are we willing to escalate what we’re willing to do? the good news about paris is that we’re clearly bending the temperature increase trajectory. we used to talk about maybe 4.0° or 5.0° celsius of increased temperatures by the end of the century. we’re increasingly talking about somewhere between 2.7° to 3.5°/3.7°, so that’s the good news. the bad news is that’s still way beyond where we want to be and way beyond paris says we’re going to be. if the current pledges of paris are all totally implemented faithfully, we go from 47 gigatons of carbon-dioxide annually to 58. so we slow down the rate of increase but we keep increasing. we can’t do that because if you think of it as water in a bathtub, the water is going up more slowly but eventually the bathtub will overfill. so the real test for paris is going to be: when we start these assessments and we realize we’re not where we need to be, are parties willing to escalate? one of the hopes you have with an agreement like paris is, [it’s] an international agreement in which countries come together, start to learn from each other, start to collaborate more because treaties can foster cooperation. and you hope by doing that parties start to learn that reducing emissions can be done more cheaply than they thought, they realize other countries are actually complying with what they said, and that impels them to do more also, and ultimately reduces emissions more than they have.

pf: the trump administration has decided they will be pulling the u.s. out of paris. how complicated is it to pull out of the paris climate agreement? and if we successfully do pull out, how complicated will it be for a following administration to put the united states back into the agreement?

burns: in terms of the first question, it’s complicated to get out. one of the reasons that we do that is we don’t want other countries that have relied on an agreement and then other parties that have joined just suddenly pulling out because they then have to respond themselves and decide if they’re going to withdraw or if it’s going to change the nature of their commitments. so we make it a slow process. the way paris works is, you can’t give notice of your intention to withdraw, until three years after you ratified paris. so we couldn’t give notice that we actually intended to withdraw from paris until three years from november, 2016. then it takes another year before it takes effect and goes into force. since the trump administration has announced its intention to withdraw, it can’t legally actually announce that intention until three years from november of last year, and can’t withdraw until a year after that. our effective date of withdrawing from paris is pretty much after the next election.

pf: so we could possibly have a new administration in office by that time?

burns: we could. if we announce in three years [after ratification] that we’re withdrawing, it will probably happen and it’d be very difficult to reverse it at that point. now getting back in, is potentially a relatively simple process in the sense that, what we did with the paris agreement is we entered by something called an “executive agreement,” instead of going to the senate. the reason we were able to get the treaty bypassed from ratification by two thirds of the senate, is because we said we could do this under executive agreement. and we could do this because the commitments we made under paris were no more than what we were already doing in terms of national legislation or regulations or current treaty obligations. so the argument we made was, since paris is voluntary, we had already agreed under the framework convention on climate change (which we’re a party to), that we would reduce our emissions to a level that wouldn’t cause dangerous anthropogenic impacts. we said that paris just defines what “dangerous” is. we aren’t required to do more than what we were before and we had domestic regulations called the clean power plan to reduce our emissions, and those commitments would be tracked by what we were committing to under paris. so if we did that again, and we came back in under an executive agreement, it could be done relatively quickly.

pf: if the united states were to implement policies such as a cap-and-trade system, how would that significantly reduce our risks to climate change?

burns: well, it depends. if you were to implement either a cap-and-trade system, or a carbon tax or a command-and-control system (reducing emissions by a fixed amount), the key is how much you decide to reduce your emissions. that’s the first question. one of the things we’ve seen under a lot of cap-and-trade programs in the world is that the cap hasn’t been set low enough to reduce emissions that much or put a price on carbon that drives the trading. so that’s a political commitment. the second problem is that even though the united states is a major emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, the bottom line is that we are only one emitter. we’re about 16% of the world’s emissions. so even if we were to massively reduce our emissions, it wouldn’t bring down our temperature trajectory that much. one thing that would be very important is, it would have some impact because we’re a major emitter, but perhaps more importantly it would signal to other countries that the largest economy in the world had the resolve to do it. a lot of other countries in the world compete with the united states… so other countries would be willing to do more because they [wouldn’t want to] be put at a competitive disadvantage in terms [of their] industry.

pf: what are some policies we could implement on a global scale that could greatly reduce the risks of climate change?

burns: i think one thing we could do that could make a very large difference is to eliminate subsidies to fossil fuels development. we spend hundreds of billions of dollars “incentivizing” fossil fuel production and there’s no reason to provide incentives most of the time. there’s enough profit being made that countries would do it anyway. what it does is it eliminates the level playing field for fossil fuels and alternatives. we subsidize in a lot of countries’ renewables also, but at a much lower level. we’re privileging fossil fuels at a time when we keep saying: renewable energy should compete in the open marketplace. but we don’t have a free and open marketplace. so eliminating those hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies and creating more of a level playing field would really help. we also need to substantially increase our research and development for potential technological breakthroughs in terms of energy. one of the things we know is that the stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stone. it [ended] because there were massive improvements based on technological breakthroughs. the same thing could be said here. if we put more funding into renewables for example, their cost could probably come down so much that we wouldn’t have the political battles that we have now because it’d become simply a question of economic imperative to shift away from fossil fuels. we’ve seen the cost curves for renewables drop dramatically to the point they’re at parity, or lower than fossil fuels. if we were to spend more on research and development, there [are] probably a lot more breakthroughs that would help make that transition more quickly.