this interview has been edited for clarity and length.

q: tell me about your fundraiser.

a: i originally wanted to do something that would coincide with my hiking trip because it seemed like the perfect opportunity to fundraise for something that was important to me, and i chose the sierra club because they’re one of the leading organizations that helps the environment. i also wanted to take it a step further and go with something that would help with environmental justice and fighting against environmental racism because that was really important to me, especially as we see so many instances of systemic racism. there are so many different levels on which this happens and i chose the sierra club for that reason and i’m glad i was able to do it with them and raise so much.

q: was there a specific event that made you feel like you should involve yourself in the fight against environmental racism? was there anything that inspired you to do it?

a: i don’t know. it’s a new passion of mine. i think, seeing as a lot of stuff has come up with the black lives matter movement, i was just thinking about how like the outdoors can be a very white place. on my hike, it was crazy how… i mean, vermont’s a very white state, but i really didn’t see a lot of color. not only do a lot of communities of color not have access to hiking trails and other places where they can have outdoor activities, but there are so many cases of pollution and bad water. i guess just learning about flint and other places that have these crises because of other people’s uses of pollution. i don’t know. i guess just seeing that, they weren’t the ones polluting, it was other people in like mass corporations, so i thought it didn’t seem fair that they had to suffer because of other people’s actions.

q: what do you think is the biggest issue within climate inequity?

a: hmm, that’s a tough one. i think one of the biggest problems is the fact that people of color can create change in their community and they can try to fight to fix these issues, but it’s so much harder for them to fix the overall issues of why it’s happening and the pollution and the consumerism and everything that’s leading to it. i guess the fact that it’s an inequality and the fact that not only can these communities not fix the problem, but they can’t fix what’s causing it.

q: when was the first time you found out about climate inequity? was it just generally on social media or was it elsewhere?

a: yeah, i guess. it’s kind of hard to pinpoint. also, when i was driving home and i don’t know, we drive through baltimore a lot and there are these smokestacks and it’s, it’s actually funny because it’s turning trash into energy, but it’s still a major pollutant in baltimore. i guess my dad pointed that out to me and that was really crazy to see. but mainly social media, probably. my teacher is super passionate about that. i was interviewing her last year for this program i was doing and i asked her this question, i asked her, “do you think it’s harder for people without money to be able to fight for climate change?” she was absolutely like, “no, it’s the wealthy people who are creating these issues because they can buy everything and it’s not their concern.” once she said that, like i kind of just, my whole way of thinking turned around. that was really a turning point in that.

q: would you recommend that other people do things like you did, connecting with nature through a hike, or organizing a fundraiser to contribute resources to the fight?

a: yeah, definitely. i think the hike was life-changing. not only because i just think that being able to connect with the outdoors really inspired me to continue to fight for climate change, but the connection between the two made so much more sense because when i’m sitting in my suburban home, i don’t really see why i need to be supporting these causes, but in the woods, it left me thinking that if there weren’t people fighting to keep these trails alive and to keep other things like that going then i wouldn’t be there. i think that the connection between the two is very important.

q: do you think that our generation, high schoolers, gen z, whatever you want to call us, are aware of environmental racism? do you think it gets enough general press coverage?

a: i don’t think so. i think that racism and environmental issues get a lot of coverage, but i don’t think that a lot of people necessarily combine the two. maybe that’s just in the area we live in and like around us, since there are not hurricanes and there’s no pollution as much as in other areas, but no, i don’t think the two are necessarily combined as much as they should be. i think that that’s changing, but up until a few years ago, i’d never really heard of it.

q: do you think environmental racism should figure more prominently in political campaigns and in policymaking right now?

a: yeah. i think that obviously it should. i guess what we were saying before, there are environmental issues and racism and all of that and the need to create laws to fight both of them, but i mean, there’s a definite lack in laws that link them. it would be hard to, it seems like more of a local or state thing than a federal issue, because they’re so specific to different groups i guess.

q: for teenagers who maybe don’t have the time or means to go to organize a fundraising hike like you did, what can we do to fight everyday environmental racism in our lives?

a: i think that one’s hard, because if it’s not something you see in your community, it’s a lot harder to understand it than if it is something you’re experiencing every day. i guess that’s a problem teenagers face in a lot of different areas, because i don’t know, like posting. does that really help? i don’t know. yes it awakens people, but it’s not really action. i think that research and starting to learn about it is the first step. i think that’s really important, but is spreading awareness enough? that’s a good question. i definitely want to think about that, because i don’t really have a great answer. i think that it is hard because some people think that slacktivism is pointless, but at the same time it really does spread information quickly. i also think that since older generations just don’t understand it, we definitely have a chance to make something happen and create change.

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. 

q: many people cringe at the idea of parasitic insects. what is it about parasites that interest you so much?

a: i think what i find so interesting about parasites is the fact that they challenge my assumptions about how the natural world works. i learned about biology, i learned about all these kinds of ecological interactions; predator and prey, and how animals evolve, defenses against predation, or competition. all of that sort of fits into a framework of how i understand the world. and these parasites come along and then give examples of things that don’t really fit that framework, and all of a sudden i realized wait a minute, the level of complexity that’s possible in nature is far beyond what i thought was possible. it’s not like i thought i knew everything about nature ahead of time. but you feel confident in saying ‘yeah, i see this hawk chasing after a squirrel. that fits into what i know of how the world works.’ and then you read or hear about how these parasites are manipulating their host, and you think that makes no sense. and i found that really interesting. it’s so novel; it’s so interesting to me.

q: how do you think photography can be used as a form of environmental communication and why might this be more effective than, say, a scientific paper?

a: photography has this advantage because we are very much visually oriented creatures. so much of our biology is based around the fact that we have such good vision. i think our brains are already well-built to take in imagery; it’s automatically stimulating for us. so, you sort of have this built-in advantage. in that sense, i think it takes a lot less effort to grab somebody’s attention. now, when it comes to changing somebody’s worldview, and inspiring their curiosity, and all those things, it takes more than just the image to do that. it takes a story, it takes context, and a better understanding of what your audience’s assumptions are. a photograph by itself can’t do all that, but it’s an amazing way into somebody’s attention. i didn’t really recognize that until i was having a conversation with my editor over that story, and he really defined my objective for that story. like, you’re not going to teach everybody about every step of this process. the magazine is only going to give you one page, one photograph. and your job is to get people to stop flipping through the magazine and read the caption. and i’ve really seen that as what the role of photography is more broadly. you can’t necessarily give somebody an entire biology lesson with a single photograph. but you can get them to be at least interested to learn about it on their own, or to listen to you talk, or to read the paper or read the article. i just think it’s this window into a larger subject.

q: in your talk “beauty and the bizarre,” you talk about photographing the emerald wasp. could you talk a bit about their relationship with cockroaches and the possible relation to parkinson’s disease? what exactly does the emerald wasp do?

a: the emerald cockroach wasp, or the emerald jewel wasp (another common name it’s known by) hunts cockroaches. but these cockroaches are larger than it, like many times. so rather than try to overpower it or kill the cockroach, it has figured out a way to immobilize its prey. it does that by leading its stinger into the back of the cockroach’s head. its stinger has special sensors that can actually detect where in the brain its stinger is, and it finds the part of the brain that is responsible for the motivation for movement in the cockroach. it then injects a venom cocktail that disrupts the dopamine activity of that part of the brain. and that’s a general way of describing a process that’s actually more complex than i understand. i know that it involves something that disrupts the dopamine activity. what that means is this cockroach can still move, but it can no longer decide to move on its own. so the wasp removes its stinger, and then it grabs the cockroach by an antenna, and by pulling on the antenna, that stimulates the cockroach to move. but if it lets go of the antenna, the cockroach can’t run away. so it’s this way of getting around the fact that its prey is too large. but it also doesn’t want to kill the prey because it’s not going to eat it itself, it’s going to actually feed it to its babies. it’s going to bury it alive with a single egg that can feed on this living cockroach that stays fresh, because it’s not dead.

so i visited the scientist frederic libersat in israel who studies the action of this venom. i went to the lab, and i photographed this. i had done some research on this biology, but i didn’t realize until after when i saw that professor give a lecture at a conference where he said “you know, we’re actually working with parkinson’s researchers to try and develop a better treatment for this disease by studying the wasp.” and that’s because the dopamine-disrupting activity of this venom has a similar mechanism to how parkinson’s works in humans. and what i don’t understand is how close that gap is. so on the one hand, it’s insane that our own brains and cockroaches brains share similar neurotransmitters. it kind of points to the common building blocks of all of the animal world, and the biological world more broadly. i don’t know how far along that collaboration is, or what the near-term implications are. i don’t know that they’re necessarily going to market with a new drug based on this, but i think the idea that they can think about the activity of this disease and the system from a mental perspective. it’s almost like a model system where the activity of this neurotransmitter and the chemistry of the cockroach’s brain is far simpler in terms of its effects on the cockroach’s behavior than our own super complicated brain and super complicated disease. so it’s a way to simplify a system and think about how to approach the much more complicated problem.

q: what’s next for you?

a: for the immediate, i’m very much trying to organize my life and take a break. but i am in the beginnings of my next project on jellyfish and using that as an example for how to think about complexity in the biological world. parasites is another example of this; it’s creatures that have something to teach us about how the world works. everybody knows about jellyfish, but even i’m just scratching the surface of how intricate and beautiful and complicated they are. to look at this thing that just looks like a bag of goo and to understand how it sees the world and has survived longer than almost any other animal on the planet, through mass extinctions. this is a cool thing that we could probably learn something from. so that’ll be the next project for me.

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.