Because that’s not how Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson rolls.

BY CINDI LEIVE

Someone recently described Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson to me as a “magical human being,” which makes sense: She’s a marine biologist who somehow makes very dense climate science accessible, and she’s also a lot of fun (last week, she and actor Jason Sudeikis hosted a climate variety show at the Brooklyn Museum).

But her greatest magic trick is her optimism. In her new book, What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures, a collection of interviews, data, poetry, and more, Dr. Johnson veers off the doom-and-gloom path of much climate coverage to go in a different direction. She talked to me by phone from near her home in Maine while a literal cricket chirped in the background.

Cindi Leive: Your title, What If We Get It Right?, implies that we can get it right—which is kind of a novel idea. So my first question is, do you really believe that?

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson: I think the most important part of the title is the question mark! [Laughs.] I think it’s important to be clear that getting it right does not mean a perfect world because the climate has already changed. We’re going to be experiencing climate impacts regardless of what we do. But there are a wide range of possible futures. And we basically have all the solutions we need: We know how to shift to renewable energy. We know how to improve public transit…We know how to green our buildings. It’s not a big mystery what we should do. 

You mentioned a wide scenario of possible futures. Can you sketch them for us?

Well, one option is the trajectory that we’ve been on at least until the last few years, which is just letting the fossil fuel industry win, not reining in extraction and the burning of oil and gas and coal at all, and heading toward a climate apocalypse: the mega-floods mega-droughts, mega-fires, mega-hurricanes version of the future. And that’s what we get from media. That’s what we get from movies. Most of the content on climate that reaches us is like, It’s a horror story, and it’s only going to get worse. And yes, we do want to avoid the worst-case scenario! But if we do all of this work, what do we get? That was my impetus for the book: to show the other side if we implement all the solutions we already have. We could essentially stop the Earth from warming further. We could add many more species living on this planet with us. We could [lessen] sea-level rise. That sounds like not that big a deal, but we’re talking about hundreds of millions of people—the largest human migration in history!—who might not have to migrate because of sea-level rise. So the extent to which we rein that in really matters.

I think a lot of people, when they think about preventing climate change, still think that means they have to prioritize the health and well-being of people a couple of generations from now or half the world over above their own well-being. But you don’t see it that way at all.

For so long we were told that this is a problem for our grandchildren. And it’s not. The dire climate impacts are already upon us. And so the thought that we could just put off action—that ship has sailed. I personally also don’t see this through the frame of sacrifice. Because we are already sacrificing by not doing anything—which is a choice with incredibly horrific consequences. And so doing something is actually the easier and better option and will absolutely pay dividends. 

So much of the book is deliciously nerdy—really deep in the weeds of how you make change in so many extremely specific areas. I really liked the interview with Abigail Dillen [a litigator at Earthjustice] because I don’t think that people think about the courts as having that much to do with our climate futures.

We absolutely don’t think about the Supreme Court generally as a big environmental issue. You know, people have been so rightly horrified by the Dobbs decision overturning Roe versus Wade. We’ve missed the overturning of the Chevron doctrine which gives agencies deference in sorting out the details of how to implement the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act.

We have three branches of government, and they all have a major possibility to shape, to be blunt, the future of life on Earth. The fact that the United States is the largest emitter, historically, cumulatively, is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. We try to blame other countries, but it really is us. So whether we get it right really matters because we set the status quo for policy in other countries.

I also loved the chapter with Ayisha Siddiqa and Xiye Bastida. Sometimes Gen Z activism gets dismissed, like “It’s all about these big theatrical gestures and made-for-TikTok protests.” But this was an incredibly intellectually rigorous chapter.

There are a lot of young people who are serious strategists and organizers working on climate, and thank goodness, because we desperately need them. This is a multi-generation-deep movement right now. The biggest thing that came out of that conversation for me was: We really need to support this next generation. Their moral clarity is a compass that we need. When they say, you’re setting our future on fire, it’s true, and we need to be accountable to them.

Your last climate book was four years ago. What feels different to you now?

The policy landscape is different. Since that first book was published, we’ve had the Inflation Reduction Act passed, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed, which is the largest investment in climate solutions in world history. And a lot of things are changing for the better. I have solar panels at my house because of those tax credits.

And this book is also dropping right before an election. How are you thinking about that, up and down the ballot?

First of all, this is a climate election. Who we elect will shape the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions. We have at the presidential level, a choice between Donald Trump, who literally offered fossil fuel executives that for $1 billion in campaign donations, he would do their bidding once he got into the White House again. And then you have on the other side Vice President Harris, who was the deciding vote on the Inflation Reduction Act and signed that into law and has been there while things like the American Climate Corps were established, putting tens of thousands of young people to work on climate solutions. And down ballot, it is those local officials, the city council members. public utility commissioners, the school board, and the mayors who are deciding, do we have municipal composting? Are we expanding bike lanes and investing in public transit? Are we, you know, greening and insulating buildings and updating building codes, for example? All that sort of nitty-gritty is where change happens. 

I’ve been partnering with the Environmental Voter Project, which was created on the understanding that there are about 10 million environmentalists in the US who have climate as their number one voting issue, who are already registered but who do not regularly vote. So if we can get some of those folks to head to the polls…They have a track record of shifting by percentage points the turnout in key places. If people are looking for a place to plug in before the election, I recommend that. The stakes are so high.