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For the past three seasons of the Second Nature, hundreds of you have shared climate actions you take in our own homes — composting, avoiding overconsumption, eating less meat. These practices give us a strong foundation for what comes next.

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This season, we’re focusing our energy outward and making our efforts bigger by proxy with the help of community. This first episode serves as a mission statement for our season of community and connection, and we are extremely honored to have our first guest of the season be the one and only Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.

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Be sure to listen to the end of the episode to hear our first-ever Community Classifieds — an audio bulletin board of community climate efforts to join around the world.

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Here are some of the people you'll hear from in this episode:

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Episode Credits

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• Listener contributions: Amandine Thomas,Braden Marazzo-Nowicki, Liv, Melissa Tan, Willa Stoutenbeek‍
• Episode expert: Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson‍
• Editing and engineering: Evan Goodchild‍‍
• Hosting and production: Katelan Cunningham

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Citations and Further Reading

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• How Many People Do You Need to Change the Culture? | Sierra Club
• More people care about climate change than you think | Our World in Data

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Full Transcript

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Katelan Cunningham (00:00):

Welcome back to a new season of Second Nature. This is a podcast from Commons, which is an app that hundreds of thousands of sustainably minded people use to find rewarding ways to buy less and buy better. And this is the show where we talk to people about how they're living sustainably in an unsustainable world. We are back with season four, y'all, but getting here if it wasn't so easy, if I'm being so for real with you, is been a bit of a slog. I realized what was slowing me down when I heard Dr. Ayana, Elizabeth Johnson's speech at the time Earth Awards in November, particularly one line fair warning, there's an expletive coming. She said, hope. What's the strategy? What are we going to do? So we don't need hope.

Katelan Cunningham (00:59):

The reason that getting to the mic has felt to me like trudging through mud in a rainstorm wearing boots that are two sizes too big is because I was waiting for hope to sort of light the way or kick me in the butt. And when I'm looking at climate news, hope has been a little bit hard to come by. I know that on its own, no amount of hoping is going to transition us to a fossil fuel free future or get rid of plastic or make the show happen. But what hope can do is give us a little push or a little motivation to take some of the climate actions that we talk about all the time on this show. Like if you're hoping for a more biodiverse neighborhood that could motivate you to actually start a community garden. If you're hoping for a more ethical fashion industry that could motivate you to ditch fast fashion, hope is the wish or belief in a better vision of the future. But when that vision becomes blurry because the government is shutting down climate efforts or companies are incentivizing over consumption and greenwashing all over the place, we can't just stop doing stuff, not when there's so much at stake without action. Hope doesn't turn into anything, it has nowhere to go. So instead of hopeless, wallowing and screaming into MyPillow, what are we gonna do? Now

Katelan Cunningham (02:25):

I'm gonna get back to actually doing stuff and I hope you'll join me

Katelan Cunningham (02:32):

This season. We're gonna get outside of our comfort zones and into our communities so we can take action that's much bigger than ourselves. We're going from little steps to big steps and this episode is going to serve as sort of a mission statement for the season. If at any point you're feeling a little bit lost or like you're not sure where to focus your efforts, this episode is a great one to come back to, not least of all, because coming up we're going to talk to the icon herself, the first expert of the season, the incomparable writer, climate leader, marine biologist, Dr. Ayana, Elizabeth Johnson. But not before we hear from you our community about how you're already taking the big steps.

Amandine Thomas  (03:21):

I think a lot of people are feeling, uh, maybe a bit demoralized about how do we take down the big machine, you know, capitalism and big polluters and it's just hard to feel like we can make an impact.

Willa Stoutenbeek (03:38):

I personally wanna focus more on utopian ideas than sharing all these dystopian ideas because I feel like the dystopian narrative isn't really offering anyone any perspective. So it kind of also paralyzes people

Liv (03:53):

We're told that we're consumers first and maybe citizens second. But at the end of the day, we're actually all just community members.

Braden Marazzo-Nowicki (04:02):

Every day I go out and work in the community. I see how beautifully resilient people are our capacity for creating an enacting change locally and globally.

Melissa Tan (04:15):

So instead of just like sitting back and waiting for something to happen, try and do it for yourself because what you're doing is actually the pilot of what could be scaled up.

Liv Cella (04:25):

The climate crisis demands radical solutions. And radical doesn't have to mean what you May 1st think. It means radical can be literally taking matters into your own hands and learning to repair your stuff, taking more time with things. I know that that's a hard ask in the society where time is like so monetized, but it's a small rebellion.

Amandine Thomas  (04:49):

We forget that we need to give people grace and we're not all gonna be thunberg from day one. Little steps count as well because they are the first stepping stone towards something bigger and greater.

Braden Marazzo-Nowicki (05:02):

By building community gardens and relying on volunteer labor and the resources that we can find, we showcase a model of reciprocity with nature and the love of community joy and resilience that I believe is the future. And of course we take a lot of this from indigenous authors and activists who are so essential to these sorts of movements.

Willa Stoutenbeek (05:29):

If you look back in history, some of the best systems and ideas have come from philosophies that people thought at the time were crazy. And I feel like we need a little bit more of that. Again,

Katelan Cunningham (05:45):

If you sometimes feel like you're totally alone in your climate efforts or like you're the only one who cares. While the reassuring thing is that the stats show you're not alone. Not even close. But most of us feel like we are in a survey of 130,000 people across 125 countries. 86% thought that their country should try to fight global warming. Here in the US surveys show that practically all of us drastically underestimate public support for climate policies. In reality, support for climate policies is nearly double what we think. And yes, this is also true among supporters of right-wing parties. This is an example of a perception gap when we think things are one way, but they're actually another way. This perception gap thinking that no one cares about climate, when in fact most people do that can actually get in the way of systemic change. That's because this feeling like we are all alone can force us to think of something massive like climate change. Like it's a problem that we have to solve on our own. So sometimes that forces us to narrow our vision on small problems like convincing your parents to get a compost bin

Katelan Cunningham (07:08):

And the small stuff can distract us from the big stuff. The really big systemic stuff like getting entire cities to launch composting programs to thousands of homes. Don't get me wrong, personal stuff is still really, really important. Composting, getting solar panels, taking public transit, eating plant-based. I think of these actions like the ways that we embody our values and keep one foot in the future that we want to live in. But to make real big systemic strides, we have to keep our other foot in strategy and getting outside of ourselves in our homes. If you need a strong nudge in that direction, I'd suggest picking up Dr. Ayana. Elizabeth Johnson's latest book, what if We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures, it is full of essays, interviews, art, data, all focused on solutions, real tangible, do it right now kind of solutions. And I had the great pleasure of talking to her about some of them.

Katelan Cunningham (08:15):

I wanted to start off by saying that this book was a real welcome reality check for me. And I feel like saying that these days is like reality is very scary. So a lot of reality checks are not actually very welcome. But I really appreciated that you're kind of saying like, Hey, the climate has already changed. This isn't something that's going to happen. Mm-hmm <affirmative> this is not something that's probably happening And what I found very eyeopening personally is that it forced me to get really comfortable with the fact that the way forward isn't the way back. So I just kind of wondered how do you think about the past as you start to envision a way forward as you have mapped out in this book?

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (09:20):

I quote my mom in the book somewhere that she talks about back to the future. Like, we do need to go backwards in order to go forwards in terms of some traditional practices and like ways of relating with nature and each other. For example, like the role of mending and having food gardens in our homes, like climate victory gardens is something that she thinks about a lot along the lines of like what happened in World War ii. And so there are all these practical ways of living on the earth that we've known for generations, but lost touch with because of high-paced consumer society. So I do think a lot about how much more sustainable it was to live in previous generations as just like a regular person, not as like a lagger necessarily, but right. Thinking about like what that might look like in the modern context. So I'm a little bit of a Luddite. I'm not super excited about the next app or technological invention or all the ways to use ai. I try to be a futurist in one sense, but not in the techno optimist way at all. Um, more in like how do we better reintegrate ourselves as one of the millions of species on the planet?

Katelan Cunningham (10:41):

One of the other things that struck me is like at the very beginning of your book, you talk about throwing like Cheetos in the ocean to like, oh

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (10:48):

Gosh, yeah, <laugh>

Katelan Cunningham (10:49):

To feed the animals. And just like how quickly, like in the short period of time that you've been on the planet, like how quickly we look back at that and say, oh God, and laugh, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Like, I mean one of the biggest goals of the book is to sort of remedy this lack of action, right? And to get people moving more quickly. When you've been going around talking to people about this book about less talking and more doing, what's the thing that you find most often gets in the way for people? What is the biggest blocker for most people?

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (11:16):

Uh, they just dunno where to start. Having seen that reaction for years now, what I've noticed is that people are really waiting for the right invitation. And so I think a significant part of my role in the world is just to say, welcome. We need you. Like let's figure out where you fit into all this work. Because you know, we know from polling that the vast majority of Americans are concerned and of course more globally and would do something but don't actually know what they should do because they wanna do something meaningful. They don't wanna just like sort their recycling better, you know? Yeah. Yeah. They wanna figure out like what's the thing that will actually make a difference? And so I think there's a lot of just waiting until that appears. And related to that is it can feel really lonely. Yeah. And I think a lot of times people are thinking about what can I do as opposed to like, what can we do?

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (12:11):

Like what can I join? How can I be a part of something that's effective and exciting working? And so that's, you know, one of the things that I certainly encourage people to do is like, find your crew. What is the local organization or chapter of a national group or neighbors or sports team or church group or whatever that you can be a part of and contribute your talents and resources to that would make much more of a difference than you as one person alone. Yeah. And, and to get outside of this thinking about like only what you can do in your household and thinking about how you contribute to the broader changes that we need. Yeah. Although of course like get your money out of fossil fuels immediately for the love of God. <laugh>,

Katelan Cunningham (12:56):

Here's your invitation to get your money out of fossil fuels for the love of God. Right. Now that actually brings me to one of the other things I wanted to talk to you about, which is this sort of idea of ripple effects we've actually done. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. A whole episode on this. And you talked about your dad's legacy, right? That he left behind and you said this thing in the book, you said, it's not about glory, it's about ripples. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I just wondered if you could talk a little bit more about that. I feel like we're all very caught up in this idea of like instant gratification or like quick recognition. And so that really struck me as something very different to kind of like reckon with and get comfortable with.

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (13:31):

Yeah. So my dad was a Jamaican immigrant to the US and an architect and architecture is this notoriously insular and has historically very racist field, so it was super hard for him to break through mm-hmm <affirmative>. But he had, you know, he was a partner in one of the first black architecture firms in New York. And I always thought he was a failure because he didn't have like a bunch of fancy cool buildings that he could point to and say that he made. But after he died, I met someone, a young black architect who had heard of his firm and um, said that they had opened a lot of doors for people. Mm. And that's the entire point, right? That it's not about the glory, it's about the ripples. Like if you're gonna be the first one, you gotta open the door for everyone who's coming up behind you and just talking about this book.

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (14:26):

What if we get it right for the last year? Hearing how it's affected people, resonated with people. It's been so interesting the ripples that I'm hearing about from the book that you can never predict. Right? Yeah. And I think that's kind of the point. You put stuff out in the world and obviously you hope for the best and work for the best possible outcome, but you'll just never know how your work will affect others. Like you said before we started recording that How to Save a Planet, my first podcast, you know, has influenced the way that you approach these kinds of conversations. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And that's like one of the number one things I hear when I'm on book tours. People are like, how to save a planet, like got me through the pandemic <laugh> or like helped me like quit my job and like find this cool climate work to do.

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (15:14):

Um, and of course we had no idea if anyone would be tuning in or like actually taking action, you know, the high school kids who like won against Exxon because of that podcast because they were like, well what are we gonna do? Right? So I think getting people the information and sort of kick in the pants that they need is just a really important step. No one can like hold everyone's hand through every step of finding their way to make a difference in the world. But I think it's really important that there are lots of different people offering these welcomes and invitations and helping people find their roles. 'cause we need everybody.

Katelan Cunningham (15:50):

Yeah. You have this Venn diagram, which I, I feel like probably a lot of listeners of this show, <laugh> will have seen this Venn diagram, but it's such a great framework and even if you've already heard of it, it's a good reminder. I wondered if you could just like quickly explain Sure. Your climate action Venn diagram.

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (16:06):

Yeah. So it's three overlapping circles and the first one is what are you good at? So what are your skills, your resources, your networks? Like what is it that you specifically can bring to the table and like be generous with yourself about that. People are so hard on themselves about, oh, what do I have to offer? And everyone has significant things to offer. The second circle is what work needs doing. So thinking about the particular climate and justice solutions that you wanna work on. And there's a zillion options there. And I encourage people to actually check out drawdown.org if you wanna see a list of all the solutions we already have and be reminded of just how much possibility, how quickly we could make these changes. Not waiting for new technology just with everything we know up right now. And then the third circle is what brings you joy or satisfaction, delight.

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (17:04):

It's not that we're gonna be giggling every day as we do our <laugh> climate solutions work, but um, making sure that it feels gratifying and worthwhile and has these like moments of joy and delight. And it is important for being able to keep going in this work. And for me, a lot of that is just like who I collaborate with mm-hmm <affirmative>. No matter how annoying like the spreadsheet of the day is, like you've got good people around you. And then the idea is just to find your way to the center of that Venn diagram for yourself and stay there for as many minutes of the rest of your life as you can. Yeah. Um, although I think it's important to say like, I have multiple Venn diagrams. It's not like you pick one thing and that has to be like your one thing you do forever.

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (17:47):

Right? Like I do a lot of writing and speaking work, but I also co-founded a policy think tank and I work on that and I teach, so that's allowed <laugh> <laugh> and it could change over time as you learn more and figure out like what ways you can be most useful. And I should say there's a version of this called Ikigai, which is a Japanese framework for finding your purpose. And I hadn't known about that when I just like sketched this on a piece of cardboard. Yeah. But the funny part is it's almost exactly the same except it has a fourth, I think maybe five circles, but there's definitely a fourth one that's like, how can you make a living? Like how can you make money? Oh. Oh yeah. I guess hilariously never even considered irrelevant

Katelan Cunningham (18:33):

<laugh> that,

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (18:34):

But I think that's fine because for a lot of people it's not necessarily the core part of their day job, but it can be a core part of how you show up as a family member, as a community member, as a citizen, et cetera. Mm-hmm. Although I think many would argue that there's a way you can bring climate into your job no matter what. It's

Katelan Cunningham (18:53):

Yes. We have an episode on that too. I agree. There are so many great conversations in this book. I had trouble picking what to ask about, but I think for my final question, you did this live talk with architect Kate Orff and design justice pioneer Brian, the lead junior. The conversation was about neighborhoods and community and Brian said this thing that really struck me, which was culture is the habits, tendencies, patterns and routines that we collectively share. It's the consequences of persistent circumstance and prevailing conditions. And then Kate also added infrastructure as other people. And so I wondered in the work that you've been doing, which as you mentioned can be pretty isolating, I wondered if you have needed to sort of break away from established systems of like capitalism and individualism in order to sort of like embrace a collective approach that is needed for us to like take substantial climate action.

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (19:54):

I mean, everything I've ever done has been a collaboration, right? Like this book is 20 interviews. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. With the people who have helped me see the ways forward in terms of what getting it right. Could look like. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. How to Save a Planet was certainly a team effort. Urban Ocean Lab I co-founded. So my bio is like everything is like co-founder, co-author, co-editor, co-creator. Yeah. Right. So I think first of all, that is important to say. And the other thing that Brian said in that interview is that resilience is just culture. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. It's like how are we responding to the world as it changes? How are you responding together? My sense of my community is always evolving as I change and move, literally move. Yeah. Um, I don't know, I think it sounds a bit oversimplified to put it this way perhaps, but community is the most important thing. Like no one can save the planet. Like no one person can do that. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so we each have a role to play and of course we can do more bigger, exciting things when we find our people and do it together. And so I think the real challenge of it is to find our people mm-hmm <affirmative>. And then do big things with them. Um, and that's harder than it sounds I think.

Katelan Cunningham (21:21):

Yeah, definitely. It feels like a lot of the systems, especially in America that we participate in sort of incentivize this individualism a little bit. Right. And like, so yeah, that's what I meant by isolating. It's sort of like climate work can feel isolating when you're in a world that doesn't care about it. And then also we're just isolated as people I think more and more even especially since the pandemic, like all the things that kind of like came with that mm-hmm <affirmative>. So yeah, it can be tricky.

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (21:45):

I don't think we are in a world where people don't care about it though. I think that's like a self-imposed sense of isolation mm-hmm. Because we know from polling data that like the vast majority of people are concerned. Yeah. The question is like, are we talking about it? Yeah. Are we acknowledging it, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, which is a very different part of the challenge. Like how are people just getting through their day to day in this crazy world and not wanting to add more to their plates? But I'm not sure if I said this when I was answering your earlier question, but one of the challenges that I've seen talking to people all around the country is this immediate impulse to do the individual thing as their contribution to do things only in their own household, right? To like figure out how to lower the carbon footprint of their individual lives.

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (22:34):

And people are obsessed with reducing their own single use plastic or, um, reliance on fossil fuels, all of that stuff, which is great. I'm in, I do all these things. I think it's super important, but if all I did was live this like hermetically sealed perfectly environmentally friendly life, that would not change the world at all. It wouldn't have the ripples, especially if I was like super annoying about it and telling everyone how I was like doing it. Right. <laugh>, but just like alienating people. Um, yeah. And so I think it's almost as if the ways in which the environmental movement has talked about what we need to do for so many decades, that short list of vote, protest, donate, spread the word lower your carbon footprint, it like tends to be isolating an individual as opposed to the, you know, Venn diagram approach of like, figure out where you fit into the broader work that needs doing. Bill McKibben has a quote that something along the lines of the most important thing an individual can do is figure out how to be less of an individual.

Katelan Cunningham (23:42):

On that note, Thank you so, so much for joining us on

Katelan Cunningham (23:44):

The show. I really appreciate

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (23:45):

It. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Katelan Cunningham (23:55):

That is our mission for the season, my friends, to shift from individual thinkers to collective thinkers and shift our focus to systems so we can understand our roles and the power we hold within them.

Katelan Cunningham (24:10):

A great place to start is with Dr. Johnson's climate action Venn diagram. You can find this online, but here's a little refresher. You're gonna draw three overlapping circles and one of them write down what brings you joy in another, write what work needs doing. And in the third you're gonna write what you're good at in the center where all those circles overlap. That's where you're gonna find some of those key climate actions that are perfect for you to focus on. But of course, we can't make systemic change alone. So it's key that we find ways to join and participate in communities these days. We are definitely becoming more isolated, and so I know that building and participating in community can feel really difficult. But these communities are out there and they need your help. There are organizing groups, mutual aid groups, nonprofits, climate clubs, mending clubs, and a lot of you are already involved in them, which is awesome. So we thought this season that we'd end each episode with what we're calling community classifieds. You'll hear directly from folks involved with climate communities and their cities. So you can get leads on places that you can plug in. But first, here's who you heard from on today's episode.

Katelan Cunningham (25:35):

This episode was edited and engineered by the one and only Evan. Good child. It was written and produced by me, Kaitlyn Cunningham. Next week we'll be talking about one of marketing's hottest scams, greenwashing, how it's evolving, where it shows up, and most importantly, how to detect it. Until then, check out these great groups from community classifieds all around the world. And if you wanna shout out an org that you are a part of, there's a link to do that in the show notes. See you next week.