Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson has spent the bulk of her career imagining solutions to environmental problems. Here she speaks at a 2019 TED Talk on the coral reef crisis. Credit: Ryan Lash
In 2024, marine biologist and climate policy expert Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson published a book of essays, conversations, and poetry that imagines a positive and proactive environmental future. “What if We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures” focuses on solutions to climate change, not just its consequences. Her book of interviews and essays features a diverse range of experts and is intended to inspire us to think optimistically about protecting our planet.
Months into the second Trump administration, Dr. Johnson’s optimism persists despite the Trump administration’s agenda to roll back laws protecting our air and water, cancel funding for clean energy and community health, and double-down on the Biden Administration’s greenlighting of fossil fuel projects that we know will quicken the pace of climate change.
CLF President Bradley Campbell recently spoke with Dr. Johnson about where we go from here. We’ve excerpted portions of their conversation and edited for length and clarity.
Brad: I’m wondering how the start of the second Trump presidency has reinforced and changed your take on the close connection between the fate of our democracy and the fate of our climate?
Ayana: The heart of the book is about 20 interviews with a wide array of different experts across policy, yes, but also finance, farming, architecture, design, and Hollywood. There is also an interview in the book with Colette Pichon Battle, who co-leads a climate justice group called Taproot Earth in the Gulf South. Part of our discussion was about what home means in the context of climate change for places like the bayous in Louisiana, where she grew up. And that there has long been this sense there that no one is coming to save us. I’ve been hearing her voice in my head lately. This really is a moment for community, for collaboration, for each of us coming with whatever we have to offer and offering it.
I don’t have a crystal ball as to what the future holds for this administration, but the last few months have been pretty awful at a pace and level of recklessness and disregard for human life and ecosystems that’s pretty astounding and suggests a fundamental lack of understanding that our economy is actually based on nature. Our health and well-being is actually based on ecosystems within which we live. We’re part of a web of life.
My first written reaction to the Trump administration was an article in Rolling Stone encouraging people to act locally. That was always a phrase of the environmental movement that I admit I found kind of corny: “Think globally, act locally.” This was very popular in the 90s, maybe. But now I’m coming back to it. Go to your town council meetings and be a part of local democracy where your voice can make a really big difference.
Brad: In building the book through a series of interviews with leaders, both at the community level and otherwise, sometimes those voices diverge from yours. So I’m curious as to whether, in a book that contains so many voices, is it a challenge to maintain your own voice?
Ayana: No, because I introduced all the interviews. I’m setting the stage with the tone and the questions that I want to ask. I’m also the editor.
In the Mustafa Suleyman [interview] in particular. He is now, since I did the interview, the head of AI at Microsoft. I think a lot of people’s reactions to that interview were actually the same as mine: It doesn’t seem like there’s enough upside here. And I know that from his perspective, a lot of the question is, since it’s here, what’s the best way to have it be here? He’s thought a lot about AI ethics and all of that. He did some important early work on reducing the carbon footprint of data centers. But the question remains, if we can’t put the cat back in the bag, well, what do we do? And so that was really the frame with which I was approaching that conversation. If I had a time machine and could un-invent AI, I would. But that’s not going to happen.
Brad: For a scientist, you have a keen sense of both the importance of law and the flaws and biases of our legal system, particularly the corporate bias. I’m wondering if you were in charge of the United States for a day, what would you fix first in our legal system?
Ayana: Citizens United would be a great place to start. Corporations are not people. All that money in politics, the deluge. Since that Supreme Court decision, the [number] of private citizens essentially buying elections has been astronomical. We certainly saw this in the last cycle in a way that we’ve never seen before in this country. If we want to be able to elect people who care about the things we care about, our votes need to count.
There’s a conversation in the book with Rhianna Gunn Wright, who’s one of the architects of the Green New Deal, and just a delightful policy wonk. It was interesting to talk to her about how critical democracy protection is to climate and environmental work. We don’t often connect those dots as much as we need to.
There’s a million things that I’m worried about. Just the thought of how much we’re going backward on really hard-fought legal battles across the board, not even just the environment, is truly horrifying. This moment in American history is, I hope, giving people a much better appreciation for the importance of judges as we’re seeing them rule on immigration cases and corruption cases. It really, really matters who’s in those positions.
Brad: Do the Obama and Biden policies that you showcase in the book and even celebrate – Justice 40, climate investments in the Inflation Reduction Act, the Climate Ocean plan – look different in hindsight?
Ayana: Because they look gone.
Brad: And they weren’t done. The policies weren’t done in any kind of durable form. One of the things we struggle with is how to give credit to elected officials for being in the right policy posture, but also being critical when they don’t do it in a way that produces durable results. I’m wondering how you balance that?
Ayana: This is a perennial problem for environmental groups, especially the law ones. If it’s impossible to get a bill through Congress, what are you supposed to do? Not take the executive order? It’s not that people didn’t want a more durable option.
I think one of the things we’ve seen very clearly with this administration is they just ignore [laws] if they don’t like it, from deportations to whatever. I think we’re in a very new, as many legal experts are describing it, constitutional crisis scenario where not only do we wish we had better laws, but the laws that we fought so hard to get are barely being applied anymore.
Which is why I keep thinking about these two things at once. [Making durable laws while holding officials accountable.] Obviously, fight for that. Obviously, do everything we can for the midterm elections. And then, also think about what we can do locally.
And the power of corporations in this moment is also enormous. What corporations and universities are going to stand up for matters more and more.
Brad: What do you think are two to three specific priorities that we should be working on over the next two to four years?
Ayana: Electing people who care about these issues.
That’s number, one, two, and three for me right now. But if that’s just number one, then there’s a lot to be said for this concept that, in some ways, this is a moment to create the ideas so that you’ll have them when the window of opportunity opens. This idea of the shovel-ready project got a lot of play through the Inflation Reduction Act, but also under the Obama administration’s Recovery Act. There’s a lot to be done there that’s just planning what we’re going to do next.
[Second], like the title question of my book, “What If We Get It Right,” and the subtitle “Visions of Climate Futures,” we still need to do a lot of this imagining, envisioning collectively, so that we can build the future we want to live in. We have to be able to see it concretely.
And the number three thing: What we should each be doing depends on what we are each positioned to do. It’s time to lean into our particular strengths and figure out how we can contribute to the bigger work that needs doing.
