NARRATION

It is not often that a single book completely changes the way you think about your work, but that’s how I felt after reading marine biologist and policy expert Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s, What If We Get It Right? From the moment I put it down, I knew I needed to get this book for my entire team and for every person in my life who struggles with climate anxiety—which is pretty much everyone.

My name is Willow Defebaugh, and this is The Nature Of. Each week we’ll look to the natural world for insights into how to navigate the experience of being human. This week, we’re exploring the nature of solutions.

The way we talk about climate change, and the stories we tell around it, are often so focused on the problems. Even for me, as the editor-in-chief of a climate magazine, it’s easy to catastrophize—because, let’s be honest, things are bad. Which is exactly why Ayana’s work focuses so much on how we change that.

Talking with her left me feeling grounded and empowered by all of the pathways that already exist to a healthy and livable future, and the role we can each play in getting there.

Willow Defebaugh

So I want to throw one of your favorite questions from the book back at you, which is—

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

I hate it when people ask me my own questions.

Willow

I know. What are three things that you wish everyone knew about climate solutions?

Ayana

 I wish people knew that we basically have the solutions we need. Like, we do not have to wait for some fancy new technology. We already know how to produce renewable electricity. We already know how to improve public transit. We already know how to green our buildings, right? We already know how to improve our food systems to reduce food waste. There’s not, like, a big secret about what we need to do. It’s just a matter of how quickly we’re gonna do it. And then, what role we’re each gonna play. So the second thing would be that there is a role for everybody; because addressing the climate crisis is so embedded in everything we do: in every sector, in every community. So often it’s thought of as like, okay, Well I’m not gonna install solar panels and I’m not an engineer and I’m not a politician. But we need project managers, we need graphic designers, we need event planners, we need administrators: There is a role for everybody. We need bus drivers, we need teachers. We need the medical industry involved— 

Willow

PR people, storytellers…

Ayana

We need PR people. We need storytellers. For the love of God, we need Hollywood engaged on this, please. We need pop culture. There is a role for literally everybody. This relates to probably something we’ll talk about, but also it can be fun to work on solutions.

Willow

Yes.

Ayana

Like it doesn’t have to be miserable work. It can be like very creative and gratifying work that you do with people you like. And I think that’s a too-well-kept secret.

Willow

And it’s energizing. It’s empowering. That was my biggest takeaway reading this book: I felt like I just had a renewed amount of energy and, like it’s fun! It should be fun. Why not?

Ayana

Totally. I mean, there’s a lot of emails involved, like it’s not just pure delight, right?

Willow

There’s a lot of Zoom meetings.

Ayana

But there is this sense of being part of moving our future in a better direction. And the thing that I actually took away from not just creating the book but doing, creating the book tour around it, like, deciding to launch with a climate variety show that involved a magician that I co-hosted with Jason Sudeikis; that had music acts that had, you know, trivia contests that was really about how can we take the climate crisis seriously without taking ourselves too seriously? All the rules are made up. We can actually approach envisioning and creating the future however we want. And I find that to be actually really exciting: that there is so much room for not just the arts in this—when people think about creativity, they think about, you know, the formal arts and Oh, if I’m not an artsy person, it doesn’t apply to me. But I think creativity more broadly, like, How are we gonna get these solutions done? You know? Like there’s so many different ways to approach it. 

Willow

I think of creativity as being something that humans have in common with nature herself, right? It’s like, she’s the great creator. We are a very creative species.

Ayana

I mean, giraffes and octopuses exist. So, there are lots of different ways to be a species on this planet.

Willow

Absolutely. Yeah. And we’re a really creative species. Yeah. So. Let’s use that for good. You know, as we were saying, something you do so well in this book is take problems, acknowledge that they’re there, but turn them into possibilities. How do we as a culture shift from constantly talking about what’s wrong to what’s right—and how do we get there?

Ayana

That’s funny. My first response is, it’s so personal.

It’s so a matter of temperament. I mean, we all know cranky people who just always wanna focus on the negative and, like, I don’t know.

And then we all, you know, we all know people who are just so focused on the positive that they refuse to acknowledge how dire the context is, right? So one of the ways I did that in the book was with the title: What If We Get it Right? Framing it as, a question. I mean, there’s a question mark at the end, right?

It’s not like when we get it right, it’s just like, Let’s think about this. Let’s imagine a future we actually wanna live in, right? The subtitle—“Visions of Climate Futures”—is an invitation to imagine a better world essentially. It sounds kind of corny to say it that way out loud, but you can’t just imagine the future by yourself in the corner and then have it happen. We all have a role to play in making it real. But every time we think about the problems, we should also be thinking about, like, What could we do about this? Whether it’s fast fashion or our food system, or design and buildings and neighborhoods and landscapes. Or technology or finance.

There are ways we can improve all of these systems from the personal and household and community levels up through government. That’s really what I wanna leave people with. There’s so much that we could do. We do not have to wait for some magical solution.

We don’t have to wait for fusion. We just have to get to work. 

Willow

Yeah. I mean, you say at some point in the book, I think, Things just don’t have to be this way. And that’s a line that really sticks out because that also, you know, and again, speaking of the toxic positivity, that also should make you a little mad. Right? It’s like, we do not have to be in this situation. There are so many ways out of this situation. 

Ayana

 I think I probably wrote that sentence in reference to fossil fuel executives. Like, this was a choice that was made for us by a bunch of very rich, very selfish people. 

Willow

And that should make you mad.

Ayana

And that should make you mad. And remind us that was a choice: designing the world based on fossil fuels. And there are other choices we can make at any moment.

Willow

There’s something you also say: So often the conversation is binary, either we get the Earth to a place of apocalypse or paradise, without room for anything in between.

So I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about the middle place. Because that’s really what we’re working toward at this point.

Ayana

Yeah. Yeah I mean I think it can be very dispiriting to think in this binary of We either solve climate change or we’re doomed. And this all or nothing, 0 or 100, apocalypse or paradise dichotomy is a false one. And it’s not really helpful, and it’s really demotivating because if you think, Well we can’t get it perfect, then We’re screwed, why bother? becomes the alternative. And what is hard to get your head around, and also a bit sad, is that once you realize that we cannot have a perfectly pristine planet with 8 billion and growing people on it, the world has already changed, climate has already changed, now what? I think of this in a sort of 0 to 100 scale. If the worst outcome is 0, like no life on Earth. And we can imagine a paradise where every species flourishes and ecosystems are all intact. Then somewhere between that 0 and a 100 is where we’re gonna end up, right? We’re talking about hundreds of millions of lives that hang in the balance, literally, in terms of the impacts of climate change and extreme weather that we’re seeing all over the world all the time now in terms of species extinctions, in terms of entire ecosystems, existing or not in ways that are recognizable to us. 

My Ph.D research was studying coral reefs, right? So this is all very personal for me as it is for everyone. And so I think a lot about those increments, and it can be sort of like we’re—like, incrementalism is, gets a bad rap. But I embrace it because whether we have, 2 degrees Celsius of warming or 5 is a huge difference, right? Whether we have a foot or 10 feet of sea level rise is a huge difference. And so that’s how I think about these things, whether we have dengue and malaria in Canada or just in the South United States, is a significant difference.

But these are the sorts of things that, you know, we’re facing and need to think about. 

Willow

The 0 to 100 framework is really brilliant because it illuminates how silly it is—

Ayana

Especially as a kid who is like, But like obviously I want a good grade on this test. Like, how good a grade can humanity get right on this test?

Willow

And it also, your mind kind of immediately goes to, if it’s a question of, Okay, can we save 70% of life Earth, 50%, whatever, imagine being like, Well, it’s not 100, so it’s not worth it. Yeah. 

Ayana

Yeah I mean I’ll take a B-plus honestly. Yeah, that would be great at this point, right?

Willow

Obviously as a marine biologist, the ocean is a passion of yours. So what are a few of your favorite ocean-based solutions?

Ayana

So, ocean climate actions. Like scaling offshore renewable energy, which is right now primarily offshore wind, but others are coming online, like floating solar panels and tidal energy. There’s all sorts of opportunities there.

Decarbonizing shipping. Shipping, if it were a country, would be like the sixth highest emitter of greenhouse gases. Just because the fuel that’s burned in shipping is very dirty typically. So figuring out how to decarbonize shipping is a huge opportunity. Eating a lower carbon footprint diet from, based on seafood. I think of that mostly as like seaweeds and farmed shellfish: oysters and mussels and clams. Everyone can eat with impunity ’cause they just are filter feeders. 

Willow

I’m sure some people will be happy to hear that.

Ayana

Yes. Eat all the oysters you want. So those all combined could be about 35% of our climate solution.

Willow

Wow.

Ayana

So mostly when we think about the ocean, we think about the impacts of climate change on the ocean, which are awful. But there’s also—we should be absolutely looking to the ocean for solutions, as well. So for me, a lot of people think now about regenerative farming as part of shifting our food system in ways that would make it more environmentally friendly, but regenerative ocean farming is a thing people don’t really know much about, which is the seaweeds and shellfish. It’s a thing we haven’t gotten wrong yet. So it’s an opportunity to more or less get it right from the start.

Which is so different than, like, how do we fix agriculture on land? Like, oh God, we have so much mess to undo; so many processes and systems to revisit and deconstruct and rebuild. Or the same with our electricity and our grid and our transportation, right? There’s a lot to undo. Whereas there are some new industries that we can think about, like how do we get it right on labor?

How would we make sure that coastal communities benefit from this? How do we think about who profits off of this, and, like, what the whole supply chain looks like? There’s just—how do we integrate offshore, ocean farming with wind turbines and protected areas and all of this kind of stuff. That’s one of my favorites, but also just the existence of coastal ecosystems. Like wetlands, sea grass beds, oyster reefs, mangroves. These are ecosystems that are protecting our coastline from the impacts of storms that are worsening because of climate change, and in many cases absorbing more carbon per acre than a forest on land.

So they deserve way more love. 

Willow

And it comes back to what you were just sharing that there’s so much we can accomplish by helping nature just do her thing.

Ayana

Yeah.

Willow

And I think people really don’t grasp that. She’s got some of the most incredible technology that we’ve ever seen.

Ayana

I know. I know. One stat that really jumps out to me is that coastal wetlands can provide better and cheaper shoreline protection than sea walls in many cases. People go straight to the concrete engineering solution. But during Superstorm Sandy here in New York and New Jersey, even though 85% of the wetlands in this area had already been bulldozed for development, the 15% that were remaining prevented over $600 million worth of damage.

Willow

Wow.

Ayana

And so if we, whatever is left, protecting it means a lot, right? Whether that’s the loss of people’s homes, or infrastructure, in very practical ways protecting nature has huge benefits to us.

Willow

And I love that you brought in the marine farming ’cause I think something that really jumped out at me in that interview too was that it’s fairly easy to scale, right? It’s something that people can learn how to do, it can be replicated.

Ayana

It’s actually a field that a lot of the new people going to that field are women. And a lot of them are queer women. There’s like this, like, independence of making your own living out on the water—that drive to create something physical in the world and share it.

They’re just— it was a surprise demographic. 

Willow

Incredible.

Ayana

Which is great. Awesome.

Willow

Hell yeah.

Ayana

And it’s a, the whole sector is like very flannel heavy. And so it’s just been very interesting to see this field develop.

Willow

Climate solutions and flannel. It just goes together and we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk more about some of the least sexy, but most important parts of all of this work, and I’m excited to dive into that. Before we do, I wanna touch on tech-based solutions.

I also wanted to talk about nature-based solutions first. But this is a contentious point, I think sometimes within the environmental movement, because there’s weariness around jumping straight to tech-based solutions, and I think there’s good reason for that.

Where do you personally land right now? In terms of how we answer the question of how much do we wanna rely on tech-based solutions? 

Ayana

I mean, we need electricity. Yes, we need transportation. I guess I remind myself to think more expansively about what technology means. Like when bicycles were invented, that was high-tech, right?

And we need high-speed rail in the United States for the love of God, right? It’s time. And I don’t see that coming anytime soon. But that’s a technology we absolutely need, right? It’s not just Silicon Valley, digital app-based technology.  It’s not just nuclear fusion kind of technology.

It’s a much bigger category than that: public transit, modernizing our electricity grid, making sure that we actually have the transmission lines that enable us to bring this new solar and wind energy into the grid is something very boring that we need to figure out.

When I interviewed Climate Scientist, Dr. Kate Marvel, NASA climate scientist…. 

Willow

The best scientist name.

Ayana

I mean, also, ridiculously good branding. Way to go to her parents. Her answer to what is the least sexy, most important solution was transmission.

We need to figure out transmission lines, nobody wants them right where they live. Figuring out how to do that infrastructure in a way that is efficient is something that we’ve got to sort out right sooner than later. 

Willow

Speaking of the least sexy parts of this conversation.

So something I really appreciate that you walk away from this book with is, shifting where people are investing their time and energy, right? Rather than just trying to be a good quote unquote, like climate consumer, right? Changing your consumer habits to how do you be a good climate citizen?

How do you get engaged with local politics? How do we learn about permitting? What advice do you have to share about getting engaged with the critical and less sexy aspects of this work? 

Ayana

I think I would say, start local. Going to your city or town council meetings, getting a sense of who’s going to vote for what you actually have a lot of access to the politicians who represent you, the people don’t take advantage of.

My mother has, in the town where we live, just started showing up and asking about town planning and zoning questions. These are active conversations in most communities. If we’re gonna build more housing, where should it be? How do we think about the caring capacity of this area?

How do we set aside wildlife corridors? How do we think about investing in transportation that matches a growing population? Do we have enough drinking water if we build all these houses? These questions that, the people who are elected to your city council don’t necessarily have a training in any of that.

And so just showing up and asking these questions can be very powerful, right? Because their job is to represent you and listen to your concerns. And it’s much easier to flex your power as a climate citizen, as a local, at a local level than it is, I’d say the presidency for many reasons. Or even with members of Congress.

So I would just say to think about what local things are happening and if you can show up to the meetings, that’s the most powerful. If you can bring five people with you even better and get involved with an organization, I think. People have this sense that being a citizen or showing up on this stuff means you have to do it alone.

And I think that can be, I don’t know, overwhelming, intimidating, all of that stuff. But there are local environmental groups basically everywhere. So whether it’s a local chapter of the Sierra Club or 350.org, or the Sunrise movement, right? There’s all these existing networks you can plug into and find your people and see what you can contribute to that collective effort.

Willow

Yeah. I remember there’s a stat in the book about how many cities there are in America. I can’t remember what interview this came up in. I think it was like, if we get five people in each city…

Ayana

This is Bill McKibben.

Willow

Yes. Who we were gonna talk about. We love Bill.

Ayana

There’s about 20,000 cities and towns in the U.S. and so if you have just a handful of people in each town, say five people in each town, going to the planning board meetings, going to the public utility commissions meetings, keeping up with and putting pressure on those local governments to do the right thing when it comes to climate, that can make a huge difference.

And so, Third Act, his organization, is actually training people to go to those meetings and hearings. To know what questions to ask to think about what they wanna advocate for. And I love that ’cause if enough of us do that makes a huge difference. There’s just no accountability at a lot of these levels right now because the public isn’t showing up.

Willow

So everyone has their homework. Grab a few friends.

Ayana

I put him in the money section—the “Follow the Money” section—because he’s been doing such incredible work leading on divestment and trying to shift what’s going on on Wall Street. And he reminded me, actually, that since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, like agreeing basically that we need to reign in fossil fuels, banks have provided $5.5 trillion in financing to fossil fuel companies. I would say going in the wrong direction; with the top four banks alone, JP Morgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America providing more than $1.3 trillion in funding. This is expanding fossil fuel infrastructure So if anyone listening has their money in any of those banks, just move it.

There are a lot of better options. BankforGood.org is a place to go and research banks that are much more responsible. And it’s the kind of thing that’s a pain in the butt to move your money, but you just spend a day doing research and paperwork and then you’re done forever and you don’t have to worry about your money financing fossil fuels because that’s what happens when you have your money in the bank or in a fund.

Some portion of it gets lent out to fossil fuel companies. And that’s no good. 

Willow

I’m happy that we brought in Bill McKibben and his interview ’cause I wanted to touch on it anyway, we love Bill. Something he goes into in that interview also is addressing how much progress we can achieve within capitalism.

And I wanted to point that out because I think we hear a lot within progressive circles of, there’s nothing we can achieve until capitalism is gone. And he points out that there are many countries around the world, Scandinavian countries that, you know, have achieved progress, but because there’s also regulation.

So I was just wondering if there’s anything you could share about green capitalism and how we can think about what we can achieve within this framework that doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere anytime soon. 

Ayana

Yeah. This is something that came up in a lot of interviews in this book. The sort of reality of this, the scenario we face is that we live within capitalism and we don’t get to just stop working on climate solutions until we have a different economy. Like, this is a race against the clock; how can we keep moving forward? And so there’s a little bit of we’re just gonna have to walk and chew gum on this one.

And I feel like so often when we hear that kind of perspective that Well, capitalism is dooming us all. So it’s just very fatalistic, right? It’s just the thing that it keeps coming back to, is like there’s a lot of quitters out there. Don’t be a quitter when it comes to climate.

Willow

Don’t be a quitter.

Ayana

Like, don’t give up. Do not give up, right? Just don’t give up on the future of life on Earth. And so if we take giving up, we take quitting, off the table as an option, that leaves us with, okay, this is the reality of the world that we live in. What progress can we make within this current reality while obviously trying to improve the context within which we make future decisions. 

Willow

Yeah. I’ll never forget after the presidential election, the results came in and one of the first like requests for comment I got from a major publication was like, Do you plan on giving up?

And I was like, on life? On the planet? I think a lot of where my head has been at is the question of just what can we do with the pieces that are on the board. And the board’s not ideal right now. And also there’s still things that we can do.

Or focus on at the very least. 

Ayana

Absolutely.

Willow

I think we often talk about climate and the climate crisis more through this lens of are we screwed or are we not? Or are we in a good place or a bad place? But actually taking the moral framework of, Is it right, how we are in relationship with nature? It’s a powerful shift and I’m wondering if you can speak to that. What possibility is there in achieving or spreading moral clarity within the messaging around climate? 

Ayana

Yeah, it’s funny ’cause like we were just talking about nuance before. And I think yes, of course embrace nuance, but also let’s be clear that some things are right and some things are wrong and some people have much more blame than others in this.

And destroying the future of life on Earth is wrong. Making poor people deal with all the worst impacts of the climate crisis is wrong, right? Making communities of color deal with all the pollution of the fossil fuel sector is wrong. Driving species extinct is wrong, and I think it’s okay to just have that clarity on some things and that it is our duty as humans to help solve problems even though we didn’t create them.

Which is a bummer. I don’t wanna be cleaning up these executives’ messes, but we’ve agreed that we’re not gonna quit on life on Earth, so here we are. It comes out of a speech I gave at the youth climate strike, global climate strikes in 2019. When Greta Thunberg was in New York, there were like 200,000 or 300,000 people in the streets of lower Manhattan.

It was amazing. It was such a special day. I was, like, the old person who was invited to speak at the youth rally which I’m very honored. Nothing like high school kids giving you any sort of stamp of approval. The toughest audience.

So often, people describe young climate activists as naive. And I just wanted to tell them there’s nothing naive about moral clarity. Like it is okay. And in fact, older folks need to be reminded that there is a right and wrong on a lot of this stuff. And the question is to what extent and how quickly can we rectify those wrongs? Because I absolutely see that as a critical role for young people is just keeping us all focused on the big picture, keeping us honest about the stakes for their future.

They’re right when they say we’re setting their future on fire. Like they need to continue presenting us these stark realities and holding older generations accountable for honestly our failings, to step up with solutions in a big way sooner. 

Willow

And I love that you framed it as the younger generation keeping us honest.

And I think that there is something that is so clarifying about seeing this as a moral issue. There’s a reason that—kids skipping school around the world because what’s the point of going to school if there’s not a livable future—I think there’s a reason that really shifted the needle for so many people. We’re at a point now where the main issue isn’t climate denialism anymore. We’re at a point where the majority of people are concerned. 

Ayana

The vast majority. Yeah.

Willow

I wanna end with the climate Venn diagram. I think it’s the perfect invitation for anyone who is listening to this and wondering, Okay, I don’t wanna sit on the sidelines like, how do I get involved? Can you share about that?

Ayana

Or even if you are involved, but are wanting to step it up. So this climate action Venn diagram came out of just being asked over and over, Okay, I’m in like, how can I help? What do I do? And it’s such a hard question to answer because I’m like, I don’t know, I need to know a lot about you to answer that question. For so long I feel like the environmental movement and the media when they’ve written about what you can do, it’s a very generic list of, like, you should use your vote and donate and protest and spread the word and lower your personal carbon footprint, which of course is a marketing term invented by Ogilvy on behalf of BP. There’s that.

Willow

The greatest scam there ever was.

Ayana

The greatest scam there ever was, I am now convinced is actually plastics recycling.

Willow

Oh, say that.

Ayana

So the attorney general of the State of California has now sued fossil fuel companies for pretending that plastics recycling works because basically like it’s very hard to make most plastic into a new plastic thing that’s the same thing, at least, right? A bottle doesn’t just become a new bottle forever in this closed loop and we’ve given a pass to all this single-use plastic for so long because it had a recycling logo on the bottom, which—the three arrows in a triangle with a number in the middle doesn’t mean it’s recyclable. That’s just a symbol, denoting the type of plastic that it is. And if it’s not one or two, it’s probably not getting recycled. And if it’s one or two, it can only get recycled maybe once or twice before the quality degrades so much that it’s useless and so I’m really hopeful about this lawsuit because, yeah, all these corporations, I mean Coca-Cola is basically like a plastic bottle company.

And so figuring out how…once we are not deluded about that, we can start to think about how we need to make changes in order to…

Willow

And that’s why we need lawyers too.

Ayana

Absolutely. We need lawyers. Anyway, so yes, I think this is like one of the biggest frauds of greenwashing ever perpetrated on the public.

I will stop talking about that now and I will talk about the Venn diagram.

Willow

I am happy you brought it in because it goes back to what we were sharing earlier how so many people think their focus or their personal emphasis should be on recycling more and whatever else, but it’s actually let’s get your energy going where it will actually make a difference.

Ayana

Yeah. Only 9% of plastics get recycled in the U.S., which is mind boggling. And I think we shouldn’t denigrate the role of individual household level action in reducing our waste. Our food waste, for example, is like a really big deal. A lot of that happens in the home, and if it ends up in a landfill instead of in a compost, releasing all this methane, which is a super potent greenhouse gas. The choices that we make as individuals certainly add up if we are riding our bikes, advocating for bike lanes. Like the more people that are like using these forms of public transit, the more investment there is in it, right? And the more people who are supporting brands that are leading on sustainability, the more those companies can thrive.

So the way that we engage with solutions and use our dollars and our voices absolutely matter. But if we get so naval gaze-y about and devote all of our climate solutions energy to just reducing our own impact on the planet, we don’t leave anything left for engaging with policy and our city council meetings and our public utility commissions, which are deciding how quickly and how justly we make our energy transition to renewables.

So I just wanna encourage people to think bigger than themselves in all things. And so this Venn diagram has three circles. The first circle is what are you good at? And the idea there is that you should be using the skills and the resources that you specifically have and applying those to climate solutions.

So what a lawyer and a transit nerd and a designer should do are very different things. And I just keep wanting to put in a plug for good project managers. Like we need great administration on this. We need the spreadsheet makers. Yes, we need you… 

Willow

Because I am not one of them.

Ayana

So whatever skills, resources, networks you can bring to the table, super important.

The second circle is, what is the work that needs doing? So which are the particular climate and justice solutions you wanna work on? And there are hundreds of them. If you want some inspiration of a full list of solutions, go to projectdrawdown.org and you can see these are all solutions that exist already and you can contribute to.

And then the third circle is, what brings you joy? That’s what’s gonna keep us going in this work, prevent burnout, et cetera. And so finding our way, each of us to that heart of our own bespoke Venn diagram, is a thing I would encourage people to do. 

Willow

What are your skills, what work needs doing, and what brings you joy?

Ayana

Yeah.

Willow

Perfect.

NARRATION

At the end of each episode, I offer three prompts for guided self-reflection to help internalize and investigate how this week’s themes show up in our daily lives and how we can apply the principles discussed for this week. 

I’d like to invite you to think about the questions from Ayana’s Climate Venn diagram. And how they fit into your own life.

Her questions are:

1. What am I good at?

2. What work needs doing?

3. What brings me joy?

Follow the links in show notes for additional resources related to the episode.

The Nature Of is an Atmos podcast produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Nuzum of Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Julia Natt, Eleanor Kagan, and Daniel Hartman. Our sound designer is Kristen Mueller. 

The Executive Producers of The Nature Of are me: Willow Defebaugh, Theresa Perez, Jake Sargent, and Eric Nuzum.

Atmos is a nonprofit media organization focused on the cross pollination of climate and culture. In addition to our podcast, we deliver award-winning journalism and creative storytelling through a biannual print magazine, daily digital features, original newsletters, and more. To support our work or this podcast, see our show notes or visit atmos.earth/biome

I’m your host Willow Defebaugh and this is The Nature Of.