What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
I recently got to experience the Cambridge stop on Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s nationwide book tour—which feels more like a progressive dinner party serving up a buffet of climate solutions. At each stop, she invites a handful of the individuals featured in her book to explore the book’s title question, What If We Get It Right? In Cambridge, Johnson sat down with Samantha Montano, Professor of Emergency Management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy; Kelly Sims Gallagher, Dean and Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy at Tufts University; and Brian Donahue of Bascom Hollow Farm, Professor Emeritus at Brandeis University, and an editor of From the Ground Up. They shared their “least sexy climate solutions,” which included building funding for emergency management; eating less (but more sustainably raised) meat; ensuring greater access to high-quality food; and enacting financial incentives, or “feebates,” to radically shift consumer behavior.
Their conversation reminded us that solutions do exist, and that now we must act. The evening was wrapped in a heartfelt musical performance by the Oshima Brothers, a thumping poetry reading by Steve Connell, and a fiery audience call-and-response Climate Oath. The packed room was electric with energy and possibility. Boundless optimism was in the air two weeks prior to the election.
My experience of the book tour provides a peek into this robust volume, an anthology of 20 interviews, five poems, three co-authored chapters, two artists’ new works, and personal notes and stories from Johnson’s life. She doesn’t shy away from the very real and stark realities of the climate crisis, setting the stage with a chapter she calls “Reality Check.” After all, she’s a “scientist and realist” who just happens to be “in love with climate solutions.” From there, she takes the reader on an optimistic journey—meeting with thinkers and doers, farmers, filmmakers, scientists, policy visionaries, community organizers, artists, and poets to create a playbook of collective wisdom for all of us.
I can give you only a small slice here of the wide range of topics and voices covered in the book: nature-inspired solutions with author and journalist Judith D. Schwartz; equity in farm ownership with Black Kreyol farmer and author Leah Penniman; the power of design in shaping a better climate future with Museum of Modern Art’s Senior Curator Paola Antonelli; the responsibility of corporations with Patagonia’s Vice President of Communications and Policy, K. Corley Kenna; and solutions like regenerative ocean farming with farmer and GreenWave Director Bren Smith. Interspersed throughout the chapters are poetry by Wendell Berry, Ayisha Siddiqa, Jacqueline Woodson, Steve Connell, and Marge Piercy, and art by Olalekan Jeyifous and Erica Deeman. This book connects inspiration and action—the perfect ingredients for our times.
Together, Johnson and her collaborators help us see ourselves doing the “joyous work” to realize a better climate future for all.
To close, here’s a passage from the book:
Massive change is happening and it will be inevitably increasingly hard and painful, and many of us will get lost along the way. The only protection against the worst-case scenario is also in community.
We need each other. Either way and always.
— Mia Birdsong
Learn more at getitright.earth.
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