ASM194 Taking Action on Climate Change with Anna Jane Joyner

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the world is burning but it's not too late we're talking climate change this week on ask sciencemic [Music] welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith in life but this week i'm asking the questions to anna jane joyner who is an expert and an advocate in the world of climate change i'm really excited about the potential for us to get out of hopelessness and into action so what do you say let's get it started anna jane joyner is passionate about crafting stories and strategies that inspire new and non-traditional audiences to take action on climate change her work has been featured by rolling stone glamour mtv the associated press and more anna jane's efforts to engage evangelicals including her own father a prominent pastor was featured in years of living dangerously an emmy award-winning showtime series on climate change on the climate crisis a mealy mouth today currently she's the co-ho co-host of no place like home a podcast that gets to the heart of climate change she's also the director of the good energy climate storytelling project a new initiative that collaborates with tv and film writers to tell compelling climate stories anna jane welcome to ask science mike oh it's so good to be here thank you for having me so you just you agreed to come on to the show with like zero notice at all i'm so thankful uh and i don't usually do two interview shows back to back so i bet people in the audience like whoa science mike what's going on um but i think this is like maybe the most important conversation we've ever had on ask science mike uh because in a very macro view we're at a really critical phase of human civilization and the climate right now and in a really micro view there's a lot of actions and work that need to be done right now to address climate and i know that people listening to this program care about climate change i know that they usually feel like really disempowered and confused on what the next right action is and what they can do and i was wondering if you could talk to us about you know how you approach climate what the big picture looks like and uh what got you into climate advocacy in the first place i would love to where would you like me to start uh let's talk about kind of your story and your experiences first and go from there cool um so i was not raised to be a climate activist quite the opposite my dad is kind of a prominent mega church pastor in the sort of evangelical charismatic space um that william came out of william matthews our friend um but yeah so i was not definitely wasn't on my radar if anything environmentalism was um kind of looked down upon as like something that crazy liberals did um but i did grow up in the mountains and spending time on the gulf coast where i now live so i grew up with kind of a deep love and appreciation for nature which i think did plant some of the seeds of my activism but basically you know classic i went to college at unc chapel hill and i studied abroad in new zealand and um just happened to take an ecology course because i thought it would be easier than taking the science courses at unc chapel hill um and so i'm taking this ecology course while i'm in new zealand and for the first time really studying like the sort of magical ways that the like earth actually works like i remember we were like one of our projects was growing different kinds of grasses and looking like at you know the ecosystem at like the grass level and we did a lot of like stunning bird migrations and i just was like very mesmerized by how ecology works and how we're all so interconnected and just seeing the worlds in that very minute way that we often overlook but that's it's quite miraculous um and then of course i'm running around in new zealand so it's just like absolutely like one of the most beautiful places on the planet and um i had i was kind of a heathen at that point like i'd sort of eschewed my my upbringing and the evangelical christianity that i had um been brought up in i was a sorority girl i was mostly interested in like making lots of money and marrying some handsome person and but it was basically it was running around in new zealand and it was also the first time i could vote an election it was the second um it was the second bush election and so i don't know i just had this sort of awakening where i really felt like for the first time since you know i was a child and how you know growing up evangelical as you all know you have this kind of like save the world or save the souls mentality where you're fighting for this bigger cause and i'd i'd kind of lost all that and was really just mostly focused on myself but there was something about learning about the political system and researching and exploring how i wanted to vote which i took very seriously since it was my first time and then also just like being immersed in this incredibly beautiful place and learning about uh ecosystems that i don't it kind of was rebirthed in me like this desire to actually fight for something or care for something bigger than myself so yeah i went back to unc chapel hill and switched my major to environmental science quickly realized that science was not my forte and switched to environmental communications which lo and behold is actually a pretty big gap in the space and yeah just like that's really when i started learning about climate change and mountaintop removal coal mining and you know ocean pollution all these kind of environmental justice and how environmental harm impacts people and um it just kind of so you know it's kind of like the matrix like once you take the pill and you see it it's it's really hard to go back and i just felt pretty early on that there was not anything else that i could do it just felt like a you know kind of a calling to use the language of my church um and i've been doing it ever since almost 15 years 15 years next year which makes me feel very old it you know it really is so vital um like you i love science like you i'm not a scientist but there is such a gap between how scientists communicate and what motivates and creates understanding with the public like the very techniques that are required to publish and get grants and be successful in science are like antithetical to public communication yeah and driving policy uh so it's it's great to hear you name that and also that you gave your life over to it i mean that's really impressive um so i just want to start by saying like thank you for identifying and then filling that gap and doing it so well no thank you um you know you've got kind of a boots on the ground view of efforts to work on environmental policy and to affect positive change in our climate trajectory i'm wondering with that vantage point if you ever feel hopeless and if you feel hopeless what you do yeah um the answer is i have definitely felt hopeless at various points you know this is a heavy a heavy career to work in you know like it's literally wrestling with the fate of the world every day and um and a lot of tragedy and harm and it can be very overwhelming at times i think a lot of people in the activism world struggle at different points and so yes so i think you know for me it's you know i've been an environmental activist since i was 19 essentially since i had took that course in new zealand i came home and started getting involved in the environmental movement at unc chapel hill and you know never worked in any other field other than pouring coffee um so it's um you know in some ways it's all i've ever known but i do think for me i had kind of you know a sort of a climate awakening when i was yeah it was like 2013 2014 i was doing this documentary series years of living dangerously and basically was like well if i'm going to be featured on this documentary series about climate change i need to like re-up all of you know my like immerse myself in all the latest research and at that point i was working on several different environmental issues i was also doing a lot of forest policy and environmental or water quality issues um but i and climate was like a part of that portfolio but it wasn't my sole focus but i i really did just kind of dive in and start doing all this research it was all stuff that i like intellectually knew like i took courses in climate science in college it wasn't um it was you know i was aware of it but i guess that was the first time where i like i i really got it like i remember i was listening to this ted talk by david roberts who's a journalist for vox media brilliant climate journalist if you're if you're looking for for voices on it um but he just gave this like ted talk where he would somebody had challenged him to explain climate change in 15 minutes and he's it's very simple but it's just like the way he lays it out just it really showcases in like simple but compelling terms how dire the situation is and like how much we have to lose and kind of the fire that we're playing with as a species um and i just remember like driving and crying in my car and just being like i l i can't do anything else like nothing else matters like especially at that point i was working on a at a regional non-profit and you know we were it was in western north carolina which is where i grew up and kind of my my heart is definitely there a lot of my family's there i love those mountains um but it just felt like i was you know we were fighting to protect this region but it felt like i was like fighting it felt like i was like painting a room with in a house with a wrecking ball outside you know like it was just all of a sudden very clear that um if we don't if we don't deal with climate change then it's you know all of these other issues you know just ultimately um i don't want to say they don't matter but like that's like it is the over whelmingly existential crisis that we have as a species have to have to figure out or or not and face the consequences um so yeah i think for a while i definitely went through some ups and downs but i did go through a pretty severe depression after the 2016 election along with like half of america so at least i wasn't alone um but it was it was the first time where i really felt you know kind of hopeless like it just i you it it's very personal for me because my dad is a climate denier and also a public figure and we were kind of getting and just you know there's a sense of a betrayal or almost a band admit like you're um you're advocating for these policies and for this person who is not only undermining my entire life's work you know like everything i've ever fought for professionally and personally because they're very tied together for me but also they're endangering my life and my future and like the theoretical grandchildren that i you know that i'm probably not gonna have because i'm too worried about the future and you know that felt i just felt so like personally betrayed and then just like genuinely scared you know like there's a i mean there's it's still true to this day there's a very real possibility that we don't figure this out and that the future just you know continues to get a lot more difficult and scary and you know we could we could be looking at um a very very different world by the end of the century i mean we will be looking at a different world kind of the scale of how different i think is what we are deciding now so yeah that was really hard and i would say there are a couple of things well let me pause do you have any questions about that and then i'll tell you how how i got out of it i would just say on your very last statement about this entry i've noticed a shift in what scientists talk about away from will it get bad to how bad will it get and how soon and what influence our actions have on those two variables but the question of does it get bad seems to be in the rearview mirror um and i i know for me that creates a lot of a lot of sadness and a lot yeah it does it's i mean sometimes i take a step back and i'm like it's just so ludicrous that we're in this situation like that we are being i'm i feel angry because it's actual you know there's like 90 of carbon pollutions are created by like 10 companies you know like there are actual humans with addresses and names um both politicians and corporate you know leaders who have made the decisions that have put us in this very dangerous situation and i feel angry and upset about that and some of that even goes you know towards my parents who have been advocating for politicians who are championing these kinds of dangerous policies and i think we have to part of processing all this is acknowledging the negative emotions like of grief and anger and loss and sadness and for me that's been really important and i think they're completely fair emotions even despair i think is a fair emotion because this is unlike anything we've ever seen before and nobody knows exactly what to do about it and there is a lot of sadness there for me and also i should say too like i work with a psychologist who's who specializes in climate change and psychology and how it and that actually is a really important part of um i think a lot of like the sort of environmental groups like you know the client climate change groups um kind of just want to jump straight to hope like there's still things we can do you know windmills and rainbows and solar panels and electric cars and all that is great but i think if you don't acknowledge how scary this is and how how sad it is then you can you know it feels disingenuous um because most people's emotional experience of dealing with climate change does include those emotions and we can't just pretend like they're not there um both as individuals and as like a society when we're dealing with this um and it was odd for me like when i went through that pretty harrowing depression after the election and i you know i didn't work for a couple months i'm a freelancer right now so i didn't have like an office i had to go into which i think like created positive and negative things like in some ways all my friends who still had to go to work even though they were traumatized at least they still had something they had to do you know like they kind of whereas i was just kind of like marinating in the sense of like existential despair and anger um but i did have this sense even when i was going through that that like i would come out of it it was very strange too it was like the first time in my career where i didn't know it wasn't even that i just didn't know what to do like i actually couldn't do the things i knew how to do like i like i was lucky to get out of bed some weeks you know like it was just like it was like all of my all of them i like go get them activism energy just had evaporated and it was really scary because a lot of my identity is wrapped up in my work and it's like i just couldn't there's a couple months where i just couldn't show up which is was very strange and but it was almost like i feel like i almost had to go through that period like and i did like i sort of almost like like i have so this is very personal but why not i have like panic attacks like they run in my family um and like a bunch of my siblings have them they're you know a thing that we inherited for better or worse but one thing that helps me when i'm having a panic attack is like imagining the worst case scenario which is that you die and for some reason that makes me less freaked out because i'm just like oh i go hang out in the sky with my dog who passed a couple years ago or i don't know everybody dies and sure it's terrifying because we don't know exactly what it is but it's a very like natural human thing that's going to happen one way or another and so for some reason that calms me like just like going to the worst possible scenario um and i had to kind of do that on a macro level with climate change like what is the worst case scenario here like humans go extinct and that is so sad because i love humans like i love music i love art i love relationships i love stories i love so much of um the kind of the the beauty that that humanity has brought and and it makes me really sad to think about losing that but i think you know this is a small planet and a huge universe and i have to hope and believe that if we did that to ourselves that some sort of life force and beauty and art would exist and who knows what happens um but that that helped me and then i think which is a weird thing to say but that is something that helped me kind of come out of it and then ultimately the other really big thing that helped me was i live in the deep south i live you know in alabama i come from a leg a legacy of um you know oppressors essentially people who owned slaves and participated in um the wrong side of the civil rights movement and um being back down here i've had to confront a lot of that and also just like really have um made kind of a more concerted effort to to learn from my friends who are people of color and who have um been you know kind of been marginalized throughout history or their families or their you know their can folk have and i think that's like one of my friends is marianna east hegler who's a climate justice essayist and she wrote this beautiful piece about how climate change is not the first existential threat for people of color black people in the south in particular you know 400 years of slavery was definitely an existential threat and many people you know lived and died before they saw freedom and and so i think you know especially from people who are coming from kind of a more privileged position it's you know it's easy to get overwhelmed by the the existential nature of climate change and how scary it feels but it's helped me a lot to learn from people whose um you know whose family in stories you know have already faced that you know overwhelming crises um and still you know fought for justice and freedom because it was the right thing to do not even necessarily because they thought they were going to win um yeah [Music] i care so much that any sponsors for ask science mike are products and services that i think you'll really be interested in hearing about that can really improve your quality of life and i can't think of any better example of that than betterhelp.com if you follow any of my work you know that i've been on a really incredible mental health journey the last couple of years in the last eight months especially there's honestly been times where i've wondered if i'll be able to be happy or if i'll be able to accomplish the things that i want to accomplish in life and professional mental health counseling and therapy is how i've made it through that and not to say that i'm healed i'm realizing that for me to be me for me to be the me that i want to be requires mental health guidance on an ongoing basis here's the problem at least 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therapists available across all 50 states and worldwide they have broad expertise in a network that might not be available where you are and there's financial aid available for those who qualify one of my favorite things about the service so if you'd like to get started today pursuing better mental health support in your life ask science mike listeners get 10 percent off their first month with discount code science mike just go to betterhelp.com slash science my can fill out a questionnaire to allow the experts at betterhelp to assess your needs and get you matched with a counselor you'll love that's betterhelp.com sciencemike [Music] i'd like to return to something and that is uh your vulnerability in discussing panic attacks we're talking about climate and big picture stuff but i also just thank you for being vulnerable um you know i i've had uh some mental health struggles the last couple of years and i'm seeing how when we're brave like you were just brave and talk about challenges we face how that can make other people feel seen and comforted and in a conversation like this that's so existential i just really appreciate you grounding that back in your own experience and then i was thinking about how in a very strange way when i have times of grief and concern and imagine the worst that could happen is that i would die and that comforts me too i don't know why that is i don't know how common that is but that's something you and i share but then but then when you talked about human extinction for reasons i don't understand i'm very comfortable with the fact that one day i will die but my psychology violently rebels against the notion of our species going extinct and it's so strange to have a podcast conversation where like a plausible stake is is human extinction and even if human extinction is like maybe a more extreme outcome plausible but you know not guaranteed it is certain that lots of plant and animal species will continue to go extinct as they're going extinct as we talk right now it's such a massive global issue you know i've heard scientists describe this moment as a mass extinction event not the future the moment we're in right now as a mass extinction event and there's we're having to fight this billion front war um which kind of made me reflect on how you and i met and how we started talking uh was zooming out from a global view of climate to moving into a localized view and that was specifically uh in the arctic and not just in the arctic in general but in the region around what's known as the arctic national wildlife refuge which is in the northernmost parts of alaska and you know because of the graciousness of an organization you're involved with me and other hosts of the literature's podcast got to travel to the arctic circle and see these beautiful coastal plains where you know a large caribou herd migrates through regularly and and and raises their next generation and we got to encounter the glitch and people who live nearby whose subsistence way of life is completely dependent on those caribou and challenging my assumptions as an animal rights person i saw the way in which my associations of agriculture and hunting with animal exploitation weren't reflected in a people who've been on this continent for 30 000 years and lived in a symbiotic equilibrium with the land plants and animals in that region um of all the things we could be facing right now why is the arctic important yeah i think you know for me the arctic is a really special place my my mentor was a man named lenny comb and he was a photojournalist um who went up to cover the arctic in like i think it was like the late 80s or early 90s and he was just so impacted by the magic of the place of the arctic refuge in the coastal plains and also of the gwichen people that he um he became an activist he said he could no longer be um unbiased and he was really the one who taught me how to be an activist and really showed me kind of that my voice mattered and that um it really is just about showing up um which is something he learned from the guitan um it was during um there there was big fights during the bush years over protecting the arctic refuge which we were successful at and i'll come back to you because there's new threats now um but during those years they won a big battle again you know they were trying to drill for oil and gas in the arctic refuge which is sacred to the gwichin it's the birthing place of the caribou of the porcupine caribou which are also sacred to them um and he lenny kept asking the chief like for strategic advice essentially like how did you win this like how can we learn from it and um the chief just kept saying you just show up and you do it in a good way and i think that of all of the many things i've learned in 15 years of activism and advocacy that's like the number one thing that holds true is like even if you don't know what you're doing and most of the time we don't like nobody's nobody has like a blueprint map for how we you know uh avert the worst impacts of climate change or save a place and um a culture you know like these are these are unknown battles um but you just show up and you do it in a good way and in a lot of cases not all of them and a lot you do you win and you know the arctic refuge is a great example because it's a kind of an iconic environmental fight um it's been under threat for oil and gas drilling for pretty much like my whole life but it's um but we've protected it we um through through showing up and speaking up and standing in solitary you know with the chin and through a lot of savvy advocacy and and kind of strategic fights um but of course under the trump administration like everything else um it is under threat they've they kind of snuck a piece into the tax bill in 2017 to open up the refuge to oil and gas drilling and we are obviously fighting that uh with the gwychen and you know kind of because it would essentially be eco side of the guitan people um not to mention the destruction of you know one of pretty much they call it america's last great wilderness like one of the most special wild places that we have in the world um and yeah for me it's it's it's really i think there's several reasons that i feel so compelled by by this fight in the arctic and we're in the guaten and part of it's because climate change can feel so vast and huge and it's hard to know where to start but this is like a specific place and people that need our help right now that are facing both the you know the arctic is warming faster than anywhere else in the world so they're already facing really severe climate impacts and on top of that they're facing oil and gas drilling in their sacred land which would destroy their not only their culture but also they depend on the wildlife and the caribou for food um that it's a very as you know because you were there it's very removed and it you know milk is 11 a gallon so their food security is dependent on the arctic refuge um so that's you know it is it's kind of when it feels overwhelming and huge and big sometimes i think it's really helpful to to look at specific fights in specific places where we have the power to do something positive and this is one of those examples where um we can win this we can show up and we can do it in a good way and we can fight and um on top you know and on top of all those reasons i just you know i think the and you know kind of like what i was saying before like one thing that does give me courage when finding a climate change is looking to um you know kind of a wise you know sort of sacred teachings and and cultures that have fought existential threats before and indigenous communities are certainly um top of that list of people who have been fighting for their their culture and their livelihoods and their security and safety for you know hundreds if not thousands of years and so um i think fighting alongside them is something that we're called to do um because it's the right thing we'll have a a liturgist podcast episode in the near future where you'll actually get to hear the voices of the glitching people in their own words describing the situation they face so you know you all who listen who also listen to the liturgists uh that's coming if you're not generally a liturgist listener i would definitely recommend you listening to our our arctic episode um should you know probably be out i think in october uh it's a big episode we have a lot of audio to get through um but until then i'd like to help paint a picture in your mind of what arctic village is like and why not only climate change but oil and gas exploration are so dangerous to those people because we're americans and we have this odd combination of material comfort and constant existential anxiety today we don't usually get to look beyond our next paycheck our next amazon prime delivery but i think we all know and we all understand that our country's relationship with and treatment of indigenous and native populations has been bad those populations of people have been subjected to more than just indignities but actions that cumulatively can only be named as genocide and when we flew from los angeles to seattle and that was the shorter of the two flights seattle to fairbanks is a is a long long flight and you arrive in fair banks and if you're coming from l.a the the lower population density is pretty obvious immediately but then you fly in a very small plane that seats nine people you fly for several hours north before you reach arctic village and quickly after you leave fairbanks you never see a road you never see a building you only see a wild land untouched by human development that is breathtakingly beautiful and somewhat alien because it's a it's a biome it's a it's a it's environment that doesn't match people's lived experience it's tundra when you land an arctic village it's gravel roads there are no roads that connect to the outside world so every single thing in arctic village has to be brought in by airplane which is why milk is 11 a gallon and when you walk around and you tour the village and you hear people's stories friends i just have to be honest i was struck by how america's antagonism towards native people is not a thing that happened in the distant past or the recent past but it's something that is ongoing i don't want the reality to get lost in the sentence that the culture identity and way of life of the christian people is under constant assault what that means is the way they eat is under threat twice once from climate change and the second way is in oil and gas exploration but that it's not just that just a generation ago they their children were still being removed from the local culture brought to the united states to be quote educated unquote driving a cultural difference between young people and elders and lowering and reducing their culture and their culture is ancient the gwichen have been in that region for 30 000 years i mean that's impossible for americans or europeans to contemplate cultural heritages with that much continuity i was completely heartbroken by my complacency and complacency in that dynamic because we walked in thinking we could talk about the trump administration as some unique and sudden threat and i quickly understood that a failure to act on climate in a significant and meaningful way and a continual erosion of native rights and native dignity is a bipartisan issue if there's anything i know about as science mike listeners it's that you have all political persuasions we have democrats and republicans and independents we have staunch conservatives and literal communist leftists all listening to the same program what i want you to hear from me knowing that i love you and i care for you and i know that we all want to make a better world is that we have all played a role in the exploitation and the oppression of the glitch and people and i say we because that includes me i care so much about helping us us includes me open our eyes to the reality of how we live in the world and how it affects the world itself and other people that live within our world and i'm telling you my friends i've seen with my own eyes the tragedy of how climate change is playing out in the arctic that an ocean that has always had ice in it year round for the first time in recorded history this year had none the way that's changing the topography the distribution of plants and animals and on top of that sweeping change we're introducing the very real possibility of building roads across a place that has none drilling through the surface of the earth into the ground and extracting oil i don't know if you remember standing rock it wasn't that long ago but our our media narrative moves fast these days native people protested a pipeline under the grounds one that it went through sacred lands and two the risk of oil spill was significant and we were told by public policy experts that the risk of oil leakage was low and that pipeline has already leaked oil into that ground i grew up in the gulf coast where anna jane is from and i watched as a bp oil spill destroyed the gulf of mexico and its beautiful wild diversity i watched as not hypothetical people but friends i know could no longer make their living in coastal work of fishing both commercial and guided and tourism fell as those beautiful sugar white sand beaches got filled with oil but florida has a bustling and diverse economy and many options to re-channel economic growth but in the distant lands of the arctic village the gwichen people don't face so many options through the actions of our lifestyle and our government we are forcing them with a choice erase your unique ancient and beautiful cultural identity or die and as i say that my friends my eyes fill with tears and my heart breaks because i don't want to play any part of telling another human being to face that choice so my gas can be two cents cheaper when i shouldn't be buying it anyway and right now is a critical moment in our attempts to stand with the glitching people anna jane would you mind telling us about the vote this week and what listeners could do in response after they hear this episode which will come out on yes thank you so much for playing that landscape i'm also tearing up a little bit um but yes um there is definitely something we can do um about the arctic and also about climate change in a big picture way but basically um the house of representatives is about to vote for the first time ever on a bill to protect the arctic refuge and the guitan people and that will hopefully have already been voted on by the time that you hear about this and it's huge it's very historic it's the first time the house of um that congress has ever taken a stand on protecting the arctic refuge and there's still a lot of other hurdles to go through like eventually people need to go to the senate um we need to win back the senate in order for it to pass um but it's it's a massive step in the right direction so that the kind of most immediate thing that um our listeners can do is to thank the congress people who vote for us to protect the arctic to really demonstrate um to our decision makers and our politicians that we as constituents care about the arctic refuge and which hin and we're um we're thankful for them to doing the right thing and and if they voted against it you know we're gonna hold them accountable to do the right thing in the future um but that's the biggest you know as you mentioned mike this is a pretty harried media landscape and it's hard for any issue to break through but we in order to save the arctic and and protect the guatem we really have to elevate um the plight of the arctic refuge and and so that's elevating it to our decision makers thanking them when they do the right thing calling them out when they do the wrong thing um and it's also calling you know calling on um you know companies not to drill in the arctic there will be a big push for that this fall that i can definitely um send you information on and it's you know mostly i think almost most more important is just talking making sure that your circles your friends your family your communities know that this is happening and know that there's something that we can do about it we can still protect the arctic it is something um and protect the guten from from oil drilling that is a positive thing that we can still do and i think that's really important to remember that even though we're in a very scary moment in human history there still are you know there still are positive ways that we can impact the world and protect each other and these you know kind of sacred peoples and sacred lands um and that's true for climate change as well too i don't want to sound i'm you know the truth is that scientists are saying we have somewhere in the window of 10 to 15 years to dramatically decrease our carbon emissions and kind of turn this ship around before we face sort of the worst possible impacts of climate change um and that is a scary thing you know given the political and cultural dynamics of our world but that's also like in some ways it's a pretty amazing moment to be alive like in like we basically are you know kind of the generations alive right now are the first people to experience climate change and we are the last people who really get a say on what's done about it and that is an enormous responsibility and can feel quite overwhelming but it's also an incredible opportunity in some ways the people who are alive right now have more of an ability to make a positive impact in the world um than ever before um and that's you know that's i think like the thing about climate change it's so well there's lots of things about climate change i think for me the injustice of it is is one of the most um you know the fact that it's the people who least contributed to it that are experiencing it you know the most as we're seeing in the bahamas right now um but the other i think really scary thing is it's just like it's it's so unknown it's like this very like you know we can't imagine this world that we are creating for better or or worse and and that is scary i think for humans the uncertainty factor but it's also a little bit of like every great story and adventure you know you have to you have to go fight the big scary thing even when it feels overwhelming and so it's kind of a call to you know a call to adventure in this moment too of there's there's something that's exciting about being alive that we can hopefully we can collectively mobilize people to do something about it and i know that listening right now are thousands of people who are conservatives or republicans or libertarians and you all have such a powerful opportunity to be a key character in the story democrats in congress with democrat constituents expect us to call and raise holy hell about climate that's baked into the expectation and republican representatives with democrat constituents expect democrats to say you better do this you represent me even though i didn't vote for you that's it's all baked into the assumption if you want to change the narrative you want to change the world if you're a conservative or a republican or a libertarian and you listen to the show then that means i know you appreciate science and i know you have views on how we should structure society in a way that's fair but you actually also do care about marginalized people and you do care about being an equitable person in society if you call your republican representative and say i'm a republican i'm a conservative i'm a libertarian and i care about climate and i care about standing with the gwichen people you start to reframe this entire conversation i don't want people's eyes to glaze over because of political affiliation or expectations and narrative friends i'm not talking to you as a political progressive though i am one i'm talking to you as someone who cares for my children's future and for yours as much as i also care for future generations of native and indigenous people living in the americas everyone can get involved and if everyone gets involved we will make a difference and we will make a better world anna jane where could people learn more about you and follow your work and i also want to let people know watch the podcast feed anytime you see anna jane joyner appear it means there is an opportunity to act immediately to make the world a better place uh and but i'd like you to keep keep in touch with anna even when she's not on the show so where can they find you oh thank you so much it's an honor to chat with you and all your listeners um i also have a podcast called no place like home which is a podcast that gets to the heart of climate change so we talk about uh these issues quite a bit um that's probably the best place to find me you can find me on twitter at anna jane joyner and yeah i look forward to staying in touch and i'm just i'm so grateful and honored to be be a part of your show and you have a co-host on no place like home right i do my co-host is marianne hitch she's one of my best friends but she's also um the director of the beyond coal campaign which is the largest climate campaign in the world they have already retired 297 coal plants and are working on more and she's yeah she is you know as far as like change makers go actually making a difference on this issue it is marianne and her incredible community of activists um working to not only move beyond coal but to um you know provide um you know just transition for people in coal country which i really appreciate because my i'm from i grew up on the gulf coast and also in the appalachian mountains and my husband's from coal country kentucky so it's really important that we take care of the people as we do transition our energy system and make sure people still have good jobs and so yeah brilliant woman and we have lots of fascinating conversations um about the arctic about uh biancole about all kind of all the climate feels and we'd love for you to join us and when you listen to no place like home you win twice once by being more informed about what's happening with our climate and how you can act but also by supporting elevating women's voices in media podcasting is male dominated and i don't know about you but i get excited when i hear about great shows hosted by people who aren't dudes [Laughter] so that's wonderful um gosh anna jane thank you so much for being with us on the program today it was such an honor oh yes thank you it has been a gift so you've done it you've made it to another episode of ask science mike instead of doing something valuable with your time i'm so thankful i want to thank caitlyn hermstad for producing and directing ass science mike i'd like to thank greg nordin for editing andrew golucky for pre-production work and of course my patrons on patreon for making this show possible we're thinking a lot about the future of the program and as we do that if you've got questions or comments on this episode or the podcast in general we'd love to engage with you on social media we're pretty much on everything thanks for listening everyone [Applause]