Arun Venugopal: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Arun Venugopal from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom. I'm filling in for Brian today. Does this sound anything like you?

Charlers McBride: I am a climate doomer. Since about 2019, I have believed that there's little to nothing that we can do to actually reverse climate change on a global scale, and frankly, this has led to a lot of depression and anxiety.

Arun: If so, you're experiencing what some people call eco-anxiety or as the TikToker Charles McBride, his voice, we just heard phrased it climate doom. Maybe you experience it as depression and anxiety or maybe you simply cannot engage in conversations about the climate without feeling an overwhelming sense of dread. These feelings are especially present among young people. According to a 2021 study surveying 16 to 25-year-olds across the world, more than 45% of respondents said that their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning.

Seriously, who can blame them for feeling like this? There is little education on climate change occurring in schools and a lot of it focuses on the overwhelming existential threats that will likely come to fruition in their lifetimes. Our guest now focuses on combating these feelings of climate doom and gloom. Her solution, focusing on solution. With us now is Sage Lenier, climate education activist and also founder of Sustainable & Just Future. Sage, welcome to WNYC.

Sage: Hi, thanks for having me.

Arun: Thanks for joining us from the West Coast. Tell us what is your experience with climate doomism?

Sage: Climate doomism is the dominant discourse in environmentalism for sure. Studying, I was a young teenager and I was really passionate about social justice in particular. It came to the environmentalism with the realization that it really has the potential to be the one movement that encapsulates all of them. There's no human rights on a dead planet. I'm interested, and I'm learning, and I'm just experiencing doom left and right from largely educators whether that was high school teachers or college professors or people on the internet, articles, or was reading books.

By and large, the narrative was like it's too late and that obviously didn't sit well with me as a young person because this is our future that we're talking about. I also was just like, "I don't think it's too late because I don't think we've even tried to solve it. I don't think we've even thought about solutions." I'm not hearing you guys talk to say anything about solution. I began researching what realistic solutions look like and what realistic adaptation to the climate crisis and living with it to what it looked like. I've developed that as the basis of my work is climate solutions.

Arun: Sage, in terms of this sense of climate doom, in your own experience, did you think it was pretty much when these issues came up, but did you think it percolated into your overall life?

Sage: Do you mean like--?

Arun: I think partly what we're trying to get at is, is this something that simply paralyzes when we're asked to talk about solutions or to talk about how we're going to dress this problem or is it something that is just all-pervading when you're just walking around in the sense that nothing is going to get better?

Sage: It's definitely all-pervading. I think as we are racing our crisis point on a nexus of intertwined things. It does feel like the world is ending in so many ways, I think. I think for me in my own life, the focus on solutions and also just delving into action, like not just learning about really engaging with solutions. It has been so transformative for me for not just mental health, but also to see a real impact made. I feel personally that there is a huge difference that I can make because I'll go and get involved in a fight in my community or whatever it is and I'll see the transformation actually unfold.

I'll be like, "Wow, this could actually happen if we just--" This is realistic. It's just that people haven't dug in yet.

Arun: I want to join listeners to offer their insights or questions for our guest, Sage Lenier. Listeners, let's wage some of your climate anxiety. Tells us what climate issues are most troubling to you right now. Maybe our guest, Sage Lenier can offer some solutions. That number is 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692 or just tweet us @BrianLehrer. Sage, your course is focused on solutions to some of the biggest existential threats. What solution to which problem is most exciting to you at this moment? What's the first one that comes to mind?

Sage: I realized I didn't give context to that to the listeners. I started an educational program at Berkeley, where I teach environmental solutions to my peers or was teaching to my peers, and it's been wildly successful. We got over 1,800 people involved in the program so far. We've really high success rate, and a lot of people coming out of this program decide that they want to either have an environmental emphasis or study environmental topics completely. Just moving more people into the movement is really what I'm passionate about.

My favorite climate solution I think-- I'm really excited about the concept of economic degrowth in the particular economy because I think we're looking at these numbers and we're saying, "Okay, we can only meet 45--" I think I'm not sure. I'm going to get it switched out, but it's either 45% or 55% of our energy needs with renewable energy while staying under 1.5 Celsius. Where do we get the rest of that energy from? This mad dash scramble and I'm like, "Why don't we just emphasize moving towards an economic system that uses less energy rather than trying to figure out how to swap that massive [unintelligible 00:07:01] demand?"

Because we don't want to just shift to a noble energy. We want a fundamental society reform so that we don't have all these other environmental issues like deforestation, water pollution, air pollution as well as a system that is based on exploitation. We need to shift towards an economy that is more based on services, knowledge, experiences rather than having an economy based on the sale of more and more goods because that's destined to collapse and with the ecosystem collapse because we define it in the amount of [unintelligible 00:07:35].

Imagining a circular economy, imagining planned economic degrowth, create a little bit of design of are goods going forward, I think that's the most exciting intervention for me because it takes the pressure off of purely relying on solar panels and wind turbines. It's like, "No, let's just decarbonized and the whole system and move towards a lower carbon, lower resource demand system."

Arun: Just to be clear, I think you used the term that a lot of us may not have heard before, economic degrowth. Is that right?

Sage: Yes.

Arun: Basically, how would you define economic degrowth? Because I think for some people, it may sound like you're saying, let's just-- It may be scary for some people to hear that term.

Sage: It's definitely scary for people. I think when we think folks are down, they're on board with the whole radical climate action now, that is economic degrowth. That it's not just solar panels. That's really not going to get us where we need to go. Solar panels are part of the solution but economic degrowth is the ultimate solution that we're looking at. Basically, even 200 years ago, we didn't really have much of a global economy that is such an interesting modern phenomena and having a globalized supply chain and having--

Just a system that is based on and dependent on the ever-increasing timeline of rapidly extracting research from nature, processing any goods, throwing them away, and starting that cycle over again has driven us to this point. We have to imagine an economic system that is no longer based on the sale of good extraction of resources and economic degrowth calls for a planned system of policies in place to make sure that everyone is protected while we shrink the economy, but shrinking the economy to a sustainable side.

Arun: These are some of the big kind of, I guess, Meta conversations you've been having. Are there certain small steps that you think should also be happening if someone is just trying to inch away to a more solution-oriented approach to solving this problem and perhaps removing the sense of climate doomism from themselves.

Sage: Oh, absolutely. I love talking about this. One of the things I'm constantly trying to communicate to people is that it's not like neither individual action nor system change can get us where we need to go. Both have to happen. Whether that's individual actions you make in your lifestyle, you personally adopt a circular economy framework and use that to inform your buying your purchases and your, I don't know, travel, lifestyle, habits, whatever it is. Yes, that is so important because I think folks have a tendency going, "No, no, no, no, no."

Don't talk about individual change. We need system change but change has never originated in the system. It originates with mass movements of people coming together to force the system to change. Lifestyle change or lifestyle and individual change and then system change are so intrinsically intertwined. I want to speak to the power of that. Then the second point, I really, really want to push people into the solutions that they can enact in your community. Whether it's you don't have a compost program, a municipal compost program in your school, in your workplace, whatever.

Or your city doesn't have a goal to end homelessness or you don't have a climate resilience plan for your neighborhood, even just working with your neighbors to say, "What would we do in a disaster? How are we going to support each other? What are our evacuation routes?" There are so many interventions that each of us can get involved in to make our communities, our neighborhoods a better place. When we're talking about system change, it really needs to come in a hodgepodge form of all of these different cities, municipalities, and counties coming together with their own system changes to create national, international system change.

Because I'm not expecting the government to actually get around and legislate fast fashion or create zero-waste goals or any of that. As much as I would love it, don't think it's going to happen. What we can do is enact those things on a city-state municipal level, and slowly patch work this whole thing together of system change. If you look, there is so much power in doing the work in your community and trusting that everyone else is going to do the work in theirs.

Arun: Just a quick second, let me just do a station ID. This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. This is New York and New Jersey Public Radio. We're talking to Sage Lenier about being more solution-oriented when it comes to climate change. Let's take a call from Riverdale. Hi, Craig. You're on the air with Sage Lenier, do you have any questions or insights?

Craig: Yes, I do. I have a lot, actually. The first one is, what are we doing about drinking water? Lake Mead is pretty much dried up. All of these bodies of water are where we're not going to have enough. The water table in California is practically dried out. You also have all of these things of people growing avocados, almond trees, and all these things. These crops take up so much more water than it does to grow other foods. It is ridiculous. You see all these people with these. It's amazing.

Arun: Thank you.

Craig: The other thing is [crosstalk]

Arun: I think we'll have to -- there's a couple questions there. Sage, do you want to weigh in on neither of those things?

Sage: Yes, totally. I cannot give you like a breakdown of Lake Mead. I don't live there, but I would say you're so right about the agricultural component of the water demand. Municipal, everyday people using water typically only accounts for 10% to 20% of a region's water usage. The vast majority of it is an industry and agriculture. That speaks to the need for a circular economy and these community level shifts. Whether it's in California, we do need to have a serious reckoning here about the almond industry, but also especially the animal agriculture industry.

Agriculture is associated with, I think about 54%. Don't quote me on that, around half of California's water footprint. A huge, a significant portion of that is animal agriculture, not just the water that we need for the cows, chickens, and whatnot themselves, but also the water we need to grow their food. Moving towards a more plant-based diet is going to be a critical component of saving our dwindling water supplies because it uses so much of the world's existing water supply. Moving towards a plant-based diet, talking about regulation of things.

Do we want to put a cap on the amount of almond trees in the state of California? That's a great conversation to have, or even on a county accounting level where those counties are seeing their water table drop, they can have that conversation and legislate on their own terms. We don't have to just wait around for this grandiose nationwide system change. Whether it's in your life, prioritizing, I'm not going to eat almonds anymore, or advocating for that level of change under community level, shifting towards a plant-based diet.

When it comes to a water footprint, yes, industry and agriculture. The production of stuff and the production of food are the two biggest places we can cut back. I'm a huge advocate for try making those transitions towards a less racist, intense economy, ceasing to financially incentivize those incredibly high water consumption goods and foods rather than trying to make the most of our existing water supply.

Arun: Let's take that a call from Astoria, Queens. Adam, you have a question for Sage Lenier? Hi.

Adam: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I agree wholeheartedly about the importance of emphasizing individual action in our community. I'm a member of a neighborhood group, Friends of Astoria Heights Park that has done things locally with our park, where we bring the community together to plant trees, to clean things up, to have composting, to create a butterfly garden. These activities are so important in terms of giving, especially young children a counterbalance to the steady diet of apocalyptic existential crisis information that they're flooded with, that they're inundated with.

I've seen it with my son that he's obviously much happier and feels that he's contributing, taking responsibility, and making a difference when he is participating in activities like that. I've seen it in other children, too. There really is a mental health crisis in this country that is like an existential problem in and of itself with children feeling like they can't make a difference. The only thing I would push back against in terms of what your guest has been talking about is that I think we need more growth. We need more dynamism.

We just need it to be decentralized and highly differentiated across all these different regions, where I think that if we encourage our children to embrace the possibilities of creating business solutions to the problems that exist, we'll get far more dynamic churn, we'll get more experimentation. I don't think that in line with what your guest has been saying we need to avoid this idea of like one-size-fits all solutions.

Arun: Got it. Thank you, Adam. Sage, a couple of things there. One, very hopeful, and one more, I guess, of a pushback against the idea of economic degrowth as you put it.

Sage: Yes, it's really exciting to hear about your community initiative. I love that you shared that, but I would say I'm not anti-business. I'm just very realistic about the amount of resources that we're consuming right now. There are many, many economic opportunities for growth and entrepreneurship and really creative, fun ideas that I get excited about all the time. I have a whole portion of what I do is talking about, yes, sustainable business, circular businesses, those kinds of business models that can really create-- businesses have an obligation.

There's a huge innovation opportunity here right now to come up with the kinds of systems that enable us to make sustainable and ethical decisions in and easily. Whether that's pushing grocery stores to bulk sections or fair trade certifications so that we know their workers are being paid ethically. There are so many different interventions. I get really excited about the concept of all these like car sharing. Businesses that are popping up left and right in the Bay Area. We have gig. Gig, you just walk up to it, unlock it with your phone, drop it off anywhere. I think it's so fascinating because you've turned the concept of a car into a service rather than a good. I called up Gig because I talk about them in my class at Berkeley. I called them up. This was two years ago now, and I need to call them up and do new numbers. I was like, "How many cars do you have in the Bay Area?" They said 500. I said, "How many people do you have in your system?" I think they said 20,000 at the time. I'm like, "That's amazing." If, for example, assuming that none of those 20,000 people have a car, we're now sharing this fleet.

Anyways, I'm going on. I just think it's fascinating, and there are definitely so many business opportunities. We do need to also cut back. The fashion industry is 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions at this point. I think there is a lot of room for innovation and in making use of what we already have in terms of fashion, but also we do just have to cut out huge sections of that industry. It's just not sustainable.

Arun: We're going to have to leave it there--

Sage: For economic degrowth and regrowth as well.

Arun: Okay. We're going to leave it there for today, Sage. For our climate story of the week, I've been speaking to Sage Lenier, climate education activist, and founder of Sustainable & Just Future. Sage, thank you for joining us this morning.

Sage: Thank you all for listening.

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