Turning Climate Fear into Action with Anya Kamenetz

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the subject of climate change?  Jessica does. 
With  weather events and natural disasters getting more severe and seeming to creep closer and closer to her own backyard, Jessica feels overwhelmed, to the point of paralysis, by what one person could possibly do to effect change.

Enter Anya Kamenetz, who writes the newsletter The Golden Hour about thriving, and raising thriving kids, on a changing planet.  She covered education for many years including for NPR, where she co-created the podcast Life Kit: Parenting. Her 5th book is The Stolen Year: How Covid Changed Children’s Lives, And Where We Go Now. Kamenetz is currently an advisor to the Aspen Institute and the Climate Mental Health Network, working on new initiatives at the intersection of children and climate change.

Join Jessica and Anya as they candidly address the politicization of climate change, its isolating consequences, and the urgent call to recognize it as a human issue, not just an environmental one. Anya shines a light on our potential to be part of the solution, turning fear into action.  And may have even helped Jessica feel a little less paralyzed and a lot more purpose filled.

Important Links from this episode:
Anya's Newsletter
https://thegoldenhour.substack.com/

More Information on Joanna Macy
https://www.joannamacy.net/main

All We Can Save Project
https://www.allwecansave.earth/

Climate Mental Health Network
https://www.climatementalhealth.net/

Climate Mobilization
https://www.theclimatemobilization.org/

Transcript

Jessica Kidwell: 0:00

This podcast was created to be a space for conversation. The topics will vary, but the conversation will always be honest, authentic and sometimes even a little uncomfortable. My hope is that through these conversations, we will build a community of people who might not always agree with each other, but will definitely feel less isolated and alone. So I'm Jessica Kidwell and this is we Should Talk About that. One, two, one, two. Hi. How are you? I'm doing pretty well and I am super excited that you are joining me for this conversation today.

Jessica Kidwell: 0:47

Today's guest is Anya Kamenetz. Anya writes the newsletter the Golden Hour about thriving and raising thriving kids on a changing planet. She covered education for many years, including for NPR, where she co-created the podcast Life Kit Parenting. She is the author of five books and you've actually heard her before on Season 3 of Leastat about her most recent book, the Stolen Year how COVID Changed Children's Lives and when we Go From here. Now she has quit her job at NPR to work full-time at the intersection of kids' well-being and climate change, and she continues her work looking at the impact of new technology on youth well-being.

Jessica Kidwell: 1:34

Anya, thank you so much for coming back to we Should Talk About that. Thanks so much for having me back when I was getting ready to relaunch this podcast with just me and kind of brainstorming conversations that I wanted to have and people I could have them with. One of the items on my brain dump list was actually I wrote the word climate paralysis to jog my memory of the fact that I feel an incredible amount of anxiety about climate change, climate crisis, climate, everything, and yet I feel completely paralyzed about what little old me in my house in Alexandria, virginia, should be doing to try to affect any change whatsoever. And your newsletter came with your sub-stack, popped right into my inbox in the most beautiful, perfect way and I was like, oh my god, I have to get on your back on this show to talk about exactly this.

Anya Kamenetz: 2:41

Wow, I wish I could take credit for that, but honestly, it's the season from hell, like we literally just got through the hottest summer in world history, and so it's funny. It's not funny. It's not funny, but but it's funny that this is the issue that literally affects every living creature on the planet. Yeah, and yet we can feel alone when we think about it.

Jessica Kidwell: 3:09

I worry that the politicalization of climate is where my own personal loneliness comes from. What do you think about that? You?

Anya Kamenetz: 3:21

know, I feel that in a way, and I think, as I've been turned I mean I have a long history of this.

Anya Kamenetz: 3:27

I grew up in the Gulf South, so I sort of grew up with hurricanes, I grew with the petrochemical industry but I can see how, over the last five years, what's really changed is the way that environmentalists have come to think and act and talk about this issue and understand that this is not a polar bear thing, but this is a people thing and it's not a political thing.

Anya Kamenetz: 3:48

It is planetary and it's bigger than any of our political structures. So the divisiveness of climate change I mean, let's be clear, there are many people who profit from the divisiveness of climate change and they've spent a lot of money to make it feel very divisive, and so we have a politics that isn't solely due to it's not a law of nature that climate change would be this politicizer. Many countries around the world where even the right and the left are united on the idea that we need to do something about it, Regardless of where you fall in the political spectrum. I think the important thing is to understand that this is happening. It's happening right now and we all have a responsibility to be part of the solution.

Jessica Kidwell: 4:27

What I wonder is, as more and more things happen around the world and in people's literal backyards. Now, yeah, but what do you think is gonna take to make it be something that, instead of just feeling overwhelmed and anxious about it, people feel activated to do something about it?

Anya Kamenetz: 4:53

I feel that I've come to feel that that's not quite the right question. One of the most influential people in my thinking has been a teacher named Joanne Macie, and she's been teaching about, basically, climate despair. Despair and empowerment is sort of the core of her work and how we move through despair. And she says there are multiple stories going on at any one time. So business as usual is happening right now.

Anya Kamenetz: 5:17

The last time you flew an airplane or you ordered something from Amazon, things are pretty much going along in certain ways, and this is kind of how the world is. And then there's the unraveling right, things are falling apart and it's very obvious that they're falling apart. And then there's the turning, and that too, is taking place right now. So there is this huge growth in renewable energy, there is neighborhood based action, there is composting, there are fights by indigenous people around the world who are fighting and winning. So all of those things are happening at once. The wake up call is coming every morning and it's coming from inside the house, and you always have the power to join up, but the fact of climate change is never gonna be enough for everyone to get on the same page about it. That's not how this stuff works. It's gonna come from people forcing change to happen at the political level and at the level of institutions.

Jessica Kidwell: 6:13

So how have you come to decide that this intersection of kids well being and climate change is where you are going to try to do the most work? Is it that we have to start with kids so that it changes, or is it that it is a little bit easier to work on a problem if you are trying to describe it to children?

Anya Kamenetz: 6:39

Those are both really great reasons. But really what brought me to it is this is what I know about. So I've been in for 20 years covering education. I've been covering innovations in education.

Anya Kamenetz: 6:53

I did the book the Art of Screen Time, which is into parenting work.

Anya Kamenetz: 6:56

The life kit work with NPR was really about how do we talk about to kids about tough topics so really delving into that whole difficult conversations space. Then I wrote about children in COVID and that was about how these global issues and these global problems affect children in these really intimate ways and for a lifetime. So understanding the science of adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress, knowing that we have these precious few years and when I talk about in the sub stack the golden hour or the golden years to make a difference in a child's life and that makes a difference for generations to come so it feels like a really fruitful intervention point. But also it's just what I know about. So it's what I'm comfortable talking to and talking about and the communities that I'm involved in communities of educators or parents are have the ability to be mobilized on this issue. That's really what I bring to anyone who's listening to say that you have something that you know about or that you love or you care about, and climate action can start in that place.

Jessica Kidwell: 7:57

I want to talk a little bit about just the name of the sub stack, the golden hour, and it was just interesting with your introductory entry that there's so many different definitions of what the golden hour is. Can you kind of go through some of those with me? First and foremost, most people think about it from a photography standpoint and how it's the time of day where you take the most beautiful pictures. But there are some less beautiful definitions of the golden hour.

Anya Kamenetz: 8:28

Yeah, that's right.

Anya Kamenetz: 8:29

So exactly so, coming from the position of social media and I know probably a lot of parents who use social media, use Instagram, are probably familiar with this idea and with photographers, you're catching the light, so you understand that if it's dawn or if it's dusk, you have a brief, precious window to catch that light and then it's gonna be gone.

Anya Kamenetz: 8:49

But the same phrase the golden hour is actually used in trauma medicine and it's used to talk about how important it is to get help when people are grievously injured or if they have a cardiac event. Every second counts and you're ticking down that clock and I actually had the ability to take a trauma emergency hospital environment training for NPR, and so they're gonna send you into. I ended up going into Ukraine and they wanna teach you the bare bare minimum of trauma medicine, and what they teach you is enough to know how to do something. So if someone's losing a lot of blood because you don't wanna stand with your hands at your sides waiting for someone else with more skills to come in, if you know enough to be empowered, then you know that you can be part of the solution, and that's really the urgency that I wanted to bring to this conversation.

Jessica Kidwell: 9:36

And, in addition to the urgency, I referenced the paralysis that I personally feel, and then you talked about the freeze climate to spare. There are a ton of emotions that seem to come up when anyone starts to either think about or start researching climate change. We even say climate change. What do we say now? What is the correct thing? To call it, to be accurate and not set people off and put them on their defenses.

Anya Kamenetz: 10:10

You know, in some ways, if the word is putting up a barrier, I mean you can talk about extreme weather, you can talk about changing weather right.

Anya Kamenetz: 10:17

You can talk about extreme record temperatures. You can talk about droughts, floods, fires, and those are things that it takes a lot to ignore or to deny those. So, sticking with that for a minute and thinking about what are the transformations that need to take place, I was really relieved when I started thinking about climate as a mental health issue because, coming from my background reporting on social and emotional wellness and social emotional learning, and seeing how deeply rooted that was becoming in our schools, so many parents and so many teachers have more tools in their toolbox to help kids deal with big feelings. And so I might not know about renewable energy, but I know about emotions and I know that we try to feel our feelings right. We try to get help so we don't get overwhelmed, we try to widen our window of tolerance. We speak our feelings, we name our feelings right, we share them with other people. Yeah, and that's the path through. I mean, that doesn't. That's where you start, it's not where you stop.

Jessica Kidwell: 11:19

Right, Right. So this concept of the emotional wheel when it comes to talking about climate I think it's your most recent newsletter really went deeply into combining mental health with the concept of climate change.

Anya Kamenetz: 11:37

Yes, I mean, I'm so passionate about this because I do feel like it's a window in for a lot of people, because it is so painful and it's stopping people from having these conversations on the wheel. You can see that, of course, there's anger, there's rage, there's frustration, powerlessness, overwhelm, there's anxiety and fear and there's grief and sadness. And there's another quadrant, which is there are actually positive climate emotions that people report and studies and that people experience the feeling of empathy and connection with the natural world. Why do we grieve the loss of these things? Because every single person has a place that they love and a piece of natural beauty that speaks to their heart, and carrying that inside of us and being grateful for what we have today, that gratitude is the flip side of the grief and the fear that we have, and we really need to hold on to both sides so we can get the energy to keep going.

Jessica Kidwell: 12:32

And it's the keeping going that I think I personally need the most help with, as far as going through the ups and downs of thinking about oh my gosh, I can't ignore this anymore. I mean the literal smoke cloud that descended upon the East Coast this summer. We have to do something. We have to do something. It brings it forward in me like oh my gosh, this is unignorable. Now and then that overwhelm and sense of but what do I do? How do you suggest we start moving people into purpose and action?

Anya Kamenetz: 13:14

I love that question. It's really, really important. I think that the first piece of advice is to make sure that you're talking to other people about it in real life, and not just talking, but connecting with people that you find are engaged in purposeful action. So that can happen on the neighborhood level. It can happen in your church, in your place of worship, in your kid's school, in your workplace anywhere where you have people that come together for any purpose. They can and should be talking about this and what they can do together, because there are a lot of people out there that have been out there doing the activism and doing the stuff and they're ready for fresh blood, they're ready to be organized and to be helped. And there's so many things that you can do.

Anya Kamenetz: 13:53

And I think that a lot of times we've been disempowered in our roles as citizens. A lot of times we are family members, we're workers, we're consumers, but this fourth piece of citizenry doesn't always speak to us as much or isn't always as grounded. You would have had a loss of civil society and a loss of these kinds of connections, but staying in touch with people talking about it, talking about what can be done, is really the first step. Also, all we can save is an anthology, and they've created a community of climate circles and they have a program of what's called climate wayfinding and they encourage people to really think about their personal actions, their professional world and their political actions. So, personally, you're talking about your home, your energy use, the choices that you're making as far as flying, as far as consumption, and not perfection tomorrow. But what is the progress that you're going to make? What are the goals you're going to set as a family? Can you take one less flying vacation? The professional is how does this intersect with your work?

Anya Kamenetz: 14:55

You're covering climate on the podcast. You're talking about it here. You talk about it on social media. If you have a job where you're in a corporate setting and there's sustainability commitments on that level, can you advocate for that internally? And then the political is it could be any cause that's important to you. It can be local, national, international, it can be related to marine life, it can be sidewalks, it can be air pollution, something that affects you personally, that really has a story that can keep you connected, and then I'll tell you. My climate anxiety has plummeted since I'm working in this stuff, because I feel like I'm doing what I can, and I'm still thinking about how I can do more, and I'm publicly, very publicly, struggling with how I can do more, especially in the area of flying. That's what I think about a lot. But the point is, I got my gears in and I'm moving and I'm sharing that and moving along and I feel that momentum.

Jessica Kidwell: 15:51

And that fights that paralysis that I feel sometimes mired in, that it all feels like it's so overwhelming and I don't know where to start so I just won't start. So, once you, it's kind of like a body in motion stays in motion, a purpose that starts, stays purposeful, maybe Absolutely. So did you? I want to make sure that I make note of that book. Did you say all we can save?

Anya Kamenetz: 16:19

That's right. Yeah, it's an anthology of all women talking about their climate journeys.

Jessica Kidwell: 16:23

What are some other good starting points for someone who's ready to stick it into a different gear and start moving forward? Maybe we start with from a parenting standpoint, since that's your wheelhouse. How do we start talking to our kids about it?

Anya Kamenetz: 16:39

Yes, I work as an advisor to Climate Mental Health Network. That's where we created the Climate Emotions Wheel that you talked about. We created also a set of resources for parents. Really, it's a primer for parents on talking to your kids about climate and the feelings. So it's not just the facts of climate change, but it's the feelings of climate change and working that in, because our schools are getting better and they're bringing it up. But a lot of times what happens is they hear a little something on the news and or they hear a little something in class and they come home with feelings that really need unpacking. So we have these resources at Climate Mental Health Network slash parents. There's a script for elementary school students and a script for middle and high school students with background knowledge.

Anya Kamenetz: 17:23

If you feel like you need to become armed with a little more information. And that's really the way I recommend, and you know, anytime you're having a conversation like this with kids, you try to start with listening right. What have you heard? What are you wondering? Do you have any questions for me? We can learn this together and look it up together. I can't tell you how many times and this is true of all kinds of issues but parents don't always make themselves aware of just how much kids are soaking up or what they're getting, and they may not be getting the facts, but they reach are. They read our body language. You know when something's playing on the news and they can see that we're stressed and they they extrapolate from that and oftentimes they take it to the worst possible place.

Jessica Kidwell: 18:06

So you can help, you can help rein that in and you can help them also look at how much positive action is actually going on, because that's something that our media doesn't always cover what do you say to parents who feel overwhelmed with guilt about their use of Amazon to make their day to day life easier versus potentially wanting to have purposeful action in a positive way with climate change?

Anya Kamenetz: 18:33

nobody is perfect. Everybody has contradictions. We are part of a society that is set up in this particular way, and capitalism is the reason that you don't have time to go to your nice neighborhood store and buy everything at the farmers market, and there's this consumer pressure. That said, you're gonna feel better if you take a little bit of an action right. So you know, if that means going from 110 orders on Amazon to going to 97 orders on Amazon, if that means choosing the low package option or the single-day delivery option, if that means making time one day, and when it's actually, instead of taking your kids to the park, you're gonna go on an errand and you're gonna buy things from the local hardware store instead, and maybe it comes a little bit slower, or if it's not exactly what you expected it to be. So we, that's how we change our habits, you know, and guilt is an important emotion, you know it's a powerful emotion, it's a moral emotion that has a purpose when it's spoken and when it's turned into actions and it's definitely on the wheel, for sure.

Jessica Kidwell: 19:36

Yes, it is absolutely on the wheel and then on the flip side. This is kind of you know. My job is to try and foresee any question that somebody might be thinking of, or being honest with the questions that pop in my mind when it comes to a topic. I want to talk about climate activists and the role that that can have, positively and negatively, when you are trying to get more and more people to move into purpose, and what's coming to mind as I think about living right outside of Washington DC is when the climate activists will throw paint on art or glue their hands to the wall in a museum. How do I, number one, talk to my kids about that?

Anya Kamenetz: 20:28

number two, talk to myself about the the function that that type of protest has to the movement overall you know, I shared something about this recently in on my LinkedIn and it was a. It was an op-ed from inside philanthropy and it was about, you know, I think it. First of all, I think in America we sort of lack some literacy about social movements and the history social movements and real people power, because a lot of times were taught sort of a great man version of history and I mean Martin Luther King is in there, but you don't hear about the years that went on of the bus boycott and how much effort that actually took. You know Rosa Parks didn't just decide one day not to sit at the back of the bus, like there was a lot of work, there were a lot of meetings and a lot of people don't realize that Martin Luther King was extremely unpopular during his lifetime and even, you know, even at the end of his life. Very unpopular because this stuff was disruptive. And when activists throw paint and when they glue themselves or disrupt the US Open their purposes to annoy and to be off-putting and to make noise and as long as they get us talking, they feel like they've made their point.

Anya Kamenetz: 21:38

Now I don't pretend to be a strategist of the movement, the climate movement. What's really helped me is just an understanding that nobody here has the right answer. Right, we are screwing this up as a human race, and so, if I can point fingers and say I don't think they're doing it right, fine, but do they believe in the right things? Are they trying to do something? Yes, okay, so I can pursue what I think is most important. I like building bridges with people and I like expanding the movement, inviting people in. Other people like being confrontational and they think that's the way to do it, and as long as you're not crossing a line of violence you know, of harming people you can be in the same movement with me, and I'm not going to pass judgment on that, and I'm just gonna say I do it my way and I stand up for what I believe in. As long as we believe in the same things, we can have common cause.

Jessica Kidwell: 22:28

I think your point about the lack of literacy about the history of social movements is incredibly important, because I think we all suffer from shorter and shorter attention spans and if I can't be summed up in a two-minute soundbite then we don't like to necessarily dive in.

Jessica Kidwell: 22:54

And that's kind of what our history books are they're. They're the highlight reel of what has happened and people forget the long slog that it took for women to get the right to vote for civil justice, civil rights, for gay rights, like there's so many rights and privileges that we may take for granted now and forget how difficult, annoying, disruptive and hard it was to get to that point a lot of people don't realize this, but suffragists attacked paintings and actually slash paintings of nude women over a hundred years ago and they they said you know, we're fighting for the dignity of women and we want to attack these women museums and, like you said, even if we don't necessarily agree with the tactic, it gets the conversation into the headlines and therefore people have climate change and climate change thoughts come to that prefrontal cortex, as opposed to ignoring and ignoring and all the scarlet o'haring.

Jessica Kidwell: 24:07

I'll think about that tomorrow.

Anya Kamenetz: 24:12

Well, we can have this conversation really interestingly in a parenting context, because how often have you been like your kids bringing a complaint to you and you're policing their tone of voice or the words that they're choosing? And that's legitimate, because we deserve to be talked to with respect, but are we listening to the underlying need at the same time?

Jessica Kidwell: 24:32

Or when a child tantrums and we are taught as parents and educators to, or supposed to, try and look past the behavior and try to understand what the underlying need is, like you said that something's going on, there is an issue larger than the tantrum that's in front of you. Exactly, exactly, okay, okay, I'm feeling slightly less paralyzed so far through this conversation. I like the idea that you don't have to necessarily bite off and eat the entire climate elephant in one sitting. Yes, you can make small changes that feel doable and right for your life, and just staying in the conversation and learning is also an important aspect of it, I imagine.

Anya Kamenetz: 25:35

Learning is so important and making connections with other people that engage in these things is so important. Climate got classified with politics as something that's left out of the polite conversations, but I'm a really big fan of not polite conversations. We do, and I think that I know that you are. I know that you are. When you're friends with people and you can really talk about what's on your heart, it's okay and it's good to share these things. And when you really start talking to the people that you really care about and your neighbors and your friends and the other kids' moms at the playground when you bring it into everyday talk, you're going to be really surprised by what comes out. I guarantee you.

Anya Kamenetz: 26:12

I've connected with so many people. Now I have to be like, because every time someone comes across a really depressing piece of climate news about like dead animals, they just text me right away. They say I thought of you on. Yeah, I'm like, wow, thanks, thanks. But it's worth it, it's for the greater good, you know, and I love being in these conversations. It really helps so much.

Jessica Kidwell: 26:31

And it is, I think, such an important step. Like I think about having conversations with my friends and you might feel embarrassed sometimes by how, despite the anxiety and disturbed feelings I feel about the obvious changes in the climate, perhaps I'm not willing to make hard choices in my day to day life. That might slightly inconvenience me. Wow, I really won't walk to my friend's house who lives literally two streets over because I don't know, I just don't feel like it and I'm embarrassed to say it. But actually if I say it out loud it just seems absurd and it kind of takes the power. I think that's why I'm trying to say it takes the power of that embarrassment away and kind of freeze me up to maybe take tiny bits of action.

Anya Kamenetz: 27:31

I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that thought process. It also makes me think a little bit about atomic habits, and you know right, because what we're really talking about is the identity that we're building, which is an identity of a person who is on the path of doing more things, and I've noticed this in my own life. I mean, this is me personally. I have been on a personal just in the last few months journey of taking my damn cup to the coffee shop, which is a block and half from my house, because my habit had been I go for my run and then I got my coffee at the end of my run as a treat. But now I have to break that stack because I have to go back home, get the cup and come back to get the coffee.

Anya Kamenetz: 28:15

Yeah Right, it's so hard to untangle these things and we're so, you know, wound up in ourselves. But I am the type of person who takes a reusable cup. I'm thoughtful like that and that's the type of person I want to be and I have to show that. That's who I am.

Jessica Kidwell: 28:31

And I think it's important to kind of celebrate that that's who you are and also, within that celebrating it, we. I could imagine a scenario where I might stop myself from growing more because I'm so busy celebrating the small changes that I already made. Like, don't just stop with the celebration. Yeah, be glad that you're making the small change, but then also keep looking for other ways to make more small changes.

Anya Kamenetz: 29:06

That's really important. Thank you for underlining that and honestly, I mean a lot of my more activist friends would say I do not care about your cup Like. Who did you donate to? Where is your money going? Did you show up to the rally? The personal behaviors are there for building the identity, I would say, and I think consumer habits matter. I mean, when you talk about getting so in New York City just passed a local law about takeout containers and utensils, right, and that was one person's individual choice. But they pushed it further and they said you know what, we're going to make a bigger change here, and so how do you move it into? The collective is always. That would be my next step.

Jessica Kidwell: 29:47

Right, but I feel like for the average Jessica in the world, it is that type of step that feels more paralyzing than starting with the personal changes that I can make, and then I feel like it becomes like you talk about atomic habits, like the path opens up of ways that then the changes that I make might start looking more in the collective best interest as opposed to my own, I mean.

Anya Kamenetz: 30:24

I could make this up, but I didn't have to make this up because it literally happened that I brought my cup out at the coffee shop and the guy next to me in line was like, oh, I need to start doing that. It just pointed at mine, so just seeing it helps right, and it normalizes it, and then you're part of that movement.

Jessica Kidwell: 30:40

It's that ripple, a ripple effect, and I'm kind of hoping, after this conversation, the, the ripple that I need needs to be within myself and then hopefully, hopefully, after more and more of your newsletters and more and more of my own education, my ripple will travel outside of myself and and start impacting others, like you are so clearly doing. Let's talk about the substack. I am on a personal mission to try and be more fearless about asking to have people support me monetarily, in addition to loving what I do and wanting to be here it is. It is not necessarily a free situation to run a podcast, and that is what comes to mind when I come across any type of substack. Let's talk a little bit about the importance of subscribing to substacks and then the importance of paying for the content that newsletter writers such as yourself put out there.

Anya Kamenetz: 31:50

Yeah, absolutely. I mean I just see it as an opportunity to back the work of people that I really admire, who are trying something different, that doesn't necessarily fit in the mold of everyday publications and the media machine that is really dedicated to turning out kind of the same old stuff all the time. So it's a space of freedom for me. The money, the monetary support, means a lot. It's far from being you know something where I could quit my other work, but every time I get that it's a vote of confidence, right and it's honestly, I mean, what would feel as best about it is knowing that there's this personal relationship with people, that they can email me. I read all my emails, you know. They give me feedback, they answer questions and they help me feel like what I'm doing is making a difference and also they help me steer. So they are that ripple effect, like every single person who opens the newsletter and shares it with someone else is that ripple effect.

Jessica Kidwell: 32:54

And I want to be clear that I don't advocate that every sub stack should immediately people should become paid members to any sub stack that comes across their inbox. What I have noticed is the amount of links that I hit inside your newsletter that lead me to learn more, or the I leave your newsletter and look up additional information that you you have brought to me, starts to show how valuable and how much research and how much time and energy that you put into each of those newsletters and it starts to become obvious that that is something that, monetarily, I personally would want to support and I think that most people need to make those decisions for themselves, you know, for whatever your information sources are. But it just makes me think about like I'm mindlessly stream and have monthly things come

Jessica Kidwell: 33:57

out that I, that I I probably don't even know how many monthly automatic payments come out for things that I'm not necessarily even using, and the golden hour is something that I look forward to, and I always learn something every time it hits my inbox, so I am giving a humongous plug to being a paid subscriber. However, you should just subscribe to the golden hour to get started on on learning more about ways in which the climate overwhelm can can be a little bit more. Actually can be a little less overwhelming thank you so much.

Anya Kamenetz: 34:35

I mean so much to me and if you, if you're listening, if you subscribe, you know, send me a note if you're, if you subscribe from the podcast, I really, yeah, that would be amazing and yeah, how do people find the sub stack? It's the golden hour.

Jessica Kidwell: 34:50

That sub stack calm oh, another question I wanted to ask you is, in addition to bringing your cup and having to change the way that you're run, what are some other ways that all of your research has caused you to make changes in in your life, your family life?

Anya Kamenetz: 35:07

yeah, a lot of this has come kind of hand-in-hand right. So we've been privileged and able to make a lot of changes in our home. So when we first moved in, we put solar panels on and then the next step was taking out the boiler. So we have an electric stove now and we have electric heat, we have compost and we have backyard compost as well, as there's now a city compost option, and we changed around a lot of our grocery ordering. So this is a combination of thinking about, you know, having eating locally as well as trying to reduce food waste. So we're doing meal planning and I've engaged a whole family and meal planning to try to reduce our food waste, although the composting also helps a lot with that.

Anya Kamenetz: 35:48

The other types of things that we do have to do, the kinds of organizations that we support. So there's a there's a big range of those and different different tactics. You know, thinking about organizing, helping youth that organize. There's a group that I'm a part of called the climate mobilization, and they're really looking at the intersection of mutual aid and climate change, so making sure that people are ready for disasters, making sure that they can prepare to respond to disasters, and so that's led to a lot of really interesting conversations, also at our neighborhood level, the city level.

Anya Kamenetz: 36:21

I'm really excited about the kinds of organizing that's going on around things like car free streets. Right, so you don't think necessarily of climate change when think of car free streets, but it's a huge intersection. It's something that is about safety for kids, it's about clean air, it's about places for them to play and it's about reducing driving, it's about reducing tailpipe emissions and ultimately, getting you know, having more walkable and bikeable cities. So that's a range of different things that we've gotten engaged in. There's a great greening committee at my kids school, at the PTA level, and so I love that kind of climate action because it has an educational dimension, so organizing different kinds of activities that the kids can get involved in is always really fun and then with season five of, we should talk about that.

Jessica Kidwell: 37:06

Kicking off the theme for this season seems to be an easy tie-in for the conversation we're having today. It is a we start evolution this season and I am trying to take a look at what evolution, or what it means to each guest to evolve yeah, I love that.

Anya Kamenetz: 37:25

I love that. I've actually been thinking a lot about Charles Darwin very specifically recently. I think one of the hardest aspects of personal evolution can be really especially as we get older really believing in the possibility of change. You know, we get really engaged and in love with our stories about ourselves, even if, or especially if, they're painful stories, their stories about trauma, you know. Yeah, so taking a little bit of a leap into a future and believing that it'll be on loan and it will be different from the past is really what I I'm trying to visualize and I'm thinking a lot about one of my, one of my slogans for the New Year it's a new Jewish year and I just had my birthday too, so wow, that's a lot of new.

Anya Kamenetz: 38:10

Yeah, it's a big, it's a big moment, and seeing with new eyes is the is the mantra there. So that's what I think of with evolution. I think of seeing with new eyes well.

Jessica Kidwell: 38:22

I could not love that more if I tried. That is something I will for sure take away with me. I am going to try to look at my climate paralysis and see it with new eyes and find ways to have some purpose and forward motion for myself and Anya. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me about it and helping kind of control the overwhelm that I think lots of people have when when they started thinking about climate change.

Anya Kamenetz: 38:53

I really, really appreciate it thank you so much and thanks for your thoughtful questions. I can tell you really struggled with this and it's really I'm sure it's gonna be great for people who are listening.

Jessica Kidwell: 39:03

I mean from your mouth to, hopefully, their hearts we should talk about. That is hosted and produced by me, jessica Kidwell. The audio engineering is done by Jarrett Nicolay at mixtape studios in Alexandria, virginia. The theme song be where you are is courtesy of astrovia. Graphic design is by Kevin Adkins.

Jessica Kidwell: 39:26

Do you have a topic we should talk about? Let me know. Submit your idea on our website, wwwweestatpodcom. There's a form right on the main page for you to get in touch with me. And if you don't have a topic but you want to let me know what you thought about the show, think about leaving me a voicemail. You can call we stat at 631-4. We stat that's 631-493-7828. Or you can send me a comment on any of our social links Facebook, instagram, linkedin, threads, that platform formerly known as Twitter. On all of these you can find me at Weestat Pod. You may even hear your comments on the air. And finally, there is no we without your participation. I really couldn't do this podcast without your support. So thank you for being here, and if you or your business want to monetarily support the show, I'd appreciate that too. Email me at info at we stat podcom for more information.

Anya Kamenetz: 40:46

Oh, I should learn my constellation learn to navigate.