How to be a better steward of the environment
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TED Audio Collective. You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. On our last episode of the show, I spoke with my friend, comedian Joe Firestone. And at the end of that conversation, as I always do at the end of our interviews for this show, I asked Joe how she was personally trying to be a better human. Here's what she had to say. So I used to have a compost bin. Do you know the brown ones provided by the city? The ones that are rat proof. So then they took them away.

The city took them away. The city's bringing them back. And so today, I asked for one for my building. Big one. There's 13-gallon, 21-gallon. I said, I'm going to do the 21-gallon. I don't know if my landlord's going to let this happen, but I'm trying because I don't like it.

I don't like throwing away food. That's great. I admire that. I've been trying to compost myself and I discovered that I'm basically just putting things in this big black composter, but I don't think it's becoming compost as soon as it's going to just become a giant vat of horrible rotten food. But we'll see if it works. But that's good for you. I'm glad that's a good human thing. Sure. That's something. Yeah. How to help our planet has come up with a lot of our guests. But the challenge when it comes to helping our planet is that the issues are so multifaceted.

In our interviews, I've heard many different approaches and ideas about how to get involved. So on today's episode, we're going to listen back to a bunch of fascinating moments with guests that we hadn't been able to fit onto the podcast until now. And maybe, just maybe, we might end up with a solution that is more effective than my sad, dysfunctional little compost bin. My fingers are crossed. And we're going to find out right after this quick ad. ♪

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These days, we're surrounded by photo editing programs. Have you ever wondered what something or someone actually looks like under all the manipulation? I'm Elise Hugh, and you might know me as the host of TED Talks Daily. This October, I am giving a TED Talk in Atlanta about finding true beauty in a sea of artificial images.

I'm so excited to share the stage with all the amazing speakers of the TED Next conference, and I hope you'll come and experience it with me. Visit go.ted.com slash TED Next to get your pass today. And we are back. OK, so today we are talking about connecting with planet Earth and trying to make better choices when it comes to protecting this one and only home that we have.

When I think back on all of the interviews that we've done on the show that touch on these themes, one of the ones that sticks with me the most is with Chef Sean Sherman. Sean is a chef. He's a cookbook author, and he's the founder of indigenous food education business, The Sioux Chef. I've always liked to cook personally, but since I talked with Sean, I found myself thinking a lot more deeply about ingredients, not just whether they taste good or whether they're organic or local, but really about their histories. Who brought them?

Who planted them? How are they reflective or not reflective of the history of the place that I'm living in? Sean is one of those people that is such a deep thinker. He's such a deep thinker and he's obviously a fantastic chef. And here's what he had to say about why he thinks food can be the perfect way to start thinking about these issues.

So I just feel really hopeful that a lot of positive changes are going to come around where people can truly understand why it's important to protect our environment, to preserve a lot of this natural resource that's around us, to understand how we can just connect with the nature around us better, to utilize it, to protect that nature, but also, you know, have it being able to supply us with a lot of really healthy, nutritious foods and just

Opening up our worlds a little bit more, you know, so, you know, like we're not disattached from the environment. It's a part of our, it's a part of where we are. And we have to understand that moving forward. We can't just bowl over everything. And this colonial mindset of being able to just rip up and tear out what you need and just leave destruction behind you obviously does not work.

You know, because we have to be thinking about the future. We have to be thinking about the next generation. So all this work that we're doing, again, is just trying to set up structure and foundation for the following generation to be able to grow off of. What is it that you you do that you think makes people actually listen to you when sometimes the culture, the dominant United States culture is to pretend like these aren't issues at all?

You know, I think food is the vehicle that's really helping us to get this story out there because people are very curious about food and people love to learn about new foods. And because this is an interesting topic, people will take the time to stop and listen. So I've done a lot of talks and I will deep dive into the colonial history right away because a lot of people are very unaware of this situation.

And even just from a personal background, the work that we're doing, I'm just trying to do something to right a wrong of a situation that I grew up within, where I grew up within what people would call a food desert today. And if we were able to go back to more of a culturally and regionally appropriate food system, and you could figure out better ways to feed people in need, that we would just be healthier in general. So there's just so much to work on, on so many different levels.

And I just feel like people are willing to take the time to listen and to see these stories happening in real time. And the food really helps, because food is cultural identity. And we think about the food that our grandparents or great-grandparents passed down to us, and that's something that's really special and unique. But so much of that history was damaged to us as Indigenous peoples because of the history of the U.S. government versus Indigenous peoples here. And we're doing everything we can to reclaim a lot of that knowledge and share it.

I think really that connection with nature is such an important piece. I think really taking the time to start to learn the names of the plants around me particularly, and even taking it a step further of learning the original languages. So like I'm in Minnesota, so we're doing a project where we're putting out, working with this park

board in Minneapolis and creating a new park where we're going to be putting all these placards so people can walk and see the Dakota name of the plant first, and then the English name, and then a description of how these plants have been used for various pieces. And I think that connection of learning some of those old languages and learning the uses of these plants is such a great step.

Because, you know, our environment is so important and we have to really understand these natural resources can not be continued to be destroyed over, you know, the way it's been. And we have to make that change. And I think that we can all benefit from having a healthier environment. So as we continue this episode where we're talking about our planet and the environment, I think it's worth noting that for me, I often think of nature and then technology as opposites, right? Like one is inherently against the other.

But then after I had a conversation with author and environmentalist Mary Ellen Hannibal, she really convinced me that there are all sorts of ways that technology can allow everyday people to engage more deeply with nature, to do work as citizen scientists, and to understand what it is that they're seeing around them in the natural world. For Mary Ellen, technology, it can be a bridge between generations and across geography. And here is how using an app that lets you identify animals and plants has done that for her.

When I've gone around the country talking about citizen science, I will often speak to groups. I mean, a lot of people who want to do citizen science are at gardening groups or botanical gardens. I love, love, love those people. A lot of them don't, they just don't want to use technology. And if you're not also in a community where other people are doing it, it can be kind of lonely on your own. Although there is a community through iNaturalist. So it's not everything at all, um,

The thing about it, about citizen science, is you directly observing nature and making note of it. So with eBird, for example, you don't need to use any technology for that. Also, I think that's citizen science. It's actually just understanding that we are part of nature and we need to advocate and observe it.

So many, many other things. If you never want to do iNaturalist, you know, I have no problem with that. It also seems like so much of what we've talked about is such a natural way for parents and kids to be involved together because so many of these questions of like, what is this world around me? What is that? Why is that happening? These are such kid questions. Not that not to at all demean adults who ask them, but like kids so want to know, like, what is a butterfly? Why are there butterflies here? Where do they go?

I wonder if you have any specific tips of resources for parents who want to get their kids involved in citizen science initiatives. So one thing I really like is Journey North. That's another, there's lots of citizen science platforms out there beyond iNaturalist. Journey North is one for making note of migrations. So hummingbird migrations, monarch migrations. There's also, they have a project on day and night projects.

This is very interesting. So you can be anywhere, you know, in the country and you can, with your kids, you can start noticing every day, what time does it get dark? And then, you know, through doing that every day with your kids, you're teaching them quite a lot about really the cycle of life. And then it becomes a platform for talking about the cycle of life. So also, I didn't complete this thought earlier, for which I apologize, but that other app, Seek,

SEEK was developed for kids because you don't actually want to use iNaturalist with kids on their own if they're under 14 because they are geolocated and you don't want people to be able to figure out where your kid is when. So SEEK doesn't geolocate you and the AI, the artificial intelligence works faster. So that's a way to use technology without being connected to anything that geolocates you, which is good.

We're going to have more guests and more conversation in just a moment. Do not go anywhere.

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I want to tell you about a new podcast from NPR called Wild Card. You know, I am generally not the biggest fan of celebrity interview shows because they kind of feel packaged, like they've already told these stories a bunch of times before. But Wild Card is totally different because the conversation is decided by the celebrity picking a random card from a deck of conversation starters. And since even the host, Rachel Martin, doesn't know what they're going to

pick. The conversations feel alive and exciting and dangerous in a way because they're vulnerable and unpredictable. And it is so much more interesting than these stock answers that the celebrities tend to give on other shows. You get to hear things like Jack Antonov describe why boredom works or Jenny Slate on salad dressing or Issa Rae on the secret to creativity. It is a beautiful, interesting show, and I love it. Wildcard comes out every Thursday from NPR. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay, we're back. So this next clip comes from my conversation with Louisa Neubauer.

Louisa is an incredible and inspiring climate activist. As a college student, Louisa was one of the main organizers of the global climate strikes Fridays for Future. And now there's so much that I loved about talking with Louisa. But I think one of the biggest ideas that I took away is Louisa makes this crystal clear call for action, action from all of us. Whatever your skills, whatever your abilities, Louisa makes it really plain and simple. We need you.

We need every person we can get to save this planet. This is our only home and we need to be taking action right now. Here's Louisa. One of the things that I'm so interested by that you talked about in your TEDx talk and that I know you talk about a lot, you know, you're one of these leading environmentalists. And yet you tell people that you're not going to tell them to recycle or take fewer plane rides or buy secondhand clothes. Why is that? Well,

We are facing a systemic crisis, actually multiple systemic crises. So we need to provide and find and find for systemic answers. And recycling systems are great and secondhand shops are too. But what we need people to do is to engage in systemic fights and resistance on that systemic level.

And that's really difficult and really abstract. So I usually try to provide answers that are a bit more concrete, actually. And so one of the concrete answers that you've given or that I've heard you give is that we all need to be climate activists. Well, yeah, ideally. I think there's this understanding that a climate activist or a climate justice activist is always a very young person or a very old person. There's apparently nothing in between.

And these people are never normal. Like they, you know, had always this one thing that happened in their life and it changed everything. And then they had a really tough childhood or a really difficult life in between, or they were suddenly billionaires, but then they changed. And it's always this very extraordinary story to that, which obviously, you know, which can be inspiring in a sense, but I think it can also be a bit threatening. It kind of, you know, tells people, well,

You're too normal to be a climate activist. And I really want to tear this stereotype apart and make it as easy as possible for people to engage in climate activism and to become a climate activist, which fortunately is much easier now than it used to be because it's actually a cool thing to do.

It's something nice. It's actually something, you know, you could put on your CV if you wanted to. You know, I find this to be one of the most inspiring parts of this is that I feel like for a long time there's been this sense of like if you want to help the environment, it's all things that you are doing wrong. Like you need to be a better you need to take shorter showers. You need to recycle more. You need to change where you buy things. And all of those are important, like you said. But I think that it kind of shifts responsibility away from

Yeah, absolutely.

Actually, it's something that is, as soon as you think about it, it's very obvious. You can tell people to cycle more often, but they won't do it unless there's a good cycling infrastructure and suddenly we're on a systemic stage.

And suddenly it's about the politics behind it, the politics who are working in favor of automobile lobbyists and not in favor of cyclists, for instance. Well, one of the things you've done about it is Fridays for Future. And Fridays for Future, it started with students and with school walkouts.

But who else do you think is missing from the wider environmental movement? Well, this has changed a lot, actually. So it started as school strikes, really. So happening with school children. But obviously, when I and others in Germany started and in Europe, like in Central Europe, we weren't mostly school children, but there were many university students like myself coming and joining that. So we kind of broke this school thing up a bit and we kind of called it youth movement then.

And then suddenly people came up and said, well, we are parents and, you know, we're really worried about the future of our children. So what do we do? And so they founded Parents for Future. And then other people came up and they founded then Teachers for Future and Architects for Future and Musicians for Future and all those things. So suddenly it's now getting like a...

much more of an intergenerational fight. So I talked to a grandma for future who's currently fighting in some woods in Germany, defending that from deforestation. So it's really, you know, getting through the generations. And that is possible because with possibly the most important story of Fridays for Future is that the climate crisis is in fact not a

crisis of the climate, but of the people and those at the front lines mostly and the young generation, the children, the young people. And it's really easy to ignore the icebergs on the Arctic, which is melting. And it's really easy to ignore the forests that are currently burning. But it's kind of impossible to ignore the future of your own child or your grandchild. And that is what opened up this whole potential of intergenerational change making.

So I don't think there is someone like missing or so, but I think obviously there's so much more potential of people getting engaged with this and understanding that it's now the time to get involved. Thank you so much for listening to this special episode of How to Be a Better Human. I hope that you feel a little bit fired up, maybe a little bit inspired, but also a little bit angry, right? That is not heartburn you're feeling. That is righteous indignation.

All of our guests, they highlight that there are huge, immediate systemic problems that threaten our existence. We cannot ignore them. We need to organize. We need to change systems. We need to fight the status quo. The people that I talked to on this episode, they are doing just that. And you can too. And I really hope that you do because I sure would like to keep on living on this planet for a little bit longer, hopefully for a lot longer. So let's take some action.

That is our episode. And on the TED side, How to Be a Better Human is brought to you by Abimanyu Das from the earth, Daniela Balarezo from the wind, Frederica Elizabeth Josefa from the water, and Powers from the fire and Karen Newman from the heart. From PRX Productions, our show is brought to you by Jocelyn Gonzalez Animal, Pedro Rafael Rosado Vegetable, and Sandra Lopez Monsalve Mineral. If you like our show, please share it with another human or with many other humans. Have a great week. We'll be back next Monday.

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