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The Current Transcript for October 27, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: This is a collective breath and we are deciding who we need on the other side of it.

MATT GALLOWAY: When we spoke with James Maskalyk in March, the first terrifying wave of his pandemic was in full swing and the doctor told us about the stress of treating COVID patients in the E.R. and how he used meditation to cope with being on the front lines. Now he is using those techniques to help handle what he himself is facing. After a very serious cancer diagnosis, Dr. Maskalyk is here in 30 minutes to talk about moving from physician to patient. Also this morning, while this current crisis may seem overwhelming, climate change activists want you to know that yet another existential threat is looming in our midst. But is that message reaching beyond the converted?

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Most people who are interested in climate change just don't yet have the tools to talk about it confidently. The choir is there. They want to sing, but they don't know the words.

MG: Many of those words have been compiled in an inspiring new book. And in an hour, meet the editors of the collection of essays, stories and poems by women at the forefront of the fight against climate change. We start though with the question of why Canada is a fertile ground for baseless conspiracy theories in this pandemic and the very real danger they can pose. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: theme]

How conspiracies like QAnon are slowly creeping into some Canadian churches

Guests: Jessica DiSabatino, Justin Ling

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[Sounds from anti-mask protests in Montreal]

MG: That's the sound of an anti mask protest in Montreal last month. They're shouting "liberte" or freedom. Thousands of people were there. Many of them bearing symbols from one particular group, QAnon. It is a conspiracy theory based around the idea that Donald Trump is fighting a ring of child traffickers that includes government officials, Democrats and Hollywood stars. There have been acts of violence committed in the name of QAnon, and the FBI has labelled it a domestic terrorism threat. And now it has spread its dangerous disinformation into this pandemic. The theory has a growing following in Canada and in Canada's churches. Some religious leaders in this country have been noticing more of their members, latching on to QAnon theories. Jessica DiSabatino is the lead pastor of the Journey Church in Calgary and she joins us now. Good morning.

JESSICA DISABATINO: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Early in this pandemic, what were you seeing in terms of posts, I guess, on social media, that was really concerning to you when it came to conspiracy theories?

JESSICA DISABATINO: Yeah, I mean, I think at the beginning of the pandemic, like everybody we were wondering, I think everyone was wondering what it's going to look like and what are we doing with our lives?And I think as I began to look more and more at social media, I see people that were retweeting or reposting things that were definitely related to conspiracy theories and and some of those posts specifically to QAnon.And I wasn't at all familiar with QAnon. I didn't know anything about it. So I started to read everything I could about it. And really, Matt, I was shocked that people that I knew and that I loved would have been drawn into a conspiracy theory like this.

MG: So these, some of them were friends of yours that were posting this?

JESSICA DISABATINO: Yeah, friends.

MG: What specifically were they posting?

JESSICA DISABATINO: Well, I think they were posting and now that we're nine months into this, I think some of the things that we've all seen now. Things like the Plandemic video and things related to QAnon about tunnels in America children being trafficked and things that, as you read them, seem absolutely unbelievable. And yeah, so I read them sort of with surprise, I think would be the word I would use to describe it.

MG: What did your friends tell you about why they were sharing these theories?

JESSICA DISABATINO: Yeah. So, I mean, I think when we think of a conspiracy theorists, we think about people living, people we don't know, people that we're not, like nobody that I would know would be into that is what I would have envisioned. But I think as I talked to people, I realized part of it was control. So we have some control in some areas. So if there's some conspiracy theory that I can be part of, then I can control the narrative of what's happening to me. I think others of it was, yeah, that you just have some part to play in all of this, instead of being like I think what a lot of us have felt over the last nine months is just we're a piece of seaweed floating on the waves. Like we have no control over what's happening to us at all.

MG: What's so alarming to you but what you were reading?

JESSICA DISABATINO: You know, I think there's a couple of things. I think the first thing is that whenever you get a conspiracy theory that has some basis of good in it, so, I mean, I talked to somebody who said, well, Jess, don't you care about children being trafficked? Well, I mean what kind of a question is that? Of course, any human would care about that. But then you get sort of like you're caught in a catch 22 because, well, if you care about children that are being trafficked, I mean, you would you believe in this theory. And I think that is what is concerning to me, because I think it puts a lot of people who would be, you know, soft hearted and compassionate and care about humanity, it puts him in this really funny crosshairs where they have to then sort out what's true and what's not and so that would be concerning to me. I think just the divisive nature of all of it is the most concerning though to me. I think we our society is built off as being able to have more in common than we have different about each other and particularly this theory and I think all conspiracy theories have the ability to really divide us and make us believe that whatever side is the enemy and that is really concerning to me. I think that should be the greater concern, I mean not just at my church or not just in religious institutions, but in iour society in general.

MG: So what is your, given that and given the fact that these are people who are in your church, but also friends, what's your responsibility as a leader to forcefully debunk theories like this?

MG: Yeah, like, I think in every group, it's not a majority of people that stick their hand up and say, I believe in this. So I think it's a real minority. So then I think when we talk about how do we discuss that, for me, it's been really important that I remember that the people that believe this are neither, they're not not human anymore. I think the tendency I think when you have people that believe something that to me seems incredulous that you believe it is to dehumanze them. And so I think my job as a leader is to, yes, forcefully debunk some of this. And particularly, I think the QAnon conspiracy that has gotten to really not being I think being very divisive in terms of Black Lives Matter and things like that. I think we've had to be very very forceful in terms of saying that is not as a community what we will stand for and we will make sure that all humans are, we would clearly say that black lives matter. All humans are created equal. But in terms of the specific individuals that believe this, I think people come to conspiracy theories for different reasons. I think some people, because they have a predisposition to have control and some people because they've had extraordinary hurt and pain in their life or they've been tricked before, so fool me once, but you're not gonna fool me twice. That sort of idea. So I think for myself, I think about the part that I have to play in this and I think I have to be both strong about where we have gone wrong, but then also compassionate to people asking the question, keeping a listening posture and asking the question, how did we end up here? How did you end up here?

MG: Just before I let you go, when you raised those skeptical questions, how responsive and receptive are your friends and you and your followers to hearing you question, you know, QAnon for example?

JESSICA DISABATINO: Yeah, it's a great question because I think at the beginning, what I thought would be the best way to talk to people about it was forcefully. Like how could you believe this? What is wrong with you? Sort of that kind of vibe. And I think a few months into it, I realized I'm not getting anywhere. In fact, I'm not even, this is not creating dialogue, this is creating walls. And so I think moving forward, what I've had to say is how can I keep remembering that the people, that these are still people, that they are people who have somehow come to this conclusion. And how can I keep hearing them? And I think that's produced more dialogue, at least and I think that's what we can only hope for, that we can create dialogue on both sides of this. And, you know, when it comes to things that are hurtful to other people, there's I think there are some things we have to draw the line on. There can't be dialogue about some things. But I think when we're talking about specifics that aren't perhaps harming other people, I think we have a chance to listen. And I think in the listening, we create moments to be able to ask people questions and hopefully have people see that maybe what they're believing isn't the best way to create the outcomes they're looking for.

MG: Jessica, I appreciate speaking with you this morning. Thank you.

JESSICA DISABATINO: Thanks Matt.

MG: Jessica DiSabatino is the lead pastor of the Journey Church in Calgary. The rise of QAnon isn't just happening in Canadian churches. Justin Ling is a freelance investigative journalist. He's covered QAnon for Foreign Policy Magazine. He's in Montreal and has been listening in. Justin, good morning to you.

JUSTIN LING: Hey, good morning, Matt.

MG: We heard Pastor DiSabatino there talk about some of what her church's members are sharing from QAnon. Just briefly run us through some of the biggest conspiracy theories that QAnon is kind of propagating.

JUSTIN LING: I mean, the Pastor did pretty good job of basically into the heart of what QAnon believes. But, you know, at the very core, it it asserts that there is a deep state conspiracy, a constellation of current and former government officials who really run the show and that a big part of their hold on power revolves around the idea that they're are abducting, kidnapping, essentially, trafficking and potentially sacrificing children in the name of some sort of satanic ritual. I realize that sounds pretty out there, but that is the sort of building blocks at the base of QAnon. And this may sound vaguely familiar to people who followed the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. And it's no coincidence, Pizzagate, you know, the conspiracy that there is this, you know, dungeon in the basement of this D.C. pizza parlour is the foundation for QAnon. It's really what sparked the whole thing, but it's taken on a life of its own. Now, there's all manner of conspiracies around the Trump presidency. It has sort of subsumed 9/11 conspiracy theories. You know there are anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. There are you know, they borrowed things from just about every major conspiracy movement in the last, you know, in the last century really.

MG: What's the connection with Black Lives Matter, for example? I mean, Jessica raised that issue.

JUSTIN LING: Yeah, I mean, there's a belief that Black Lives Matter protesters, are in on it, that they're being paid or that they're, you know, going out in the streets in service of this deep state. I mean, there's this really kind of deranged belief that many of the outpouring into opposition to the Trump administration are just tendrils basically of this deep state that wants to keep the president down. You know, fundamentally, QAnon believes that there is a war for between good and evil happening and that Donald Trump is, you know, the great crusader fighting against this deep state. And that QAnon needs to rally around him basically to defend his quest for justice.

MG: You've written, I mean, that's in the United States, you've written that QAnon has taken a powerful grip here in Canada. Why is it, why is this country fertile ground for these theories?

JUSTIN LING: I mean, it's remarkable the international appeal that QAnon has. I mean, fundamentally, it is a delusion built around Donald Trump, but because it is so sort of amorphous and so willing to pick up other conspiracy theories, it has attracted a significant following in Iran, of all places, throughout Europe. You mentioned off the top. France has a contingent. But in Canada in particular, it seems to have really found a willing constituency for, I think, a variety of reasons. I mean, you know, one is our buying into American media and social media, that helps a large chunk. But it's also that Canada is in the QAnon conspiracy run by the deep state. Justin Trudeau, you know, according to you know, these conspiracy theorists is part of this international child trafficking network. And QAnon on followers in Canada are sort of called up to to organize to oppose the prime minister in this government. You may have seen recently that folks in downtown Ottawa, were trying to perform citizen's arrests of the prime minister and other politicians, many of the people in, you know, a part of that crew were either tacitly or outright acknowledging QAnon conspiracy theories. So it has found a real support base amongst folks who are unhappy with the government anyway, amongst folks who are already, you know, adherence to various conspiracy theories and especially people who oppose the COVID-19, you know, social distancing measures.

MG: Well, tell me more about that. I mean, we're seeing, we talked about this on the program a few weeks ago, a poll by La Presse, the newspaper in Montreal, saying 18 percent of Quebecers think the pandemic is a tool created by governments to control them. What is the connection between what QAnon is propagating and concerns around lockdowns and around mask wearing and these demonstrations that we're seeing in the streets of Montreal and elsewhere?

JUSTIN LING: Well, I think it really goes to the heart of how QAnon works. So, you know, there is behind QAnon this bigger called Q, who sends out these missives that are sort of coded and esoteric and vaguely worded and has, you know, repeatedly kind of tip their hat to the idea that the pandemic is like your previous guest noted, a Plandemic or some sort of conspiracy or organized effort to basically keep people inside to, you know, control them. And I think a lot of the followers have taken that and run with it. You know, they have, you know QAnon really challenges their followers to come up with their own theories, to train their own ideas, to do their own research. And a lot of the folks who, you know, have bought into QAnon have gone out and done that. You know, they've started trying to read some of the research and and I think have been taken in by a lot of bad research and have come up with this idea that COVID-19 was developed in a lab, that it's a government plot, that it's you know, that the deaths are overstated and so on and so forth. So, you know, QAnon on has done, just this, you know, I kind of imagine it as a snowball, you know, falling down a hill and kind of collecting snow and debris and sticks and rocks all along the way. Cuase that's what it is. It has, you know, eaten up all manner of conspiracy theories, you know, related and only semi-related.

MG: There are people who wonder how it, I mean, mixed metaphors about how the snowball would would get auction, how it would gather more snow. And people say that it's in part a reluctance by some leaders to disavow this conspiracy theory. NBC's Savannah Guthrie asked President Donald Trump about his support for QAnon at a recent presidential campaign town hall. Have a listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Can you just once and for all state that that is completely not true, so disavow QAnon in its entirety.

VOICE 2: I know nothing about QAnon.

VOICE 1: I just told you.

VOICE 2: I know very little. You told me, but what you tell me doesn't necessarily make it fact. I hate to say that. I know nothing about it. I do know they are very much against pedophilia. They fight it very hard. But I know nothing about. If you'd like me to study this.

VOICE 1: They believe it is a satanic cult run by the deep state.

VOICE 2: Let me just tell you, what I do hear about it is they are very strongly against pedophilia and I agree with that.

MG: We've seen President Trump sort of dance around QAnon, but there are cases in which candidates who support them could be elected in the election a week from today. What is that done for the legitimacy of these baseless conspiracy theories?

JUSTIN LING: Oh I think there's a tremendous amount. You know, I don't think it needs political approval. I mean, a big part of the QAnon conspiracy tells its followers that, you know, they're the only ones who understand this properly, that they are kind of part of this received wisdom cult in a sense that, you know, really knows what's up. So they don't need Donald Trump to acknowledge them. It helps for sure. Every time Donald Trump mentions their name and says something like, you know, I know they support me. I know they're behind me. I know they're against child trafficking. It's a big boost, without a doubt. But I think even just hearing the name in the media in that light, you know, also is a huge almost recruitment tool for them. But it has absolutely taken root in the Republican Party. I mean, there by one estimate, are 44 Republican candidates running for office who either openly or kind of more subtly support to QAnon. I mean that is a massive number and if several of them, I mean, many of those people are not going to win office, but several of them likely are. There are going to be QAnon believers in Congress come next year.

MG: So what do you do? We're just about out of time, but what do you do about this? If the FBI says that this is a domestic terror threat and there are real world consequences for what's happening, how do you go about taming this down?

JUSTIN LING: Well, you know, I think there's there's a lot of solutions here. I mean, you know, we actually think we have a pretty good idea of who the person behind QAnon is. We believe it's the owner of a very kind of dark online web form called 8Chan. Some circumstantial evidence is pretty compelling. I mean, I think unmasking Q might go some some lengths to show the followers that they're being tricked. You know, I think you need to talk about counter radicalization and deradicalization. That's essentially what we're dealing with here. We need to figure out ways in which to help these people think critically about, you know, the sort of nonsense they're being given. And we do need to try to figure out what folks are going to be susceptible to violence. We have seen multiple examples of QAnon followers committing acts of violence. Think back just to July. Corey Hurren and the man alleged to have driven through the front gates of Rideau Hall with a plan allegedly to kill the prime minister was a QAnon follower. And we know the QAnon can drive people to violence. But at the same time, we also need to be sure that we're not encouraging, you know, the sort of mass surveillance of this movement that I don't think would be effective and it would be a, you know, an overrun of civil liberties. You know, I don't think this is an inherently violent movement, but it is one we need to be worried about.

MG: Justin, great to talk to you about this. Thank you.

JUSTIN LING: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Justin Ling, freelance investigative journalist. He's covered QAnon for Foreign Policy Magazine. Your CBC News is up next. And then a conversation with the Doctor. James Maskalyk has been on the frontlines helping patients throughout this pandemic. Now, with a serious cancer diagnosis, he has gone from doctor to patient and taking everything he's learned about healing from all over the world to help himself and others. Dr. James Maskalyk joins me in six minutes time. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

[Music]

Doctor who helped people meditate through pandemic fears diagnosed with stage 4 cancer

Guests: James Maskalyk

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

[Music: theme]

MG: Still to come, the women at the forefront of the climate emergency. But first, one of this pandemic's calmest voices on the frontlines on facing his own mortality.

[Music: theme]

MG: In the early days of this pandemic, one of the calmest, most thoughtful voices coming from the frontlines was that of Dr. James Maskalyk. He was working in the emergency department, in the COVID unit at St. Michael's Hospital in downtown Toronto. And he would give regular updates on his Facebook page, answering questions and sharing his meditation practice. In fact, he led a group meditation right here on The Current as the pandemic really took hold. Then this summer, he was hit with difficult news. A lump that he had noticed on his neck was, in fact, a rare and malignant form of cancer. Dr. James Maskalyk joins me now. Doctor, good morning.

JAMES MASKALYK: Hi Matt, how are you?

MG: I'm okay. How are you doing?

JAMES MASKALYK: You know the question these days, isn't it?

MG: Sure is.

JAMES MASKALYK: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I like to say every day since I was a baby, I experienced the full human register of emotion from joy to despair. And today's no different, you know.

MG: Tell me a little bit about what happened this summer. You and I spoke and we'd been sending messages back and forth over the course of of the early days of the pandemic when you were working in the ER, as I mentioned, at St. Mike's. What happened this summer to you?

JAMES MASKALYK: Yeah, as you know, I was kind of threw myself into the work at St. Mike's. You know, all of us did, really. And it was familiar for me. I lost my mom kind of suddenly and tragically in February. So, you know, what does a doctor do but just throw him or herself into bigger problems in front of them, right. So I was doing that. I was, you know, working, isolating like everybody, but also just really committing to this like it was an MSF mission, you know? But it was great. I got to sleep in my own bed and see my friends occasionally. And then sort of got a sore throat, what I thought was a sore throat. And I thought, oh, maybe I got COVID. And then I felt the lymph node on one side of my neck. And then as soon as I felt that I knew, well, that's not, it should be at least on two sides if it's an infection. So hastened my own biopsy, an ENT doctor at St. Mikes did it for me. And what first we thought was papillary cancer, which is really one that Western medicine has the answer for. We can treat it quite easily, turned out to be something much more complex and rare. I have to get a bespoke saying, you know, can't just be something simple. So within about because there's no, it's very, quite rare, you know, the highlights the pharmaceutical industry , pharmaco industrial complex, they're not really motivated to financially invest in curing something that is only a few people have, right. So the cure for this one surgery. So within about really 10 days after finding that node, I was in surgery.

MG: What happened then? What did you learn?

JAMES MASKALYK: You know, it's funny. It's really just like experiencing sickness as a physician who promises to help others is just the most enlightening and humbling thing. Right. It's like kind of like coming out as human, you know, that's what happened to me. It's like, I thought, somewhat vaguely humiliating because I thought well I knew all the stuff. I knew, I learned in school how to how to how to prevent these types of things. And now and I'm just human after all. You know, you kind of get a sneaking suspicion, you're going to make it out OK. You're going to be the one who defies the truth that this is always has been a return trip ticket. Always has been a return trip ticket. So, you know, I went into that operation and I really have this empathy for the patients who had to be there at the same, you know, endure the same thing. It's very isolating. My brother couldn't come with me. He flew out from Alberta to be with me. He couldn't come in. No one could visit me in the hospital. Everyone's walking around in shields and masks and me, too, you know, it seemed almost impersonal. And so I had this, you know, very, very meticulous and long operation to remove as much of the cancer as they could. And, you know, the margins came back. It was on my laryngeal nerve, the nerve that gives me my ability for us to have this conversation. It was adhered to it and the pathology came back. When they sent it to the pathologists, the margins were 0.1 millimetres. 0.1 millimetres. That's how close that cancer was to that nerve. So, you know, it has just been a lot of, you know, unanticipated emotional work. But I'm just, what's emerged is not just this fear that, you know, sure I have it. You know, I feel like I have a lot more life to live and a lot more to give, but just this absolute conviction of reverence that the world in reality and biology is firmly on my side. But on March, May 29th, in the universe in the form of an EMT surgeon reached deep into my neck when it heard about this sickness and tried to cut this away because those cells are not continent with whatever the purposes of this experience, we have a living. So I know that to be true. And I know that to be true, that people right now in St. Mike's and in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and all over the world are going to work as frontline workers and putting masks on and helping people who they're afraid to have COVID. And that's the nature of nature. And I know it's hard to endure, but it never became so clear to me as when I had to go through this.

MG: This is a Stage 4 cancer?

JAMES MASKALYK: Yeah, they call it Stage 4 cancer. And that spreads to my lymph nodes, so you know where to from, there is anybody's guess. And, you know, I'm getting another biopsy today, so if they can take it out, then, you know, hey, I'm cured. The other tpossibility is that I find a symbiosis with these cells such that I give them something about what they need. So, you know, the presumption, again, that they were only ever trying to help me out. And so, you know, they lost a certain wisdom that the they're not supposed to be immortal, but they made a mistake. So I don't want to internalize that conflict and, you know, that's where it's possible to align my energies such that I am able to use as much of it as possible towards healing, but also, you know, quell the dissonance of these cells, such unable to live along and actually healthy life, despite this mistake that they made.

MG: Tell me about healing. When you and I know this just from following you on social media, when you got this diagnosis, you've been working on your next book called Doctor Heal Thyself, which is I mean, your handle on Instagram. And it's been like that for a long time. What does that mean, that phrase, doctor heal thyself, given what you've gone through in the last few months?

JAMES MASKALYK: Well, certainly my theme that seems to run through my books is hubris now, isn't it? You know, I called my editor when I got this diagnosis. They said, you know, I've got some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first? And she said, well the good. I said, well, my title makes a lot more sense now. And the bad news is, I don't know if I can do it. But you know guess what, I can because, you know, the arc of that book was, you know, in this book, it's like I travelled the world as much as I could before COVID talking to people who've dedicated their lives towards healing, helping others in different wisdom traditions. Right. Like Chinese medicine person, our First Nations. And just experiencing the medicine as a patient kind of humbling myself and saying, you know, I don't know. Actually, I don't know. Even medicine doesn't know so much. And just wanted to see where they all overlap and they overlap in this place that you know, I've always been drawn. What is that thing that can heal even on our deathbed? Even in the face of sickness or in the face of cancer? And for lack of a better word, it's like spirit. Right? you know, it's almost it's almost like an epithet these days, like New Age, you know. But that's the healing process. It's just a more complex idea of something that includes the mind and the body and include the community and ecology. And in fact, I would say that's how we're actually living our life, you know, and I was inspired to start this book and go in that direction because I saw that life expectancy was actually declining despite the innovation, despite the precision medicine and cancer vaccines and all this stuff he was actually declining even before COVID because people were killing themselves with drugs and alcohol, fentanyl and alcohol and you know, suicide. So what was hurt? The body was OK. It seemed to be OK. In fact, the body was just trying to endure this insult and this assault from outside. But so what is that thing? And that's where you tangle up against the things like grief and hope, all those things that really unify us in a human experience.

MG: You spent part of the summer in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Tell me about the healing centres that you went to there and what you took from those experiences.

JAMES MASKALYK: Yeah. You know, Turtle Lodge was in Manitoba. I'm really just so enchanted with what they're doing there. And it's this I guess I would say a spiritual epicentre for First Nations. And I was a fly on the wall during a meeting and the elders who came across the country as much as they could, you know, I think it was as much smaller meeting because of COVID, so some people weren't able to travel. But just listening to the rhythm of this wisdom that has been happening for, you know, thousands of years, right, as they got together as communities and talked about what was troubling their people and what was bothering them, you know, in their own minds. And hearing these themes emerge that in my, you know, in my view is really the cure for COVID. I mean, yeah sure a vaccine is great. You know, I think we all are waiting for one. But the actual cure is to stop the the the damage that we're doing to our own selves and our own ecosystem by kind of ceremonializing our lives. So we are able to actually deliver more spiritual life until every act that we're doing is conscious and we are in harmony with the environment that surrounds us, rather than using it as fast as we can to get to the next thing. So just the and the way that they helped me hold grief, you know, because you so well know and we're just only still scratching the surface of the pain that these communities have held for generations as they were had, you know, their system of belief kind of stripped away systematically. So, you know, having that, people say, you know, when I talk about my mom passing away, saying, you know, she's got everything she needs. You know, don't worry about her. She's got everything she needs. And the tears you're crying there, 10,000 years old. And just that this community. I didn't. And they welcomed me so effortlessly. I was just really humbled.

MG: And did that help in what, I mean, part of it is about your mom, but you also get this diagnosis that, you know, you're 47-years-old. I mean, life is in front of you in some ways. Did that perspective help you wrap your head around what you were going through yourself?

JAMES MASKALYK: Yeah. You know, as I was struggling with it with this guy, Dave, who's, you know, the knowledge keeper at Turtle Lodge, he said, you know, it seems like you got more life to live, like, you've got a strong spirit. But whenever it's your time and it's always going to be your time at sometime, right, no one's escaping that, you'll only get asked one question when you leave. Did you bring love into the world? And if you did, you've done it, you've done the work. And so there's this, oh yeah I'm just this little thing. Part of a much bigger thing. And if feels differently, sometimes it feels some ways like it's very much about me, but this is this process, the progress of insight and the spirit is this incessant ruling thing that I'm just get to be witness to.

MG: Do you see a dissonance between what you do, the training that you have, the practice that you have in Western medicine and I mean, what you do in the emergency department? And you've written about this, that those moments where somebody comes in on an air ambulance and you have to apply the rigours of Western medicine in a heartbeat to keep this person's heart beating. Do you see a dissonance between that and more traditional or alternative ways of healing.

JAMES MASKALYK: In some ways I do. And I think it's mostly just a lack of time. A lack of time and a lack of training. You know people come into the E.R. and you'll probably go there at any moment and there will be a line, waiting line of people who are actually quite anxious to leave. You know, they want to be seen now and they want to get out. And so you have this, you're dealing with the anxiety of the people in the waiting room, almost in the way, so you shortchange the person in front of you sometimes. You can't help it. You just feel like pressure, right. But when I see a person see who comes in, who's been drinking too much, I can tell and they're in alcohol withdrawal, to get them out of the situation, I can write them a prescription for Valium and say, just take this instead of the booze, it will help you get rid of the shakes and allow you to sleep, but I haven't really helped them out. I haven't said, you know, I need you, how can we get you to a place where you don't feel you need to drink so much? You don't need to annesthesize the little boy or little girl inside of you, what happened when you were a little boy or a little girl? Tell me about your dad, tell me about your mom or whatever it is. And, you know, it takes time to uncover and time to reveal. So I hope that that's the growth for us. Like, I hope that this COVID thing, which is just you know training, I think is for what's essential. Right. I hope more and more people are able to enter this type of field and realize that once they're well and know wellness is they're able to help other people and were able to give give more time those of us who are hurt and we all get hurt. We're all go through, you know, the cyclicals, you know, healing and hurt, you know, back and forth like that. So I do think that there's a lack of a time sometimes that's priced out of the system. Something is not as found as strongly in in the Western tradition as it is in others.

MG: How is that changed? And I know you aren't able to work in the E.R. right now, but being a patient, how has that changed how you see your role as a physician? Because you've gone from physician to patient, and that's a profound change.

JAMES MASKALYK: Well, you know, as you work in, I don't think I'm ever going to leave the attitude that we're actually here to uncover the beautiful world that is actually inside this one. And we do that by growing in our understanding that we're, the notion of our family can only ever increase to include vulnerable people no matter where they are. Like, I just believe that is true. And that's in the future. That is what is coming our way. And you can see more and more of it every day. I just want to see as much of it as I can before it's my time to go. So I'm never going to stop wanting to reach out to that in a particular way, in an individual way. I just don't know if the insults of the emergency department, I can endure them right now while I'm in this kind of healing phase.

MG: Do you miss it?

JAMES MASKALYK: I miss, yeah, I do. I miss my friends in the E.R. and miss the chance to make someone who's afraid laugh and make them feel like the world makes sense a little bit. That, I got it. You know, I got them and I'll help them. Andthat part I miss a lot.

MG: When you when you get that sort of care from somebody on the on the other side of the gurney, again, like what does it teach you about what what those patients are looking for? You say that you're able to kind of make somebody laugh, who's afraid? I'm assuming that there's some fear in what you're facing as well. And so what have you taken from that in terms of what you can offer when you get back to the ER, what you can offer to those patients?

JAMES MASKALYK: You know, it's interesting. It's like when you get the sickness or the sickness, I'm like, no one cares about this as much as me. You know, it's not because they they're uncaring, it's just because it's impossible. How can anyone care about it as much as me? So all I guess what I can say now to my patients, my future patients, is I know what it's like. I know what it's like. And yet and yet I'm here. And yet all these people are here. You know, we're, you're not alone. I know it can feel that way. And especially when you're facing the existential dread of of death. You can feel you're alone, but you're not. You're part of something that's much bigger. And I think that that, what I was referring to, caring for vulnerable people, no matter where they are is that there's a sense of safety that you can be healing. That's the thing that once, I think once you feel that, that's what can looking to be healed on your deathbed is that you're going to be held in a way that your pain will be held, your suffering and that is a real relief that you know morphine can never bring.

MG: One of the things that you wrote about it again when you were right on the front lines of the COVID fight was that you're your greatest fear is that once we get through this, that will just go back to business as usual. Tell me more about that. What are you worried about when we get to the other side of all of this?

JAMES MASKALYK: Yeah, I think, you know, I think that we're just all of us as a society and people are wrestling with this tremendous cognitive load right now of eight billion people. And you could understand it, you satirically, but now you're feeling it. You're feeling the difficulties that are upon us and it's people say, oh, someone you know, we made these problems. And I'm like, no, we didn't make them, they just occurred. But they're ours now. So, you know, one of the ones that I think is dangerous is that like just a growing economy is the most important thing that it needs to be growing exponentially. But that sounds like the cancer in my body. OK. That doesn't, that's not consonant with the with the principles of liveness. Like equilibrium is a growth of reverence and gratitude and humility. And I'll coming back to thatceremonialization of our lives that can occur. That's the kind of growth that I think will help us stabilize this and find a better balance, so we're able to be more deeper versions of the people we actually are, which is what I think the point of this place actually is. So if it's just we rev up the economy and rev things that, you know, and still wilderness starts to disappear in the rainforest, which is our only remaining pharmacy, it's our only remaining pharmacy, if we continue to destroy that for, you know, just because it's we have our appetite is uncontrollable, then I'm kind of worried about who we are. But I don't think that's what will occur. I don't think that will occur. This is a time, this is the most important time in my view and in human history, you know, as far as I can tell, because we have all the stuff. All this stuff can make this happen and all the stuff to endure, and the question is, will we learn the lesson?

MG: Are you always like do you ever get angry about the situation that you find yourself in? You have a way of being it and it's through your practice, but also just the writing that you do of being really philosophical and being calm, as I said earlier on. Do you ever get angry about the cards that came out of the deck?

JAMES MASKALYK: For me, no. I mean about this? No, no, not angry. I didn't go through that. You know, I was, I did the arithmetic yesterday. My body's had experienced mitosis, 340 trillion times, more or less with single cell. Whatever that single cell that happened when mym mom and my dad happened came together has 340 trillion times has repeated itself. And the one mistake. One mistake. And I think about, well, if my body is just made of stuff that isn't my body, the food I put in it, the relationships I have with my neighbourhood and the air that I breathe. You know how can the same integrity not be present in all the other aspects of my life as well too? So is the universe actually on my side? I think it is. I think it is. It's on all of our sides. And so I just I guess the feeling that I feel more often is like reverence to that, the unknowable thing. Gratitude to be here at all. To meet the people that I have. And, you know, because I'm being kind of asked to leave. Well, no I'm being asked to face the question of leaving is I'm a bit sad cause it's so pretty. And, you know, you look in the human iris and you see all these little pulleys of muscles and the flecks of brown and a blue eye and it accommodates the light, like, instantly and you're just gobsmacked b the beauty of the world. So I think, like, the Japanese have a term for it, I don't know if I pronounce that right. But it's like wistfulness at the ephemerality of things. So that wistfulness, sure.

MG: Do you think differently about time? We're almost out of time for our conversation, but do you think differently about time now?

JAMES MASKALYK: I mean, there's only, yeah. I mean, there's only ever this moment and that you're being asked the question to, you know, how can you love, how can you let love through you as truly as possible? And you know, when my mind yawds back and forth between past and present, I mean I can get fearful or worried or regretful, but when I'm when I'm in the moment, I feel everything is all right, which is intended to cue the song, which is by Angel Olsen, if that's still on order. But that's when I feel that everything's going to be all right.

MG: We'll try and slide some of that in. I wish you great health. I look forward to talking to you again. James, thank you.

JAMES MASKALYK: Thanks brother.

MG: Dr. James Maskalyk, an emergency medicine specialist at St. Michael's Hospital and the author of two books, Six Months in Sudan and Life on the Ground Floor. He's at work on a third called, Doctor Heal Thyself, and he is facing a cancer diagnosis, as he talked about. This is the song that he mentioned. It's a song that apparently he wakes up to each morning. It's by Angel Olsen. It's called "All Right Now."

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[Song: "All Right Now" by Angel Olsen]

MG: The Current's back in 90 seconds. We'll speak with climate scientists Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson about the women at the forefront of the fight against climate change. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

[Music]

All We Can Save highlights the voices of women in the climate change movement – and the fact that they’ve been there all along

Guests: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Katharine Wilkinson

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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VOICE: My heart is moved by all I cannot save. So much has been destroyed. I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power reconstitute the world.

MG: Those words were written by the late American poet and feminist, Adrienne Rich. And it was those words that inspired two climate scientists to think about what they can still save and put it all together in a book. All We Can Save -- Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis was co-edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson. This is a collection of essays, poems and stories written by women at the forefront of the climate change movement. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson join us now. Good morning to you both.

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: Good morning.

KATHARINE WILKINSON: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Tell me a little bit about that excerpt that we heard from Adrienne Rich. What was it in reading that that was so inspiring to you?

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: Yeah, those words actually often bring tears to my eyes when we we consider the climate movement and how we talk about climate. The climate crisis and climate solutions. We often miss the opportunity to be both honest about how dire the scientific projections are. And at the same time, embrace it's still possible. And that's what we were trying to capture in the title. And that's why this stanza from Adrienne Rich's poem called Natural Resources really captured our attention, because how do you name a book change that makes you will actually want to pick it up? That's not just like lies about hope. Right. Like, we didn't want to give people false hope, but we did want to offer possibility and focus on solutions.

MG: Lies about hope. That's really interesting, Katharine, because I think people are looking for hope because the news is so heavy and the news, particularly around the climate and a changing climate, can just destroy you. So tell me more about, you know, avoiding lies, about hope.

KATHARINE WILKINSON: I will quote Ayana, who sometimes has expletive hope. Show me the plan. And, you know, I think that in a lot of ways is the pivot, which is hope is often interpreted as something passive, something that is sort of well, I don't really want to solve this sad or angry or anxious about what's going on. Could somebody make me feel better about things? And, you know, I think the reality is that the only way that we will feel better about things is to get to work on building a better world. Working towards that possibility that Ayanna was talking about. And so we were really deliberate. And the subtitle of the book about using the word courage, because if your eyes are open to what's happening on this planet, I was just looking at images of the fire that broke out on Mount Kilimanjaro. And it will absolutely break your heart. And the question is, if your heart's broken, does that become fuel to stand up and play your part in this great work of transformation? That is really the task for humanity this decade and and beyond.

MG: This is a collection, as I said, of essays and poems and stories written by women. In the introduction, you say that the climate crisis is not gender neutral. Katharine, what did you mean by that?

KATHARINE WILKINSON: It's helpful, I think, think about the Pentagon called climate change a threat multiplier. We might think about climate change as a vulnerability or an injustice multiplier. So that means that wherever we've got injustice baked into the current system, climate change is going to kind of heighten those inequities. And we live in a gender unequal society. We live in a society that is unequal along lines of race, Global north, Global south. So all of these areas where we see disparity of kind of intensity, of impacts from climate change and also disparity in ability to cope and to sort of bounce back, say, when extreme weather events hit. But oftentimes the story just isn't fair. You know, for example, we know that that when NGOs are more likely to be injured or killed in a natural disaster, that climate impacts like about precipitate early marriage. And we even see in data now a tie between climate impacts and sexual violence and sex trafficking. But it's not just a story about victims. And this is something that I've really learnt a lot from Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland. But when you are closer to the site of impact of the problem, you are Nessa's more equipped to know what the solution should be. And we see women and girls stepping up all over the world at the local level to U.N. climate negotiate and everything in between to lead us forward in a way that centres care and community and compassion and. Do you really think that the climate crisis is a leadership crisis and what we've got to do is transform society decades? We need a transformational leadership and we need a full diversity of all of the best of humanity's thinking and doing to come be part of the biggest and strongest team possible. Too often that has not been the case. We've been leaving women and girls and not pioneering folks out of the decision making rooms, out of the critical conversations. And we hope this book will be part of shifting that.

MG: Ayana, I could hear you in the background.

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: Yeah, I'm just like mhmm, mhmm and I think, you know, in co-authring the first essay in the book with Katharine, the Begin, we really did a bunch of research into the social science around what Katharine's describing, that we we know, for example, that when women have an equal seat at the table in decision making, in policy, that the outcomes for nature are better, that we have stronger environmental laws, that there are more strongly enforced. And so, you know, this is not about women only, but it's about making sure that women have equal representation as we're deciding the future of life on Earth. That is sort of the way we open the book. And in particular, pointing out a woman who's who had been lost to history, Eunice Newton Foote, who is the scientist who discovered that carbon dioxide would lead to planetary warming. And she discovered this in 1856. Like Eunice tried to warn us, right. And she discovered this years before Irish physicist John Tyndall made a similar discovery in more detail and had a whole lab and university behind him. And she just made this discovery in her backyard.

MG: What does it tell you that to your point, her contributions to this have been lost in history, but there are a lot of people who will have never heard her name.

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: Yeah, we should have a Eunice Newton Foote Day. It's so typical, right? Like, no one is surprised when we say, like, a woman actually discovered this first, but like yeah that tracks with like, oh, we disregard the contributions of women in a lot of Western societies. So I think if we can just skip the part where we all need to fight about who gets credit and who came up with the idea. And it's less about ego and it's more about collaboration and collectivism and healing and everyone bringing their best to the table. That's the vibe that we're trying to bring to this concept of climate feminism.

MG: Let's talk about who's at the table. One of my favourite essays in this collection is Collards Are Just As Good as Kale, which is a statement of fact, by the way. Heather McTeer Toney, talks about the history of black environmentalism. Have a listen to some of what she wrote. This is a reading from your audio book.

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VOICE: Caring about climate change is not a boujie Black thing. Who exactly do you think is on the front lines every single day fighting to keep our communities safe from industries, polluters and those seeking to harm our kids? We live in pollution, play around it, work for it and pray against it. Hell, we even sing about it. Black women are every day environmentalists. We are climate leaders. We just don't get the headlines too often.

MG: Ayana Johnson, there's a lot in there, that idea of climate change not being a boujie Black thing. Why don't we hear more black voices in this climate fight?

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: Racism. It was a trick question?

MG: It's as simple as that?

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: Yea, I mean, we just don't respect the expertise of people who don't sort of like, look and sound a certain way. And so when Heather McTeer Toney, was writing that essay, when we were working with her, it was the same time when I was learning about the polling from Yale and George Mason universities that actually quantify what she's talking up, that people of colour are statistically significantly more concerned about climate. We know from that polling that forty nine percent of white people in the US are concerned about climate change, compared to 57 percent of black people and 69 percent a lot less people. So when we when we picture the stereotypical environmentalist as like a white dude with a Patagonia jacket and a Prius hiking or a woman who's obsessed about reducing waste and plastic. And as Viðga like, we're missing the millions and millions and millions of people who already care and many of whom are already contributing. And if we can lift this burden of racism off of people and white supremacy and mass incarceration and state violence, that just imagine how much more these people who already care could be contributing to solutions, could be focussing on like I already care and this is what I'm good at. And so, like, I'm bringing that to this work. And that's why we have to look at these problems as intertwined because that that excerpt you just shared from Heather. Peace just reminds me that the question that comes to mind so often is like, who are we saving the planet for?

MG: Can you relate to that idea of being overlooked? Your experience being overlooked as a black woman scientist?

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: No, but like that is by design. I have seen this happen for generations to women, to people of colour, especially to women of colour. And I just like that's just not something I will put up with. So it is, if I have not been overlooked, that is like a deliberate effort on my part to make sure that I am telling my own story. This is why I write so much, because we have to write ourselves into history, because no one is going to do it for us to us.

KATHARINE WILKINSON: To us this is really about how successful or not can we be as a movement. So one of the things that Ayana and I are working on is a new non-profit called the All We Can Save Project. We know that historically there's been a real disparity in environmental philanthropy. Most of it has gone to or is led by white men. That just simply won't do. We've got really transformational leadership. A lot of it being led by black women, indigenous women, other women of colour. And they need the money to do the work. And so that's one of the things that that we're gonna be working on with this project.

MG: It leads to this is the theme that runs right through the book, is this idea of intersectionality. What is that, in the context of what you're talking about, I mean, Ayana you can pick this up, what does that word mean in the context of climate change?

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: It means we live in a world where everything is connected and if we try to solve climate change as if it's a purely engineering problem, then we will fail to solve the problem because we will be solving a problem that is much simpler than the problem that actually exists, because people live in the world and people are affected by the impacts of climate change. And as we've been discussing, like bringing the full diversity of humanity and full brainpower to solutions is what we need. And so, you know, one of the examples that is has been front of mind for me, given that we are in the throes of this pandemic, is thinking about how that affects different people so differently and how that is intertwined, twined with climate change. When we think about where power plants are located in communities of colour, in poor communities, these are people who have for decades been exposed to the air pollution associated with burning fossil fuels and that weakens your respiratory system. That is bad for your heart to be breathing in all of that dirty air. And that is putting people at a much higher risk for extreme forms of COVID. And so to sort of like ignore these things means that we won't actually solve the problems. We won't solve the public health problems. We won't solve the planetary climate problems.

MG: What sort of resistance do you face in that? It was interesting that the premier of Alberta Province here in Canada, Jason Kenney, called the idea of intersectionality recently a kooky academic theory. Is there a way that you can bring those sort of people into the tent? And when you talk about that and when you talk about, you know, the connections, do you resistance from people who say, well, sure, that sounds interesting in theory, but that's not how it works in real life.

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: Yeah, I'm curious to hear what Katharine says on this, but my first instinct is to say everyday I wake up as a scientist, as a person who cares deeply about the future of the planet, as a policy nerd, as a woman, as a black person, as a daughter. Like that's just who I am every morning. And to say that, like, I only get to be one of those things at a time and that none of those parts of who I am should ever intersect is just counter-productive because we were able to bring our full humanity to the problem. We're able to come up with different solutions. The fact that I'm the daughter of a Jamaican immigrant means that my work on ocean policy in the Caribbean is more culturally informed. Why would I want to ignore that? It's an asset, not a liability. If we think of our diversity and our personal experiences as ways to inform problem-solving, then of course we want to bring everything we know when we're controlling.

KATHARINE WILKINSON: Yeah, I'll just add it's a profound kind of privilege to think that intersectionality is not a thing, because that just means that you've never encountered it. And it's a really frustrating example of a failure to listen. And that's one of the themes that runs really profoundly through through this book, is the importance of listening to those who are bearing the brunt of fossil fuel extraction and production today, who are bearing the brunt of climate impacts. We simply will not get to the best answers by huddling up with people who have had exactly the same experiences that we have had.

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: I was just gonna point out Maggie Thomas's essay, which is called The Politics of Policy, which is all about the role of listing and making policy. And she was a climate adviser to Governor Jay Inslee's can presidential campaign, which was all about climate. She then went on to be the climate adviser for Senator Elizabeth Warren's campaign for president and is now advising the Biden campaign on their climate policy and this idea of how are we listening to the impacted communities as we design policies that are designed to help solve these problems, like of course, we want to go to Detroit and hear like what's actually going on? Like what do you actually need? What does the problem feel like to you? How do we solve this?

MG: You also have to bring people in. And Emily Atkin is a journalist. She's the author of the climate newsletter, Heated. And in her essay, she writes about the idea of preaching to the converted. Have a listen to this.

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VOICE: For years, I assumed that educating people who are already interested in climate change would just be preaching to the choir, but my reporting career has taught me that's not true. Most people who are interested in climate change just don't yet have the tools to talk about it confidently. The choir is there. They want to sing, but they don't know the words.

MG: Ayana Johnson, do you worry that your work is preaching to the converted?

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: No, I don't worry about it at all. I mean, I think a lot of, I've got plenty of worries. That's not one of them. I guess I would say I think the opportunity here is to bring the vast majority of people who are concerned about climate but haven't yet figured out what role they can play. And I think that's what Emily's talking about when she just uses this metaphor of the choir needing to learn how to sing, meaning to learn the notes. Right. Because what we can each contribute is very different from just like feeling like you understand the situation and don't have any agency. And so we see this book. We see the 41 essays in the book, each as a different door, as an example of a way that you can walk in and participate in the climate work that needs doing. And so the first essay in the book is called Calling In. It is specifically a welcome by a teenage climate activist saying what we need is not thousands of people being perfect climate activists, but millions of people doing the best they can. And that's the message that we really want to reach people with, because just caring and being worried is not enough at this point.

MG: It's not just essays. I mean, this is also a book that includes poetry. And I wanted to listen to a poem by Terry T.Williams.

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VOICE: Soul and soil are not separate. Neither are wind and spirit, nor water and tears. We are eroding and evolving at once, like the Red Rock landscape before me. Our grief is our love. Our love will be our undoing as we quietly disengage from the collective madness of the patriarchal mind that says aggression is the way forward.

MG: Katharine Wilkinson, why did you want to include poetry in the book? And how does poetry allow you to address this issue in a way that perhaps the essays don't?

KATHARINE WILKINSON: My sort of earliest environmental awakenings were in tangled web poetry when I was in high school first reading the work of Mary Oliver, for example, and feeling really transformed by kind of by the access that poetry gives us to deeper understanding that helps us access greater clarity, helps us access our heart, I think. And we didn't originally set out to include poetry in the collection, but it quickly became clear that to kind of make this quilt an accurate reflection of the way women are showing up in this movement, Poetry was going to be a really important piece of that. And it's especially helpful, I think, in a topic that is as heavy as climate change. There's a lot of density and many of these essays and we wanted to give people kind of a space to breathe and to feel whatever they might be feeling and and to know that they're not alone. And I think that's something that poetry gives us a sense of kind of more collective human experience. Emily Acton actually said the other day she got her copy of the book and she cracked it open to her piece, but she ended up reading an Anne Haven McDonell poem that sits right next to her essay. And she said, I just I read it and I read it again and I read it again and I just felt so honoured. That's the kind of conversation that we want to cultivate, a conversation that is more generous, that is more nuance, that allows us to show up as our whole selves, not just our, you know, intellectual policy, engineering, science selves, but also the parts of us that feel that care and that's the kind of like holistic way of of being that we think ultimately leads to more successful social movements.

MG: You mentioned leadership. I want to ask you two quick things. I'd be remiss in the midst of an election that has been unlike any other election, what do you see when it comes to how or if climate change has been addressed in this campaign thus far? There are often these calculations that show this tiny little number in the grand scheme of all the conversations around an election, climate change gets mentioned in this tiny, tiny little number. Katharine, what do you make of how climate change has been addressed or not addressed in this campaign thus far?

KATHARINE WILKINSON: Well, we've seen a lot of progress actually, this campaign season, because we had folks like Jay Inslee and .Elizabeth Warren, you know, pushing the policy, thinking forward, really investing in that. But it's also suggested really in the last two years, because of the youth climate movement, young people are doing a lot of the educating that has been really needed within the movement and beyond it. As the Democratic primaries were unfolding in the U.S., they were bird dogging candidates all over the country, asking them, do you commit to a green new deal pushing, pushing, having these really brilliant kind of viral moments that led to things like CNN hosting a climate town hall, which would have been unthinkable in the 2016 campaign cycle. We've seen more minutes in debates, both in the primaries and our presidential debate dedicated to climate than has ever happened. Is that where the discourse needs to be? Absolutely not. Chris Wallace made the troubling mistake of asking President Trump whether he believed in climate change in that debate. We are way beyond questions about whether climate change is like Santa Claus. Climate change is like gravity. It is a matter of fact and you either understand it or you don't. So there's been a weird tension between progress and then kind of the, you know, the stragglers sort of not coming along with with reality. It's also been really exciting to see the polling of how top of mind climate is, especially for young voters. And I want to know what Ayana is thinking about this as well.

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: We've just finally seen a Race to the Top in terms of climate policy in the US. People are competing for who has the best climate plan, and that is unprecedented in American politics and it is long overdue. And I think, you know, as we've been thinking about this in the presidential race, that's wonderful. But we also need to be thinking about this in our city councils, in Congress. Right. Like every person we vote for, we care about the future of, you know, having a habitable planet, we should be asking and thinking about where do they stand on climate, not do they believe it or not, as Katharine said, but like what is their plan? What is their strategy? What are they going to do to keep us safe? How quickly do they have a plan to ramp down fossil fuels, eliminate greenhouse gas emissions? Push for regenerative practices? All of these things need political leadership and I think we're. Finally, seeing the glimmers of that becoming possible in the US. And I just wanted to say one thing before we wrapped up is to give a shout out to the Canadian contributors to the anthology. Naomi Klein, as well as Leah Stokes, Clement, who writes about the role of finance and investing in climate solutions, as well as Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist. So for those who are listening, who only want to read the writings of Canadians, we've got you covered. There are four brilliant essays.

MG: Just finally, Katharine mentioned the youth leadership and there are a couple of essays by teenage authors in this book. And we've talked in the last 12 months, certainly a bit longer than that, about the role of the youth movement in helping to get kids out on the streets, protesting climate change, but also calling to your point on on politicians to make real change. Where do you think Ayana, that that youth movement goes from here?

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: I mean, I think they just they're relentless and it's amazing. I mean, there's something called the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge where people are asking politicians to refuse to accept campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry and largely due to the youth movement, 2500 politicians in the US have been forced to sign up. And I think, you know, they deserve a ton of credit for putting federal climate policy on the centre stage for doing a sit in in Nancy Pelosi's office last year before she became speaker of the House, when that was about to happen and saying like, oh, you told us climate wasn't one of your priorities. Well, it's about to be. And it worked. We had a select committee on The Current climate crisis release of a huge report, you know, showing the urgency. And we've had, you know, just a whole shift in. You can't get away with not talking about it in the U.S. anymore. So I think we owe a lot to these young people who are bringing this moral clarity to climate work. Who are saying, look, this is my future you're gambling. We can't even vote yet. And you're screwing us over. So please get it together. You have children. You have grandchildren. How are you going to look them in the eye if you don't take this seriously? And that ability to see right and wrong and to see there are issues on which we can't compromise. You can't negotiate with, you know, with carbon dioxide, you just have to stop emitting it. I'm just so grateful for all of the energy and strength that they are bringing to this work.

MG: It's a great pleasure to talk to you both about this. There's a lot in this book, and the range is something that is really powerful as well, just in terms of topics, but also, I mean, poetry is really helpful when you're talking about heavy subjects as well. And it adds a lot to it as well. It's a real pleasure to speak with you both. Thank you.

AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: Likewise. Thank you.

KATHARINE WILKINSON: Likewise, Matt.

MG: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist and founder of the Urban Ocean Lab and the Ocean Collective. Katharine Wilkinson is editor in chief at Project Drawdown. And together they've edited All We Can Save -- Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. That's it for The Current. Q is up next on CBC Radio. I wanted to give you, before we go, a heads up on something that you'll hear later on this week. One of the biggest hits, if you take a look at the course of this pandemic, one of the biggest hits that I think we've all taken is to the economy. You have people who are out of work. You have people who are working in different ways. People who are working at home. Whole industries vanishing, it seems like overnight. Others thriving in what's being called the new normal. Later on this week, we are going to devote our entire program to the economy. You will hear from people hit hard by this pandemic, people who are getting creative and pivoting in a moment of crisis and some people who are also working to get us all back on track. Thursday, tune in for our special. It's called, Remaking a Living: Surviving the COVID Economy. That's coming up later on this week on The Current. In the meantime, that's it for today. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you tomorrow.

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Oct. 27, 2020 episode transcript

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