What Kind of a Sky Do We Want to be Living Under?

An interview with Kimberly Nicholas, the author of “Under the Sky We Make”

Welcome back to Thin Ink! I hope you had a good summer and weren’t affected by the increasing array of weather-related disasters. I sweated my way through August, as heatwaves hit both the U.S. and Italy when I was in each place. Nevertheless, I am super grateful to able to spend time with - and hug - family members from different parts of the world. 

On the Ligurian coast. Photo by me.

1. It’s warming

2. It’s us

3. We’re sure

4. It’s bad

5. We can Fix It 

This catchy little “climate haiku” was coined by scientist Dr. Kimberley Nicholas, Associate Professor at Sweden’s Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies. Kim is also the author of the book “Under the Sky We Make: How to Be Human in a Warming World” and has her own newsletter, We Can Fix It.  

I’ve written about Kim’s work, including her studies on Europe’s bloated common agricultural policy (CAP). I’d also planned to do this interview some two years ago but Myanmar’s vicious and power-hungry military staged a coup around the same time her book was coming out.

How do you solve a problem like...

So I pushed aside - temporarily I thought - the paperback I’d ordered in advance to focus on the situation back home. Readers, I’m embarrassed to say it was two and a half-years before I picked it up again. 

But when I did, I felt a visceral connection to Kim’s writing, from recounting her childhood in Sonoma, a famous wine region in northern California to warnings of worsening wildfires and other disasters. I’m sure proximity played a big role - I was in my brother’s home in southern California, surrounded by news of wildfires.

I’m fairly familiar with climate science, but still enjoyed Kim’s fact-filled yet deeply personal book. It was targeted at Americans but applicable to so many of us living in other rich countries. It also gives practical advice on dealing with the climate crisis. 

So I spoke to her about her thoughts on where we are, how we can balance hope and despair, and what we can do. Below is an edited version of the conversation. I’m also switching a little from my normal Q&A style by including excerpts from Kim’s book that really struck a chord with me. 

“For me, climate change has gone from being something I study to a way that I see the world and experience my life. It’s one thing to publish a study on the hypothetical impacts of temperature increase on California’s people and ecosystems; it’s another to feel my stomach gripped by fear as my parents flee a catastrophic California wildfire cranked up by longer, hotter, drier summers. It’s one thing to measure declining color pigments in Pinot Noir grapes due to increasing temperatures; it’s another to viscerally mourn the loss of the taste of my favourite wine as it passes from this Earth.” - Kimberly Nicholas, from her book

Q: It’s been two and a half years since the book came out. How are you feeling about what you wrote and the world?

A:  It is definitely a very interesting time to be alive. It's an ongoing struggle, I would say, because there's so much happening all the time, like the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in the US, which is having real, measurable impacts on the ground and getting stuff done that needs to be done. 

On the other hand, it's really hard to see suffering increasing. In the climate emergency, we basically have three options: prevent, prepare and suffer, and we've missed opportunities to prevent some of the worst impacts. So we're living through a time of a lot of suffering and a lot of that suffering was preventable. 

So, it is tough. Having the book out there has been a really wonderful experience for me and connecting with readers, including people who I otherwise wouldn't have had the chance to connect with. It feels meaningful to me to create a space where people feel seen or can relate their own experiences or maybe helps them put words to something that they've seen or felt but haven't quite known how to describe. 

But it's an ongoing struggle to know what to do and what's enough. What is it that I can do, personally, to fill the hours in the day that I have available with meaningful work that hopefully is helping move things in the right direction? But also to recognise that no one person can do all that is necessary. I don't know if that's an answer to your question, but that's where I'm at.

“Some of the biggest power to effect change you have as a consumer is not in how you spend your money but in where you refuse to spend it, and how you push on the financial systems you’re already a part of.” - Kimberly Nicholas, from her book

Q: You wrote that the book is for consumers in America, because it is the people in the richest country with the widest possible choices, that should change their behaviour. But I would say it's probably applicable to anyone living in rich countries in Europe or Asia.  

A: Thank you. I take it as a compliment. I’ve lived in Europe now for 13 years and I feel, with some qualification, to be able to speak to the situation here. I don't have any kind of deep experience of Asia. So I don't feel qualified to assess how helpful it is there. But I'm very happy if readers find it useful. 

I really tried to address, in particular, this global top 10% and even the higher end of that. This is a group that's basically already in political and economic power and so many people who are privileged and lucky enough to live in a democratic country have a range of political and citizen actions available to them that most of the world just doesn't have access to. So I think it's really important that we make use of that.  

“One clear sign that our economy isn’t working as it should to deliver real value is that it’s currently cheap to buy dangerous things (fossil fuels, industrial meat) and expensive to buy sustainable things (community renewable energy, sustainably produced food).” 
- Kimberly Nicholas, from her book

Q: What are your thoughts on the Montana ruling, where the court found in favour of young people who sued the government over climate change. Do you think that's going to set a precedent of some sort?

A: I think it's exciting. I'm actually getting chills thinking about it because I do think it has incredible potential and as a precedent. I think moving to a rights-based paradigm in climate justice has a lot of potential. 

I don't know in great detail all the particulars of the Montana case, but my understanding is that these legal cases focus on rights in general. Rights of young people and rights of nature, and I think that paradigm has a really important potential to make some important, positive and fundamental changes.

“It’s exhausting and infuriating to be a scientist in a post-truth world.” - Kimberly Nicholas, from her book

Q: Another thing that struck me was that you wrote in quite detail about the wildfires in Sonoma and warned about them worsening. California is having wildfires again this year and many other countries are struggling with them too. Do you feel prescient? 

A: The fires are so devastating. When my family evacuated first in 2017, I had never felt fear gripped my stomach in that kind of visceral way where I was afraid for the lives of people that I loved. That is a sign of the privilege and comfort I've enjoyed that is not to be taken for granted and not something available to many people in the world. 

But that feeling in particular about the life threatening nature of fire is something that so many people are experiencing right now. It's very painful, and it doesn't feel good to feel that I was right. I would much rather be wrong.

It's quite hard to be delivering an unpopular message that people don't want to hear and that is seen as threatening to the current status quo. It’s like pushing a boulder up a hill, but I know the facts to be correct and I believe it to be the right thing to do.

So 2017 was six years ago. There have been really serious fires a few times since in my home region between Napa and Sonoma and around California. but I've been surprised by how much people have adapted to or how much this kind of “frog in boiling water phenomenon” is happening. 

There was a wildfire when I was starting college. I think it was in 1995 or 1996. My parents evacuated and I was home for the summer so I evacuated as well. That happened one time in sort of my living memory until these last five, six years where it happens every year. That''s a huge step change, but people who are living there… almost rewrite history to say that it's always been like this or say, “Oh, it’s fog.” 

But I also see how committed people are to their homes, how they’re doing things to reduce (fire) risk, and how they’re taking fire safety really seriously. 

“The debates and discussions about climate that matter now are moral, not scientific ones, about the kind of sky we want to make, and what that says about what it means to be human.” - Kimberly Nicholas, from her book

Q: The book was very personal too. You talked about your grandfather's legacy and the passing of a very close friend, just to name two. Was that cathartic? Or was it difficult, as a scientist, to do that?

A: I actually really enjoyed the opportunity to do that and I think I probably wouldn't have been able to do that earlier in my career. I thought quite a bit about what is too much information and what the reader doesn't need to know. 

One of the most positive feedback I got was from an excerpt published in The Guardian about scientists using facts AND feelings. That really resonated a lot with people and I heard from a lot of folks about that.

Scientists themselves sometimes feel like they want to be a little more human. Of course you have to have the facts right, follow the rigorous methods, go through peer reviews and do all the scientific stuff but we still are also humans. I mean, something is wrong with you if you don't have feelings about the climate crisis and I guess giving people permission to acknowledge that is helpful.

“The most important choices for high-emitting individuals to quickly reduce our climate pollution were to live car-, meat-, and flight-free.” - Kimberly Nicholas, from her book

Q: Since the book was published, Russia has invaded Ukraine and we are now seeing expended investment in fossil fuels as a result. Do you get super frustrated with how things are going? 

A: This is definitely a practice that requires active effort and cultivation and something I'm constantly working on but I'm trying to inhabit a space of “both… and”. Yes, there are bad things happening. I want to be a witness to suffering, to not turn away, to acknowledge their existence and honour the lives impacted… and to also be acknowledging the good things and celebrating victories.  

To come back to your question about Ukraine, I've become more and more convinced that a shock to the system is not enough to get transformative change. It could be an opportunity for change and unlock possibilities, political will, creativity or resources, but it will not in and of itself generate transformative change. 

The pandemic felt like that to me. The wildfires being experienced around the world feel like that to me. Ukraine certainly is kind of like that. 

You need the right people in place. You need those ideas to be available and developed. There needs to be some kind of plans, studies or cases that people can refer to. So when a political window opens - it’s gonna be a very short window of attention and opportunity - there needs to be solutions available for the decision makers to use. 

“Even the smallest of the high-impact climate actions we identified (eating a plant-based diet) makes a far larger difference for the climate than more common but much lower-impact choices like recycling everything in your household or using a reusable shopping bag for a year. In fact, we found a plant-based diet saves four times more emissions than recycling, and 160 times more than a reusable bag.” - Kimberly Nicholas, from her book

Q: Is the media doing enough? What can we do better?

A: I think the media has such an important role to play. The way I see the media can be the most effective is to take the skills that journalists already have, which is telling a compelling story, and intersect it in some way with climate story. 

For journalists who are specialised in any field - sports, politics, culture, fashion, you name it - there are ways of bringing in a climate lens that doesn't have to be the whole story, doesn't have to take a lot of words. Like including, “climate change, or the climate crisis, which is caused primarily by burning fossil fuels”. 

The media has changed quite a lot in the last 25 years and most of it been very good. I've heard from journalists that they want to write about the climate crisis but one reason not to is feeling intimidated by the complexity of the issue. They told me the climate haiku I always refer to is a helpful framework.

“Earth Will Be Fine - But Humans Are in Trouble” 
A sub-heading in Kim’s book. It made me think of George Carlin. 

Q: How do you balance the bad news with being hopeful? Do you have any advice or suggestions on dealing with climate anxiety? 

A: So what the research says is that you don't have to feel hope to have meaning and purpose and to take important, substantial action. Hopelessness is clearly bad, but it hasn’t been shown that hope is actually either necessary or sufficient to make you feel good or make you do good. 

What the research shows that makes a big difference is meaning-focused coping, specifically with the climate crisis, which is where you strengthen your capacity and make use of the tools, the community and the resources to stay healthy and well, and to take meaningful action. 

That's not based on sticking your head in the sand and pretending nothing bad is happening. It's not based on everything having to go perfectly. It's basically finding meaning in your actions and seeing and believing that they matter and make a difference, while recognising it's not only on us as individuals to do everything.

You asked how I cope. I've dialled down my media consumption quite a lot and I have to thank Elon Musk. It was the implosion of Twitter that really made me rethink how I was spending my time and energy in terms of both producing and consuming information.

I got a lot of benefit from being on there and there are many things that I enjoyed… but I also realised I'm much happier and healthier spending more time in the real world, doing exercise, getting fresh air, going on walks with friends, doing things that I enjoy and keeping up my physical and mental health that way. 

Also I realised I had basically enough tweets to have written nine books. It's an overly simple comparison, but I just thought… I’d rather focus on more thoughtfully digested and value added writing.

“Recent research shows that contrary to the expectation that a majority must support change, only 25 percent of a population is actually needed to support a norm change, like not smoking or not flying, before it reaches a tipping point and becomes a social norm, and this can happen fast.” - Kimberly Nicholas, from her book

Three Good Reads 

1. Climate-Friendly Food Systems Start with Different Values, Not Technologies - ensia

   This op-ed by Philip Loring, Associate Professor and Arrell Chair in Food, Policy, and Society at University of Guelph is a timely reminder of what is truly needed to transform our food systems. 

   “The principal challenges facing our food systems are not technological in nature. Rather, they are political and economic.” 
   

2. How a UN-led fight against locusts took a toxic toll on Kenyan farmers - Grist 

   When locusts descended on Kenya, international organizations including the WFP and FAO - the two U.N. agencies dealing with food and agriculture - sprung into action to help. Unfortunately, the pesticides they’d acquired “were either already banned in the U.S. and Europe or soon would be”. 

   “Subsistence farmers in Garissa believe they were accidentally poisoned while using these chemicals — and they’re still dealing with the ramifications,” wrote Kang-Chun Cheng, adding that internal documents showed UN officials were aware of the resulting problems. 
   

3. Lahaina used to be a wetland - Heated

   How colonisation and climate change turned this former capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii into a tinderbox, according to Kaniela Ing, a seventh-generation indigenous Hawaiian living in O'ahu and the national director of the Green New Deal Network. 

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