The Striking Parallels Between Covid-19 and Climate Change
Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson on oceans, the coronavirus, and the climate policies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden
This is a busy time for Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, PhD, a marine biologist, environmental policy expert, and CEO of conservation consulting firm Ocean Collectiv. Earlier this year, she advised Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren on environmental policy. Now she’s about to publish an anthology of essays, poetry, and visual art about the climate crisis and launch a podcast about climate change on Gimlet Media.
The book, All We Can Save, and the podcast, How to Save a Planet, share the same goal: showing people how they can get involved in the fight against climate change.
Johnson has been working toward this goal for nearly 20 years. She started her career at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where she wanted to learn how scientists could help create good environmental policies.
That’s why the Trump administration’s rollback of EPA regulations cuts so deep. “Any attacks on the EPA and the work of those really dedicated civil servants or rollbacks in hard-fought environmental protections are just such a brutal punch in the gut to the environment…