Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, climate communicator and one of the editors of All We Can Save. That was one of my favourite books of 2020, and so this book immediately had my full attention.
Where a lot of climate books describe how bad things could get, this one asks the question of the title – what if we get it right? What would the world look like? What would politics, banking, food or energy look like?
To get at those answers, Johnson talks to a wide variety of experts, presenting them with that central question. This prompts her interviewees to imagine the best possible outcome, and work backwards through the problems in the way of those successes. Solutions are in the foreground, without ever being naive about the thorny realities of the climate crisis or the urgency of fully committing to the solutions. “One thing is certain,” Johnson warns, “half-assed action in the face of potential doom is an indisputably absurd choice.”
Among the interviewees here are Kate Marvel on earth science, a chapter on AI with Mustafa Suleyman, Rhiana Gunn-Wright on the green new deal. Bill McKibben talks about protest and divestment. Adam McKay and Franklin Leonard discuss their film Don’t Look Up and the wider challenge of effective climate storytelling. I particularly enjoyed New Orleans architect Bryan Lee on design justice, a term I hadn’t encountered before but immediately recognise. I appreciated Leah Penniman’s infectious enthusiasm for seeds and farming, and Samantha Montano’s explanations of disasterology and how we can better protect people from natural disasters.
As with All We Can Save, there are poems and artworks scattered through the book, including some joyous afro-futurist solarpunk from Olalekan Jeyifous. I missed out on the artwork because I listened to the audiobook, and had to look it up later. On the plus side, the audiobook features the contributors in their own voices, each chapter an edited conversation. It comes across more like a podcast series than an audiobook. Also like All We Can Save, the book doesn’t stray far from North America, though there is a little more variety in the accents this time around. I’d love a similar book that features climate solutions from the across the globe. Perhaps I’ll have to write it myself.
Thanks to the combined efforts of climate science, dystopian fiction and the news – which are increasingly hard to tell apart these days – it’s very easy to imagine climate disaster. I’m not sure that motivates people very well. We might swing from blissful ignorance to paralysing anxiety. We need positive visions of the better world that climate solutions are already shaping, and we need to know how we will fit into that world. “We need something firm to aim for,” says Johnson. “Something with love and joy in it.”
What If We Get it Right? has accompanied me around the region over the last few weeks, as I visit schools and help them think through their response to climate change. I’ve reached the end of the book, and I’m taking Johnson’s concluding words of encouragement with me: “Averting climate catastrophe, this is the work of our lifetimes… Be tenacious on behalf of life on Earth.”
- You can pick up What If We Get It Right from Earthbound Books
The Earthbound Report 
Earthbound Report – thank you for this review. Am working in a bookshop where the title of Climate Change is Racist was a mark against it. A colleague, not the book buyer, did read it. It changed his mind, although he pretended it had not. In light of this type of culture unique to parts of the American South, which title would you recommend I try to get ordered for the store (likely for my own use) – All We Can Save, or this more recent What If We Got it Right? The times here have been so difficult for working class people that their negativity towards minorities is understandable if unfair. I want to avoid wasting time fighting battles i cannot win, but want to order an inspiring book about climate for Earth Month. Thank you so much in advance.