If you sort of think of every species as an answer to, you know, the great question of, which is how do you survive on planet Earth? Every species has come up with a different answer to that question. And that's just, you know, truly mind-bogglingly amazing. Elizabeth Colbert is a legend among environmental journalists. As a staff writer at The New Yorker, she spent decades documenting life on this planet and how it's changing. There's a reason she has a Pulitzer Prize. It's almost impossible to convey the seismic impact of her book The Sixth Extinction, which changed how we think about the biodiversity crisis. And when I'm reading an Elizabeth Colbert piece, there's almost a feeling I have that I'm fulfilling a kind of sacred obligation. I'm not just educating myself about life on Earth. I'm bearing witness to it. I'm trying to get people to pay attention. I mean, really, if you think about it, you know, we're in this war of attention right now. I'm Will O'Defebaugh, and this is The Nature Of, where we look to the nature of our world for wisdom and ideas that change the way we live. This week, I'm sitting down with Elizabeth Colbert to talk about her new book, Life on a Little Known Planet, and why wonder is still worth searching for. I'm so happy to be able to connect with you, and I'm just such a huge admirer of your work. So thank you for being on the show. Well, thanks for having me. I've seen you styled as being a observer and commenter on environmentalism. So I suppose broadly, my first question is, how's that going right now? Well, you know, I started out on this sort of beat, if you want to call it that, two decades ago. And, you know, it hasn't been a good two decades watching the complete indifference to these issues and hostility really towards them from the current administration is obviously pretty tough. Yeah, it's quite harrowing. Is being out in the field something that helps you kind of stay focused? And, you know, there's just, we're living in this time where there's so much being thrown at the wall. It feels almost impossible to know what to focus on. What is it that helps you stay intentional with your time and know what is signal versus what is noise? You know, getting out into the field with people and seeing new things has always been the best part of the job, you know, and I've gotten to go amazing places and meet amazing people and see amazing creatures and landscapes and seascapes. So that has been just a great pleasure. And when I, you know, look back, there are some extraordinary highlights I feel very, very, very fortunate to have experienced. Well, speaking of highlights, your new book, Life on a Little Known Planet, collects pieces that you've written mostly for The New Yorker over the last few decades. And the range of subjects is really just incredible. From investigating the efforts to communicate with whales in Dominica to tracking glacial melt in Greenland, it really takes you all over the world. Something that really stands out, I think, in reading your work is these windows and snapshots you get into people's lives and the very unique perspectives that they hold on our changing planet. So I'm wondering, is there someone who stands out or jumps to mind in this moment that really has stayed with you? You know, you kind of become friends with people. I mean, you've heard their life stories. You're not exactly their shrink, you know, but you try to spend a lot of time with people and get as deep as I can into what makes them tick and what they're looking for and what they're hoping to accomplish. one of the stories in the book and in fact sort of the title story in the book Life on a Little Known Planet is about an entomologist and I've been out now many times with Dave Wagner, he works at UConn and you know, done all sorts of fun things, eaten crickets with him and searched for caterpillars, which was a lot of fun, very memorable and I saw a lot of fantastic scenery as well as a lot of really interesting caterpillars I'm happy you brought up the title piece because it's one of my favorites and David working to catalog this knowledge while we still can right before it disappears you've spoken to that kind of representing a larger theme of the book which is this you put it as the tension between knowledge and obliteration I'm wondering if you can just speak a little bit to the tension that exists there David is very explicit about this. So he's out there trying to, you know, catalog every caterpillar in North America, basically. That's a big job. There's a lot of species out there, and a lot of them that are not even known. And he sees that as sort of a race against some of these rare species, you know, have probably already winked out. He really wants that knowledge to be, you know, preserved in some way. And he also takes genetic samples of of all these caterpillars. So there will be a sort of a bank of that, of those genetics. Now, you know, if they're gone, we can question what good that will do. But, you know, I also do see my own role, you know, so there are parallels there. I do see the role of environmental journalists today. You know, there are many different roles that you could have, but part of it is, is that witnessing role of, you know, things may or may not be here in the future. and someone ought to have recorded their passing. He says something to you in the story. He says, we're going to solve climate change. It's just a question of how many species that we love are we going to lose? Is that a perspective that you share? Is that sort of what's guiding your own thinking as you're doing your work right now? Is the first part of that even still up for question to you? Well, Dave is a much more optimistic person than I am. I will say that. I mean, solving climate change, I mean, I would not use the word solve with climate change. Climate change is a cumulative problem. It's not like a lot of your ordinary and run-of-the-mill pollution problems where, you know, things will dissipate over time. If you stop emitting X or Y, it will fall out of the atmosphere and, you know, your problems will decline. And whatever CO2 we put up there is, you know, for all intents and purposes is going to be up there. I don't want to say forever, but more or less in human terms, forever. Yeah. And I think a piece that is often missed that I've observed is that what we're experiencing now is from emissions from decades ago. Right. And so that that's why the bringing emissions down in the present moment is so important, because at this point we talking about the impacts that will be felt decades from now So climate change has this very you know unfortunately fascinating temporal problem in my eyes where it exists so much across across time And it not always easiest thing to communicate Absolutely. We did evolve where, you know, there was no such thing as a really a long term problem. And it's not clear that we're capable of thinking in that kind of terms. I mean, people do talk about like cathedral thinking, like if you put up a cathedral, you lay the cornerstone, but you're not going to live to see that cathedral finished. And that is what we need, you know, really long-term thinking with climate change, because we are setting in motion processes that will play out over, you know, decades and hundreds of years and thousands of years. And that is really hard to convey. And it's also, how do you get people to care about something that's X number of years in the future, but is irreversible. We do see repeated examples of things like seven generations principle, right, and indigenous cultures. And you just mentioned the sort of generational aspect too. But I haven't really thought so much about the evolutionary mind. The problem we have is not having necessarily evolved to think about problems that aren't short term. So it's kind of a question of, are we going to make that evolutionary leap. I mean, Ed Wilson had this line of, you know, we have prehistoric minds and medieval institutions and space age technology. That's a really dangerous combination. And when you think about it, it is. It's just a really dangerous combination because we are, you know, programmed really to see short term threats. You know, that hyena over there, whatever, was a really big threat to us. Now, what were we doing that was really long-term damage? Well, in some cases, prehistoric people were doing, our Paleolithic ancestors, they were doing things that had long-term consequences. They didn't realize it. They were overhunting big animals, and we don't have those big animals anymore. But it played out over a long time, and they had no way of knowing it. Now, our situation where we know what we're doing, you might think that we would rise to the occasion, but there's not a lot of evidence that we will. Continuing this sort of temporal thread, you know, because this book collects essays from over the last few decades, what was it like for you revisiting some of these works and kind of measuring them against progress that has or most likely has not been made since? Yeah. You know, in some ways it was fun to go back and look at things. But in a lot of cases, you know, things were written at a sort of more optimistic moment. Like, yeah, you know, we're actually trying to tackle this problem in the case of climate change, for example. And now there's just a sense of, well, we're not trying. In this country, we're actively, actively, actively not trying. In fact, actively trying to keep coal plants open. So in that sense, it was sobering. Let's just put it that way. Yeah. It was fascinating to read the Song of Ice piece about Greenland this week, given the news with Trump and Greenland. And just really interesting to hold the contrast there. Yeah. And the Greenlanders are, I mean, I love Greenland. I've been a few times and really feel terrible for the Greenlanders. They have, you know, they're just being treated like pawns in this game. It's not a game. It's their home. One thing I think is important to appreciate about Greenland is it's a very, you know, communitarian society. There's no private land. You don't own the land in Greenland. And, you know, to have the Trump people talking about it, you know, we're going to go in the same way like, you know, with Venezuela, we're just going to seize it, you know, it's just anathema to them. Yeah. You describe a sense of almost like a spell that comes over you when you travel there. Can you speak a little bit to what it was like maybe the first time you went and you saw the ice up close or even just the journey in reporting that story? Yeah, the first time I went was actually in 2001. And it completely changed my mind. It's really my life, really. And it's sort of why I set off on this path. I think it's pretty impossible, unfortunately, for people to really visualize Greenland. It's two miles of ice. So when you're on the top of the ice sheet, and I did get to go to the top of the ice sheet that first trip, you know, you're standing on two miles of ice, which is sort of surreal. And even when you're standing on it, you can't really think, okay, well, you know, it's two miles. You know, if we were to succeed in melting it, which, you know, which we could, depending on how far we go in this process, you know, that's 20 feet of sea level rise. And that's just really surreal. And then another part of it that's, you know, pretty extraordinary when you're up there, you realize, you know, every kid learns in grade school that, you know, Manhattan was under ice at one point. And then you're up there and you're like, yeah, this was an ice sheet just like this one, you know, buried Manhattan. And it sounds like it was a long time ago. But in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't very long ago. So it really tilted my worldview, you know, how the world changes and how it can change, how immense changes are possible. And I don't think we appreciate that because human civilization has developed in this moment of relatively unusual climate stability. You know, there's a footnote at the end of the Greenland story that since you had reported it, an additional two and a half trillion tons of ice have been lost. Compiling those additional notes at the end of the story is like that one. I mean, do you ever just want to scream? um yeah no absolutely i mean you kind of want to you know just shake the entire country or world by the shoulders and just grab them by the shoulders and shake them and say you know what are what are you thinking what do you think is going to happen here you know because um to go back to what you know the scientists in greenland told me you know back in 2001 you you can't argue with physics. This is very well-established physics. And, you know, when you make a prediction, you know, you think about it like climate modelers predicted pretty much exactly what has happened. And when you see that, you would think in a society that's as scientifically sophisticated as our own, that people would say, okay, well, that's a pretty, you know, that's a pretty big clue that they're onto something. You know, they were able to predict this decades in advance. and what the predictions are for decades from now, if we continue on our, especially if we continue on our present path, they're very grim. And I just don't know how you cut through the noise and impress that upon people. And, you know, the other problem, of course, is that even once you impress that upon people, it takes a lot of work to redo your economy, to redo your energy systems. And there was some slight progress being made on that front until the 2024 election. When you started on this beat the issue was more trying to get people to understand that climate change is happening right And it seems like that not so much the question anymore because there a growing consensus that people want climate progress around the world and people accepting it. So what do you see as your role now? There's some disconnect between what we know and what we're doing. So where does journalism fit into that? And some people were saying, well, we should just focus on the solutions. Like what, you know, even though, as I say, we can't really solve this problem. We can certainly make it better or worse. You know, those are our options. It can be a serious problem or it can be, you know, absolutely unmanageable problem. And, you know, that certainly influenced me. A lot of the pieces in Life in a Little Known Planet are about people's proposals for what we should do, showing people what could be done. So that's another job for journalists. And I think that that's reasonable. But now in a moment where, you know, we're, as I say, we're just sort of actively destroying a lot of things, attempts at making things better. It's really, you know, just chronicling the destruction, I think, is a valid exercise, but it really is hard to know what is the role of a climate journalist right now? What are we bringing to the table? And I'm not sure that I've entirely figured that out. I'll be honest. Well, that's really honest, and I appreciate that. And I'm struggling with the same thing. And I think chronicling the destruction and also, as you pointed to, chronicling the wonder as well before it slips through our fingers. I guess I keep coming back to it being all a yes and, right? It's like, because, you know, our last issue of Atmos, our 12th edition, Pollinate, the whole issue is just dedicated to solutions. I love putting that issue together. It was one of my favorite to make because how rewarding to just be focusing for a minute on who's doing what about this situation that we're in. But obviously, all of that work means nothing if we are continuing to just perpetuate the problem. And it's so with solutions, it's always a yes. And we have to chronicle the destruction, we have to chronicle what's happening, the wonder and also what's being done about it. Yes. And I think the problem that you run into, and that, you know, is definitely something that I, you know, sort of grappled with when I reread a lot of these pieces is, you know, the scale problem. And I'm sure you ran into that when you were putting together that issue. Like there are a lot of, you know, brilliant ideas out there. And then it's always like, well, this is a pilot project, you know, in wherever, and it's, you know, removing whatever, a hundred, tons of carbon dioxide or whatever it's doing. And you measure that against the scale of the problem, which is 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year. And you have to weigh as a journalist too, like, well, what do I do with this? I don't want to bat it down at the beginning of the story that then why am I even writing about it? But I also do want to be honest that there are huge hurdles here. Yeah. This is heavy, heavy material that you have dedicated your life to focusing on. How does emotionality factor into it for you in the process of reporting, but also in thinking about people who are reading your stories? In a way, you could argue, you know, I'm a bit of an emotional parasite, and I think journalists are, because we are sort of piggybacking on the emotions of the people that you're covering, and they are guiding your emotions to that extent. And my own emotions, like, wow, this is just a bummer, you know, I try not to get into that in part because what's the point, sort of, I guess, if that makes sense. But often, you know, it's hard to really look at a lot of these stories. It's hard to go out there and have, you know, people talking about this is disappearing, this is disappearing, this is disappearing. and certainly not feel profoundly saddened by that. Yeah. But I think you also do such a credible job of weaving in so many facts and insights about some of the species you're reporting on that just open up a sense of wonder and curiosity. I mean, I feel moved when I read in the piece you did about honeybees that they're the only other species we know of that communicates with body language and dance, right? And that's like the tiniest footnote in your story, but those details, I think there's so much to be said for the curiosity that that unlocks and the emotional experience as well. Well, I very much appreciate that. I'm trying to get people to pay attention. I mean, really, that's, if you think about it, you know, we're in this war of attention right now. That is so much of what is going on. And the title of the book is borrowed from a book from the 60s by an entomologist. And he was writing this sort of plea for let's pay attention even to these, you know, creepy crawly things that nobody likes, but they're really fascinating. I mean, if you sort of think of every species as an answer to, you know, the great question of, which is how do you survive on planet Earth? Every species has come up with a different answer to that question. And that's just, you know, truly mind-bogglingly amazing. Yeah, you know, I'm constantly referencing one of the first episodes we did for the show, but it was with Janine Benyus at the Biomimicry Institute. And, you know, she points to exactly what you're saying, which is that every species that is still alive today is an example of life having figured out how to survive in some capacity. And so it's almost like we are surrounded by teachers, or she says genius. But humans, we think that we're alone. And that's why I'm so grateful to storytellers like yourself who are shining a light on that genius and just saying, this is worth paying attention to. trying to get people to focus and pay attention for 5,000 words, 10,000 words. It's even that is a battle, which is wild that we've gotten to this point. Yeah, no, look, it used to be a New Yorker, you know, New Yorker story was, you know, something that people, you know, read on the beach or on the subway or whatever. And it was not considered an immense ask, right? But now I think the stakes have really gone up. Like, you know, can you get the AI summary? I think everyone we just now think in terms of, you know, bullet points or tweets or whatever, you know, but I think it's a very different experience for your mind and I guess I could say your soul to actually immerse yourself in a subject. And I think there's way, way too little of that right now. Yeah. It's the difference in my mind between like data and information versus story. And I think telling stories and sharing knowledge through stories is just such an integral part of being human. And I think that's what gets lost. That's a very good point. There is this whole section where you go into different solutions around the world. Is there one that in particular kind of pulled you out of the gloom? Yeah, I mean, I went to this island, Samsu, in Denmark. They kept saying to me, you know, we are just ordinary people. We are not special people, you know, but they just put their minds to it. Like, what can we do? And they had a lot of wind so they put up a bunch of big wind turbines and they had a very smart scheme where people could invest in the turbines So it wasn like these are being inflicted on you You know you might not you might or might not like the view It doesn matter You could invest in them and you could get a return on your investment So everyone was kind of an owner of the system. And that was really smart and really important. That was a very inspiring story. I'd be remiss not to ask you about the sixth extinction, because it was such a monumental book in this particular movement. And it's been just over 10 years since it was released. What are your reflections on that book now? When I was writing The Sixth Extinction, insects were thought to be sort of an extinction-resistant group. They're by far the biggest group of species on the planet. I mean, there's a joke that to a first approximation, all species are insects. They so outnumber other species. So what happens to insects is super, super important for so many reasons. And I think that the fact that we are now looking at serious declines in insects also is unfortunately just further evidence that the message of the sixth extinction is on target, which I regret to say. You wish that you were wrong about that book. Exactly. Exactly. It would be embarrassing. How's that? But it would have other satisfactions. Yeah. Yeah. We were talking about this aspect of what's already been locked in and what isn't. How does that relate or compare to the extinction crisis? They're definitely analogous. Like, you know, as they like to say on the bumper sticker or whatever, extinction is forever. You know, despite a lot of talk, and that's another thing we talk about, about, you know, are you going to resurrect species? You know, extinction is really, you know, pretty permanent. And what we are doing, we're locking in a certain amount of biodiversity loss. Even if those species haven't been officially declared extinct, there are a lot of sort of walking dead species that are down to very low numbers and they're not going to recover or they're functionally extinct. That's a very important category. They're no longer contributing to the ecosystem the way they were. They're sort of lopping off limbs on the tree of life. And this ditto for, you know, melting the Greenland ice sheet, you know, once you set that process in motion, you don't get to stop it. Or it's very difficult to stop it. It may be impossible to stop it. And, you know, I think that the long tail of these problems, the permanent nature of these problems is, I think, very daunting to people. I think, you know, to a certain extent, people turn away from it. There's a sense when reading an Elizabeth Colbert piece that you're not just learning about something you're bearing witness you're bearing witness to our changing planet for you do you have a specific wish or hope as to what your readers or witnesses will do next after they put down one of your stories i don't have like a prescriptive view like why don't you go out you know and put up solar panels because i mean although that would be great you know my hope though is that it rocks you in some way that it it's like i can't ignore that that that actually can't be ignored imagining that you are releasing another collection of essays sometime in the future what what is your hope for what those stories are about and what binds them together i hope what binds them together is a curiosity about the world honestly a sense of wow, the world is really interesting. And that extends from, you know, the lowliest, you know, insect to whales to humans, amazing capacity to invent new things, both new ways of destroying the planet and new potential ways of ameliorating that. So what motivates me, I mean, what does motivate me actually, you know, to do this is in a large part of curiosity. It's like, wow, this is just so interesting. And I hope that that comes through. Beautifully said. Do you have any closing thoughts or wisdom for anyone who's listening who might be maybe an environmental journalist themselves, maybe someone who's just struggling to navigate this age of disinformation or anything else? Well, I guess my one piece of, you know, advice, as it were, you know, people always, you know, I always get asked, like, you know, how do you get up in the morning? Because this is really depressing stuff. And, you know, my answer sort of echoes the point that I made about what I would hope unites the story in a future collection and unites the stories in this collection. And that is, wow, the world is really interesting. And even, you know, if it is terrifying, and right now I think it is terrifying, you know, you wake up every day and you're like, what happened overnight that could be more terrifying? it's still a fascinating world that we live in and you know go out and um you know in any vacant lot you can see you know something really interesting going on and give something that's you know not a screen um and not the trump administration your attention and it will reward you yes every morning i wake up and i'm like what fresh hell is this but then but then i i have to remind myself that heaven is still here too. We just have to look for it. Yes, yes, exactly. Well, thank you so much, Elizabeth. I really appreciate your time and the work that you're doing. And I look forward to reading your next piece. Oh, well, thank you. Thanks so much for having me. It was really a pleasure. If you're feeling heavy after listening to this conversation, you're not alone. Like I said, Elizabeth has dedicated her life to telling the truth. And the truth is, we're in a precarious moment for our species. When I find myself feeling overwhelmed, I often come back to this idea that Elizabeth and I spoke about of being a witness. It almost feels like a sacred responsibility to me. Like if there's one thing I can do today, when there's so many forces that are fighting for my attention and my ability to focus, can I choose not to turn away? And maybe for today, that's enough. Teresa Perez, Jake Sargent, and Eric Newsom. Atmos is a non-profit that seeks to re-enchant people with our shared humanity and the earth through creative storytelling. To support our work or this podcast, see our show notes or visit atmos.earth.com. That's A-T-M-O-S dot earth slash B-I-O-M-E. I'm your host, Willow Defabaugh, and this is The Nature Of. Thank you.
