What If We Get It Right?

April 1, 2023

Through her work, marine biologist Johnson knows that we are in the midst of environmental crisis, but she refuses to give up hope. Here she explores human interconnectedness to nature and shows the progress that has been made in sustainability while wanting to lift us beyond electric cars and solar panels. What's needed, she argues, is cultural change, globally and locally. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2023

Johnson, a marine biologist, Ted Talk star, and Time 100 Next lister, offers a collection of essays, conversations, data, poems, and art that presents solutions and possible safe outcomes from the looming environmental dystopia. She coedited the bestselling All We Can Save and edited the 2022 edition of Mariner's The Best American Science and Nature Writing. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 22, 2024
There are countless means by which a sustainable future is possible, if only society has the political will to enact them, according to this galvanizing survey. Marine biologist Johnson (All We Can Save) draws on in-depth interviews with experts in earth science, tech, design, and agriculture, as well as activists and journalists, to showcase the vast array of potential solutions and to help readers envision what the future could look like (Johnson writes that her motivation for writing the book was her own difficulty imagining a post-fossil fuel world). The interviews are remarkably insightful. Some add depth to familiar topics (journalist Bill McKibben gives a robust explanation of how entrenched the banking system is in the fossil fuel industry; activists Xiye Bastida and Ayisha Siddiqa recount the recent history of the youth climate movement, incisively reflecting on the benefits and limitations of the mass protests favored in the movement’s early years and outlining today’s more multifaceted strategy), while others will likely surprise readers (environmental historian Brian Donahue suggests that land-rich towns and suburbs that have recently gotten into community gardening should try forestry next). Johnson’s account is buoyed throughout by her adamant belief that sweeping change is possible, with a little push (“Moving forward requires that we propel each other.... We need to leap”). This is a much-needed antidote to “climate grief.”

Starred review from August 1, 2024
Interviews with experts who are successfully combating climate change. Marine biologist Johnson traces her love affair with the ocean to a family vacation in 1986, when her parents took her on a glass-bottom boat ride in Key West, Florida, where she got to marvel at what was left of the area's coral reefs. Today, she is the founder of Urban Ocean Lab, "a policy think tank for the future of coastal cities." Despite the fact that her job exposes her to some of the world's worst environmental catastrophes, Johnson is also hungry for optimism, specifically, for proof that by working together people can mitigate the effects of climate change and undo the damage we've so carelessly caused. She writes, "We need something firm to aim for. Something with love and joy in it. And we need the gumption that emerges from an effervescent sense of possibility." This desire for practical, joy-based approaches to climate change led Johnson to conduct a series of interviews with environmental activists, thinkers, and scientists who move conversations away from litanies of what we've done wrong and toward the question, "What if we get it right?" These wide-ranging interviews span issues ranging from artificial intelligence as a tool for preventing climate change to racial justice in homestead farming to divestment as a means of redirecting capital away from fossil fuels and toward sustainable solutions. In addition to asking perspicacious questions and curating a diverse and brilliant set of voices, Johnson leads us through the material with a witty, brainy frankness that renders this often dense, potentially depressing material into an exuberantly hopeful read. An inspiring compilation of voices from the environmental justice movement.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from August 1, 2024
In this engaging collection, twenty experts representing various interests weigh in on future actions that could mitigate ecological damage wrought by human activity. The text consists of one-on-one interviews accompanied by thoughtful commentary, and author Johnson has both the professional and personal chops to make the format work. A biracial kid from Brooklyn who grew up to be a lawyer/marine biologist/Harvard PhD/conservation policy expert, she asks insightful questions and guides musings towards the future, encouraging creative solutions. She does so through a series of informal, conversational, and occasionally irreverent prompts, resulting in candid and fresh responses. Selections are grouped according to overarching themes (rural landscapes and food systems, urban ecosystems, government and corporate responsibilities, financial responses, media representations), and participants include farmers, architects, emergency managers, filmmakers, poets, and youth activists. Johnson's passion shines through on every page. She shares convincing personal anecdotes, plentiful in-context footnotes, and selected excerpts highlighted with user-friendly icons (an asterisk indicates a key insight, concerns get an exclamation point, poignant reflections a heart, and important paths forward are underlined). This brings together lots of information from lots of informed viewpoints, and will be equally effective whether read selectively as individual pieces or cover-to-cover.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.