Climate talk in the coffee line

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I’m standing in line for an oatmilk latte at Audrey’s Coffee in South Kingston, Rhode Island. Stayed overnight after having a lovely talk with my friend and fellow author, Liz Rush at the Metcalf Spring Lecture. We’re both alums of the Metcalf Institute at University of Rhode Island, which brings together scientists and journalists, helps both learn from each other. If you’re a journalist, I highly recommend checking out their fellowship offerings. The room was full of students and faculty, including from a couple new programs: environmental education within the fold of the College of Education and an Environmental Arts & Humanities degree. (Can I go back to school, please?)

The coffee line’s not moving.

“It’s not usually this busy,” says the guy in front of me as we wait. I tell him it’s my first time here. He asks where I’m from. I tell him Cape Cod. Ask if he’s a local.

“I’m a squidder, but it’s not so good ‘cause of climate change…”

The first thing he says. I swear. (And I’m pretty sure he used the word “squidder”…is that right?)

“You do that at night, right?” I ask, and his face lights up with my tiny morsel of knowledge. I know this fact because of my Metcalf fellowship.

elaborate drawings of octopus and squid by Ernest Haeckel
‘Gamochonia,’ 1899, Adolf Giltsch after Ernest Haeckel © The Royal Society

He goes on to tell me his captain is seeing changes because of acidification, though he can’t elaborate. Admits it’s above his pay grade.

“It is my pay grade,” I say, laughing. “Climate journalist.” He laughs and we keep talking. He tells me about living in Narragansett. How it’s working class. But progressive. Surfers. Weed smokers. “No one voted for Trump,” he says. He can’t believe the new cluster of five million dollar houses that the new owners must have bought sight unseen, since they’re by the waste water plant and it stinks around there.

I ask him if he has to do other work since the squid’s not so great. Yeah, he says, his face boyish though he must be in his thirties. He’s started making fishing nets, but he misses being on the water.

The line moves forward. I learn his name is Joe and shake his hand before he picks up his coffee and leaves.

I tried to pursue a story about ocean acidification’s impact on shellfishing here in New England about eight years ago. Had a hard time finding scallopers or oysterfolks concerned about it, even as institutional reports warned of the impact.

So much has changed. Is changing. On the ground. In the water. I don’t know if squid are affected by ocean acidification. Maybe not, since it impacts shell production, making scallops and oysters much more at risk. But the fact that the warming climate is on the mind, and tongue, of a squidder from Narragansett named Joe, in line at a coffee shop, buoys me.

Here’s a bit more: “In New England, Climate Change Is Moving Fast. The Fishing Industry Is Not,’ co-authored by WBUR’s Barbara Moran, who I’ll be talking with….

A few upcoming events to share:

upcoming events

Other news about A Better World Is Possible: Global Youth Confront the Climate Crisis: hardcover copies have sold out and are heading for a second printing; featured in Book Riot’s spring roundup; conversation with ecoRI News; Q&A with Katy Doughty and me at Smash Pages; and Shelf Awareness featured our new official book trailer:

Journalists & writer friends, take note…

I’m reading/listening…

  • Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris. S. and I read “Marrying Libraries” in bed one night. Something we still haven’t done. 🙂
  • This marvelous multimedia Guardian exploration of insect migration by Phoebe Weston, Ana Lucía González Paz, Prina Shah and Garry Blight.
  • In the in-betweens, I’m listening to The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia by Kiran Desai. Don’t know where the story is leading but the descriptive powers of her writing are inspiring.
  • Joe at the coffee shop isn’t wrong. Nature covers a new study showing that climate change is speeding up, the rate of warming surging since 2015. These regular reports, along with the horror of wars upon humans and the environment within US borders and our great leaders carrying the decimation around the world, and I took a break to listen to…
  • …RadioLab’s Snail Sex Tape. I will be on the lookout for love darts this spring.

Coda…

Haven’t you always been curious about…

Women’s Health & The Environment: Going Up In Smoke

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Tomorrow I’ll be heading to the heartland for University of Iowa’s Global Forum to talk cookstoves. With people from a variety of backgrounds — anthropology, engineering, economics, gender studies, journalism, non-profits and more — we’ll discuss the troubling persistence of harm from biomass cookstoves used by three billion people around the world. This multidisciplinary approach seems like a good step away from thinking about this as a purely an engineering problem, or an economic problem, or a development problem. It’s all those things and a whole lot of other messy humanness. It’s what I explored in my book, A River Runs Again and this piece for Nature. The event is free and open to the public.

upcoming talks: MIT, BU & Harvard

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Eco Swaraj: Can India’s Model of the Micro Transform Development for the 21st Century?

It’s been a year and half since A River Runs Again was published and my answer to the above question continues to morph. If you’re in the Cambridge, Massachusetts area in the next couple of months, you’ll have a chance to join me as I think out loud about what I found while researching the book over three years and what recent world events make me think now. (You can read a little more on that at the KSJ blog post, here.)

e4Dev student group of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITei)
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
MIT, Building E18, Room 304
50 Ames Street, Cambridge MA
You can find more information and RSVP here. 

Harvard STS Circle
Monday, March 27, 2017
12:15 pm – 2:00 pm
Harvard University, K262, Bowie-Vernon Room, CGIS
1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA
You can find more info and RSVP here. 
(To get a free sandwich, be sure to RSVP by Wednesday at 5:00 pm the week before!)

I’ll be showing lots of photographs and here’s a description of the talk:

In this exploration of life, loss and survival in modern-day India, Subramanian shares findings and photographs from her book, A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis from the Barren Cliffs of Rajasthan to the Farmlands of Karnataka. Using the five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and ether) as a framework, she traveled across India to seek out the ordinary people and micro-enterprises determined to guide India into a more sustainable future. Could India be the perfect place to shift from an outdated model of the macro — big dams, industrial agriculture, nuclear power, all developed in the West — to a new model of the micro? Should it choose this path, India could create a sustainable model of development that could be implemented elsewhere, from industrializing China to electrifying sub-Saharan Africa, to drought-stricken America, with its crumbling infrastructure.

Spread the word!

AND….

…I’ll also be joining a great panel hosted by Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy & Union of Concerned Scientists:

Science & Environment: A Journalist’s Perspective
Thursday, February 16, 2017
4:00 pm – 5: 30 pm
The Westin Copley Place Hotel
10 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02116
Panel Discussion followed by cocktail reception and hors d’oeuvres.
This event is free & open-to-all.

Science and policy issues in energy and the environment have become a rich source of material for authors and journalists across the media spectrum.  In particular, both the science of climate change and the reportage on that science have both become heavily politicized, posing unique challenges for journalism.

This panel discussion explores the evolving role of authors and journalists who work in the energy and environment fields.  Each panelist will discuss the evolution of their professional experience and the challenges of writing and reporting in this field, especially in the wake of the 2016 presidential election.

Panelists

Moderator

More info here.

Elemental India tour continuing south…

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2016.01.31-27

More events coming up for Elemental India. Specific details here. Hope to see you and do share the word with others you know in the following cities:

Pune:
• 11 Feb: Fergusson College
Chennai:
• 15 Feb: MIDS
• 16 Feb: IIT-M Research Park
Bengaluru:
• 19 Feb: Azim Premji University
• 19 Feb: IISc Centre for Ecological Sciences
Hyderabad:
• 26 Feb: University of Hyderabad

Mumbai events

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2016.01.31-271
I’m in Mumbai this week speaking about Elemental India, as the air is thick with the residue of the Deonar dump fire, as we think about solutions.  Here are a few events:
 
  • Green Drinks at Bombay Connect Thurs. Feb. 4 at 7:30 pm
  • Mumbai Press Club Fri. Feb. 5 at 4:00 pm (journalists only)
  • Kala Ghoda Arts Festival Eco-Arts panel Sat. Feb. 6 at 6:45 pm, where I’m excited to explore the power of the arts in enacting ecological change. With Ravi Agarwal, Sonia Mehra Chawla and Arati Kumar-Rao.
See here for specific details, as well as information on other book events happening around India. 

UChicago Center/EPIC presentation: New Delhi

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Epic
I’ll be giving a full multimedia presentation about Elemental India at The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago- India (EPIC India), an interdisciplinary research group at U.Chicago on energy and environmental policy and economics. Join us!
Thursday, January 28, 2016
6:00 PM
UChicago Center
DLF Capitol Point
Baba Kharak Singh Marg
New Delhi

Related show

We Speak Up: Delhi event

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Feminism Beyond Boundaries 25Jan (1)“We Speak Up: Can a Generation of Indian Girls Find their Voice?” 

Another Delhi event coming up on Monday, when I’ll be speaking at Apne Aap‘s Feminism Beyond Boundaries series. I’ll be focusing on the fifth element in my book, in which I traveled to Bihar to explore population growth along with reproductive and sexual health training for teens. One girl transformed her life when she slipped a note into her father’s pocket….

Join me Monday, January 25, 2016 at the Oxford Bookstore Connaught Place (81, N Block, Connaught Place), 4:00 pm, to hear more.

Check out the Facebook event page here.

Related show

  • Author: Meera Subramanian
  • Tour: A River Runs Again / Elemental India Book Tour
  • Date: January 25, 2016
  • Time: 4:00pm
  • Venue: Oxford Bookstore
  • City: New Delhi
  • Address: N-81, Connaught Circus
  • Country: India
  • Notes: “We Speak Up: Can a Generation of Indian Girls Find their Voice?”

India Book Launch: New Delhi!

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ElementalIndiaLaunchINVITE

Join me, Delhiites! I’ve landed in India for the release of Elemental India: The Natural World in a Time of Crisis and Opportunity, and hope you’ll join me at one of the upcoming events. This is the official book launch, Tuesday, January 19th (tomorrow!) at The American Center at 6:00 pm. I’ll be in conversation with the wonderful Aseem Shrivastava, co-author of Churning the Earth.We’ll be touching upon faith in a seed, vanishing vultures, rivers reborn, choking air, population pressures, and the eternal question of hope. And there’ll be refreshments. Co-hosted by The American Center, HarperCollins India, USIEF (Fulbright) and Caravan magazine. Do come! Details here.

Update: Here’s a podcast of our conversation:

More events in the works for Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai over the next month. Find all details for confirmed events here.

Recorded, live!

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Working on a reported book has had three distinct phases. The on-the-ground reporting, a time of movement and questions, cameras slinging and notebooks filling. Then there was the isolation chamber of writing, dissecting the notebooks and photos, diving into research, writing, writing, re-writing, re-writing.

And now I’m in the third stage — of heading out into the world to talk about what I found. Can 1.3 billion people in India live sustainably? Can the planet? What’s working? What’s not? What can everyone learn, within India and around the world, from the successful models and the cautionary tales?

In case you weren’t able to make it to any of the events on my book tour, here are a few archived recordings of some of the presentations.

In New York City, I sat down with acclaimed author and good friend Suketu Mehta at my alma mater, New York University, for an evening hosted by the Literary Reportage concentration of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute:

At the World Affairs Council of Northern California, I had great conversation with Linda Calhoun, Executive Producer at Career Girls. Before the talk, I met with World Affairs student ambassadors and fielded some of the toughest questions I heard on tour. (Providing great hope for the future!)

Here’s another video from the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, where I’m in conversation WWC’s Meaghan Parker, American journalist Lisa Palmer, (who’s working on her book Feeding a Hot Hungry Planet: Agriculture, Climate Change, and Population) and Indian journalist Priyali Sur:

I was honored to join a long legacy of presenters at the University of Virginia’s Medical Center Hour, (though it was tough to figure out how to follow up a professional skateboarder!). The audio is a little tricky, but nice shots of photographs I’ve been showing along the way. The event was produced by the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities in partnership with Historical Collections of the Health Sciences Library.

And also in New York City, I spoke with Steven Weiss of The Jewish Channel’s Up Close:

Enjoy.