An Interview from the Future

Today we are talking with Jheri Nyongo, who recently completed their 20th year in the Civilian Conservation Corps. Jheri was the architect of the Every Home a Garden initiative and rose from installer to executive director of the northeast region.

Anna: Jheri, thank you for coming today.

Jheri: Thanks, Anna, I'm glad to be here.

A: Tell us about your first year in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

J: We started with a mandate to install solar panels. At that time, I was going wherever they sent me. We were climbing on roofs and fitting panels and explaining about choosing exposures. About six months in, I'd heard several homeowners complaining about the electric utility of the time. The company kept delaying on connecting the panel systems to the electric grid. So I talked to the team, and we went to talk to the utility board. Turns out, they were worried about live wires from the panels. That's when the team decided we needed to work on the electric grid, too.

A: I spoke to your coworker Gordo Finnegan, and he said you were the leader on that.

J: If he says so. It took a team.

A: Did you like the electrical work?

J: It was interesting. We had a new set of safety procedures to worry about. I studied up on power lines and transformers and all that.

A: Eventually receiving a doctor's degree in electrical engineering.

J: Yes, that. I had some useful problems to work into my dissertation, so the work and the studies helped each other. We were dividing the grid into little sections. When everything went well, power would pass between them. When one section had a problem, it would isolate. The grid had to be smart, to handle all those power plants on roofs, which is what our solar panels were.

A: How long did you work on making the grid smarter?

J: That was my main concern for the next eight or nine years. Other teams took it up, worked in other areas. We traded what we learned between regions and made good progress.

A: Did anyone oppose the work?

J: (chuckles) There were some. One man I won't dignify by naming spent a year following us around with signs claiming that our smart connection points were the devil's surveillance plan. He had a few folks worked with him for a while. I kept my head down and worked and that blew over. We had some funding fights, too. Our first budget came in with the Green New Deal, and was up for reconsideration two years later. We saw some stink in congress. But by then, we'd given a lot of folks free solar panels, and more people wanted them. So the budget held. Most of that happened above my pay grade.

A: Why did you stop working on the grid?

J: We were mostly done by then. There were remote areas that still needed work. We'd sorted out the fun questions. I started looking around for the next problem.

A: Was that insulation?

J: No, another branch of the CCC began work on insulation while our team was working on the grid. The two approaches helped each other – insulation lowered energy use, which made the grid work better, and the better grid made areas that needed help pop right out. Insulation, appliances, light bulbs – the home team had all of that under control. So I started looking for another area we could work on.

A: What were some of the options you considered?

J: The CCC's first tagline had been "Solar panels for every home" with a little asterisk to cover those cases where they'd never pay off. As we finished up with that, and expanded into improving the grid and making homes more efficient, we needed a new line. The public relations team tried a few that no one liked. Finally, we had a big conference. Those who couldn't fly to Cincinnati joined by video call. Everyone put their thoughts in the big bucket of ideas. It took a week. Finally, we came up with the line we still use now.

A: It broadened your aim quite a bit.

J: At that point, anything that would reduce carbon, reduce other greenhouse gases, make any product or service use less energy or create less waste became fair game. I had a lot to think about. I considered home battery systems, universal broadband, transportation. I wanted to work outside, and I saw that we hadn't made much progress on lowering methane from garbage collection. What would encourage people to keep food waste out of their garbage? If they could compost it and use the compost at home. Plus, gardening calms a place. So we came up with Every Home a Garden.

A: Lots of people have had gardens. How was this different?

J: We wanted everyone to have a garden. Didn't matter if you lived on the eighth floor, or couldn't walk. We were looking at gardens that could be part of your roof, your walls, gardens for people who had no yard or no sunlight.

A: Wouldn't that raise electricity use?

J: It was a whole new set of problems to solve. Sometimes, we did need some artificial light. We worked to make that as efficient as possible. Lots of times we could choose the right plants or bring sunlight through pipes. We had some misfires where the compost was chasing people out of their homes before we found a few good systems for that, too.

A: How many homes have you reached?

J: We estimate about 30%. That's enough that we've found solutions for most home types.

A: Does that mean you are looking for your next interesting problem?

J: (chuckles) I'm not ready to talk about that.

A: Can you tell us anything about what you plan to do next?

J: I expect I can do good work for the CCC for another decade or more. We've taken care of some of the big areas of waste, and we can keep finding ways to do better.

A: Thanks very much for your time, Jheri. And thanks for your service.

J: It was a pleasure talking to you.

Finding Our Part

The world is in crisis. The climate crisis is really just one part of it. We are reaching a place where the joint action of billions of humans can have huge, horrible consequences even if those actions, undertaken by a single human, wouldn't do any noticeable harm.

We've dealt with some similar problems before. We created treaties to cut CFCs when they were damaging the ozone layer and reduced the impact of acid rain. Earlier, we learned sewer systems when having people in a city toss their waste into the street wasn't working. We have found some techniques for managing hunting and fishing rights, although fisheries need more help. We developed property to help avoid the tragedy of the commons. There are strong social norms to control excess noise and public nakedness and other activities that benefit you but annoy your neighbors. So we have successfully dealt with some conflicts of private versus public interest.

The climate crisis impacts the entire world. Also, it is often a conflict of groups versus the globe instead of an individual versus their neighbors. This larger scale may be part of why we are finding it intractable.

The groups who are benefiting from emitting carbon that harms the entire world are large and powerful. We have types of power now that were unimaginable even two centuries ago. Monarchs might control the output of an entire country – but they couldn't launch global advertising campaigns or cross the world in a day or field the labor-hours or security forces of modern multinational corporations and nations – there weren't that many people yet! Nor was there the sheer economic leverage we have now.

And we have been using fossils fuels to create a lot of that technological and economic power. Many of us are invested in it – literally, because we have shares of oil and coal companies, figuratively, because we enjoy the freedom of our cars and the warmth of our furnaces, and systematically, because we have learned to live in a way deeply interdependent with many others who are also using fossil fuels. Our lights come on from fossil fuel power plants. Our stores hold food grown with them, plastics made from them, everything transported with them. When we go to rally against climate change, we still may have no choice but to burn them to arrive. Our customers and neighbors use them, take their livelihoods from them, need them to live. Suppose all fossil fuel companies stopped paying their employees immediately. The resulting slowdown in the economy would match the Great Recession, with blackouts, and might rise to the level of the Great Depression.

Humans are scared of change and they are scared to lose income, which is how we survive within civilization. It's no wonder that many resist taking on the climate crisis.

So what can we do?

Start disentangling ourselves as we can, how we can.

Individual action may be your part: reducing fuel burned, divesting from fossil fuels, making your home more energy efficient, purchasing renewable energy and installing solar or wind power, and so on.

Or, your part might be joint action: money or time given to organizations fighting climate change, speaking out, voting and organizing for climate candidates and measures. You could be creating systems and products that disentangle us, and working with your neighbors to help them join the efforts.

I have more in my book Carbon Reset, which I give away here: www.carbonreset.com

One of my parts is to imagine how the zero carbon future could be more satisfying than our present.

What matters most is that you find your part and keep taking the steps. As James Clear recently said, "Rome wasn't built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour."