With Earth Day on the horizon (April 22), we go deep into our own connections with nature, health and the environment. We consider the past—Earth Day itself goes all the way back to 1970—and the present, with the Biden Administration’s once-ambitious ecology agenda currently on ice*, while scientists’ climate-change projections only heating up. For many of us in Gen Z, the future is scary: “It’s like a time limit on our lives,” says Walnut Hills High Schooler Nola Stowe. But by learning more about the hows and whys of the climate crisis, environmental injustice, endangered species, pollution, drought and other problems, local and global, we plant seeds of solutions. And that helps us stay hopeful.

The podcasters:

Harnoor Mann (host), University of Cincinnati

Nola Stowe, Walnut Hills H.S.

A.J. Jones, recent graduate, University of Cincinnati

*The New York Times Daily podcast just had a good episode about this.

Click here for NPR’s climate coverage.

Click here for details on the Greater Cincinnati Earth Day Festival on April 23; we’ll share info on other local events on the D&Me blog.

Here’s a Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library link for the book Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, referenced by Nola during this episode. And here’s California Governor Gavin Newsom’s executive order to phase out gas-powered cars, mentioned by A.J.

And click here to access a vintage D&Z episode from September 2020, talking about Gen Z’s environmental activism with two young brothers from the Navajo Nation. It’s still one of our favorites.

Conversation recorded on Zoom April 10, 2022

Seedling photo illustration by Freedomz/Shutterstock