The Art of Being There
Environmental Storytelling in the Age of Trump
Can we continue and even strengthen climate and environmental storytelling while the very language of sustainability is being demonized and deleted? And in this deepening era of “Green Hushing,” will anyone even listen?
As Earth Day approaches, I caught up with a number of sustainability leaders profiled in Total Garbage. I wanted to know how they’re responding to this Fahrenheit 451 moment when federal grants are being canceled and websites scrubbed of such basic terms as “environmental justice,” “climate change,” “renewable,” “green” and “wind.” In his recent declaration of a “National Energy Emergency,” Trump pointedly excluded solar and wind from even being defined as “energy.”
So is there still hope for narratives about the environment Mother Nature in this climate atmosphere of hostility to all things green the color of money?
I got an emphatic “Yes!” from Chris Galarza, a Pittsburgh-based former restaurant chef. Now he designs planet-friendly kitchens that ditch gas stoves for clean, green induction technology—cooking with magnets. Even though gas stoves have become one of the more ridiculous front lines in the culture wars, Galarza remains optimistic in the face of the most anti-environmental president in history. That’s because his pitch has already been battle-tested and Trump-proofed by the most skeptical and hostile audience around: chefs who are more than ready to channel their inner Gordon Ramsey at the merest suggestion that they change how they cook.
Figuring out a workaround for this took a while. Galarza’s original pitch focused on making commercial kitchens a force against climate change and toxic stove emissions. That’s what landed him high-profile projects at Chatham University and Microsoft, which both have major sustainability commitments. But that pitch didn’t open doors with mainstream chefs and restaurant owners. It got them slammed in his face.
“It’s not for lack of caring about the environment, but the fact that chefs just don't have the luxury to think about things on the macroscale, such as climate change,” Galarza says. “They’re just trying to survive in an industry where profit margins are down to 3 or 4 percent… They’d hear about induction and say, ‘I can’t afford that!’”
So Galarza flipped his spiel to: You can’t afford not to make this switch. With real-world data and live demos, he shows how switching to induction cuts costs across the board while letting chefs cook, smoke, roast and sear any meal faster than with gas. Water boils in half the time. His induction kitchens serve more paying customers per shift than rivals slaving over the inefficient, 19th-century technology of gas burners.
Not familiar with induction stoves? Here’s why they rock: whether a deluxe commercial model or a $69 countertop version for home kitchens, they cook but they don’t get hot. That’s because induction “burners” are actually powerful magnets. They create a supercharged version of the effect that makes smartphones warm while sitting on wireless chargers. Only the bottom of pots get hot, along with the food inside. Gas burners, by contrast, waste most of their energy heating everything nearby—the pots, the entire stove, the room, and the staff. That’s why induction is three times more energy-efficient than gas and very fast.
As any chef—or fan of the Hulu series, The Bear—can tell you, time is money in the restaurant business. Once his pitch changed, Galarza’s skeptical chef audience no longer asked the question that has stymied eco-solutions for decades: What’s in it for me? Now the answer is obvious: Time.
Galarza’s most dramatic demo: He pulls a sauté pan out of the freezer and has food sizzling in seconds—faster than a gas stove can do it even with a pre-warmed pan.
That’s the sustainability story that reaches his target audience. No culture war stuff. No selling a climate fix. He’s just offering a way to do the job better, faster and cheaper. Chefs are becoming environmentalists without even needing to know that’s what they’re doing, Galarza says, though many see value in promoting their kitchens as green. Others just gladly accept the profits and go along with the green hushing.
Galarza doesn’t care. The result is the same: more and more kitchens are adopting the most planet-friendly cooking technology ever conceived. “You just have to frame it the right way,” he says. “And we all end up in the same place.”
The head of sustainability at the University of Minnesota at Morris tells a similar story. Troy Goodnough has been working with the conservative farmers of the town of Morris to build one of the most sustainable farm communities in America.
Two giant wind turbines on the campus feed the local grid with cheap electricity. Meanwhile the town has further lowered the cost of its energy bills with a combination of more efficient lighting, electric public buses, and solar power on every public building (all done with federal support Trump now threatens to kill). Even the city liquor story is in on the act, with a motto that galvanized surrounding farm communities to replicate the Morris Model: “We Chill Your Beer With the Sun.”
The latest twist in Morris’s sustainability journey: The community is hosting a university test factory to make green ammonia fertilizer with wind power. This breakthrough can cut farmers’ costs while giving them local control of the most critical chemical in modern agriculture. Making ammonia typically burns fantastic amounts of fossil fuels, a major contributor to global warming—unless you use wind power, America’s cheapest source of electricity. Then ammonia makes a clean, green fertilizer, as well as a carbon-free fuel for farm machinery.
Morris is very much Trump country, despite the threat he poses to their ammonia plant and a hoped-for third wind turbine. Yet farmers and local business owners support Troy Goodnough and his sustainability program in Morris, too. As I explained in the Wall Street Journal, the motivation has never been about the climate or saving the planet. What’s in it for them is a different story: rural independence, lower costs, and farming made easier and more productive. In these parts wind and sun are crops—and the harvest has been good to Morris. Being able to make fertilizer locally, without huge fuel and shipping costs, is a game changer. That it also happens to be a winner for the environment is a happy coincidence.
“That’s the story we tell here,” Goodnough says. “That’s what works here. It also happens to be true.”
The common thread between this farm town and high tech stoves is that they are both triumphs of a different way of telling environmental and sustainability stories. These narratives show how practicality and ingenuity trump politics in everyday life—a powerful counter to fear-driven green hushing.
“You just have to frame it the right way. And we all end up in the same place.”
This isn’a a slight of hand or a dodging of truth. It’s another way of chronicling solutions to our most intractable problems. In Total Garbage, I discuss how reframing our big environmental crises as symptoms of waste brings many more people into a conversation about solutions. As journalists and narrative writers we have to answer the What’s it for me? question now more than ever for our readers.
If someone reads my story on an environmental topic and says, That’s not my problem, or asks Why should I care about that? then I have failed in my job. My goal in environmental narrative nonfiction can’t be solely to inform. Narrative storytelling must help people feel something, too, and, sometimes, move them to do something.
Chris Galaraza and Troy Goodnough have figured out how to do that. We can do the same. We must do the same.
P.S. Want to know more about Galarza and Goodnough? They are among the eco visionaries you’ll meet in the pages of Total Garbage, now out in paperback.
Writing Life
My friend Aimee Liu, novelist and nonfiction writer, has assembled an invaluable collection of resources for writers here on Substack. Aimee and I are in a writing group with journalist
and physicist and author Len Mlodinow, and she’s a constant source of literary inspiration and practical know-how. If you haven’t already subscribed to , I recommend you give it a look.Writers Disease
Yes, I’m talking about procrastination. Adam Grant’s tweet on it is intriguing:
Procrastination is not a time management problem. It’s an emotion management problem.
You’re not avoiding work. You’re avoiding tasks that feel boring, frustrating, or stressful.
Postponing prolongs pain. The dread of starting is quickly outweighed by the joy of progressing.
I am always battling my inner procrastinator—including getting this latest newsletter done! An organizational psychologist and bestselling author, Grant writes at great length on procrastination in his Substack, Granted. Don’t put off reading it!
L.A. Storyteller
The New York Times profiles of one of my favorite crime writers, Michael Connelly, creator of Detective Harry Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer. The deck reads: “For almost four decades, Michael Connelly has set his characters loose in a city of big dreams and lucky breaks. Now they’re facing an altered landscape. So is he.”
Connelly talked with the Times about working on his upcoming book, set in Los Angeles in 2025, when the worst fires in the city’s history broke out in January. The realization that he couldn’t publish a novel with that setting and time frame without mentioning the fires almost gave him writers block for the first time in 40 years. (Anyone else feeling serious envy at that statement?) Finally he decided to dig back into the manuscript and layer in a new storyline related to the fires. He worries about it, saying, “It remains to be seen whether I did the right thing or not.”
The book comes out in October: “The Proving Ground.”
Back in Tucson
Nobody rolls out the welcome mat better than the organizers and army of volunteers at the Tucson Festival of Books. The annual celebration in the desert draws an enthusiastic crowd of more than 120,000 readers. I was so pleased to be invited back for the release of the paperback edition of Total Garbage. Plus I love returning to the city I called home for five years as a staff writer for the late great Tucson Citizen newspaper.
During the weekend, I was in brilliant company, sharing a stage with paleontologist, polar scientist and Ends of the Earth author Neil Shubin; journalist and Power Metal author ; and L.A .Times environmental reporter, documentary filmmaker and California Against the Sea author Rosanna Xia. We had terrific moderators, too: Steve Goldstein and Bryan Nelson of Arizona Public Media, and the president of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, Chris Lehnertz. I’m so grateful to festival leaders Jennifer Casteix, Susan Williams and Lynn Wiese Sneyd for making this year’s Tucson Festival of Books so inspiring and fun.
You can catch my conversation about environmental solutions we all can embrace on C-Span’s Book TV.
Coming Events
April 10: Podcaster and author Mandy Jackson-Beverly has moved her popular Central Coast “Lunch with an Author Literary Series” to the Santa Barbara Club. The noon event is open to the general public. Details and tickets.
May 15: Please join me for “Wild Hope,” an evening at the Community Environmental Council on State Street in Santa Barbara.
Sept. 25: “Less Trash, Better Choice,” University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, Ann Arbor. Details to come.
Oct. 10: Jackson Hole Center for the Arts. I’m the keynote speaker for “Zero Waste Week: A Celebration of 35 Years of Recycling.” Details to come.
Thank You For Being Here
I so appreciate you for taking time out of your busy life to read The Art of Being There. Preserving, invigorating and telling the stories that matter to us most has never been more important.
This past month I moved my newsletter to Substack, and I was blown away by all of the generous and supportive comments from readers. Thank you, everyone. And please keep your comments and suggestions coming. I welcome ideas for future editions.
Warmest wishes,
Edward Humes
Thank you, Linda, for reading Total Garbage, and for subscribing. Welcome!
Just purchased Total Garbage… thanks for writing it!