Art Heals All Wounds
Do you think art can change the world? So do I! We’re at a pivotal moment when scientists, medical practitioners, and creatives are coming together in recognition of the ways that art plays an indispensable role in our well-being, as individuals, communities, and societies. In each episode we hear from artists and creatives who share their inspiration for their work and its wider impact. These conversations about transformative artistic practices show the ways that art can be a catalyst for healing and change.
How do we change the world? One artist at a time.
Art Heals All Wounds
Hope is a Renewable Resource: Fighting Fossil Fuel Narratives with Christa Avampato
Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Christa Avampato, a storyteller, climate activist, and a beacon of hope in New York City. Christa shares her journey of resilience, from growing up on an apple farm amidst adversity to becoming a fervent advocate for environmental protection. As a biomimicry scientist and business expert, she's dedicated to reshaping the way we think about sustainability and human design. Christa's optimistic outlook on healing—both personally, having survived cancer, and globally, through climate action—offers a refreshing perspective on the collective responsibility we all share for our planet's future. Join us as we explore her insights on the need for kindness in urban settings, the urgency of transitioning to clean energy, and her inspiring plans for fostering environmental restoration and community engagement.
00:00 Author, speaker, biomimicry enthusiast, product developer.
04:20 Dedicated New Yorker with kind, soft exterior.
08:02 Limited TV growing up, spent time outside.
12:38 Species migrating north due to climate change.
15:48 Solutions exist beyond big oil's influence.
19:43 Contact officials, not social media, for change.
21:27 Participating in democracy and environmental actions matters.
26:14 Individuals can significantly impact biodiversity and sustainability.
29:22 Utilize existing infrastructure for luxury electric buses.
33:14 Focus shifted from science to lifestyle impact.
37:21 ESG reporting is voluntary, often superficial.
38:34 Weekly climate actions shared via online platforms.
43:45 Cancer survivor finds joy, anticipates environmental lawsuit.
48:04 Art inspires hope; Berkeley explores cleaner energy.
49:40 Visit Art Heals All Wound's website to contribute or communicate.
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00;00;00;00 - 00;00;11;28
Music
hum, hum, hum, hum hum hum hum, hum.
00;00;12;00 - 00;00;36;19
Pam Uzzell
Do you believe art can change the world? So do I! On this show, we meet artists whose work is doing just that. Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds. I'm your host, Pam Uzzell.
00;00;36;22 - 00;01;09;11
Pam Uzzell
Today, I'm talking to the happiest person in New York. Storyteller and climate activist Christa Avampato says that the key to living in New York City is not to become hard, but to cultivate compassion and empathy and approach her fellow New Yorkers with kindness. Christa grew up in an unhappy home in upstate New York. She found safety in the outdoors, and nature became her home.
00;01;09;13 - 00;01;39;12
Pam Uzzell
The plants, the animals, everything that made up those ecosystems that nurtured her became family. And she is giving everything she has to fight for that family. I think the Christian is so happy because rather than dooming in response to a warming planet, she's doing. Having survived cancer and seeing her body heal. She's confident that our planet can also heal.
00;01;39;15 - 00;01;58;14
Pam Uzzell
We have all the tools we know how to do this, she says. We know that fossil fuel companies are putting out false narratives, so it's up to us to change that narrative.
00;01;58;17 - 00;02;22;24
Pam Uzzell
You want to know how you can really help me keep this show going? Follow me on your favorite listening app. So easy, right? And if you really want to give the show a boost, leave me a five star rating or review. Hi, Christa. Thank you so much for being on Art Heals All Wounds. Can you start just by telling a little bit about who you are and what you do?
00;02;22;27 - 00;02;43;29
Christa Avampato
Yeah, absolutely. Pam, thanks so much for having me. It's so nice to be with you and with your guests of the podcast. My name is Christa Avampato and I live in Brooklyn, New York, and when I talk about what I do, I really see it as coming from three different realms. So I'm a storyteller. I'm a business person, and I'm also a biomimicry scientist.
00;02;44;02 - 00;03;14;04
Christa Avampato
So from a writing perspective and a storytelling perspective, I'm an author, I'm a speaker, and I also do a lot of personal interest journalism and storytelling. From a biomimicry perspective, biomimicry is looking at all of the adaptations that exist in our natural world, and then taking those adaptations and applying them to the human designed world in a way that is sustainable and creates a healthy, productive world for all beings and doesn't cause any harm to the environment.
00;03;14;06 - 00;03;42;17
Christa Avampato
And then, from a business perspective, I have been a product developer for a very long time. I have an MBA, so I come at that from a very rigorous data perspective, which is not common necessarily for writers, but I think it's very useful to have that background. And as a business person, I've been in product development in a lot of different industries for a long time, but how I define product development is really looking it could be, designing a system.
00;03;42;18 - 00;04;11;19
Christa Avampato
It could be I'm designing a physical product. It could be that I'm designing a technical or virtual product. And the idea is really around not only human centered design, but on life centered design and really focusing on this idea of we cultivate empathy. We ideate, we design, we create, we test, we launch, and then we do the whole cycle over and over and over again to get better and better and better.
00;04;11;22 - 00;04;20;12
Pam Uzzell
That sounds so exciting. And we're going to talk about that. I just have to ask right off the bat, is a true you're the happiest person in New York?
00;04;20;14 - 00;04;43;00
Christa Avampato
I would say people when they meet me, they say, you live here, you live in New York? And I'm I'm a very New Yorky person from the way. How fast I talk, how fast I walk. I love this city down to my bones. And I'm a very, very dedicated New Yorker. I also feel that it's really important to be kind.
00;04;43;00 - 00;05;08;19
Christa Avampato
And a lot of people say, oh, you have to have this hard exterior to be a New Yorker. And I actually think it's the opposite. I think if you have a soft exterior, it allows you to be more flexible to work your way through this city. It's a tough city. The other day I was walking through Times Square with a very dear friend of mine, and literally someone slammed right into me on purpose, full frontal collision and just kept walking.
00;05;08;21 - 00;05;35;06
Christa Avampato
He didn't care at all. I have seen people be terrible to each other, in the subways, in the streets. You know, we have a lot of protests that are happening right now. There's a lot of anger in the city. There's a lot of violence in the city that has escalated since the pandemic. And still I keep putting compassion and empathy and kindness out there because I think it does have an effect, even if it's one person at a time.
00;05;35;09 - 00;05;58;06
Christa Avampato
It's cumulative. There are days when I feel really sad and really upset and really disappointed in the direction that the city is going and in the place that the city is in. And yet I still have hope that we always have an opportunity to be better. So I have this quote on my door that I always read before I leave my apartment, and it's by Rumi, and it says be a lamp or a lifeboat or a ladder.
00;05;58;06 - 00;06;15;05
Christa Avampato
Help someone's soul heal, walk out of your house like a shepherd. And I always feel like it's important to go out there with with light for people and to really think about shepherding them towards a better future for themselves and for the people around them.
00;06;15;07 - 00;06;18;27
Pam Uzzell
Yeah. That's amazing. It's really hard to.
00;06;19;00 - 00;06;19;13
Christa Avampato
Very hard.
00;06;19;13 - 00;06;23;04
Pam Uzzell
To maintain that sort of compassion, especially right now.
00;06;23;10 - 00;06;40;23
Christa Avampato
That's why it's a reminder of my door, because it's the last thing I read every time I walk outside. And I do those types of reminders because I, I feel like I need them as much as anybody else needs them. And I have to coach myself through doing that. And some days it's easier than others.
00;06;41;21 - 00;06;44;28
Christa Avampato
But I think that I think it's worth the fight.
00;06;45;01 - 00;06;55;29
Pam Uzzell
Yeah. Let's go back a little bit. You've done so many things and you are you know, you have this wonderful fusion of all of your different pursuits. Really quickly,
00;06;55;29 - 00;07;03;12
Pam Uzzell
Emerson Page and Where the Light Leads. By the time this episode is out, that will be your second young adult book.
00;07;03;15 - 00;07;13;28
Pam Uzzell
So people can read the first one, then read this one. But I want to ask about you. Is it true you grew up on a farm?
00;07;14;00 - 00;07;19;01
Christa Avampato
I did, I grew up on an apple farm in upstate New York, in the Hudson Valley. Yeah.
00;07;19;03 - 00;07;21;25
Pam Uzzell
And that you had no TV as a child.
00;07;21;28 - 00;07;35;18
Christa Avampato
We had a tiny black and white television until I was about 13. And when I say tiny black and white television, I mean, like nine inches,
00;07;35;18 - 00;07;45;18
Christa Avampato
But we did watch like some like we watched The Muppet Show when I was a kid and we watched like I was a big fan of The Today Show, which is, like, so nerdy.
00;07;45;18 - 00;08;01;16
Christa Avampato
But even like as a small child, I was really interested in the today show. It was the days of like, Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley. I'm a huge Jane Pauley fan, and Willard Scott was the weather guy. And or I should say, meteorologists, essentially. But he was way more than a weather guy. But there were things like that.
00;08;01;16 - 00;08;21;11
Christa Avampato
But we didn't have cable television ever until I was maybe the very end of high school, because we couldn't afford cable television. So we had like PBS on a black and white television until I was in high school. So that meant that, like, while a lot of kids were like, oh, they were watch. Oh, oh, your like MTV years.
00;08;21;11 - 00;08;34;25
Christa Avampato
And I was like, I don't really have any MTV years because we didn't have MTV. So sometimes I would watch at my, my friends houses and things like that, but we didn't have any of that stuff. So I was just outside mostly. Also, my mother, like threw us out of the house all the time. She was like, please get out of here.
00;08;34;28 - 00;08;57;21
Christa Avampato
So we were outside. I preferred to be outside. I will say that my house was not a happy one to grow up in. My father was an alcoholic. I have talked about this before and he died when I was 16. And so we grew up in a house that was very loud. It was very uncomfortable. Sometimes it was violent and it was it was a very unstable place.
00;08;57;24 - 00;09;24;21
Christa Avampato
And so for me, outside was safer many times than inside the house. And school was safer than being inside my house. So for me, being out in nature nature was my safe place. That was my haven. And it really attached me to the land and to the animals and to those plants and to those ecosystems. I felt much more that I was a part of those natural ecosystems
00;09;24;25 - 00;09;49;03
Christa Avampato
than I was a part of society or even a part of my own family. I felt like nature was actually my family. And so when I do my sustainability work now and biomimicry work now, I am defending my family. I'm guarding my family like that's how deeply I feel it. This isn't like a nice thing to do or self-preservation thing to do.
00;09;49;05 - 00;10;02;25
Christa Avampato
Those ecosystems are all, are me, and I defend them as fiercely as someone would defend their own blood family. And I feel very strongly about that. And it's why I do the work that I do.
00;10;02;28 - 00;10;12;18
Pam Uzzell
Wow, that's really, really interesting. And I do want to talk especially about the biomimicry.
00;10;12;20 - 00;10;13;13
Christa Avampato
Yeah.
00;10;13;15 - 00;10;20;14
Pam Uzzell
Because I've seen some of your drawing of how a city could be, which I thought, man, I want to live in that city.
00;10;20;16 - 00;10;21;10
Christa Avampato
Too.
00;10;21;13 - 00;10;52;03
Pam Uzzell
Yeah, you have a lot of ideas, and I know that you're not claiming them as your original ideas, but you are putting out a lot of work that's very exciting to me. Or amplifying work of other people. And the biomimicry and the rewilding ideas. I'm just going to throw that out there. And you can talk about those in whatever ideas you have, ideas you've seen, that you're amplifying things that you think are possible for us.
00;10;52;06 - 00;11;15;29
Christa Avampato
Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing I will always say is that the best thing that we can do is to preserve ecosystems as we have them. We have destroyed a lot. And by we. I'm not saying you and I, Pam. I am saying like big oil and I absolutely will put that out there. I'm talking about fossil fuel companies.
00;11;16;05 - 00;11;41;02
Christa Avampato
I'm talking about chemical companies that have created PFAs, that have destroyed ecosystems, that have caused mass extinctions. So it's the collective human.we. Humans are the cause of massive climate change in the last hundred years. There is no getting around that. No matter how you define it, no matter how you look at it. The we do have some old growth forests.
00;11;41;02 - 00;12;07;27
Christa Avampato
We do have some ancient ecosystems that still exist, and it is paramount for us to protect those like what is left of the Amazon rainforest. We need to protect those places because so many of them have been lost and so much land, and so much of the ocean has been degraded by human activity. We also need to now rewild, regenerate, repopulate.
00;12;07;28 - 00;12;32;01
Christa Avampato
But that doesn't mean that we go racing into an ecosystem and let's just plant a whole bunch of trees that we think will look nice. A lot of what we need to do is work in concert with nature and restore these. We know what a lot of these natural ecosystems look like. We know what species existed there, and we need to repopulate the species that were in these places because they were designed for these places.
00;12;32;01 - 00;13;00;02
Christa Avampato
Now, I will also step back and say climate change is exactly that. It is changing the climate. So if you look at the migration of species now, plant and animal species, they are moving much, much further north because it's getting so warm near the equator. And as you move away from the equator. So here in the northern hemisphere, we find that more and more plant and animal species are moving north to get away from the heat.
00;13;00;05 - 00;13;24;06
Christa Avampato
And even in New York, New York is actually considered a subtropical climate zone now. That was not always the case. I mean, look how far north New York City is. But now that's what we are considered because we have warm ish winters and really wet summers, really wet springs. The amount of water that is falling, especially in the northeast, is, is pretty alarming.
00;13;24;06 - 00;13;47;09
Christa Avampato
If you look at the last, the last decade and that will continue unless we stop pumping fossil fuels and emissions into the atmosphere. The best way that we can fight climate change is to break up with fossil fuels. Can we do it tomorrow? No. But do we need to be focusing on the transition 100% and there and we have all the solutions that we need.
00;13;47;12 - 00;14;05;19
Christa Avampato
I just finished, Vice President Al Gore has something called the Climate Reality Project, where he has trained 3.5 million people all over the world to be climate advocates. He just did his 55th training. And it was here in New York City, and I was a part of it with 3000 other people, which was amazing. This past weekend.
00;14;05;21 - 00;14;33;13
Christa Avampato
And we had so many scientists and politicians and policy makers and advocates and community organizers. It was an incredible weekend, and there is absolute consensus that the best thing that we can do is to reduce fossil fuel use as fast as we possibly can, and the thing is that we have all those solutions that was emphasized over and over again.
00;14;33;13 - 00;14;51;05
Christa Avampato
We have all the solutions. We need to have a cleaner energy supply. Now. We need the policies and the politicians and the public will to do it. There's a lot of misinformation and a lot of lying out there.
00;14;51;17 - 00;15;19;03
Christa Avampato
Literally saying it in black and white both ways. I see commercials. I saw commercial right after the training with the vice president. I came home, I turned on my television, and there was an ad that said, look at everything big oil's doing for you. Look at how great your life is because of Big Oil. And I was like, if that wasn't the universe, like sending me a sign, and these are the lies they were talking about, like this.
00;15;19;03 - 00;15;47;17
Christa Avampato
This is, this is it. This is the fossil fuel company knowing that they're lying, committing to lying and doing it anyway because it's in the interest of their bottom line of their finances, and it's destroying the planet. And we have to stand up to that and show people there's a better way. And so one of the things that I focus on this AI art that I create in my storytelling about the environment is there is a better way?
00;15;47;19 - 00;16;08;01
Christa Avampato
There is. I don't even want to focus on just what big oil is doing, because it's actually counterproductive. If we just say big oil is lying and we don't sandwich it with this is the truth, this is the lie, this is the truth and how we can make the truth our reality. Then we're actually doing something that's counterproductive in our storytelling.
00;16;08;01 - 00;16;32;24
Christa Avampato
So we have all the solutions we need. We do not need big oil to have a great life. We can actually have a much better life without big oil. And here are all the solutions. We can do it. Whether it's green energy, whether it's electrifying our fleets of public transportation, it's learning how we work in concert with nature and all this rewilding work and caring about nature and cultivating nature.
00;16;33;01 - 00;16;56;18
Christa Avampato
The all of those types of nature based solutions are really valuable. And so I'll stop there. I'm sure there's lots of questions, but that's the world. I see that nature is not something that we're working against or we're bending or molding, but nature is an ally, and all that nature is asking for is the opportunity to exist and to help us exist and to help us be happy and whole and healthy.
00;16;56;21 - 00;17;09;21
Pam Uzzell
Right. Well, one thing that popped into my head is you're talking is that here locally, I'm in the Bay area. Berkeley had passed a law or an ordinance or a building code,
00;17;09;21 - 00;17;28;06
Pam Uzzell
saying that every new building had to be completely electric. No hookups for natural gas, which I think one of the lies is the cleaner fossil fuel, which it is cleaner than oil or coal, but it is still a fossil fuel.
00;17;28;08 - 00;17;58;07
Pam Uzzell
And I think the most recent news is that a judge ruled that they could not do that. They could not require new builders to have a completely electric home that could be hooked up to clean energy. So even on the small level, Berkeley is a small city, although it is often a trendsetter. But even on this small local level, how could we start trying to support policymakers and government who are trying to do the right thing?
00;17;58;07 - 00;18;00;14
Pam Uzzell
How do we do that?
00;18;00;16 - 00;18;16;02
Christa Avampato
Yeah, one of the things I thought when I started, I'm getting my master's in sustainability leadership at the University of Cambridge. I'm almost done. I'm in my dissertation year. And one of the things I thought I would do is I thought I would go work for a fossil fuel company, and I would get them to start producing fossil fuels.
00;18;16;03 - 00;18;35;13
Christa Avampato
That was my original idea. And then as I've gone through the program and I've, I have friends and colleagues in the program who actually tried to do exactly that. And they got so frustrated on the inside. They tried to work for change on the inside. It didn't work. And so one of my friends said, the thing that we need to do is actually kill demand.
00;18;35;15 - 00;18;53;17
Christa Avampato
That's what we need to do, is kill the demand. Because if you try to work on the supply side, you're working against so much that it's almost in some way, I don't want to ever want to say something's impossible, but it may not be worth the time to do that. It may be more expedient, and we need to do this faster.
00;18;53;19 - 00;19;12;26
Christa Avampato
It may be more expedient to work on the outside as an individual, what you can do. So I actually live in an all electric building. There is no natural gas at all in my in my building. So everything is electric. And in New York State we are allowed to choose our energy providers. And also Con Edison, who is our our big provider here in New York City.
00;19;12;28 - 00;19;33;18
Christa Avampato
They're actually doing quite a bit in sustainability, not perfect. They have a long way to go, but they're getting there. New York State, specifically New York City, has more green jobs than anywhere else in the country, which is, I think, an incredible, just not everybody lives in New York. So as an individual who doesn't and even if you do live in New York, you should be doing these things too.
00;19;33;21 - 00;20;04;18
Christa Avampato
We think that writing, emailing and calling our politicians has no impact. I'm here to tell you it has a massive impact. And one thing that I learned at this training, it was very much about advocacy and communications at the Climate Reality Project is when you call or email your elected officials and you are fighting for climate change, fighting for climate policy, and you want better climate policy, you're writing to say you care about the environment, you care about this issue.
00;20;04;18 - 00;20;27;25
Christa Avampato
You care about electrification and not having fossil fuels in our buildings. It makes a huge difference because they think for every one person who calls or emails, there are many, many more people who feel that way and just aren't calling or emailing. Another thing I want to say about this is if you think that tweeting your anger is helping, it is not.
00;20;27;27 - 00;20;56;24
Christa Avampato
These social media platforms are part of the problem. I use social media all the time. We got connected because of social media. You and I. I think social media is a very, very powerful tool. When you look at the algorithms, they actually suppress sustainability information, which is really scary and unfortunate. And every time we call out lies that big Oil is putting out there into the world on social media, it actually bumps them up in the social media algorithm.
00;20;56;24 - 00;21;31;07
Christa Avampato
It's a real problem. Like nobody cares that you're tweeting, not them anymore. Not a single person cares anymore, right? Especially that platform which has been destroyed by the person who owns it. I'll just put that out there. Even though I love that platform and I have a lot to be grateful to Twitter for the new X platform, it is actually far less effective than Twitter originally was, so calling and emailing your elected officials and saying, this is what I care about, this is what I want you to be doing and going out and voting, participating and get out the vote
00;21;31;07 - 00;22;05;13
Christa Avampato
campaigns, supporting policymakers who support climate legislation and support helping the environment and supporting sustainability measures makes an enormous difference. We will never solve the climate crisis if we don't solve the democracy crisis, and if we don't solve the misinformation crisis, and if we don't solve the biodiversity crisis, all of those are intimately intertwined. Policy is tremendously important, and showing up at rallies is helpful.
00;22;05;15 - 00;22;11;07
Christa Avampato
Social media not so helpful. Calling and emailing policymakers tremendously helpful.
00;22;11;15 - 00;22;42;27
Christa Avampato
The other thing you can do is go into trainings like the Climate Reality Project, or even going on the Climate Reality Project website, things like that. Looking at what are the sustainability organizations operating in your town or in your city and joining them and joining their campaigns, going to their meetings, volunteering, asking what you can do. That's also another way to really be with the community and adding your voice to a growing tidal wave of voices is is really, really helpful.
00;22;42;27 - 00;23;00;28
Christa Avampato
But I get the frustration. It's really upsetting. And I do have to say, I'm a big fan of Michael Mann. He is a climate scientist. He is one of my heroes in the science world and the sustainability world. And he's at the university. Pennsylvania, which is one of my alma mater, is where I got my undergrad. Now.
00;23;01;00 - 00;23;28;23
Christa Avampato
And he always says, the thing that we don't get out there is that what we're doing actually is working. Are we going fast enough? Not at all. Are we doing enough? No. But what we are doing is working. We were on track for a four degrees Celsius increase by the end of the century. That's terrifying. We don't even know how our planetary systems would operate at a four degrees Celsius increase.
00;23;28;25 - 00;23;56;12
Christa Avampato
We're actually now down in the 1.5 to 2 range. That is still not great. We are still going to see massive, massive impacts. We're seeing them right now and they will compound until we start putting emissions up into the air, until we stop burning fossil fuels. And what we have done so far is working. And he's talked about this idea of going from dooming to doing.
00;23;56;14 - 00;24;24;06
Christa Avampato
So literally doing anything is helpful. And I don't care if that means recycling. Although we can talk about the myths of recycling, I don't care if that means like going out and voting every single time, like taking an action, planting a garden, taking care of the trees on your street, talking to people about sustainability, choosing food that is healthier and more plant based, and eating.
00;24;24;08 - 00;24;41;05
Christa Avampato
Eating less meat like that's that's one of the big things that we can do to like eating less meat and eating less dairy. I'm not saying you have to eliminate it from your diet. I don't eliminate it from my diet. I'm not a vegan, but I limit my meat consumption, my dairy consumption, quite a bit and it actually does help.
00;24;41;08 - 00;25;04;28
Christa Avampato
We think that those small actions that each of us take every day doesn't matter. It does. If you work for a company that doesn't have a sustainability policy fight for sustainability policy. Get on the sustainability committee. Find out who in the company is working on sustainability, and join forces with them to see how you can help them. If they don't have a sustainability policy, you could tell them to call me and I will help them.
00;25;05;00 - 00;25;26;05
Christa Avampato
Every company now has a stake in sustainability and in the health of this planet. Every person has it. We don't have any other home. We are not going to go colonize Mars. I don't care what anyone tells you, we are not going to do it. This is the only planet we have and we cannot burn down our own home and expect to be able to live in it.
00;25;26;06 - 00;25;43;03
Christa Avampato
It won't work that way. And so we have to take care of this home. It's the only one we have. And these species that existed long before we were here are counting on us. We are their only hope. And we have to take that guardianship very, very seriously.
00;25;43;05 - 00;25;47;23
Pam Uzzell
That's actually, makes me hopeful.
00;25;47;26 - 00;26;13;22
Christa Avampato
Yeah. It should. We should be hopeful. There's a lot to be hopeful for. We haven't destroyed the planet yet. We've destroyed parts of it. We're on our way. But there are things that we can do. I saw this amazing video of a wildlife photographer who he has a tiny, tiny little plot of land. And so he decided to make this tiny pond on his tiny plot of land so that he would encourage biodiversity.
00;26;13;29 - 00;26;36;03
Christa Avampato
And in a year, it was amazing. The dozens of species that he was able to help plants and animals, that he could help grow the biodiversity in his own tiny backyard. It's there are incredible things that we can do, you say, like, what do I have? We all have a voice, right? We all belong to a community. We all have the right to vote.
00;26;36;05 - 00;27;06;07
Christa Avampato
And so all this and we all have the right to decide what it is we we want to eat, or what kinds of foods we want to consume if we consume more plants, as opposed to dairy and meat. So there are like all kinds of things that we can do. Is there a way if you can't get fossil fuels shut off in your house, are there ways that you can use less of it in your house like that helps to you in this whole, you know, the marketing of big oil and fossil fuels is just it's rampant, like the fact that we call it natural gas.
00;27;06;07 - 00;27;40;11
Christa Avampato
I’m like lord, there is nothing natural about natural gas. Are you kidding me? And but they really do put these, these labels on things. Oh, like clean coal and like, there is no such thing as clean coal. It is all dirty. And there's also, I have to say, there's this real issue in the sustainability community that somehow we blame people who are miners or people who work for these companies as if it's their fault that fossil fuels are rampant in our society and causing so many issues.
00;27;40;13 - 00;28;06;00
Christa Avampato
It is not their fault. It is not the fault of people in West Virginia who work in coal country that we have coal. It is not the the problem of those people. They didn't do this. The big companies did this and use them as their instruments for it. We can reskill every single person who works in the fossil fuel company to be re-skilled to work in the clean energy economy.
00;28;06;02 - 00;28;46;29
Christa Avampato
Every single person, and they have a right to it, because their communities and their health have also been compromised by these big companies. And I think that message needs to get out there of we need to support them and mobilize them for their own well-being and their own health, and also for their economic health and for their ability to take care of their communities and that's a way that politicians and policymakers can really get on board to say the clean energy economy will bring many, many more jobs that are healthier and happier and cleaner than working for big oil.
00;28;47;01 - 00;29;22;12
Christa Avampato
And that's a lot of times we can even take the plants that are that are fossil fuel producing and turn them into green energy plants. And so there are so many things that we can do. Yes, we need policy and we need political will. And a lot of that has to start at the grassroots. And there are in West Virginia, in the Ohio River Valley, there are people who are fighting for a clean economy in those areas, and we can find them through the Climate Reality Project and other local organizations to really band with them to fight for change.
00;29;22;14 - 00;29;50;13
Pam Uzzell
So we can actually use some of the infrastructure. I wish I had more facts about these things. I'm just that are popping into my head. But there was another program here that had this idea that instead of trying to completely rebuild mass transit, we use this infrastructure, freeways that we already have take the Google bus concept of these wonderful luxury busses.
00;29;50;13 - 00;30;19;03
Pam Uzzell
And a plus, if they're also electric vehicles where people can be on Wi-Fi and make these available to everyone so that we're still using the freeways. But we are cutting way, way back on the people individually riding in cars. And it's a very interesting thing because in everybody's personal life, there's this feeling of a fear of change, of, oh, I'm going to have to do things differently.
00;30;19;03 - 00;30;44;04
Pam Uzzell
I would have to actually go to a bus stop and wait for one of these busses. And then, you know, I couldn't just zip somewhere like from Oakland here into San Francisco in my car. But I think you're right that were holding on to myths. I can't zip from Oakland to San Francisco in my car anyway. It is so congested.
00;30;44;07 - 00;31;23;19
Pam Uzzell
I am in traffic. There's no time of day, which is not a high traffic time in the Bay area anymore. And so I wonder, too, the storytelling, you said put the truth set with the lie with the truth. And I feel like in every way there's a truth that what we're doing is not sustainable and it's not even convenient, but that we are somehow locked into an idea from decades ago, perhaps that the storytelling around that could really change to have us look at.
00;31;23;22 - 00;31;34;16
Pam Uzzell
It's interesting, the name The Climate Reality Project, because it is climate reality. It's reality in so many ways that our current systems just are not working anymore.
00;31;34;18 - 00;32;05;08
Christa Avampato
Right, exactly, exactly. And it really is this idea of helping people see that a clean future does not mean sacrifice. So that's another thing that big oil has really planted. So they realized that they couldn't fight the science anymore. So now what they've decided to do and they're so they are such brilliant communicators and they are using their powers for the worst possible outcome.
00;32;05;10 - 00;32;30;11
Christa Avampato
And there's a lot that we can learn from them. It's almost like you beating them at their own game. Big oil got their playbook from tobacco. That's where they got it from, right? Tobacco. When the Surgeon General's warning came out originally on packs of cigarettes, I wasn't around at that time. That was a huge deal because people in the the fought, you know, 40s, 50s even before that.
00;32;30;14 - 00;32;55;16
Christa Avampato
I mean, smoking was oh, it's fine, it's fine to smoke. You're not going to get cancer. It's fine, it's fine. And they put all these lies out there, even though big tobacco knew exactly what they were doing. And then the law and policy held them to account. And smoking rates went way, way, way down. It's something like I forget if it's 11% or 17% of American smoke now, which is still too high.
00;32;55;16 - 00;33;14;23
Christa Avampato
I wish no one smoked and it's much lower than it ever used to be. And that was really about what it was about policy and politics. But a lot of it was about storytelling and not allowing Big Tobacco to get away with lying. And that's the same thing that's happening with Big Oil right now. They're out there lying all the time.
00;33;14;25 - 00;33;35;05
Christa Avampato
And so they knew they couldn't attack the science anymore because the science became so clear that, yes, climate change is happening. Yes, humans are driving it. Yes, the climate always changes, but it's the rate of change that is the problem. And so nature is not able to adapt at the speed at which we are changing climate as humans.
00;33;35;12 - 00;33;58;09
Christa Avampato
That's the big problem. It's the rate of change that's the problem. So then they couldn't attack the science anymore. So now what they've decided to do is go after individuals and say, well, if you have a clean energy future and you move to wind and solar and any other types of clean energy, and you don't stay addicted to fossil fuels, the quality of your life is going to be less.
00;33;58;14 - 00;34;25;12
Christa Avampato
It's going to be more expensive. It's going to be inconvenient. It's going to be less happy. You don't want that kind of life. And they've said it so many times that people think it's the truth with absolute no proof point under it at all, but they just say it. And if you say something enough times or something around, the psychology of it is if you say something around 7 or 8 times, people just think it's the truth.
00;34;25;15 - 00;34;49;22
Christa Avampato
So big oil's just out there saying it over and over and over again. One message to every single person. Your life will be less than you want it to be. If you move away from fossil fuels. That's all they're doing. And now that's their whole messaging. That's what all of them are doing. And so I agree with you to say like, oh, it's going to be less convenient.
00;34;49;22 - 00;35;11;20
Christa Avampato
And you're like, well, it's not convenient now. So what are you even talking about? But because they don't emphasize that part, they sidetrack us really quick. And look, we're all busy. We're all strapped for time. And so when they have a singular, clear, simple message that might be all that people have the bandwidth for, and they do that.
00;35;11;22 - 00;35;47;09
Christa Avampato
So they are literally encouraging people to act and vote and behave in a way that is counter to their own well-being and not in their own best interest. It's really it's it's really incredible, like the mind games that they have played it and continue to play with the public. It's criminal. And I use that word criminal very deliberately because now the lawsuits are coming and I'm very happy to see the law intervening and in really serious ways because that's what we need.
00;35;47;11 - 00;36;15;02
Pam Uzzell
Yeah. You know, just as you were talking, I was thinking about this parallel or how to create this parallel between big tobacco and, fossil fuels companies and, you know, Big Tobacco was banned from advertising on television, for example. So a huge part of their market was immediately not seeing ads. But yep, media has changed so drastically since then.
00;36;15;02 - 00;36;22;11
Pam Uzzell
We're not all, in fact, very few of us comparatively, watch, you know, broadcast television.
00;36;22;11 - 00;36;39;08
Pam Uzzell
And I do wonder now about strategies of where to reach people, where they are, who are seeing these messages. I mean, first of all, fossil fuels can advertise on television, which that could stop, which means that that would be a beginning.
00;36;39;15 - 00;36;45;09
Pam Uzzell
But then also, how do you reach these other places where people are getting their their media?
00;36;45;25 - 00;37;10;07
Christa Avampato
Companies cannot put this information out there and not be held accountable for it. And because in the United States we do not have any policy recourse that holds brands to account. In Europe they actually do in other parts of the world. If a brand says they are going to do something related to sustainability, they have to do it.
00;37;10;09 - 00;37;37;28
Christa Avampato
They cannot just put it out there and just have it be greenwashing. It's not allowed. It could it be stronger? Could the policy be stronger in Europe? Absolutely, of course. But we have nothing like all of our sustainability reporting, which you might hear referred to as ESG reporting. It's all voluntary. Nobody has to do it. They do it because consumers care and because a lot of consumers care, because a lot of policymakers care, because a lot of politicians care.
00;37;38;05 - 00;38;04;05
Christa Avampato
But a lot of the information that's put out there is really just window dressing. They're not actually doing anything. The only people in a capitalistic society, capitalistic economy that are going to hold big companies accountable are customers because customers start to affect shareholders, and shareholders really have a big say in a company. So if you're a shareholder, make some noise 100%.
00;38;04;05 - 00;38;24;05
Christa Avampato
Make some noise about these issues. And if you're a customer, make some noise and make some noise individually, but also find a way to make some noise collectively, and to put these stories out there and encourage other people to do these things. I'm going to start as a way of holding myself accountable after the Climate Reality Project training.
00;38;24;07 - 00;38;43;14
Christa Avampato
I'm a big spreadsheet fan. I have a spreadsheet for everything. I love spreadsheets, I think they're amazing. So I'm keeping track every day of like, the different climate actions that I take, even if they're really small, like us having this conversation today is going to be my climate action for today, right? But every week I've decided what I'm going to do is I'm going to just bundle up.
00;38;43;14 - 00;38;59;18
Christa Avampato
This is everything I did this week. I just put it out there into the world, on my medium page, on my website, so that it's out there and so that other people see like, oh, I can take this action and I'm going to make it really easy for people. I'm going to give them links to click on. I'll do all the research.
00;38;59;18 - 00;39;13;05
Christa Avampato
And this is a way of really adding our voice to say, this is what I'm doing, this is how you can join me. And every week I will put out this. Here's my list of climate actions this week. I really hope you'll join me.
00;39;13;05 - 00;39;31;14
Christa Avampato
And so that way people don't. They don't have to do the work. I'll do all the work for them. And this will be a part of my advocacy and a part of community and a part of organizing and helping people, like you said, have hope that there is something that we can do. I think hope is a renewable resource.
00;39;31;14 - 00;39;41;28
Christa Avampato
I think it's a really valuable resource, and it can change hearts and minds. And then once someone's heart or mind is changed, then their actions will change too.
00;39;42;01 - 00;40;14;13
Pam Uzzell
Amazing, amazing. I feel so much more hopeful just hearing your suggestions, but also also just knowing that you're in the world doing this and that. You know so many other people in the world doing this that makes me feel really amazing and I am so grateful for you being on the show and talking about this. For people who want to see your website and the work you're doing, can you let them know?
00;40;14;15 - 00;40;17;25
Christa Avampato
Yeah, absolutely. If they just go to christaavampato.com.
00;40;17;25 - 00;40;33;15
Christa Avampato
I made it real easy for people like, my name is out there, you literally put my name.com and I'll come up. You could also just Google my name and everything's going to come up. But the website is where my personal website, christaavampato.com is, where you'll see all my social media links.
00;40;33;15 - 00;40;59;27
Christa Avampato
You'll see everything I do. My blog is on there. My medium site is also on there. If you just went into medium and plugged in my name, it would come up to Medium.com, which is a really great site. Anybody can create a medium.com account and write articles that are important to them, and I've actually found that that's been a great way to get the word out there about things that I care about, things that I'm interested in.
00;41;00;02 - 00;41;18;14
Christa Avampato
It's also a place where my writing can live. And I mean, my website gets a good amount of traffic, which I'm very grateful for. That's been over a decade in the better than like 15 years in the making. So I've been on that my website for a long time. Medium has also helped because it's, they boost a lot of posts.
00;41;18;14 - 00;41;38;05
Christa Avampato
Of course, they have a huge reach because they're a huge platform. And I've found that that's actually a really great way to communicate and to, you know, find different stories about what people are doing. And it's much more of a, I would say, a grassroots space. And they actually have a really strong ethical policy about what can be put out there and what can't.
00;41;38;07 - 00;41;52;17
Christa Avampato
And so I encourage people to set up medium accounts and write about things that are important to them. You don't have to be a professional writer to be on there. Most people are not, and it's a great place to get information and to find community. But I would say that my website, christaavampato.com, is the best place to go.
00;41;52;20 - 00;41;57;05
Christa Avampato
And then if there's things in there that are interesting to you, you can find all of them on there.
00;41;57;07 - 00;42;24;18
Pam Uzzell
I do have a medium account, so I am going to look for your work, and you and I met on LinkedIn. And if you if anyone is on LinkedIn, I really encourage them to follow you because you're putting out such interesting ideas. And I always see these ideas. I mean, I know we were going to talk about rewilding which I think with your schedule and needing to go, we maybe are not going to get to.
00;42;24;20 - 00;42;32;05
Pam Uzzell
But yeah, maybe you'll just have to be on again and we'll pinpoint specifically rewilding because I love that concept.
00;42;32;08 - 00;43;05;13
Christa Avampato
I love the concept too. And it's basically about restoring and regenerating what's been lost. And it's we want to preserve what we have and then we want to regenerate and rewild and work with nature as an ally to recover what's been lost. Right. Like, I went through, a cancer diagnosis during the pandemic. And for me, having my health be so compromised in such a frightening, life threatening way, and then having bounced back and completely healed, I'm cancer free.
00;43;05;19 - 00;43;27;03
Christa Avampato
I still take a lot of medication and but to have my health completely restored, where if somebody looked at all of my blood tests, all of my scans, everything, now, no one would have any idea that I went through cancer and I had a very serious case. If my body can heal that way, nature can heal that way too.
00;43;27;05 - 00;43;59;10
Christa Avampato
Healing is not linear, right? There will always be dips in our lives and of the lives of the planet and different ecosystems where something happens, there's a storm that happens, there's a disaster that happens. There's some type of destruction that happens. It can be rebuilt, it can be changed. And no, it won't be the same. My body will never be the same post cancer, but it's pretty damn great that I get to walk around in the world and live and love and find joy and find hope and and help other people find those things.
00;43;59;12 - 00;44;30;27
Christa Avampato
And so by healing myself, along with the help of my doctors and modern medicine, it also really taught me how nature can heal too. And there are real thoughts there from my medical team that, at least in part, my cancer was driven by environmental factors. The beautiful land that I grew up on in the Hudson Valley. GE dumped millions of pounds of PCBs, which are toxic chemicals, into the Hudson River, and we had, well, water.
00;44;30;29 - 00;44;59;18
Christa Avampato
And at that time we were surrounded by great big farms that used Monsanto fertilizer for the apples that seeped into the water table that also affected our water. And so you'll find a lot of people in the Hudson Valley who are my age or older, who grew up in that area, developed really strange cancers, really weird cases. And so there are it's slowly happening, but eventually I imagined that there will be a class action lawsuit.
00;44;59;18 - 00;45;14;12
Christa Avampato
Now, GE had to pay a lot of money to clean up those PCBs. A lot of it is still in the riverbed of the Hudson River, which is what runs all along New York City and all the way up to Capital District, into Albany and into the Adirondacks. Monsanto has not been held to account, but eventually they will be.
00;45;14;12 - 00;45;38;24
Christa Avampato
I have, I have faith, and one of my big actions is looking at climate change and cancer and looking at those rates. There is an alarming rate of young people getting cancer right now. There's some type of climate tie. And so that idea of of restoration and regeneration and even though health has been degraded, health can be regained.
00;45;38;27 - 00;46;01;21
Christa Avampato
And so I'm hoping to have a lot more news to share in. The rewilding space is something I'm really excited about. Post my master's from Cambridge, which will be happening soon, and so I'm hoping in the fall I'll actually have a lot more to talk about, with with rewilding. So I've got a couple, I've got a couple projects in the hopper, so I'm excited to talk about them when when they have a little bit more progress behind them.
00;46;01;23 - 00;46;30;17
Christa Avampato
And if people are interested in rewilding, there is a place in the UK called the Knepp Estate. K-N-E-P-P, it's owned by a couple. One of them is Isabella Tree, which I think is such a lovely last name. They have a movie coming out in June, but if you just look up Isabella Tree or Knepp Estate, you will see what she and her husband Charlie have done to Charlie's family farm, that they have turned it into a rewilding paradise essentially.
00;46;30;24 - 00;46;51;25
Christa Avampato
And she wrote a 500 page book that's essentially a cookbook about how to do rewilding, which is really incredible, and I'm really inspired by them. So Isabella Tree, the Knepp estate for people who want to get into rewilding and then there's all kinds of rewilding podcasts and things like that. So yes, I would love to come back and do like just an episode about rewilding.
00;46;51;27 - 00;46;56;25
Christa Avampato
Pam, you let me know whenever you want to do that and I will come running back here.
00;46;56;27 - 00;47;03;15
Pam Uzzell
That would be awesome. And I just want to say, I'm so glad you're cancer free and that you're walking around the world.
00;47;03;15 - 00;47;22;21
Christa Avampato
I'm happy I'm walking around the world too. I'm happy to be here at this time of with all of you. We are living in an amazing time where we may be the last generation that determines the fate of humanity and the fate of the planet, and actually able to do something about it. And I take that very seriously, and it's an incredible time to be alive.
00;47;22;21 - 00;47;35;02
Christa Avampato
It's a scary time to be alive, but it's also imbued with a lot of opportunity and a lot of responsibility. And I'm glad it's people like us who are here in this time because we're needed.
00;47;35;05 - 00;47;48;16
Pam Uzzell
Well, thank you so, so much, Christa. This has been such a pleasure. Which I don't always say about talking about climate change and the environment, but it's been such a pleasure to talk with you.
00;47;48;19 - 00;48;03;17
Christa Avampato
Yes. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you, too. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm so grateful. And I want people to be hopeful, and I want to help people hold on to that hope and cultivate that hope and spread it around because we need it.
00;48;03;20 - 00;48;10;17
Pam Uzzell
And you're listening to Art Heals All Wounds.
00;48;10;20 - 00;48;14;11
Music
00;48;14;13 - 00;48;18;03
Music
00;48;18;05 - 00;48;28;11
Pam Uzzell
00;48;28;14 - 00;48;54;01
Pam Uzzell
Thank you, Christa Avampato, for helping me to see this moment in a hopeful light. What do each of us have? At the very least, we have a voice. I'll leave Christy's info in the show notes so that you can see some ways that you can use your voice. And here's an update on Berkeley becoming an all electric city.
00;48;54;03 - 00;49;28;29
Pam Uzzell
The law, passed by the City Council, was challenged by the California Restaurant Society and ultimately struck down by a court of appeals. But I've read that many businesses in Berkeley, including restaurants, are still exploring how to create a cleaner energy city by converting from natural gas to electricity. It makes me realize that even though the building code was struck down, the idea stuck and helped the city reimagine a different way to do things.
00;49;29;01 - 00;50;02;22
Pam Uzzell
And that makes me want to go out to eat in Berkeley tonight. If you have a story to share about the role that art and creativity play in your life, I'd love to share it on the show. Just go to my website and click on the widget that says leave a voicemail for Pam. If you feel like you can and would like to contribute to this show, you can do that at my website, too. Just go to the link at the top of the homepage that says buy me a coffee and leave me a small donation to help pay for the expense of making this show.
00;50;02;24 - 00;50;19;21
Pam Uzzell
Thanks for listening. The music you've heard in this podcast is by Ketsa and Lobo Loco. This podcast was edited by Iva Hristova.