Oliver Jeffers — The Green Dream

S1E1:
Transcript
Here We Are with
Oliver Jeffers

Dana Thomas: Okay, you ready? You want to give me a cue or something?

Alfie: Dana, you're recording.

Dana Thomas: This is Dana Thomas, and you're listening to The Green Dream, a podcast about how to green up your life, by Wondercast Studio.

Climate change is bearing down on us like a mighty hurricane. And it's scary as hell, but it doesn't have to be. I'm Dana Thomas, a leading voice in the sustainable fashion movement. On The Green Dream, I welcome global experts, creators and change makers from politics, business, and the arts for dynamic conversations on how you can green up your life. The Green Dream is the podcast of hope.

This episode is sponsored by Another Tomorrow, a women's fashion brand that redefines luxury with a commitment to ethics, sustainability, and transparency from farm to fabric to atelier. Find Another Tomorrow on its website, anothertomorrow.co, at its flagship boutique, 384 Bleecker Street in New York City, and at select stores.

The wonderful Oliver Jeffers kicks off our first episode. Jeffers is a children’s author and illustrator, and I know you’ll enjoy hearing his thoughts as much as I did. But before we get to my conversation with him, I wanted to first share a little about myself so that you could understand a bit more about who I am and why I decided to create a new podcast, The Green Dream.

Quite simply — because we need to know more about climate change. As a journalist, I’ve been reporting and writing about climate for several years–for the New York Times, for British Vogue, where I am European Sustainability Editor, and in my book Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes, which looks at how fashion impacts the planet and humanity. Doing this work, I have learned about how climate change has touched every aspect of our lives. At times, it feels scary–some things we read or hear make it sound like a climate apocalypse is upon us and there is nothing we can do. The reality is that is not true at all! There are all sorts of things we can do as individuals, and I thought I would share this message of hope and offer tips on how you can green up your life.

So, I’ll get to all that, but first let me tell you a bit about who I am, and how I arrived here, today, with you.

I began my career at the Washington post in the Style section at the time under the legendary editor, Ben Bradlee. And I really learned to be not just a reporter, but a writer, and that every word mattered, and that we could really touch people with our words. So I've been a journalist ever since, now 34 years. I'm a Washingtonian who moved to Paris for love. I married a Frenchman 30 years ago this year — on the same day as it happens that the Obamas got married. So every time they celebrate a big anniversary, I'm celebrating a big anniversary. I'm hoping for the 50th, they'll send us a note saying "Congratulations," because I'm going to send them one.

I've always seen myself as a general assignment feature writer. That requires good reporting, as all good journalism does. But I got pulled into fashion when the fashion editor of the Washington Post heard about my prior life as a fashion model in Paris and Milan, when I was a teenager. I worked as a fashion model during my teen years to earn money to pay for college. And at 21, I quit, with a passion – with a hunger – to become a journalist, and I enrolled in American University in Washington, studying journalism with this aim to get a job at the Washington Post, which I did while I was still in college. I landed my first job in the newsroom when I was still a senior at American University. It was the most entry-level job you could have. I was a copy aide, sorting mail, answering phones, taking phone messages, because this was before voicemail, and pushing a cart around delivering FedEx packages and newspapers to all the different editors. There's a great scene in the movie of The Post where you see a kid pushing around a cart, delivering things to the editors. That was me.

And fashion editor Nina Hyde needed a new assistant for the summer and she heard that there was a girl up on the National desk who had been a model in Paris and Milan and spoke French. And she said, “Get me that girl.” And so there I was thinking that modeling had been this thing that I did in order to get to where I wanted to be, which was a journalist at the Washington Post, and that I'd put it in a box on a shelf, and it would just stay up there, done, like that part of my life was finished.

And then I pulled it back down when I sat down next to Nina at her desk. It suddenly occurred to me that these two could actually work together, that journalism and modeling somehow could inform each other, that that information and that experience that I had in Paris and Milan was actually useful in journalism.

I went to an event that evening with her, I helped her cover it – where Calvin Klein was being honored. And it was the first time he had done anything publicly since he had gotten out of rehab. And I watched Nina move her table assignment, so she was next to him with her notebook the entire dinner. He was trapped. And I watched her work the room and get quotes from everybody, and I said, “She's a real reporter, it just happens to be about fashion. I can do that. I know how to do that!” I was taking classes on missiles and warheads, because it was still the Cold War. And I said, “I don't need to learn all that. I already know about fashion. This is easy!” And so that was my path.

I still wrote about arts and culture. And when I moved to Paris, I was always writing features about the French, about arts and culture. But my bureau chief at Newsweek magazine put me on the beat of fashion because he knew I had this experience. And because fashion was in this transition from small family companies to major global corporations in the 1990s, I tracked that transition and became not just somebody writing about hemlines and heel heights, but about the business of fashion and the politics of fashion and the impact of fashion on all of our lives, on the planet and humanity. And so there we are! Here we are!

The Green Dream is not a fashion podcast because I am not a fashion writer. I like to say that I am a general assignment feature writer, but I am also a social anthropologist.

One of the ways that we study humanity is by how we dress and how we present ourselves to each other. But no, this is not a fashion podcast. It's about humanity and the planet. It's about you and me, it's about the future, and it’s about hope.

Climate change is incredibly terrifying, but then isn't everything? Life is terrifying, I mean, how do you get through the heavy stuff of life? Bit by bit, step by step, little by little. By doing this thing and then that thing, and then suddenly it's all come together. I feel like that's how we have to tackle climate change. You know, we can't stop climate by saying we are going to pass some global law that makes everybody stop doing something.

But it’s by each of us doing our own little thing and through community effort, and all of our individual efforts kind of sewed together like a patchwork quilt. And so that's what I hope to do with this podcast, is to help you understand that you do have power and that you can change the world, you can make it a better place. Just having a think, even, about making a better or a more conscious decision about how we can go about our daily lives that is greener. Green up our lives.

We're going to meet really interesting, engaging, hilarious people from all walks of life. Some of them will be from the fashion industry like the fashion designer Katharine Hamnett, who was a climate warrior before we knew there was such a thing, trying to turn her company into a sustainable company back in 1989 – you know, 30 years she's been at this.

And then we're going to talk to Hannah Elliott, who is the automobile beat writer at Bloomberg BusinessWeek, because we keep seeing more and more about electric cars, but like what's the deal with electric cars, and are we all going to have them? And is this the solution? And is it more than a Prius? And why are they also ugly?

And we're going to have Oliver Jeffers, the children's book author, who tackles really scary issues like climate change, but through very charming, beautiful drawings and simple words that can charm a four-year-old and the reader to the four-year-old. And Eva Orner, the director of Burning, a documentary about the Australian fires that are known as the Black Summer two years ago and destroyed millions and millions of acres of land and killed hundreds of thousands of animals and caused birth effects and health problems. Most ecologists and environmentalists and activists in Australia said it could have been avoided, had the government not pursued shortsighted policy, such as promoting coal mining and not worrying about the environment and the drought that was coming.

So there's going to be some serious topics. There'll be light topics. You'll come away from this feeling empowered. That's my goal. I want you all to know that we have the power to make the world a better place if we put our minds to it. And that's why I call this the Podcast of Hope.

This episode is sponsored by Another Tomorrow, a women’s fashion brand that redefines luxury with a commitment to ethics, sustainability, and transparency, from farm to fabric to atelier. Find Another Tomorrow on its website, AnotherTomorrow.co, at its flagship boutique, 384 Bleecker Street in New York City, and at select stores.

My guest today on The Green Dream is Oliver Jeffers. He's a Northern Irish artist and an award-winning author of children's books, including Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth, which is a number one New York Times bestseller published by HarperCollins. There’s also a short film based on the book from Apple TV +, which is narrated by the one and only Meryl Streep. The Chicago Tribune described Here We Are as "a user's guide to being alive and to live on earth." And the New York Times deemed Jeffers "the master of capturing the joy in our differences."

I met Jeffers at the TED Countdown climate conference in Edinburgh last fall, where I joined several other attendees in painting a mural that Jeffers had designed. Then, last fall, I ran into him in the Bloomberg Green Pavilion at COP 26, the world climate summit in Glasgow. Jeffers was there to mount two monumental art installations about planet Earth. That's not the coolest news about him. In January, Jeffers was named an MBE (or Member of the Order of the British Empire) on the Queen's New Year's honors list for his service to the arts.

When I interviewed Jeffers from a recording studio in the heart of Soho, London, he was in his home in Belfast. Jeffers, his wife, and their two young children normally live in Brooklyn, but they’ve been in Belfast since the outbreak of the pandemic.

Oliver Jeffers, welcome to The Green Dream.

Oliver Jeffers: Thank you very much.

Dana Thomas: Congratulations on your MBE. Did you know it was coming?

Oliver Jeffers: No, I did not. Um, I got a phone call. Uh, they had sent a letter, but to the wrong address. And so I got a voice message from the Treasury Department. So I immediately thought that something was wrong, like I'd filed my taxes incorrectly. So that was a pleasant surprise, firstly, that it wasn't that, but, um, the notion of it again was shocking and very flattering.

So much of the art that I do is just kind of, sort of quietly plodding along, doing its own thing. And I think, you know, trying to encourage people to, to be better, to do better and, and there's no real metric for success or measurement for that. So this is an accolade recognizing the efforts. It certainly was energizing, and I was extremely grateful for it.

Dana Thomas: And also when we're artists or creators working at home in a home studio, we do get a bit of bunker fever, where we just sort of feel like we're doing our own thing at our own pace. And we forget that we're actually touching a lot of people, don't we?

Oliver Jeffers: Yeah, completely. It's quite unnerving. And I mean, I don't know if you've had to do any Zoom talks or anything like that, where you're talking to a large group of people, and it's just, it's very unnerving because you're just kind of aware that you're completely alone in a room talking to a machine. And normally if you're giving a talk, there's some sort of chemistry or, or energy in the audience that you can feed off of, but it's a strange time to make art, but I think it's sort of forcing people to do what it is that they actually want to do in some ways.

Dana Thomas: Tell us, how did you get into writing and illustrating children's books?

Oliver Jeffers: Well, so I actually got into that by accident. I've always thought of myself as an artist first and foremost, and all of the early art that I was making was using, I think, words and pictures together to try and tell a story, weave a narrative, an arc, create momentum. And it was only at a, when I was in my last year at art college, that one particular concept I thought would be better served in the form of a book rather than a series of individual canvases.

And once I started doing that, I remembered all of these picture books that I had enjoyed as a kid and started bringing some of that structure into it, and recognized that it was actually a really beautiful platform for storytelling and one that I was quite well-suited to. So I made my first book as an experiment in college and then thought that after graduating, I would get it published. And really it went from there when the publisher asked me if, if I had more books in me, I mean, I lied through my teeth and said, absolutely I did. But once I really started applying myself, it turns out that this was quite a natural, a natural way for me to see the world and tell stories and make art.

Dana Thomas: And yet you still work in fine art, too, don't you? You have gallery exhibitions, and you have some upcoming ones, one's called Our Place in Space in Northern Ireland and in Cambridge, April through September. Tell us about that.

Oliver Jeffers: Well, one of the biggest differences between fine art and picture books is that with picture books, it's much more of a formula process where there's a beginning, a middle and an end, and everything sort of has to be neatly wrapped up in a bow in some ways. Whereas in fine art, that's not the case. You can get away with asking questions that don't necessarily have answers or sort of suggest things without having to answer them or have some kind of resolution.

But whenever I first started making books, I just thought, well, I'm going to keep making fine art, because that was a splinter away from that, a tangent out of that. And I have been doing both ever since thinking that well, I'll just keep doing that until somebody sort of says that you can't do that anymore. And nobody ever did, so I've always been making both, but more recently, I think the worlds have been getting closer and closer together.

And, case in point, I have a show coming up in Boston that's a show of paintings, which is, you know, much more sort of nebulous and conceptual and open-ended and suggestive. And it's called The Night in Bloom. And it's all of these sort of fabulous, very colorful, flamboyant paintings of the night sky, with exaggerated stars, you know, to make it look like it's a floral garden, but always with some kind of anchor to back on Earth, as a reminder of just the perspective of our place here in this cosmos. And that's the perspective with which we look through everything.

And the Our Place in Space exhibition is very different-looking, but not dissimilar in terms of the concept of it. And actually it's closer to the way in which I would make books. And that is, it's a very large 10-mile-long walking trail sculpture project of the solar system, but that is using the solar system as a way to look at the scale of humanity. And just the perspective of looking back on Earth from massive distances to sort of just see what it is that we prioritize and what it is that actually absorbs our time and energy.

Dana Thomas: Fabulous. Now, you were born in Australia in 1977, but you grew up a Catholic in Belfast during the Northern Ireland conflict known as the Troubles. How did that conflict impact your family and your childhood?

Oliver Jeffers: Well, you know, I think actually the way in which it's impacted, it was very hard to tell because I, I would've said that I was apolitical growing up, just because I could see the damage that it was doing. And I just, I wanted to turn away from it, which is why as an artist, I had always chose to not paint murals on walls, because that was a political manifestation, the visual manifestation of politics here. And it was something I wanted to stay away from.

But whenever I was in New York and trying to explain to people, to Americans, even to British expats, the difference between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, that they were two actual different countries and some of the history and the current conflict, it really struck me just how little anybody knew or really actually once you were outside of the six counties that is this statelet, how little anyone cared. And it suddenly just all seemed like this tragic waste of energy that, there we are fighting it out to be, you know, one half to be part of one country, one half to be part of another. And the reality is that nobody cared.

And then whenever I started doing some research and was talking about the Apollo 8 mission around the moon for a sculpture that I had done, I became aware of the overview effect, and I recognized that the language that these astronauts were using to look back on Earth and explaining the petty, parochial problems was exactly the same way in which I was looking at and using to explain Northern Irish politics from a distance.

And I'm trying to now bring that back and using Northern Ireland is almost an example for everybody else, which is, you know, looking at just what this revenge, almost identity politics does when you look from far enough away. And just trying to bring some of that perspective in. But I think growing up, one of the things that's always been prevalent in my work is this sense of duality, the ability to simultaneously see two opposing opinions and points of view.

Dana Thomas: Absolutely. And for me, it almost sounds like the Troubles are kind of a parable for the problems we have now with climate change.

Oliver Jeffers: Completely, yeah! And I actually think that Northern Ireland's a very interesting place to look at at the minute, because what we see with, even with American politics where it's, you know, them versus us, the Democrats versus Republicans, it's almost become, I don't know who I am, but I know who I am not. So therefore if they think it's right, I think it's wrong. And that kind of vicious, self-protective existence of an enemy — all you need to do is look no further than Northern Ireland to see where that goes, where that tit-for-tat revenge kind of, they must be shut out, I must win at all costs, I'd rather be right than be better mentality goes. And it doesn't go very far. That's the sad thing.

But you can start to see these battle lines being drawn again. Yes, in the climate movement where it is, people would rather be right and get their point across than be better, even if better means their own identity, not being lauded or celebrated. And I think that it is a kind of a vicious circle that can ultimately become a big obstacle.

Dana Thomas: Now, you were 21 when the Good Friday Agreement was reached, how did you feel about that at the time?

Oliver Jeffers: I remember talking to people, because I went to one of the very, very few integrated schools, secondary schools, higher education. And what that means is that both Catholics and Protestants go to the same school. And when I was in New York, I had an intern who was a young African American woman from Atlanta. And when I got the letter in saying that you're a patron of the integrated education in Northern Ireland, and she was like, oh, what does that mean? And you know, I was like, yes, that just means that two groups of white Christians basically go to school together.

And it was really embarrassing, this was like, that's how kind of far behind things are here in so many ways, that the integrated schools should not be referred to as integrated schools, but rather schools and all non-integrated schools should be referred to as segregated schools.

So I was slightly, I suppose, ahead, what was, I was in fifth year when the Good Friday Agreement came in? And so this idea of cross-community conversation and dialogue was not entirely new to me, but I think there was a lot of people felt quite obviously celebratory about it, because this sort of absolutely impossible thing that could never happen had happened just through the sheer, humble determination of people like John Hume and George Mitchell from the US and, and Bill Clinton, you know, shepherding things along. And there was a real sense of celebration.

But I also remember people sort of being a bit also personally confused and struggling with this vacuum. It was like, well, you know, well what do I do now? People didn't know what quite to do with it, but it did feel like things were possible. And it's been eggshells really ever since then, that there were policies put in place there that really should have been temporary, but that was baked into the agreement that we're still dealing with now, you know, like the power-sharing where both sides just sort of cancel each other out in some ways because they can.

But it felt like this resolution that was impossible but suddenly it became possible. So mixed feelings about it across the board. I personally thought it was such a triumph. And I've been, you know, working with the positivity of that since.

Dana Thomas: My guest today is Oliver Jeffers, the Northern Irish artist and children’s book author, best known for Hear We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth, published by HarperCollins. The film version of Here We Are is available on Apple TV +.

On Earth Day 2020, Oliver Jeffers gave a TED Talk called “An Ode to Living on Earth.” And I want to share a clip from that popular TED Talk, which has some of his illustrations in the background. We'll link to the talk in the show notes, so you can check it out for yourself. When you watch the video, you’ll not only hear his wise and funny thoughts about Planet Earth, but also see the lovely cheerful pings and zings he drew to accompany them. In the meantime, listeners, you'll just have to dream up your own animations!

Oliver Jeffers: [applause] Hello. I’m sure by the time I get to the end of this sentence, given how I talk, you all have figured out that I’m from a place called Planet Earth. Earth is pretty great. It’s home to us. And germs. Those [bleeped] can take a backseat for the time being, because believe it or not, they're not the only thing going on. This planet is also home to cars. Brussel sprouts. Those weird fish things that have their own headlights. Art, fire, fire extinguishers. laws, pigeons, bottles of beer, lemons and lightbulbs, Pinot Noir and paracetamol, ghosts, mosquitoes, flamingos, flowers, the ukulele, elevators and cats, cat videos, the internet, iron beams, buildings and batteries, all ingenuity and bright ideas, all know life, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Pretty much everything we know and ever heard of. It's my favorite place, actually.

Dana Thomas: Did you always know you wanted to be an artist? Were you somebody who was drawing since forever?

Oliver Jeffers: Yeah, I was, I was. The irony is like, in those early days I was drawing sometimes because people were like, oh, that's really good. And you know, for the very short lived bursts of validation and approval and praise. But then I also realized early in primary school that I could use it as a way to get out of doing other classwork by, you know, going to help decorate the set in the school play. So I leaned into it somewhat.

Dana Thomas: Your mother was unwell for much of your childhood with multiple sclerosis, correct?

Oliver Jeffers: That's true.

Dana Thomas: And you said it kept the house full of four, what could have been very rowdy boys, a little less rowdy. How did that happen?

Oliver Jeffers: I think it was, you know, because we were all concerned for her wellbeing. We all had to help look after her. So there was a sense of baked-in responsibility there with us, that we just wanted to be sort of closer to home in case anything happened. And her and my dad both, you know, they were quite forward-thinking and, and they encouraged us to travel, to think outside the box to be curious.

And so home was a very safe and curious environment, which we're all very, very grateful for. And it was, you know, very emotionally rewarding in so many ways. Um, but we always had a sense of mortality because of mom's illness. But I think, you know, the particularly rowdy was just like, we wouldn't want to do that to her. We wouldn't want to just go be absentee and go out and cause trouble or do anything like that, because it just would've been unfair. It would've been too much for them to bear.

Dana Thomas: And you lost her when you were still quite young.

Oliver Jeffers: Mm-hmm.

Dana Thomas: How did that inform your work?

Oliver Jeffers: You know, I think it informed my work in massive ways, because, right after I finished Hazelwood college, which was the integrated college, I went to the University of Ulster — that's actually Ulster University they've called it now, and I studied visual communication thinking that I would stand a much better chance of getting a job than if I did a fine art degree. But then I took a year off in between my third year and my final year and traveled around and ended up in Australia. And I actually only really went back because my mother was getting quite ill, and we were sort of advised to be close that year. So I thought, well, I'll go back and I'll finish my degree. And then she died halfway through that last year.

I was 21 whenever she passed and I was in my final year at art college. And I think I was at that perfect age, where I got the importance of, you know, the fragility of life and the, I think the, the false economy we place in peer approval, which was especially notable in the final year of our college, where you just want everybody to think you're okay, mixed with being young enough to do something about that and realizing that life is so fragile and so short. And if you don't act the way you want to be, if you don't do what you want to do, nobody's going do it for you. And what really matters more — the work that you want do, the person you want to be or the approval of some person that you don't even really know very well?

And so that, my friend once said that I was handed a, a superpower, almost, like a magic step ladder, that I could just look above the periphery and the noise of it all and, and see things for what they really were. And I think that I've applied that to my work ever since.

And it was, I think, the mixture of that year, that gap year where I got to go and apply some of the education I'd received in the processes that I believed worked into the real world and kind of learned a very important lesson there when coupled with my mother's early demise, that in the real world, nobody is going to hold your hand and tell you what to do. And so you only get out what you put in.

So that all kind of really came to fruition in that last six months of my last year, where I was able to apply myself, I think, in a kind of a very urgent and energetic way that has set me up for the workflow for the rest of my career since.

Dana Thomas: Writing Here We Are was a departure of sorts for you, wasn't it, tackling serious topics such as the environment and climate in a children’s book. How did that come about?

Oliver Jeffers: Well, I suppose it's a departure in that it's the first ever book I'd made that was nonfiction. Every other picture book I had made up to that point was completely made up for the pure purposes of just entertaining, or so I thought. Occasionally, they would hit on interesting or meaningful morals or values.

But with Here We Are, I had a son, and it just struck me as how odd it is that two of us went to the hospital, and three of us came out, and they just let you leave without passing a test or anything like that. And when we got home, we had this person that we were responsible for. And I suppose I started doing what I would do with any new person who came to our apartment, any guest. And I was giving him the tour. And there was something really hilarious about that to me, me walking around explaining things to a small child who clearly didn't understand a word I was saying. But there was something about it that it was like, wait a minute, you know, a lot of these things that I'm saying are surprisingly relative, I mean, you break things down to be as simple as absolutely possible.

And then I decided, I was writing him a letter about these observations. And at that point it was 2015, so Brexit had just happened and, and the Trump campaign was in full swings. And just really this, this kind of vitriolic anger was right on the surface. And it felt like the world was becoming a dark and scary place. And I wondered if other people might benefit from some of these realizations that I was having myself. And so I did turn it into a book and I decided to try and make the book so simple that it was impossible to argue with no matter your politics or anything.

And that seems to have been the case, because I think that ultimately what people really want, no matter what side of a political or religious divide that they fall on, are surprisingly similar. You know, people just want to be loved, and they want to matter, and they want a safe and healthy environment for their community. And often the distortion and the noise that comes into that pits people against each other. And so I was pleasantly surprised by that no matter who was reading this book, they could get behind. I mean with very, very few cases where some people took advantage to the fact that there was a, a lesbian couple shown in the people spread, when it says, you know, “People come in all different shapes, sizes and colors, we may all sound different, look different and act differently, but don't be fooled we’re all people,” but really that was it.

And I just thought, there's, there's hope here. There's potential here because I think this book is showing that when you get to something at its simple enough core, you find that we all get lost in the noise, rather than deeply different ideas of what we actually want. People can very often point out what they don't want, but when you start to get people to point out what they do want, I think you'd be surprised at how similar it often is.

Dana Thomas: That's so true. Now, Here We Are has been embraced by environmentalists. Does that surprise you? What was your mission with it?

Oliver Jeffers: I don't think so. When I was starting to make the book, I thought there's three main pillars for this book. There's the idea of parenthood. You know, just this notion of being responsible and explaining everything to somebody who knows nothing. Then there was the idea of cosmology, which is the sheer perspective on things and, you know, the overview effect, and Earth's place inside our solar system, inside our cosmos. But the third one was environmental and social responsibility. And so it doesn't surprise me at all that the book is being picked up by environmentalists, because so much of environmentalism is, is the same as social justice, which is just creating systems we live by that can be carried out for an indefinite amount of time at no one's expense.

Dana Thomas: Let’s hear an excerpt from that lovely audio version of Here We Are.

Oliver Jeffers: Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth, written, illustrated and read by Oliver Jeffers. To my son, Harland, this book was written in the first two months of your life, as I tried to make sense of it all for you. These are the things I think you need to know.

Well, hello. Welcome to this planet. We call it earth. It is the big globe floating in space on which we live. We’re glad you found us, as space is very big. There is much to see and do here on earth, so let’s get started with the quick tour.

Dana Thomas: Apple TV + adapted Here We Are into a short film with Meryl Streep narrating, and it came out on Earth Day. What was it like to work with Meryl Streep? What did you think about when this all came together?

Oliver Jeffers: Yeah, unfortunately I didn't get to meet her. She, the voice talent were filming in totally different cities, I think even different continents. So nobody was actually together in one place. And I was in London at the time that Meryl was recording in New York, so I didn't actually get to go along. But, you know, with the weight of Apple behind you, you can kind of name anybody and they can probably get them. For the purposes of narrating the character of Mother Earth, Meryl was pretty perfect, and she's quite an environmentalist herself. So that was a real coup and added some weight behind the film.

But whenever the notion of the film first came around, I thought, I was interested and intrigued to how it was going to happen because there's not really a story in the book. The book is a set of observations and really an illustrated letter, but what we were able to do with the help of Studio AKA and Philip Hunt, the director, and there was another writer who was brought in that helped figure out a structure that could be placed on top of that, which is the day in the life of a family. So it does have a narrative flow and an arc, and I think it came out absolutely brilliantly.

Dana Thomas: It's still streaming on Apple TV + too, isn't it?

Oliver Jeffers: Yeah, yeah. I think they give it a big push every Earth Day, or at least they have the last two that it's been around, so I hope they continue to do that.

Dana Thomas: Now, last fall, you were at the TED Countdown to COP in Edinborough, where you spoke and we painted a mural together, which was very fun. And then you attended COP 26 in Glasgow, and you had a couple of exhibitions there, which I saw, some really monumental installations. Can you describe them?

Oliver Jeffers: Yeah. As you know, at COP there was different zones. There was the blue zone, which was for delegates. So that was very difficult to get into. That was not for the public. And that was where all the negotiations were taking in place. And —

Dana Thomas: That's where we saw Obama speak.

Oliver Jeffers: Yes. And then there was the green zone, which was the more public-facing zone, which was, uh, there was still talks and all sorts, but there were some exhibitions and that was where a lot of schools were going to. And so I had a concept that was basically broken down into two parts and it was originally to be one sculpture, but because of the extra space that was needed to be taken up for COVID social distancing, that didn't happen.

But it actually worked out quite well the way that it was. So in the blue zone, the idea was that if I could do anything to, I don't know, as these world leaders were going to be walking past this on their way into to negotiations, if I could do anything to sort of knock them off of their own personal ego and agenda, but when, when they were going into —

Dana Thomas: And there were a lot of egos and agendas in that blue zone!

Oliver Jeffers: Yeah. If I could do anything to just even knock that sideways for a second, that might be helpful. And so they were confronted with this spinning Earth that was produced with the charm of a well-produced school play, with some static clouds floating, and it's in this box that you could sort of walk around. And it's rotating, and it just looks like a blank Earth. But as it rotated into the, it's the night side of it, a UV light picked out written over and over and over again in all the landmass, "People live here," "People live here" over and over and over again. To show that, you know, like at this point, the two greatest scientific threats to our species are germs and weather. And neither of those care about borders or need passports or care about bank balances or checklists. These are global problems that will require global solutions.

And then in the green zone, it was called, "The Celestial Census Results." And it was outside the green zone, so anybody could see it. So flat, like, like two lollipops, it was a scale model of the Earth and the moon, about whatever it was, I think 150 feet apart. And on the moon it said, "No one lives here." And then all the way at the other end on the Earth, it says, "All of the people live here." And just sort of, you know, this simple reminder that this is the only place in the entire cosmos that anyone lives.

Dana Thomas: That we know of, at least. Until we people up Mars.

Oliver Jeffers: My Dad always joked that the surest sign of intelligent life out there is that they haven't bothered trying to contact us yet.

Dana Thomas: So what did you think of COP 26? I mean, I was comparing it to sort of attending, like, the Olympics of environmentalism–that, you know, there were just so many people and so many simultaneous events and you wanted to be at everything at the same time, and how did you find it?

Oliver Jeffers: Well, going in, I didn't know what to expect. At all. I'd never been to a COP before. Was aware that the Paris agreement had come out of COP 21, I found out since, which is in 2016, and had realized that the COP, Conference of Parties, is an annual event that happens. This was the 26th one in a row — to talk about whatever issues that the UN prioritized in its agenda. And it just so happens at the minute that that is climate. And the reason that this one was a big one is because, after Paris, this was the first five-year milestone to see how we're doing. So I went in thinking that, and I'd been talking to different people, like I got to know Tom Carnac from Global Optimism, and Christiana Figueres —

Dana Thomas: She's wonderful.

Oliver Jeffers: — she is wonderful, from TED. And we had been talking, and I was like, you know, there seems to be from an out perspective, it seems to be an awful lot of expectation on this being a success or not. And they were saying that it's really frustrating, because they knew in advance going in that there could be no moment, like by Paris 16, because there's no moment where we're going to get everybody to agree and it's going to be a thing. This is going to be a measuring of how successful we've been doing. And at best that that's going to be, well, we're all kind of on track, but we know we're not. So it's going to be from the outside, it's going to look like it hasn't been a success.

And they were sort of questioning whether it should be happening at all, and whether Boris Johnson was just forcing it through for his own ego. That's the way it seemed when I first got there, that there was a lot of frustration. People didn't know why it was there, people didn't know why it was happening. But then as I was there for two weeks, and here's really what I took away from it, was that, ultimately, people were very glad that it happened, even the people who weren't so glad at the start. And that it was a success, but not for the reasons I think that could be measured by the public. Because I think that all of the people who were there, it's, you know, it's like the difference between meeting somebody for a dinner versus having a Zoom meeting. It's like, you just don't quite know what you're going to see or miss on a Zoom meeting.

So having all those people together, I think people were suddenly becoming aware of all these other problems that were being solved by people in interesting ways. And so I think getting everybody together who's interested in fixing these problems, we're really getting something quite out of it.

But here was, for me, what the biggest takeaway was: Towards the end of it. And having walked around and gone to some of the marches and through Global Optimism, getting access to some of the meetings and some of the speeches and seeing some of the delegates at work, and then also just being around my sculpture and talking to anybody who came past as an artist and, you know, on my badge, I don't think they quite knew what to put, so I, it was just said that I was an observer. And I thought, you know, that's quite an apt title, I suppose, for, for me in general, as observing and translating.

But I suppose my takeaway was that, there were five main groups represented that I could see at COP. And it was, you know, one, the word leaders and the high-up government. Then, there was the business leaders. Then there were the delegates and journalists who were sort of trying to just do their jobs —

Dana Thomas: Like me.

Oliver Jeffers: — then there were the angry youth outside, and —

Dana Thomas: Oh boy, were they, too.

Oliver Jeffers: — yes, but this is, and I, I kept bringing this up time and time again, in the last few days as the epiphany of this hit me. I would say in Glasgow, there were more people interested in solving climate change during those two weeks than any other place on Earth, those two weeks.

Dana Thomas: I agree.

Oliver Jeffers: And I would still say the vast majority of that city did not care. So the fifth,

Dana Thomas: Didn't even know!

Oliver Jeffers: The fifth group represented at the table was the taxi driver. Every taxi you had to get into, and you had to take taxis, because the roads were closed, and the myriad ways to go, every single taxi driver I talked to, I always asked them —

Dana Thomas: Which of course was not the greenest way to get around town!

Oliver Jeffers: But it was the only way to get around town!

Dana Thomas: The only way to get around town and, yeah.

Oliver Jeffers: Because all the, you know, like bridges were closed, it was three miles to get 200 feet. But then even talking to the restaurant servers and, and just the general public people were just like 'Ah, you know, it's a waste of time." And then being followed up on a question was like, well, "What do you think is happening in there?" They didn't really know. And then it was like, do you think anything is going to happen? No. Why not? And slowly getting more and more about it.

And what I realized is that people all want to help, but the biggest group of people at that table, at COP, were the general public represented, by the taxi drivers who just are apathetic right now. And that's when it struck me, is that having seen that all, you know, some of the meetings that I sat at and some of the interviews that I did with interesting people, is it seems that everybody agrees on the problem, most of the problems have solutions. The big problem that we have now is getting everybody behind the solutions. And so in some ways it's not a climate problem we face at all, but it's a people problem. It's a story problem.

Dana Thomas: That's it. Which is why we have The Green Dream. Thank you so much, Oliver Jeffers, for being on The Green Dream. Let's try to get that message out to everyone we can.

Oliver Jeffers: Yep. We just gotta tell better stories. That is all.

Dana Thomas: That is all. Thank you so much.

Oliver Jeffers: Thanks, Dana!

Dana Thomas: New episodes of The Green Dream come out the first and third Tuesday of the month, so we’ll be back in two weeks with a conversation with Australian filmmaker Eva Orner, who made the documentary Burning, about the Black Summer fires in Australia in 2019 and 2020. The film is now streaming on Amazon. Here’s a preview.

Eva Orner: The point of where we are now with climate change — and this is the positive to give people some hope and what gives me hope is, governments are failing us. But what is leading the way now are communities, local governments and industry. And it's kind of surprising how much industry has, whether by goodwill or by sheer force and guilt, is having to adopt better —

Dana Thomas: Or fear of losing their shirts!

Eva Orner: Right! And so they have to sort of adopt fairly aggressive climate change policies with their companies and there are entrepreneurs doing great work. Mike Cannon-Brookes, who's in the film, he's Australia's Elon Musk, but without the, you know, dickery. You know, he’s a young billionaire, self-made, who puts a lot of money into science and solving climate change in industry. And he says, you know, it's really up to us to lead the way and ultimately, government will have to follow. And I think that's what we're going to see over the next decade.

Dana Thomas: This episode of the Green Dream was sponsored by the sustainable fashion brand Another Tomorrow. Written by Dana Thomas. Recorded by Alfie Thompson of Heavy Entertainment. From Talkbox Productions, with executive producer, Tavia Gilbert; senior producer, Katie Flood, with mix and master by Kayla Elrod. Music performed by Eric Brace of Red Beet Records in Nashville, Tennessee. The Green Dream is a production of Wondercast Studio in association with Mortimer House. You can find us online at wondercast.studio or through your smart speaker on Wondercast Radio. I’m Dana Thomas, the European Sustainability Editor for British Vogue. You can read my monthly column, also called The Green Dream, in the magazine or online at Vogue.co.uk. And you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter, where my handle for both is @danathomasparis. Thank you for listening.

If you’re enjoying this conversation, tune into my sister podcast on the Wondercast Network, If Jewels Could Talk, hosted by longtime British Vogue jewelry editor Carol Woolton. In If Jewels Could Talk, Carol explores every facet of jewelry – from who makes it, to who wears it, and why. It is a must-listen for everyone who loves jewelry or might be buying a piece of jewelry; anyone interested in design and history; and all those who love a rollicking real-life story. Find If Jewels Could Talk wherever you get your podcasts.