Transcript of 50 States, 50 Fixes

From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. As the federal government reverses course on renewable energy projects and other policies related to climate change, states, cities, and local groups are stepping into the breach. Today, my colleagues Kara Buckley and Katrin Einhorn on their project to document small but significant efforts to solve climate and environmental problems in every state in the country. It's Friday, January second. Cara, Katrin, Happy New Year.

Happy New Year. Happy New Year.

The two of you just completed this really big and ambitious series, 50 States, 50 Fixes. I have to say it is more, let's say, optimistic than the types of stories we typically read in our august pages. I want to talk about the origin of this. Tell me how this series started. Cara, I'm going to start with you.

Right. To answer your question, I have to go back in time. I used to be a culture reporter at the paper. I was interviewing movie stars. I was reporting on things like Me Too. But throughout it all, especially in the late 2010s, I was finding it really hard to process all the negative climate news we were hearing about the planet overheating, species crashing, et cetera.

You were having a personal struggle.

I was having a personal struggle, and I just really didn't understand how people were coping with it. I thought, Well, what can we do? What can I do? I thought, Maybe I can report this out, but in a way that focused on all these efforts that people were doing to try reverse climate change, things that were having an impact, because a lot of things can have an impact. In 2021, I joined the Climate Desk, and my focus from the start was on people that were doing things in their communities that were working.

Which is unusual in the sense that we normally think of journalism as writing about problems, not about solutions.

Right. So this beat is looking at not the plane crashes, but the planes that are not only successfully landing, but doing it really Well, an early story I did was about people taking over old golf courses and rewilding them, which was helping biodiversity. I did stories about roundabouts in Carmel, Indiana, which are the most sustainable types of intersections and reduce emissions. It was out of that reporting that I did over three years, I thought there's going to be a solution in every state. I was hearing about some of them, and I thought, let's set ourselves a challenge and also go and find out a distinct climate or environmental success story in each one of the 50 states.

Katrin, I remember us talking a few years ago, right after you joined the Climate and the Environment Desk. I think you were also concerned about how to write about this topic in a way that wouldn't always hit that same note of existential dread that Cara is talking about.

Yeah, I remember setting a goal for myself that I would include a solution in the story somewhere, even if it was a little bit at the bottom, I would at least say what the solution was in every story that I wrote. I don't know if I totally succeeded, but I tried. But I came to the Climate Desk to cover biodiversity, so wildlife and ecosystems. I cover extinction, right? When I first heard about Kara's series, it was in January 2025, after the election, of course. I was really excited about it because we knew that President Trump was going to be dismantling a lot of climate policy, environmental policy, environmental regulation. I was so interested to focus on the things that people will still be doing, are doing, have been doing to address things at the state, local, tribal levels, separately from the federal government. I was really drawn to this series because it seemed like that's where a lot of the action was going to be happening.

When you set out to do this series, what was the mandate?

We wanted win, win, win. Multiple wins. Multiple wins. It's not just resilience, it's not just adaptation. It's doing things that are reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are making ecosystems healthier that are helping restore imperiled species.

But at the same time helping human health and saving people money.

In a way, basically, you're showing the interconnectedness of our climate, to our economy, to our health with the series, it sounds like.

Precisely.

At this point, you have reported from all 50 states, congratulations. You have traversed the country.

Not just us, to be fair. It wasn't just the two of us. There was a whole team of that worked really hard on this series, including colleagues on our desk and on national. Fifty plus photographers.

Fifty plus photographers and 13 reporters.

Okay, that is cool. I want to talk about some of those stories. Let's start with each of you telling me about one that really stood out to you, maybe because it had that multiple win or downstream effects that you mentioned. Cara, let's start with you.

Yeah, absolutely. One of the stories that really popped for me was about a funeral director in Northwest Missouri. He lived in one of the most rural counties in the state. His name was Eric Chamberlain. He runs a family funeral business, and he had been worrying for a long time about how his small town was getting smaller. People were moving away, and they weren't coming back. He was just trying to figure out how could he help. Was there anything to reverse the economic misfortunes of the town? He was at work one day driving a hearse. He was over the border in Iowa, and he saw these giant white blades of a wind turbine. He'd never seen them before. He wanted to pull over, but he was leading a funeral procession, so he did not. But he began investigating it, and he approached the Department of Natural Resources at the state, and he said, There's a lot of wind in my neck of the woods. Can we maybe look at putting in wind turbines here? He ended up setting in motion this wind energy project. He convinced local farmers to put wind turbines in their At first, there were just four.

Eric told me he distinctly remembers slipping on the switch in 2008 and watching the town's electricity meter running backwards. Rockport announced it was the first community in the country to be producing more electricity from wind energy than what it needed. This ended up accruing. More places in the county started putting up wind turbines. Today, there's more than 340. Throughout the county, it supplies 50 permanent jobs. Really crucially, the town has a tax revenue base from these wind turbines, $6 million a year. It's more than half of the real estate tax revenue for the county. Supplying extra revenue for farmers who have wind turbines, too. It fundamentally changed the economy of this county, and it all started with one guy.

Wow. I want to talk about one of the stories that really stood out to me from your series. I'm a dog person. This is a story where dogs are the heroes. Can you guess which one I'm talking about?

Montana.

Yes, Montana. You want to explain what it is?

Yeah. I knew that I wanted to write about livestock Guardian dogs, which are dogs that are bred to protect livestock from predators like coyotes.

Or grizzly bears.

Or grizzly bears in this case. In Montana, on the plains of Montana, they have not been dealing with grizzly bears for quite some time because we basically eradicated them from that They were eradicated from much of the lower 48 states.

Because they're dangerous?

Because they were shot. There were a lot of predator campaigns in the early 1900s, and then laws were put into place, and these predators started rebounding.

To preserve them, basically, so they wouldn't go extinct.

So they wouldn't go extinct, exactly. These grizzlies have been slowly walking back out to the plains of Montana, where there's no real recollection of them in living memory. One of the things that they've discussed discovered is the wheat and barley farms. This is like really good eating. If you're a grizzly bear, it's a really nice, easy source of food for them. So these farmers, they never had bears raiding their orchids. Now, all of a sudden, there's bears stealing their apples and raiding their grain bins, and they're scared to go outside, certainly to let their children play outside. In Montana, there's a man named Wesley Sarmento, who at the time was the bear manager for the State Wildlife Department. He's getting all these calls from these farmers who are desperate because these bears keep showing up on their property. And Wesley's trying everything to get them to go away, including trapping them, but that's dangerous. He tried having everyone clean up the grain very well, but it was impossible because they're on a working farm. He tried electrifying the grain bins, which did work, but it was really bad for the farm workers because it was just really awkward and made working a lot harder.

And so then he heard about a local farmer whose son found a stray livestock guardian dog, like a Pyrenees type dog that often put with sheep to protect them from coyotes or whatever. To everyone's surprise, this dog was chasing bears away, including mother bears with cubs, grizzlies. So, Wesley gets with this professor who studies livestock guardian dogs, and they decide to try this study where the dogs were not guarding livestock. They were basically guarding people. They were guarding the farms. They get these big breeds, these Turkish breeds, like kengels and Anatolean shepherds, and they recruit farmers to participate in this little tiny study. These dogs were just transformative for the farmers. The beautiful thing about this story is that these dogs were protecting the people, and they were protecting the bears because they Because if the bears are going to threaten people's lives and livelihoods, they're going to get themselves killed. So the dogs were this tool for coexistence, and the families were really in love with the dogs. More than one farmer said the same thing, which was, This dog would lay down his life for What was your takeaway from this whole experience in Montana and the solutions that these people had come up with?

It was really striking how this little idea, cooked up by this bear manager and this professor, ended up having these real results for these farmers and then started spreading to other farms because other farmers in the area were seeing how well it was working. Huge reduction in bear visits. All of a sudden, they were getting dogs. That was one thing, and that speaks to the whole series, is about how these ideas can spread. The other thing specific to the grizzly bears is that they were really rediscovering this ancient knowledge. Wesley went into the whole thing. He saw less conflict between Native American communities and grizzlies, and he thought that maybe that had to do with all the dogs that roam around on the reservation. And of course, he knew that in Europe and Asia, these large dogs, hundreds of years ago, were bred to chase bears. And so he talked about how with the loss of these big predators like grizzly bears over the last couple of hundred years, we forgot about these methods of coexistence. Now, as they're recovering, we're having to relearn these ancient practices that had been forgotten.

We'll be right back. The two of you set yourselves up to find stories from all 50 states, and I do wonder if, for any reason, some states were more challenging than others. Obviously, certain states, just legislatively, if not culturally, perhaps, are more or less focused on things like climate, on things like environment, on things like conservation. For example, I would imagine if you went to Portland, you would be quite easy to find somebody who would come up with a creative vegan solution to something. By the way, I didn't even know before I read your story that there is such a thing as a vegan tattoo parlor. That's a tease. Anybody listening should just go read that story. But I wonder, did you find areas of the country that were just harder to find folks who were talking about any of these issues that we've been discussing?

Yeah, Portland really boggles the mind in terms of its vegan offerings. It's home to a vegan strip club.

Wow.

Yeah. The dancers are not allowed to wear leather or feathers. I don't know if I'm going to say their motto. It is saucy. Say it. Tell it. The motto is, We put the meat on the pole, not on the plate.

As I said, Creative Vegan Solutions.

But some of the states were definitely harder than others. By the time we were working through the series, towards the end, we had covered so many iterations of how to tackle climate and environmental crises that we didn't want to do repeats. So there were challenges for sure. But one of our best stories, one of my favorite stories, came from North Dakota, which was in our second last batch of stories. My colleague, Saatchi Mulky, found a beautiful story there. She found that the Standing Rock tribe was deep in an effort to get EV chargers set up throughout tribal lands.

Just remind us quickly, Standing Rock, we all know that name because?

Because of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, which were international news. They were trying to stop a pipeline from going through their land. They had been trying for years as well, concurrent to that, to get off fossil fuels in their tribal lands by embracing all these clean energy projects. More recently, they've been putting up EV chargers so you can drive. It's part of an intertribal network, so you can drive electric vehicles without ever having to gas up as you drive through tribal lands.

I would imagine that installing electric vehicle chargers is not an inexpensive project, especially if If I'm not mistaken, the Standing Rock Reservation, that is in an area where there's a lot of poverty. That was one of the issues with the Dakota Access Pipeline, is it was cutting through this already vulnerable area. Where did they get the money for this project?

Well, one major source, it was the Department of Energy grant. They won a $6 million grant to help fund this effort. So that made this possible.

As we spoke about at the beginning of this conversation, however, federal money, federal initiatives for environment and climate are going away or being dismantled. I just wonder, how does that affect programs like this in the future?

Yeah, a lot of them are having to put things on hold. In Fayetteville, Arkansas, where they've reduced methane emissions from the landfill through composting, they had two $20 million climate resilience projects they had to shelf. But on the flip side, cities are looking at things that are under their purview where they can save a lot of money. That was the case in Pittsburgh when decided to tackle light pollution.

Light pollution, a type of pollution that I wonder how many people actually think of as real pollution.

People don't think of it as real pollution, but according to a 2023 study, it's growing globally at 10% a year. Many places are over lit. We know that we're not supposed to have exposure to blue light at night. We're staring at our computer screens.

We know- Yes, we know that, but we don't do it. But please continue.

We know it, we don't do it, but we know it's having impact on our melatonin levels. It's not just impacting us. It's impacting pollinator friendly species and birds and bats. It's also interfering as global light grows. It's interfering with processes in the atmosphere that actually clean the air, that need night time, darkness, according to a study, to literally filter out the pollution. Wow. Yeah. We're also using a ton of energy doing it. In Pittsburgh, an astronomy professor there, she wanted her students to see the dark skies at night. She had been agitating, trying to raise awareness about the benefits of dimmer, softer lights.

What did they come up with?

They came up with dimmable streetlights that certain city officials can dim from their phones. You can just swipe across your phone, if you're a city official, and turn down the intensity of streetlights at night. They also designed street lights that have have hoods over them. So instead of the light glaring upwards where it can disorient birds and other flying animals, they're hooded and just direct the light down. They also save money. The city projects that it'll save $42,000 in energy costs a year, and it'll prevent 12,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year.

One thing that's really striking me listening to these stories also is that We have not talked about politics once. These do not seem like political problems or politicized solutions. These seem like people in their communities trying to figure out how do I deal with a problem that is affecting me specifically. I would imagine, though, that the folks you talked to, I mean, again, you went to all 50 states. You probably encountered folks who all come from very different perspectives and starting points. I just wonder what, if anything, there is to say about the politics of reporting on this.

I'm going to jump in with an example. Oklahoma has restored more streams than any other state. Part of the reason they were able to do that is they were able to convince farmers, especially beef farmers, Keep your cows out of the streams, fence off your cows. This farmer that had done this He found that because his cows weren't drinking crappy water, they were putting on more weight, his vet bills were going down, and they were also because they weren't slip, sliding up and down the bank, the whole bank had come back to life with wildlife. Balled eagles were nesting. We didn't talk about politics once. He was talking about doing things that helped his bottom line, helped his cows be healthier, and helped nature in the same token. It was almost like in a lot of our reporting, I'm not going to say it transcended politics, but people want clean air. They want clean water, they want beauty around them. That was a through line we found in every single state we reported on.

I do wonder, maybe there was no question in the communities that you visited about what the problem was, but I can imagine that maybe there was debate about what the cause was, especially as it related to climate. Totally. How much did that factor into your conversations? Or even how much did the cause of things affect the solutions that people were coming up with for themselves.

I do think it's worth pointing out that sometimes people didn't want to talk about climate change. They almost felt sometimes I'd be interviewing people and they'd be scared to even use the term climate change. You know, Farmers and ranchers often are experiencing climate change, but they either don't want to use that word or they definitely don't want to talk about it as human caused. Why? Because it's been politicized.

Because they didn't want blowback in their communities or because they didn't believe it or like- A combo, I think.

Okay.

There were people who didn't want to talk to us. We had one story lined up that we really loved. We really wanted to tell it. Then they talked amongst themselves and they said, We're really scared of talking about it because we don't want the federal government to come after us because we're talking about climate and because we did get some funding from the federal government and we don't want to imperil it. It was nuanced. It was complicated oftentimes on the ground.

I wonder if your outlook on the future has changed after spending so much time with people who have been thinking about fixes at this hyper local level? How are you looking at the broader, bigger, holistic problems that the country or the planet faces Yeah, for me, the answer is really two-pronged.

The big picture is very scary, as the big picture often is. I mean, the crises we're facing, they're real, they're mounting, they're hitting some people disproportionately compared to others. But then on the local level, as we reported out these stories, as I was seeing all the different ways communities were tackling different aspects of climate change, I It couldn't help but feel a little bit hopeful. There are so many people all over the country that are finding ways to work with the planet rather than against it.

Katrin, you?

It is really meaningful to spend time with people who are working so hard to make their communities better. I really enjoyed that personally. But in a broader way, it makes me think of something that Jane Goodall, the famous primatologist and environmentalist who died in October, something that she emphasized a lot, especially toward the end of her life, was that every single day that we live, we are making a difference. Our actions are making a difference, and we get to decide what difference we make. The people that we interviewed this year for the series just embodied that. These people were really living in that spirit.

Cara Buckley. Catherine Einhorn. Thank you both so much for being here. Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Zora Mamdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City just after midnight on Thursday. In his inauguration speech, he vowed to represent all New Yorkers, even the ones who may view his administration with, quote, distrust or disdain. If you are a New Yorker, I am your mayor. Regardless of whether we agree, I will protect you, celebrate with you, mourn alongside you, and never, not for a second, hide from you. The speech was peppered with references to the working class New Yorkers who helped drive Momdani to City Hall. The mayor called out people who drive taxis, clean public parks, and serve, as he put it, biryani and beef patties. While Mamdani has spent months reassuring civic and business leaders of his pragmatism, he pledged to govern as a democratic socialist vowing to run the city, quote, expansibly and audaciously. To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say this. No longer will City Hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorkers lives. And Tatiana Schlossberg, an environmental journalist and a daughter of Caroline Kennedy, died on Tuesday.

Tatiana received a wave of attention recently for a powerful essay she published in The New Yorker about how she was diagnosed with leukemia right after giving birth to her daughter. The essay was about her battle with a rare form of the illness and also about her alarm at the changing healthcare landscape for Americans. But it was also very personal. It was about dying, and it was about parenting and memory. It begins, When you are dying, at least in my limited experience, you start remembering everything. Some of us had the pleasure of working with Tatiana when she was a reporter at the New York Times. And this week, colleagues have been sharing their own memories, how hard she worked, her intelligence and poise, and also that she was very funny. Tatiana Schlossberg was 35. Today's episode was produced by Alex Stern and Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Patricia Willens with help from Devon Taylor. Contains music by Pat McCusker, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley and Chris Wood. The Daily's engineers are Chris Wood and Alyssa Moxley, with engineering support from Brad Fisher, Maddie Macielo, nick Pitman, and Kyle Grandillo. Our theme song is by Ben Lansberg and Jim Brumberg of WNDERly.

Our radio team is Jody Becker, Ron E. Misto, Diane Wong, and Katherine Anderson. Alexandra Lee-Jung is our Deputy Executive Producer. Michael Benoit is our Deputy Editor. Paige Cahuit is the Editor of The Daily. Ben Calhoun is our Executive producer. Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Larissa Anderson, Sam Delnick, and to the founding editor of the show, Lisa Tobin. That's it for The Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you on Monday.