Tatiana Schlossberg: Climate Change and our unknowing impact
At first glance, everything about this article and interview screamed, “Not my thing.” For one thing, I don't believe I have ever reposted an article from Vogue Magazine—it’s not really on my normal milk run. Then, there is this author with the amazingly elitist-sounding name of Tatiana Schlossberg, who, yes, is also a Kennedy (daughter of Caroline).
So, frankly, I was a little surprised that I even bothered to peruse this article. Perhaps its was the clever title of her book, Inconspicuous Consumption. Whatever the reason—read it, I did.
If you also read just a little of Tatiana’s treatise here, you will probably whisper “guiiiltyyyy” to yourself as you read, like I did. Because in this article, as in her book Inconspicuous Consumption, Schlossberg points out what should be abundantly obvious to us all: we cannot, and should not depend on government, climate treaties, the goodness of corporations, or (especially) politicians to solve the climate crisis. It begins with each of us, and unfortunately the problem is deeply imbedded in our lifestyles, economics, and view of the world itself. “We” may be the last to know this. How convenient to point the finger of guilt at everyone else. But as my uncle used to tell me, every time you point your finger at someone, three of your other fingers are pointing back at you.
—Ray Brimble
Tatiana Schlossberg's Inconspicuous Consumption Brings Climate Change Down to Earth
Originally published on Vogue.com, by Julia Felsenthal, August 27, 2019
"If you're upset, that probably means I did something right, unfortunately," declares Tatiana Schlossberg toward the end of Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have. That sort of wry, matter-of-fact pronouncement is typical of Schlossberg, 29, a former New York Times science reporter (she's also Caroline Kennedy's daughter) whose first book is a plucky exploration of the myriad ways our casual lifestyle choices come at the expense of the planet and our fellow human beings. (Spoiler alert: Even the greenest among us are locked into a system that doesn't allow for many opt-outs.) In four sections—the internet, food, fashion, and fuel—Schlossberg deconstructs the Rube Goldberg machine that is our post-industrial global economy, in which the ecological cost of consumption is outsourced, deferred, unaccounted for, or otherwise obscured. Here's an example: You probably think bingeing internet video is detrimental only to your own brain cells; in fact it guzzles energy that, owing to the geographical distribution of data centers, may be supplied by coal, contributing to the release of tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide each year and also to the production of coal ash, a terrifyingly difficult-to-sequester toxic slurry that can pose a threat to our groundwater. Did your addiction to cat videos create our fossil fuel reliant energy system or its lethal byproducts? No. But you see how everything's connected.
Tatiana Schlossberg - photo by Getty Images
It's hard being the bearer of bad news, but Schlossberg performs an elegant tight rope act: She's reported and written a treatise on climate change that is upsetting but not hysterical, eschewing headline-generating doomsday prognosticating in favor of a nerdy interest in the details. Inconspicuous Consumption is scary informative—in both senses—but also oddly enjoyable, filled with salty jokes and fun (or not so fun) facts and weird little rabbit holes. "We'll get through this together," is Schlossberg's stance when delving into daunting topics like the energy costs of bitcoin mining. It's also her broader message: going to the effort of understanding problems in all their complexity, doing so en masse, that's the only way we'll be able to hold corporations and politicians accountable for turning around this runaway train (yes, she agrees big business and government are more to blame than individual consumers). Her thesis is: if we can connect climate change to our own lives, we'll be more inclined to talk about it, think about it, and—when it comes to both personal choice, and political engagement—more inclined to do something about it. If you're looking for something to cling to in what often feels like a hopeless conversation, Schlossberg's darkly humorous, knowledge-is-power, eyes-wide-open approach may be just the thing.
"I want people to understand the seriousness and scope of the problem, but I don't want people to feel total despair," she told me when we met one day in early August over celery kombucha at a downtown Manhattan cafe. "I want people to feel they can do things. They may not be easy things, but the possibility of change exists." We chatted more about how Schlossberg came to write Inconspicuous Consumption, why there are no easy solutions, and how reporting on climate impacts has affected the way she lives her own life. "People are always trying to call me out on my behavior," she admits, then deadpans: "It's really great. I love going to parties."
You used to be someone who didn't even like reading about climate change. Now you cover it for a living. How'd that happen?
I saw An Inconvenient Truth at 16 or 17. I had learned about climate change in school but it always felt like this big, abstract problem Then when I was in graduate school getting my masters in American History I read a lot of environmental history. Being able to think about the environment as connected to other social, historical and economic forces, was really interesting. And to look at it on this long time scale, as opposed to what's happening right now. Or geologic time, which I can't really my wrap my head around.
When I was at the Times, I was writing the New York Today column. No one was really talking about climate in New York. I had covered Hurricane Sandy as a reporter in New Jersey. I was interested in looking at people's recovery, how they understood climate change in their own lives. There were only four people covering climate at the paper, and they were all white guys in their 40s and 50s. I think my background of not being a science person was helpful. My first instinct wasn't to go for what was in journals.
You dedicate the book to scientists, activists, lawyers, advocates. Did you ever consider going one of those routes? Or, given your family background, into politics?
Journalism is what I think I'm good at. It's important for people to contribute in the ways they can. I don't think I have the patience to be an environmental lawyer. I think that's truly a thankless job. Politics can be a noble profession, and it has been in the past. I respect all the people who go into politics and make change and do what is right. I don't think that's my particular way of contributing. I do come from a family of politicians, but I also come from a family of writers: my mom and my dad [Edwin Schlossberg] are writers. My grandmother [Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis] was a journalist. She had a column, the Inquiring Camera Girl, for a Washington paper. And I know my grandfather [President John F. Kennedy] had thought about being a reporter, or of owning a paper. He also was a writer and won the Pulitzer Prize.
You write with an unexpected tone: self-deprecating, funny, more exasperated than outraged. It's a little John Oliver-y.
I wanted the book to be accessible. Just because this subject is important doesn't mean it can't be interesting and fun to learn about. That's a problem for climate journalism: It's always so serious and scary. And it is. But we also have to find a way to live with it. So I wanted to make it like: this is part of your life. How can we learn about it in a way that doesn't make us want to crawl into a hole?
There's not much in here about, like, the UN Climate report. You don't dwell on the apocalypse. I assume that's strategic?
There are plenty of people writing about that. I wanted to write about the everyday background pollution that we all live with but at this point is inextricable from climate change. Climate change will make it worse, and it often accelerates climate change. We've been talking about sea level rise for a very long time. Until very recently there hasn't been a lot of public interest. I just thought: maybe it's worth trying something else, that fits more into your daily life.
Climate reporting often focuses on the supply side: how can we convert our energy grid to renewables? You focus more on the demand side: How do our behaviors create runaway energy needs, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and global pollution? Why do we tend to skip over that part of the equation?
I hadn't thought about it that way, but I think that's definitely right. It's easier to talk about a change that needs to be made as opposed to why. I don't think we understand the full scope of why, and how much work and effort and expense is involved in making that happen. People don't want to hear that we might have to give up stuff, that we can't all have what we want all the time.
I also think part of the problem is we just hear that we need to switch to renewables. Yes, that's true, but it also leaves out all the things that need to happen to do that. Renewables also require metal to be mined, and rare earth materials and energy to produce. So being able to evaluate those changes in their context is really important.