An Origin Story of the Blue New Deal

June 17, 2021·52 min·4 clips

The ocean has absorbed 90% of the heat from greenhouse gases, preventing the atmosphere from being 95°F hotter.

1. How to Save a Planet, hosted by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Alex Bloomberg, tells the story of how ocean climate policy went from a single vague sentence in the Green New Deal to explicit language in a Biden executive order. 2. Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is the episode's central narrator — a marine biologist, climate policy advocate, and co-editor of the anthology All We Can Save, who serves on the advisory boards of Green Wave and Evergreen Action. 3. The episode's thesis is that policy change begins with people writing things down, showing those words to people in power, and following ideas through to their logical conclusion even when windows of opportunity seem closed. 4. Ayana describes reading the 2019 Green New Deal resolution introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey and not finding the word 'oceans' until page 13 of 14, in Section 4 Subsection L, which only vaguely mentions protecting public lands and waters. 5. She explains that the ocean has absorbed approximately 30% of all CO2 humans have emitted and over 90% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases since the mid-1950s, and that without this buffering the atmosphere would be about 95 degrees Fahrenheit hotter. 6. The ocean cost of this buffering includes coral bleaching, fish migration toward the poles in search of cooler water, and ocean acidification — a chemical shift in seawater pH that dissolves the shells of marine organisms. 7. Ayana also outlines the ocean's untapped climate solutions: offshore wind energy, regenerative seaweed and shellfish farming with a low carbon footprint, and coastal ecosystems like mangroves and seagrasses that absorb several times more carbon per acre than land forests. 8. After complaining to Dr. Chad Nelson, CEO of the Surfrider Foundation, over lunch, Ayana joined forces with him and ocean farmer Bren Smith to write an op-ed, which was rejected by all major newspapers before being accepted by the environmental publication Grist under the title 'The Big Blue Gap in the Green New Deal.' 9. Data for Progress, a progressive think tank led by vice president Julian Brave Noiscat and senior fellow Johnny Bowman, used the op-ed as a starting point for a policy memo quantifying that the blue economy supports 3.3 million U.S. jobs and that 66% of voters support offshore wind construction. 10. At the September 2019 CNN Climate Town Hall, Bren Smith submitted a video question describing his oyster farm's destruction by two hurricanes and asking about a Blue New Deal; the question was assigned to Elizabeth Warren, who pledged on live TV to support one. 11. Warren tasked her climate advisor Maggie Thomas — a veteran of the Jay Inslee presidential campaign, considered the gold standard for climate policy — to draft a full Blue New Deal plan, which Ayana helped develop over several months via a shared Google Doc. 12. Warren released the Blue New Deal plan in early December 2019, and Ayana published a second op-ed summarizing it — this time in the Washington Post, which had previously rejected her first op-ed, under the title 'Our Oceans Brim with Climate Solutions, We Need a Blue New Deal.' 13. After Warren dropped out of the presidential race, the idea appeared to stall, but Maggie Thomas joined the think tank Evergreen Action, founded by Inslee campaign alumni to push ambitious climate proposals to influential politicians. 14. In the summer of 2020, Ayana received a call from Ali Zaidi — New York State's deputy secretary for energy and the environment, who was volunteering as Biden's climate advisor — while sitting on her Brooklyn stoop in cut-off jean shorts, and he asked what ocean priorities should be included in Biden's updated climate plan. 15. Ayana advocated for three priorities: protecting coastal ecosystems, accelerating offshore wind energy for the 40% of Americans who live in coastal counties, and a Civilian Climate Corps to put people back to work restoring ecosystems, an idea originally proposed by Jay Inslee. 16. Biden's general election Clean Energy Plan, released unexpectedly during the general election, included all three priorities — including specific language about wetlands, seagrasses, oyster reefs, mangrove and kelp forests — that directly echoed Ayana's advocacy. 17. A week after taking office, Biden signed the Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis, which includes Section 214 naming coastal ecosystems as essential to climate resilience — the sentence read aloud at the very start of the episode. 18. The episode's tone is conversational and first-person narrative, with Alex Bloomberg drawing out the story through questions and Ayana narrating her own journey with self-deprecating humor about policy memos and full voicemail boxes. 19. People interested in how U.S. climate policy actually gets made through advocacy, op-eds, think tank memos, and personal relationships will find this episode detailed and specific. 20. Listeners looking for frontline reporting or activism stories outside the D.C. policy world may find the focus on op-eds, advisory boards, and congressional testimony less engaging.

As heard by us

A climate-policy origin story that turns a niche question into a real political throughline.

This episode follows a climate idea as it moves through white papers, an op-ed, polling, and citizen questions on its way toward the Biden administration's climate agenda. Ayanna Johnson and Alex Bloomberg give that route a human shape.

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You want the backstory behind one climate idea before it landed in the Biden climate order.

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