Empowerment, Employment, Environment

How are labor and climate related? Today’s episode is all about supporting workers as the climate changes, and about work that supports climate action. Learn about labor history, a just transition, doughnuts and degrowth. Featuring Landforce’s Executive Director Ilyssa Manspeizer and Site Supervisor Shawn Taylor.

Visit landforcepgh.org to learn more about the great work Landforce is doing to care for people and greenspaces.

Watch the companion We Are Nature video series here.

Episode Credits: Produced by Taiji Nelson and Michael Pisano. Field Reporting by Jamen Thurmond and David Kelley. Editing by Michael Pisano. Music by Mark Mangini and Amos Levy.

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Transcript

Michael Pisano:
Welcome to We Are Nature, a podcast about natural histories and livable futures presented by the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. I'm your host, Michael Pisano, and today I'm joined by field reporters, Jamen Thurmond and David Kelly. Hey friends.

David Kelly:
Hey.

Jamen Thurmond:
Hey. How's it going Mike?

Michael Pisano:
It's going great. Thanks. As per usual, I'm excited to get into today's interviews, which you two conducted out in Hazelwood last summer. These interviews feature folks from Landforce, a land stewardship org that restores and maintains green space all around the Pittsburgh area. They also provide job training and career development for people leaving the prison system and with other inequitable barriers to employment. So before we get into those interviews guys, I wanted to talk a bit about Green Space. David, can you tell me about your experiences outdoors here in and around Pittsburgh?

David Kelly:
Yeah, so I know for me personally, Green Spaces were a huge part of my childhood and shaping a lot of my development and a lot of my core memories. I spent a lot of my time in View Park, skateboarding, biking in the woods, just doing what kids did at that time period in America. So they have a very special place in my heart, I would say.

Michael Pisano:
Nice. How close were you to Riverview? Could you just walk there?

David Kelly:
I pretty much could. So I used to skateboard, and eventually my parents let me leave the street when I got old enough and that was the first place I went to. Down to Riverview Park.

Michael Pisano:
Nice. Yeah, I love it there. Just before this move, I lived three minutes away and I kind of go walk in there almost every morning. Really good place. How about you, Jamen?

Jamen Thurmond:
Yeah, it's pretty similar for me. I spent a lot of time in Riverview Park. Basically, he and I grew up together and eventually in high school I worked for something called the SCA.

Michael Pisano:
Oh sure.

Jamen Thurmond:
Student Conservation Association and thankfully I was in Riverview Park. We were making check dams and things for some of the water damage that was caused over the years in Riverview and that was our project for the summer. We did a lot of job readiness, so it was cool to finally be able to give back to a place that I spent so much of my childhood in and yeah, it was pretty cool.

Michael Pisano:
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, for both of you, how do you think having access to Riverview Park, which for folks who aren't from Pittsburgh is a big, beautiful, sprawling forested park with a pool and a bunch of other amenities and old observatory, what do you think it was doing for both of you? I don't know if developmentally is the right word, but just like for your personhood to have access, why is it important for people in the city to have access?

David Kelly:
I think whenever you grow up in the city, don't necessarily develop that comfort and ease of being with nature. It's like, "I don't want that plant to touch me or I don't want any..." You just don't really get used to being the way that we were naturally meant to be and I feel like growing up outside grabbing in nature, you're at the mercy of the elements, you're at the mercy of the weather, you're at the mercy of the bugs. You just... I don't know. You come to love it. There's a sense of appreciation and love that you really... An attachment that you get to the outdoors that I think that you only get if you spend a significant amount of time in the same outdoor space. You get to see it change through the seasons, you get to see... It's incredible. It's just beautiful. It's something bigger than you.

Michael Pisano:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Jamen Thurmond:
Yeah. I would agree with that. I think the cool thing is, especially with the way that we grew up just at our age of just being 28 right now, it's like we grew up with social media, so it's cool to have a place where you were able to disconnect from that and still value that from growing up with it. Even now, I work out outside. I just prefer to do that. That's where I do my workouts. It's nice to be in nature's nate. It's nice to just hear birds chirping while you're throwing around some kettlebells. It just feels good to just be outside. I'm happy I didn't miss that from my childhood.

Michael Pisano:
And that maybe seems like a good transition into talking about Landforce. I know it's been a little while since you guys went out and did those interviews, but I'm curious about what sticks out from your conversations with Alyssa and Sean and the other Landforce crew members.

Jamen Thurmond:
One of the things I really liked about them is, it seems like they had a lot of commitment to making sure that people could very nicely transition out of coming out prison to get back into society. That's a wide open space for a lot of people. You have just not been integrated for such a long time and that could be such a difficult transition for so many people, so for them to not only align themselves with creating an environment or trying to create an environment that's going to set us up for a good future, a green future, but to then think about people who actually need the help to do that, aligning those two things is beautiful to me.

Michael Pisano:
Agreed. Yeah. David?

David Kelly:
Yeah, my thoughts are harmonious with that. It really stuck out to me because I view the for-profit prison industry equivalent to modern day slavery in a lot of ways and to see someone with Alyssa's background coming in and this is what she's saying you to do about it, that's really awesome. It's not very often that you meet someone and that's exactly what they're doing. They're practicing exactly what they preach and the idea of a just transition, which was something that was... It was a new concept to me when we first came into it, but they are doing the work on the ground floor for people that to me look like me and that's very comfortable. That's very comforting. That's very comforting to me. For me, I have people in my family who would have a similar story but they wouldn't necessarily have that access to be able to do and have the impact and be able to give back as much. So being able to see that as a benefit is amazing to me is awesome.

Michael Pisano:
Excellent. I'm glad you mentioned a just transition because that's going to be a big part of today's episode. The basic idea of just transition is looking at how to fairly share the benefits of the emerging low carbon economy and making sure that no one gets left behind as we retire extractive industries. We'll talk about that labor history, land management and how climate change is pushing economics to evolve to question established ideas about growth. Lots of stuff going on today, so let's get into it.

David Kelly:
I guess we'll have you just introduce yourself. You just tell us your name and your role at Landforce.

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
Okay. My name's Ilyssa Manspeizer. I'm the Executive Director at Landforce.

David Kelly:
For someone who's never heard of it, what is Landforce?

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
So Landforce is a Pittsburgh based social enterprise nonprofit. We hire and train people who are looking to move to the next step in their lives, in their careers and we provide a lot of training and we provide a lot of support, but we also provide employment in land stewardship, in habitat restoration, trail construction, green infrastructure work so that people can practice the skills that they're learning and then we support them through a variety of means to find their next employment.

David Kelly:
What inspired Landforce?

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
So it's a long history. There are several of us, three of us who used to work up in Mount Washington, with the Mount Washington CDC developing Emerald View Park. So Emerald View Park was Pittsburgh's newest regional park and we created a 10-mile trail plan, sorry, a 20-mile trail plan that had 10 miles of woodland trails. At the same time I had the opportunity to visit the Allegheny County Jail and I remember standing in one of the pods and looking up and thinking about all of the people there and all of the talent and the hopes and the dreams of the people there and how our city, our county, our country was just throwing those people away and throwing their hopes and dreams away. It occurred to me that while I couldn't do much, we were going to be building these trails, these woodland trails, and what we could do was hire people and give them jobs and give them the opportunities.

And at the time a little naively I thought, "Oh, and it won't be a problem because we'll just help them with their resumes and they'll get other jobs." And it wasn't that simple. They built the most amazing trail. The first trail we built in Mount Washington was Point of View, which goes around the front of Mount Washington and nobody believed that anybody could build a trail there, and when we did, everybody was thrilled and they were so excited by the work that these people had done that they kept asking us if we could do work for them or if we could create a program like we had created for us for them. So after enough years of having that request, we pulled together a group of other nonprofits and community organizations and we said, what do we do with this model that we created? And we did some national benchmarking, so we visited sites and other cities that had similar programs and we were then able to use the information we got from them to build our best practice and create Landforce as its own entity.

David Kelly:
Can you tell us about Landforce's mission and vision?

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
They are integrated into how we think about the people who we serve, both from the environmental perspective as well as the people who come through our doors looking to be in a better place for themselves. We want to create a place and a space that honors them and the experiences they've had and their expertise and their belief in themselves and build that and really make this a spectacular place to work and feel as if they're ready to move on. We envision a world that is really a better place than what we live in now.

David Kelly:
What barriers to employment do those who you train and employ face?

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
Our crew members, our employees face a whole host of barriers. Some of those arise from being returning citizens that's returning from incarceration. We hire people who may be struggling with the trauma of either incarceration or the places that they grew up or past histories and those traumas having an effect on their mental health. We hire people who often self-medicate and struggle with substance abuse and we hire people who are really stuck in the trap of generational poverty and we help them realize their dreams because it's got to be about them.

Jamen Thurmond:
What kind of impact do you hope Landforce makes in the lives of its employees?

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
So I think it's different for every individual and that's one of the things that I think we actually do well is we take each person as a person, meet them, try to meet them where they are and try to provide them the supports and opportunities and access that they hadn't had before they came to Landforce. So our hope is that when somebody comes through Landforce's doors, they're able to identify their own needs with some help and support and conversation and then move themselves to a better place.

David Kelly:
And so how has your background in anthropology informed the guiding principles mission and vision for Landforce?

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
I think as an anthropologist, people say you're an anthropologist, you're not actually practicing anthropology and I practice anthropology every day because it's about the framework. It's about understanding how to actually deeply listen to other people, how to observe what other people are doing as opposed to what they're saying and respect where everybody comes from. There's a lot of talk these days about this program Ted Lasso and the line that he quotes from, and I can never remember who actually said it originally, but be curious, not judgmental. I think that that is probably the essence of anthropology.

Michael Pisano:
Being curious and cultivating the skill to listen with an open mind is a necessity for tackling inequities and divisions. It's equally necessary for tackling climate change. Landforce's work is a beautiful example of restorative justice that addresses both, that aims to heal people and land. If you've been listening to this season of We Are Nature, the idea of intersectional justice for people and planet is nothing new. It's central to many of the groups we've interviewed. It's also a central pillar of a just transition, a concept that we'll be exploring throughout today's episode. So before we hear from Ilyssa about the environmental side of Landforce's work, let's learn some labor history.

Tony Mazzocchi was born 1926 in Brooklyn. His family was poor, he dropped out of high school as a freshman and lied about his age to go fight in World War II. After serving, Tony returned home and started working on the assembly line at Ford. He took advantage of the GI bill to go to vocational technical school while working jobs as a construction worker, steelworker, and eventually at a cosmetics factory mixing big bags of chemicals. As a 26-year-old, he became president of the United Gas Coke and Chemical Workers Union Local 149. As Pres. Tony secured equal pay for women, which was the platform he ran on and he negotiated a health insurance plan that was the first to include dental in the private sector. Tony remained an active union organizer his whole life holding several leadership positions in the 200,000 members strong Oil, Chemical and atomic Workers International Union or OCA. In 1962, Tony read Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring. Silent Spring is a classic environmental science and advocacy text that blew the whistle on how synthetic pesticides, most notably DDT were harming the environment. Carson's book is credited with major changes in US policy, including a nationwide ban on DDT. It's also linked to the founding of the EPA and it grew and galvanized the American environmental movement.

Now, when Tony Mazzocchi read Silent Spring, he made an important connection. If chemicals were dangerous, poisons in the environment, weren't the workers making those chemicals also at great risk? He used this very sound logic and his position in OCA to build relationships between labor and the environmental movement. By bringing together workers' testimonies and enlisting scientists and courting journalists, Tony and his comrades pressured employers and the government. In 1970, Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which you might know is OSHA. To this day, this legislation provides essential protections for workers.

Over the next 30 years, Tony continued fighting for worker rights with an eye on the environment. In the 1970s, he was active in the nuclear disarmament movement, but as a union leader, he represented atomic workers and recognized that disarmament would likely cost them their jobs. So he suggested that the government revive and retool the GI bill, the same bill that had sent Tony the school after World War II to support nuclear workers transitions into safer careers.

In the 1990s, after learning about the link between fossil fuels and global warming, Mazzocchi returned to this idea, initially calling it a super fund for workers that would pay fossil fuel laborers to go back to school and make a fresh start. Super fund refers to an environmental protection agency program, the Superfund program that aims to remediate hazardous waste and contaminated disaster sites. In his words, "There is a super fund for dirt. There ought to be one for workers, those who work with toxic materials on a daily basis in order to provide the world with the energy and the materials it needs deserve a helping hand to make a new start in life." Environmentalist allies suggested that the Superfund name had bad vibes and so Tony's proposal was renamed to Just Transition.

Today, 30 years later, Mazzocchi's legacy and the concept of just transition have found purchase in the climate justice movement. A lot of the time just transition conversations still focus on shutting down fossil fuel operations and what happens to the workers who rely on those jobs and if they could possibly be retrained to work in emerging green energy industries. But the just transition concept has expanded beyond green energy jobs. Now its proponents ask us to seize the moment as a broader opportunity for restorative justice to offer good jobs to people who have been left behind, whether that's by the transition away from extraction or by historical and ongoing systemic problems like wealth consolidation and white supremacy.

We'll keep digging deeper into just transition visions later in this episode, including how our economic system might transition to prioritize sustainability and human happiness. For now, let's get back to Landforce. Their work is an important reminder that climate action isn't just about green tech or green energy. All sorts of work needs to be done for climate mitigation and resiliency, including the work that Landforce does to restore people and green spaces in part by reconnecting the two. Here's Landforce site supervisor Sean Taylor who started as a Landforce crew member building trails on Mount Washington back in 2011.

Jamen Thurmond:
What's a typical Landforce gig or day look like?

Sean Taylor:
Well, our projects pretty much have to do with a lot of structures and things that we put in trails as far and as trail building as well. We also do a lot of green infrastructure maintenance, so there's things like storm water management for flooding and things that's around the city. We're all familiar with that cause of issue, but we have things. There's different locations set up around the city and green infrastructure that allows storm water to seep into the ground and then also cleans it as it does that. That's one project we do and like I said, we do trail building, box steps, bog bridges, things like that, couple boardwalks and water crossings. Our typical day is basically just meeting up on site. We tool up, come up here, places like where we're at now in the woods green space, that's a lot around the city. We'll tool up, get in here and just follow what we call a flag line. We got different directions we go in and stuff like that. Just get in there, start digging up and been put trails in.

Jamen Thurmond:
So what have you learned from the people you've worked with at Landforce?

Sean Taylor:
Patience, a lot of patients. As I'm doing a lot of teaching and a lot of directing and some people catch on to some things a little quicker than others, but learning to be patient is one thing I learned a lot in the position I'm in now and just being able to hear people out and try to make the work environment that we are in as comfortable as possible and get them to enjoy doing what they're doing while around here.

Jamen Thurmond:
So what is involved in trauma informed approach to team leading?

Sean Taylor:
Well, I mean if you want to get an area that, like the restorative practice thing that we do, that is part of our training that we do have here in Landforce, knowing that the people that coming out here are having some issues. They're having some issues within life and I try to get them to just get out here and try to find a balance within yourself to patch up maybe some of the things and issues that they are having with their soul. The work that we're in and the environment then it's not just the work environment but it be also therapeutic as well as you could hear different sounds, different trees and things like that. It could give you somewhat of a sense of beach front. If not you hear wave the ear and stuff going through the tree and that does help our crew members. Like I said, with that balance within their life of turmoil that they're having and how to handle issues that they're going through in life, whether it's their personal issues or family issues, financial issues, anything of that nature. Those are the things or training that we have to help provide them to get through those issues that they're dealing with.

Jamen Thurmond:
Perfect. Can you tell us about the site we're at today and what Landforce is doing here?

Sean Taylor:
Oh, this here site is actually, it's a green space that's located in Hazelwood community, Hazelwood. They're doing some restoration here up in this area. They brought some goats out previously to do some eating up with some of the invasives that's around here. There's a lot of invasive species of plants that are in here, in trees as well. So what they're doing is trying to restore this area back to its natural look. There's a lot of dumping things that went on up here, a lot of trash and stolen vehicles and whatnot. You found a bunch of car parts and whatnot but, this is Hazelwood Green. It's a restoration area and they're also building, putting the trails through here as well, which we're doing today. So starting off with the restoration, doing the trail, and then come this fall they plan on planting up, want to say over a 150 or so trees up in this area, so there'll be a lot of trees that's coming up in here. It'll be [inaudible 00:22:48] in this area come this fall.

Michael Pisano:
Okay. Remember the Hazelwood Greenway, first because we'll be returning to it later in the season with environmental policy expert and Hazelwood initiative organizer, Tiffany Talton. Second, because as of 2022, Hazelwood Greenway became Pittsburgh's newest official city park. As Sean mentioned, there's ongoing trail building, tree planting and other work being done to keep improving access to the 183 acre green space. If you're local, hey, go check it out.

Anyway, I'm jumping in here to talk about land stewardship and as is my way, I'd like to start a very long time ago, let's say 20,000 years.

20,000 years ago, Northern Pennsylvania and more or less the top half of North America was covered by glaciers. This was around the end of the last ice age and Pennsylvania was more or less a tundra. Notable Pennsylvanians of the time period included mammals like sabertooth cats, mastodons, giant slots, short faced bears, camels and hyenas. Slowly the climate warmed, and the glaciers [inaudible 00:23:55], creating the Great Lakes and many freshwater wells and leaving behind fertile soil, the tundra thaw and slowly turned into the mixed forest landscape that we still see in Pennsylvanian woodlands today.

We don't know exactly when humans showed up and there's a big old controversy about it that I'm not going to get into right now, but it's worth noting that about 40 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, you can visit Meadowcroft rock shelter. At Meadowcroft, archeologists discovered evidence of continuous human habitation going back at least 16,000 years. That's stuff like pottery tools, evidence of trade with coastal areas, remnants of stored food like corn, squash, fruits and seeds. 16,000 years is a long time for people to be living in an area. All across America we have evidence of indigenous peoples migrating, trading, developing agriculture, and living lives for thousands and thousands of years.

Some of that evidence shows very clearly that humans were always modifying the environment to better suit their needs. So when European colonizers arrived, they encountered a landscape that seemed in contrast to Europe, an untouched wilderness or virgin land, but in reality it was already a human managed landscape. A great example is the controlled use of fire to clear forest land, an indigenous practice that is of great relevance to the American West today as it struggles to mitigate wildfire risk as the climate changes. Small controlled burns both help prevent huge scale wildfires and they also support biodiversity. In general, native land management practices over many thousands of years impacted the distribution of species via foraging, seed dispersal, farming, hunting, and harvesting raw materials for housing and other human needs.

Just something to keep in mind, there's many ways to manage land and it's essential to include indigenous people in developing land management strategies for the future.

Let's jump ahead a bunch of thousands of years for just one more piece of land management lower. In the 1930s, the American Great Depression was in a full swing. 25% of American men were unemployed. In 1932, then governor of New York State Franklin D. Roosevelt rolled out a program called TERA, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. TERA hired unemployed New Yorkers to work on reforestation and conservation of public lands and natural resources.

The next year after being elected president, FDR proposed a national scale version of TERA called the CCC or the Civilian Conservation Corps. In his words, "I propose to create the CCC to be used in forestry, the prevention of soil erosion, flood control, and similar projects. I call your attention to the fact that this type of work is of definite practical value, not only through the prevention of great present financial loss, but also as a means of creating future national wealth." CCC workers were offered room, board, work wear, medical care, and a salary. And over the next nine years, 3 million young men went through the program and they did everything from erosion control to flood management, to tree planting, to fish stocking, to bridge building. It was a wildly popular program and a centerpiece of FDR'S new deal. The CCC died out when World War II kicked up, but its legacy lives on in many current stewardship programs, including the Student Conservation Association that Jamen was a part of as kid.

Many climate advocates have called for a civilian climate court, and in 2021 a bill was actually introduced to Congress to establish a new CCC that focused on employing people and work to strengthen climate resiliency and transition to a clean economy. Importantly, this new civilian climate core idea addresses the racism in the old New Deal version. To quote Ed Markey, one of the senators sponsoring the proposal, "The civilian Climate Core will provide an opportunity for millions of Americans from every walk of life to earn a good wage while serving their communities and training to transform our economy, rebuilding and strengthening our neighborhoods, especially those that have been devastated by climate change and racist housing and healthcare policies and supporting our labor force must be our highest priority in the months and years to come." Now, I haven't heard anything about this bill in quite some time, but I was very excited to see these ideas being considered at this big federal level. In the meantime, I'm very grateful to see more and more groups like Landforce and their partners investing time in similar programs and priorities. Let's get back to Ilyssa and Sean.

Jamen Thurmond:
What is land stewardship and why is it important?

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
So we talk about land stewardship as the opportunity to really care for the earth and in caring for the earth we're actually caring for ourselves as well. The work that we do is stewarding a healthier environment and all evidence is that a healthier environment means healthier people. We either through the air that we breathe or the water that we drink or the places that we roam or the food that we eat, without a healthy environment, our bodies and our minds are negatively impacted. So when we're stewarding the land, we may be digging like you can hear the digging in the background. We may be be cutting vines, we may be doing all sorts of different kinds of things. We may be building steps, but what we're doing is making sure that the earth is better after we've been there than before we came.

Jamen Thurmond:
Why are green spaces so important?

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
For me personally, I need to be outside. My mental health depends on it. My ability to work, my ability to concentrate, my ability to focus are connected to the peace and tranquility and sense of purpose that I find outside. But I think green spaces serve a much bigger role than just the role that I identify for me and it goes from anywhere from the temperature remediation that it does for the environment and keeping things cooler, keeping temperatures cooler in cities to the water absorption it does, preventing flooding to the trees clearing some pollutants from the air and also just... We came onto this earth with an environment intact. It's our responsibility to ensure that that environment remains as intact as possible.

Jamen Thurmond:
Awesome.

Michael Pisano:
Absolutely excellent. Let this be a reminder to you to go outside today. Here's site supervisor Sean again.

Jamen Thurmond:
Why is it important to spend time in nature?

Sean Taylor:
The connection. I think the connection is the most important part and being away from the hustle and bustle that you're in every day. You need a wind downtime. I think everybody needs a wind downtime and being out in nature is something that I think is a lost connection with some more inner city folks who don't get out much. I grew up in this stuff. This is stuff I love. I just have a connection to the woods. I have no problem, not scared. Horror movies done nothing to me. They don't give me any issues. I just love the woods and I just think that people should get out here more often and just take advantage of it.

This is one of the reasons why folks like myself, as you see are out here putting trails up in different areas, so people could be more connected with it to allow themself to drift away from some of the hustles and bustles and allow the mind to clear out so that they could have a better thinking process, a better mind frame for their self. In today's world, you got your physical health, but you also have your mental health that you have to pay attention to as well.

Michael Pisano:
So again, go outside, please take care of yourselves, but also Sean's spot on comments about mental health bring us to another important point about labor economy and the climate. To put it gingerly, the hustle and bustle of life in the 2020s can be very challenging. It can be hard to square the hours people spend working when we're still dealing with a public health crisis with deep sociopolitical and class divisions and with climate change always looming on this near horizon.

Especially when work for so many people is unfulfilling or even downright dangerous, it's getting harder and harder to see the value of productivity for the sake of financial wealth. There's also the truth that productivity and economic growth are chafing against a hard boundary. On a planet with finite resources and finite ability to absorb emissions and pollutants, extraction based big industries will not be able to continue fracking gas and making petroleum based plastics indefinitely. The economic system that governs our working lives was developed when the prevailing story said that the Earth's resources are infinite. That is of course a myth, and so some economists are considering new ways of thinking about not only how an economy works, but also what the point of an economy is.

So while we're talking and thinking about a just transition, which aligns labor rights and human opportunities for growth and happiness, with the rights of non-human nature to exist in flourish, we can also consider realigning the goals of the economy with the goals of sustainable human and non-human life. I'm going to talk about two economics concepts, one now one towards the end of the episode. I am not an economist so I'm going to keep it very quick and I encourage you to look into these ecological economics concepts on your own. They are fascinating and to me, they suggest very hopeful and realistic visions of better futures.

First up, donut economics. Yes, donut like the dessert. This concept was developed by Oxford Economist Kate Raworth. In her words, "The goal of the donut is to meet the needs of all people within the means of the planet."

The name comes from a central visual, which again, I encourage you to look up because the visual will really help clarify this one for me, but I'll try to describe it. Imagine a donut. Sorry.

Imagine a donut. The outer edge of the donut represents an ecological ceiling or the planetary boundaries that we can't surpass if we want to keep the earth healthy and habitable. Think of this as things we need to keep in check, like climate change, ocean acidification, air and chemical pollution and biodiversity loss. Okay, now the inner edge of the donut surrounding the whole represents a social foundation. Inside the hole we see life's essentials that humans need for wellbeing and survival. That's stuff like water, food and energy, but also education, equity and peace. The donuts area itself represents a sweet spot which Raworth labels the safe and just space for humanity where the ecological ceiling isn't overshot while human essential needs are also being met. The donut is not exactly a new economic system, but rather an economic model that calls us to update the global economy to be in right relationship with people and planet. It suggests that prosperity today might be better measured by the metrics of meeting human needs within the boundaries of what the planet can handle rather than by the current metrics around GDP, observable money flow and growth.

In summation, Raworth says "Humanity's 21st century challenge is to meet the needs of all within the means of the planet. In other words, to ensure that no one falls short on life's essentials, while ensuring that collectively we do not overshoot our pressure on earth's life supporting systems on which we fundamentally depend. The donut of social and planetary boundaries is a new framing of that challenge and it acts as a compass for human progress this century."

Let's pause there and for a look at how this kind of thinking can be applied on the ground to local and regional concerns, and to connect it back to just transition, let's return to Ilyssa from Landforce.

David Kelly:
Can you talk about the regional problems that Landforce tries to address in its work?

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
Sure. I've spoken a lot so far about the people, but I haven't spoken about the environment. But in order to answer that question I will speak about both, so let's start with environment this time. From an environmental perspective, we have hundreds of years of mistreating the environment, whether it was through the initial coal mining that happened when settlers first came out, or the industries that were built polluting our air even before the coal or as the coal was initially mined, the denuding of the hillsides and the chopping trees down. There's a lot of work that needs to be done to restore the environment and to connect people to all of the beauty and environment that we have in western Pennsylvania and to ensure that our water is clean, that our hillsides are green and lush, that our hillsides are stable, that our air is clean, and all of the work that we do is geared towards a small piece of helping ameliorate all the environmental issues we have out here.

From a human perspective, I was just looking at the figures. Over 60% of Allegheny County's jail is made up of African Americans, but African Americans in the county is only like 12 or 13%. So there is this huge disconnect in how we treat people within our own communities and it's incumbent upon us to ensure that every neighborhood is treated equally, every school deserves the same resources, every child deserves the same resources, every family deserves the same resources and that we need to begin to address these really deep issues of inequity.

Jamen Thurmond:
So for someone who's never heard of it, can you define just transition and how it applies to Landforce's work?

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
Okay. I believe that just transition refers to the process of going from an extractive to a regenerative economy and making sure that the needs of everyone are addressed and especially those people who have been left out of previous economic boons so that we can make sure that when we get to the other side, it's not just about the people... It's not just about the haves who currently have, but it's about the have nots who will also have.

I think for Landforce, just transition is about moving from this place of inequity and injustice to a place where everybody has an equal shot. Where no matter what you look like, no matter what neighborhood you grew up in, no matter where you come from, you will have the opportunity to find a good job that can support your family, to provide your children with a high level of education so that they can move forward, so that you can buy a house, so that you can have a vehicle if you want to although as an environmental organization, walking's good. Public transport. We want to see a place where everybody in Pittsburgh can thrive and be valued for who they are as a human being.

David Kelly:
Awesome. We often hear the argument that a green economy will equal job loss for Pennsylvanians. Can you speak to why that is not the case?

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
Sure. So a green economy is really about building something that is best for all of us in the long run. The argument has often been made that, it should all be about the jobs, but that disregards the fact that there are a lot of green jobs, there are a lot of potential green jobs, and what we don't have now is the policy in place to support the green economy. But if we had policy that supported the green economy instead of the extractive economy, then the jobs would both precede and follow. So, it's perhaps incumbent upon us to make sure that it's good policy and it supports workers as they transition out of extractive economies. But it's a false narrative to assume that one is at the expense of the other.

Michael Pisano:
We've talked about it before and I'll talk about it again. We need to reconsider what kinds of human enterprise to support with subsidies and policy. The work that Landforce and its partners and similar orgs do all over the world is essentia, it's excellent, it's exciting, and it's time to invest in scaling these good ideas up. It also seems, perhaps, like time to invest in scaling back some of the destructive practices that our economy continues to support. That brings me to our second economics lesson of the day after which we'll close out the episode with some final thoughts from Ilyssa and Sean, so briefly let me tell you about de-growth economics.

De-growth has been around for a while, but we're going to focus on some current de-growth ideas. It's been gaining support steadily in recent years and the intergovernmental panel on climate change, that's the IPCC, their 2022 report recommended that governments consider de-growth as a path to slow climate breakdown and biodiversity loss. The crux is this, wealthy nations no longer need to pursue traditional economic growth, but rather need to scale down destructive sectors of the economy and refocus on human and planetary wellbeing. So, we're still talking about just transition policies that manage a phase out of things like dirty energy production and single-use plastics but de-growth also calls for improving public services, supporting green jobs in renewables, ecosystem restoration and low carbon sectors like healthcare. And beyond de-growth economists also suggest reducing working time via policies like a four-day work week or earlier retirement age.

Altogether de-growth seems to me like a smart call to slow down. It's a suggestion that our traditional priorities around work and prosperity have not evolved to meet the present. People are tired, and the planet is hurting. Investing in the old measures of economic growth is driving both a widening wealth gap and climate change, both of which are huge bummers, which brings us back to the importance of mental health, which I think we've all been considering a lot lately. In addition to climate friendly policy de-growth's focus on slowing the economy down would mean very real everyday benefits to us hustly, bustly humans, more time to pursue health and happiness and a healthier planet to pursue it on.

Just a quick note, I lifted pretty much all that de-growth info from a December 2022 article in the Journal of Nature. It's called De-Growth Can Work and here's How Science Can Help. It's free on the internet. It's a great and short read, so please go check it out. Now back to Ilyssa.

Jamen Thurmond:
How do climate and environmental health currently intersect with the lives of people who you work with, particularly in any way that they compound other existing problems?

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
I think the example that's most meaningful to me, and maybe because we spend a lot of time working in green infrastructure, which is an attempt to slow the water down as it enters our sewage systems and that both prevent some... It'll prevent some flooding and it cleans the water as well before it hits the river.

I think the example that's strongest for me is that in some of our neighborhoods where because of poverty and because of lack of good jobs, there's been a lot of deferred maintenance on houses, so there could be cracked foundations or other issues with a house that when it floods the water seeps into those houses. There could then be a lot of issues with mold and they found that in some of those neighborhoods, in a lot of those places, the rate of childhood asthma is really high. Not only are there often less trees in those neighborhoods, which means that there's often higher pollutants and there's often more industries in those neighborhoods as well. Even in their homes, kids can't get away from the pollutants that cause asthma because of environmental conditions like flooding.

Jamen Thurmond:
As our climate changes, it's predicted that Pennsylvania will become warmer, wetter and experience more extreme weather. Unchecked, how would those outcomes impact life in your community and this part of the state?

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
Maybe it's because I worked on Mount Washington for a long time, but every time I think about climate change and weather patterns here, I think most immediately about landslides and the increasing frequency of our hillsides moving. Many of us live either on hillsides or under hillsides or on top of hillsides and this is not just an infrastructure catastrophe waiting to happen, but it's a human catastrophe waiting to happen. So it is important for us amongst lots and lots of impacts of climate change that we will continue to feel. I think we need to be really mindful of where we build, how we build, and how we shore up the actual infrastructure we currently have.

Jamen Thurmond:
Great answer.

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
Thank you.

Jamen Thurmond:
Based on the International Climate Clock Countdown, we have six years left to take decisive action. What do you hope to see accomplished in your community and our region between now and 2027?

Ilyssa Manspeizer:
I would love to see a larger investment in green jobs and in transitioning people from programs like ours into actual green jobs as they develop. This is going to require... It's going to require policy as well as funding, so for us at Landforce, we really hope that there is good policy and we're working towards having good policy that will impact jobs and make sure that that transition is just so that the people who are being most affected by issues of climate change and poverty will have the opportunities to work in jobs like these where they're having a hand in improving and restoring the environment and making sure that our children can live in a healthy and green place as well.

Jamen Thurmond:
What personally gives you hope for the future of life on our planet?

Sean Taylor:
Land stewardship, more people like myself getting involved in what we're doing. I think that gives us more hope of a better future as far as our climate. We need more people that are more conscious of what's going on and the changes that we as human beings are making to the earth and the place that we live in. And we only have one, we only have one earth. We got to take care of you. And we know things like the loss of trees through lumber and deforestation and things like that is causing, actually help it to raise the temperature of the earth. But partnerships will play. People like Tree Pittsburgh and things like that, that we work with is just more of a boost towards helping that, helping to patch up those things that we've done wrong. And if I could just help out to educate more people about it, then so be it. I have no problem with it. It's to help us all.

Jamen Thurmond:
So that moves into our last question, which is if someone wanted to get into the type of work that you do, where would you advise them to start?

Sean Taylor:
Start at Landforce. Just start at Landforce. There's quite a few organizations out here that we work with for the Grounded, Tree Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, Allegheny Land Trust. These are people that we partnered with and we work with in. Any of these organizations are all going in the same direction, so if you want to get involved with any of these things, if you're listening and you're hearing what I'm saying, just any of those organizations you can get involved with. They do whole voluntary events so if you want more education, what not, they're willing to provide that during those voluntary events. But if that's something you want to get into, but starting with us. Start with Landforce. Give us a call and we'll help you out.

Michael Pisano:
Special thanks to Landforce's Ilyssa Manspeizer and Sean Taylor for chatting with us today about employment, empowerment, and environment. You can learn more about their excellent work at landforcepgh.org.

Thanks also to David Kelly and Jamen Thurmond for the reporting on today's episode. They'll be back soon with more stories from the Hazelwood Greenway.

Thank yous are also in order for g Nelson, Sloan McRae, Bonnie McGill and Nicole Heller at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The music in today's episode was made by two of my most talented friends, Mark Mangini and Amos Levy. They also made the music for We Are Nature's Companion video series, which is linked to in the show notes.

Until next time, here's just a few wise words to empower the new year ahead.

There's no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There's no magic bullet. Instead, there are thousands of answers at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.

That was Octavia Butler from her essay "A Few Rules For Predicting The Future." I've been and hope to remain your host, Michael Pisano.

Thanks for listening.