Caring About a Bug.
Andy Johnston on Why Curiosity Might Be the First Step Towards Environmentalism.

ISSUE 7 / ENVIRONMENT

The world has never been better measured, monitored, and understood scientifically. We have not only the best models with which to imagine our possible futures, but the most comprehensive repository of historical data to measure how our planet has changed. Atmospheric carbon, oceanic acidity, species richness, freshwater quality—nearly every dimension of Earth’s systems can all be plotted and mapped in such a way that consensus on our planet’s precarity has become irrefutable. But something is missing.

Modern environmental education, particularly the sciences—though also to an extent the humanities—in the tertiary system, tends to teach us about nature. It is precisely because of these disciplines that we can chart global environmental change so convincingly and expose the reality of ecological overshoot. They have given us the language to describe the crises.

Yet, in this understanding of the environment as a measurable set of variables, in the pursuit to track systems collapse with as much accuracy as possible, in the rush to write international accords governing our carbon, we have lost sight of a very innate part of ourselves: our place in the living world itself.

A true ecological education teaches us where we are within nature, not simply what nature is.

Perhaps that is the dissonance at the heart of contemporary environmentalism. We have become extraordinarily good at measuring ecological decline, yet far less certain about how to cultivate the relationships, affections, and responsibilities that might inspire us to respond to it. Knowledge alone does not necessarily become care.

So how do we learn to love the world around us? After three years of studying environmental policy and finding more problems than solutions, and two years of editing this journal of rainbows and butterflies, I embarked on a journey to answer that question. 

Andy Johnston is a science communicator and environmental educator with a background in zoology and wildlife management. He runs an educational page: @andyjohnston.wildlife

From time to time, my algorithm breaks away from the pessimism and environmental doomerism that Meta has prescribed me and passes along something more cheerful. Andy Johnston, the “Creature Teacher”, has become a familiar face on social media for his entertaining and informative videos which explore some of Aotearoa’s most interesting organisms. 

With unwavering optimism and curiosity, his bite-sized videos about native, and often endangered, species create a deeper connection between the viewer’s existing perception of their local environment and the species that they might not have known inhabit it.

We caught up to talk about what he thinks is important about his work and what it means to be an environmental educator during a time humanity faces its biggest threats:

AJ: I’m a recovering theatre kid, so my love and passion for nature and for educating and performing sort of came together with this sci-com [science communication] connection. 

JDL: What do you want people to walk away with when they watch your videos? 

AJ: Hopefully just a better connection with how great and unique New Zealand and our taonga species are. We all, sort of, know a bit about our species but you can always get more nitty-gritty. Even if it’s just the species in your garden or the park down the the road.

JDL: Working in the most competitive form of media, you need to really quickly garner someone’s attention. What makes someone want to stop scrolling to hear about, and hopefully care about, a species they’ve never heard of? 

AJ: Yeah, it’s tough. I’m sure you’re aware of terms like the attention market. When people are scrolling on TikTok or Instagram, they’re not there to learn about a bug. They’re probably there to waste away their time.  

Andy leverages people’s mindless scrolling so that when they eventually disconnect from their device, they’ve hopefully learnt something.

Putting aside the disturbing psychological implications in terms of our attention spans, there is something powerful in this idea of informal everyday environmentalism. It serves to empower a broader group of people who might not otherwise feel connected to the field of Earth studies or ecology. While the ins and outs of algorithmic social media remain a mystery to us (or at least me), a one-minute video of a threatened insect could, with the right key words, reach someone’s feed who otherwise has no exposure to environmental thought. A factoid on the humble wētā could be the difference between one’s ignorance to the environment and actively standing up as kaitiaki.

The “rules” of content creation, however, have begun to bore Andy. He says he continues to make longer and longer videos, exploring his topics in more detail and going beyond the attention-grabbing facts.

But even concepts of low-dose everyday ecology exist as highly exposed elements of our socio-political systems. While Andy is acutely aware of this, he commits to keeping his content about nurturing curiosity in our wildlife. By positive association, he argues, people will connect the unique species in their backyard with the legislative war against the natural world, for example.

This, of course, is only a small part of the picture, as any political ecologist will tell you:

JDL: It’s such a big part of who we think we are, as New Zealanders, priding ourselves on our environment. Do you think we care about nature as much as we say we do?

AJ: While the actions of the Coalition Government may not reflect that, I think it is part of our identity, but I think it’s more that we care about the protection of it, rather than the fact we already have it. We have a beautiful country but it’s certainly not perfect as far as our relationship with nature. 

JDL: Do you need to love and appreciate nature in order to advocate for it?

AJ: No, I don’t think so. Well, I don’t know. I think like a lot of other things on the political spectrum, it doesn’t really feel like it should be a political issue. Nature is just our life, it’s our innate connection to the world. How can you support or not support our ability to breath clean air and drink clean water? 

JDL:  Obviously at the moment there’s the Conversation Amendment Bill which has sparked public outrage; loosening regulation to enable the potential sale of up to 60% of the conservation estate. And it’s not just that, you mentioned earlier Fast track Approvals in the Denniston—

AJ: —the Fisheries Amendment Act.

JDL: Exactly. Do you think that the public response to the last two or three years of environmental policy has exposed something deeper? Has the way we collectively value nature shifted as we’ve watched it get attacked? 

AJ: Yeah, quite possibly. These reforms that are happening at the moment are very unusual. And I think any dramatic shift you’re going to get people coming out of the woodwork, people that might have always enjoyed nature but now see it threatened come out to support it. I think maybe it’s not a shift in our ideals but more just a new avenue to express them. 

JDL: Are there truths about the future of the environment that educators like yourself are reluctant to share on account of how depressing they are?

AJ: Ah, well, I have anxiety about climate change and the direction of our planet, and about late-stage capitalism accelerating all of these problems. These would be the things people are reluctant to talk about but I think they’ve become mainstream in the conversation. 

JDL: Yeah, I think environmentalism has been, and often still is, politically neutral. As you say, though, concepts of our political economy have become more mainstream in our understanding of environmental change. Where do you think the place for politics is in the environmental education space? 

AJ: If you think about the science communicators we all grew up on, like David Attenborough, Dr Jane Goodall, Steve Irwin, they were all like, “here’s all the wonder and beauty and fantastic things about nature,” while you may have also had environmental activists in their spaces. But, now, look at Attenborough in his later years, his latest “Oceans” documentary was very political. I think there’s just less of a binary. Politics and the environment are coming together more naturally.

The environment has always been political. Conservation laws, mining permits, freshwater regulation, agricultural subsidies—these have never been neutral decisions. What has changed is that environmental educators are increasingly expected to acknowledge those realities. To speak honestly about biodiversity without mentioning the systems driving its decline begins to feel like telling only half the story.

This brings me back to the broader failings of education itself. Modern education has become increasingly preoccupied with producing economically useful graduates. Environmental education has not escaped this logic. We become experts at modelling climate systems and quantifying biodiversity loss, go on to consult for the firms perpetuating this damage, yet spend comparatively very little time asking what kind of relationship we ought to have with the natural world in the first place.

When public attention is fragmented by algorithms optimised for engagement rather than understanding, perhaps nurturing ecological consciousness does begin with something as simple as convincing someone to spend sixty seconds thinking about a giant wētā.

JDL: Some quick-fire questions to see us out. What gives you hope?

AJ: In part what we talked about earlier, when these big issues arise, so many people stand up to voice their opinion—that has to give you a lot of hope. I’m a naturally optimistic guy, I think people want to support the planet they live on, generally speaking. So I think I’m naturally just hopeful about humanity, it might be cliché but I have to believe that. 

My nieces send me photos of worms that they find, that gives me hope, too.

JDL: Oh, awesome. Not to drag the mood back down, the flip side of that, obviously, what worries you the most?

AJ: Late-stage capitalism and short-term thinking. A lot of these environments take millions of years to get to where they are and they can get destroyed in a weekend for immediate gain. A lack of that sort of perspective is probably the scariest thing. 

JDL: What’s one thing you wished more people knew about biodiversity and wildlife? 

AJ: I’d like more people to know that our species are so incredibly weird and different and unique. We have frogs that don’t croak and don’t lay tadpoles, fungus gnats that don’t eat fungus, and birds that don’t fly. It’s just this pocket of alien uniqueness. And maybe we take it for granted because it’s part of our everyday ethos, but they’re really weird and they’re cool and I think we should really protect them and love them.

Giant wētā—the heaviest insect on the planet. How cool is that?

On a wider scale, you know, it’s all one big loop, our connection to the environment and who we are as humans. It’s not luck that we can breathe the air and drink the water here—Earth’s systems is the most amazing puzzle that fits so perfectly together and now we’re doing things to unbalance that. But what we’ve learnt in more recent years is that those things that we’ve unbalanced they can come back a lot quicker than we thought.