How We Got Here - Ep 10

Rachel: Hi everyone. I'm Dr. Rachel Lupien.

Steph: And I’m Dr. Stephanie Spera.

Rachel: Our climate is in crisis and we all want to help, but we might not know how.

Steph: We're talking to people who have figured out how to use their talents to combat climate change and the hopes that their journey might inspire your own.

Rachel: This is how we got here: because the earth needs professional help.

INTRO

Steph: Hey, Rachel, how are you?

Rachel: I'm I'm doing great. How are you doing?

Steph: As great as one could be in these trying times. As great as my Twitter doom scrolling will allow.

Rachel: Let's get into it. How has it gone? Do you have a good, do you have a bad?

Steph: I have a good, I definitely have a good. My students are presenting posters at AAG um, this week, which is very exciting. But one student in particular.

Rachel: Do you want to give them a shout out?

Steph: Delaney?

Rachel: Do they listen?

Steph: I don't, I don't, I don't ask my students to listen.

So Delaney though. She's um, she's her grandparents really wanted to see her present her poster and they were so grumpy.

AAG is expensive and they're not going to register to see her present her poster.

Rachel: Wait, wait, wait. Sorry. Is, was AAG virtual.

Steph: It was all virtual. Oh, it was all just like, oh, we'll zoom in. And Delaney was like, well you have to register. And they're like, well, we're not, it was cost-prohibitive fee.

Rachel: I did sneak my mother into. Uh, the GSA that was in Baltimore, but that was in person. I was, I just kind of asked politely and they printed her a badge.

Steph: AAG did not do the same thing for Delaney. She was like, okay, I'm just gonna zoom them and talk them through it.

But their computer screen is so small. So she's like giving her a little spiel. They're like, we can't see the screen so small. They went to FedEx and printed her poster out. And she just sends this picture of her grandfather looking at this like four by six, six by four, whatever, a poster, they were writing down questions to ask her when she goes home over spring break, I literally started crying.

Rachel: If everyone cared about our research, as much as our grandparents cared

Steph: Truly, she sent those and I was like, I'm literally crying.

Rachel: That's so sweet. Also congrats on having so many students go. That's very cool.

Steph: Um, that's my good, I don't bad is just work is bad right now where like the week before spring break and the morale with class with the students and the faculty is, is just, I mean, like being it's it's, uh, it's a slog.

That's all. It's just

Rachel: still winter.

Steph: Winter plus, right? Yeah, let's do good, bad.

Rachel: Okay. Mine are related. So I have talked on this podcast many weeks, many weeks. My bad is about.

Steph: The paper that's been in like six journals.

Rachel: It came out this week. It was published.

Steph: Congratulations.

Rachel: I know you published six journals, six times the charm.

Steph: They say that is the very common phrase.

Rachel: That's that's a common phrase in academic publishing sometimes, um, people that came out. Another good part of that. Like my friend sent me, she's a professor at Northland College - she sent me a screenshot of one of her slides that she was using my paper to teach, which was super exciting.

I mean, honestly, the paper's probably the best one I've ever written because so many freaking people have read it and torn it apart that it just. Has been distilled into greatness.

Speaking of that, my bad transitioning, speaking of that, you know, sometimes you get emails after you publish a paper. People are like, wow, can you send me the PDF? I'd love to read it and stuff like that. Some people might be like, Hmm, you thought about this differently than me.

Let's talk about it. Great constructive criticism.

Steph: I'm afraid for where this is going.

Rachel: Oh, my heart's pounding. I received an email that was just extremely rude and condescending and missed the point and missed. A lot of what was in the paper. And they were mostly mad that I didn't cite them.

Steph: There it is.

Rachel: Um, but it was really condescending.

Um, it reminded me that Google scholar exists and that I should set up alerts so that I know when they publish a paper, I mean, it was, it was bad.

Steph: That's what the email said. You're like, this is my name. Create a Google news alert.

Rachel: Yeah, it was. It, it was like as though I was so out of touch with the current literature, that that's why I didn't, it was extremely rude, their paper.

Just side note, he mis-cited my paper. So just anyway, I just want to bring it up because these things do happen and it's, you know, this happened a couple of days ago and I'm still thinking about it constantly. It is still taking up space in my brain and it is extremely frustrating. And I'm happy to get it out here.

Yeah. So that really, that really sucked. And it takes, it took away from my couple days they sent it on us Sunday.

You know, I'm happy to know, talk about the differences in our paper. I'm so happy to do that, but that is not-

Steph: Was that email was like, why didn't you send me a thousand times? I'm the preeminent scholar. And to that person, 18 other people read that paper- no one of them said-.

Rachel: Well, I, yeah, he, I think he might've. I think he may have implied that he was one of those reviewers, which was, oh yeah. He also brought up the fact that it had been rejected so many times it was really, it was really rude.

Um, it was like, and I, and I shared that on Twitter. That it was rejected so many times again, because transparency and to make people feel like that happens to everyone, you know, we, yeah, it does. And it, it was just a kick in the stomach.

Steph: Like use your tweet against you. I'm going to say: fuck that guy.

Rachel: Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'll sleep a little better tonight anyway.

Steph: I'm just going to say my. Um, my, my mother-in-law's in town and she's Midwestern, she asked me point blank: "is Theodore going to say dick or fuck first?'

But fuck that guy.

Rachel: He's a real dick.

Steph: So I'm super stoked to introduce our guest Vijay. He has a joint doctorate in environment and resources and epidemiology from U W Madison. And he's a climate and health scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Coucil, which is the NRDC. At the NRDC he works with other scientists, policy experts, and lawyers to help advance climate and health protections that can benefit people now while also safeguarding a livable future for all. He specifically focuses on demonstrating the significant health cost of climate change and defending the science that underpins the clean air act before he was at the end. He was at the EPA. He speaks Spanish. He speaks Hindi. He's published several papers on the health impacts of climate change, triggered air pollution and extreme heat in the U S in India and I'm so, so, so excited to chat with him today. Welcome Vijay!

INTERVIEW

Vijay thank you so much for taking the time to be with us tonight. Our first question for you. What do you do? What's your job title?

Vijay: Yeah. Um, cool. No, thanks for the invite.

Um, yeah, I'm Vijay Limaye. My title is a climate and health scientist and I work at the NRDC the natural resources, defense council. So that's kind of my official title. Um, and I think it captures the gist of what I, what I do connecting the dots between climate change and health.

Rachel: Awesome. So what do you actually do?

Vijay: Yeah, so, um, you know, I do kind of a lot of work to talk about the climate crisis as a public health emergency. You know, for the longest time, I think we've been taught that the climate problem is all about glaciers melting and polar bears and distress, which is totally true. But it's very much also about really real threats to human health here and now. So when you hear about wildfires and floods, heat waves, air pollution, infectious disease, sea level rise, all those things, um, are really important because they threatened humans, right? They threatened our families, our parents, our grandparents, our teachers, people, we love all that we care about.

And so, um, you know, while historically the climate problem really hasn't been kind of framed as a public health issue. That's really kind of how I approach it. So a lot of my work is about kind of unpacking the climate risks as they relate to human wellbeing. Um, doing research on all of that, but doing a lot of communication and kind of advocacy to help protect people from this problem.

Steph: Cool. I might, this might be my new job, Rachel. This is podcast is also a thing away for me to get out of academia.

Rachel: We're trying to find stuff we're interviewing people, interviewing their jobs yet.

Steph: So what do you actually actually do on a, on a day-to-day basis? What does that look like?

Vijay: Yeah. I love where I work kind of at the intersection of science, communication and policy. So I get to do a lot of different things. Um, my days can be kind of unpredictable, generally I'm talking, um, usually every, every week or so I'm talking to at least a reporter or two to try to just connect them.

Between climate and weather disasters that are happening all around us and trying to really center the human experience, um, to talk about people and why people should care about the climate problem. Um, I'm also doing quite a bit of research on the climate problem, um, in collaboration with other people.

You know, one thing I kind of experienced when I was a graduate student was kind of a really isolated experience of writing a lot on my own, you know, working on my dissertation long nights at the office and all that. And I really love the work that I get to do now because it's a lot of it's collaborative.

Um, the climate problem is so complicated when you try to connect, um, all of these issues to human health. And so I really kind of rely on a lot of colleagues to help, um, conduct research on the problem, both in the U S I do a lot of work internationally, like in India, too. Um, so I'm doing a lot of, a lot of calls these days talking to research collaborators and figuring out how to, how to deal with those options.

Um, you know, sometimes I'm looking at big spreadsheets and trying to figure out how to connect, you know, climate models, to temperature, projections, to energy issues, to air pollution and how there's a lot of, kind of, um, puzzle pieces to fit together on that front. And so a lot of my work is about translation, like making data work together, um, figuring out what lessons from India we might apply here in terms of adaptation to climate problems like extreme.

Um, I see a lot of what I do, actually. It was kind of like translating the climate issue into health and different ways. Um, and so my days are pretty varied, but they generally involve a lot of collaboration with a lot of scientists and lawyers at NRDC. We do a lot of advocacy, um, public policy for the environment and public health.

I used to work at the Environmental Protection Agency, so I kind of know a lot about how parts of that agency work. And right now I have been doing just in the past few weeks, a lot of, um, public commenting on the EPA plans under this president, we've got kind of a lot of opportunity, but a limited window of time to move the ball forward.

So it's a whole mix. My days are kind of unpredictable, but that's kind of what keeps it exciting.

Steph: What I find really interesting too, your doctorate has nothing to do with communication right. In any way, but you, and we'll, we'll probably discover this, but it sounds like you have to do a lot of communicating in your job.

And sometimes scientists aren't well known for their. Ability to communicate difficult topics.

Vijay: Yeah, totally. You know, I think, um, That's totally the case, obviously that a lot of scientists, you know, frankly, haven't been trained in communicating effectively. When I was a student, I certainly went to like a limitless number of awful talks, right? Like seminars where someone's like up there, actively speaking a foreign language and they just kind of lost and all the acronyms and the details and unable to really, um, make their work compelling.

Right. And that was really frustrating for me as a student. And I like kind of vowed sitting through those like really boring seminars to not be like that, right. To like try as hard as I could to make sure that people understand, um, why I cared about, about an issue. Right. And, um, you know, so I think things are slowly improving in terms of like, you know, graduate students, I think more and more interested in presenting their work to public audiences and making the case that, you know, what they're up to is as compelling stuff.

Um, and I definitely see like a huge kind of opportunity for. Technical experts who are interested in engaging with the public to do so in really creative ways. And I think part of the reason that we're in this mess is because we've kind of assumed that scientists can handle science communication and figure it out.

And the truth is that, you know, science communication is its own field, its own science, right. I have a ton to learn, but I think we can all just, you know, try things out because certainly what we've been doing for years and years has not led us to the place that we need to be on.

Steph: Yeah. And I, and jumping out, I also just think scientists were like taught to be apolitical too, which is like a really. Interesting. I think that plus the lack of training, like you were saying, Vijay really did not do us any favors when we're talking about climate change in these big problems in assessing risk.

And I think of things like having to explain to my students what a hundred year flood is, right. And how that's like a crazy, it's like, no, it's just probability. No, you could have 200 year floods in a year. Like, you know what I mean? Like this weird, all of these bonkers ways scientists decided to do things.

And I think that doesn't do us any favor. So I think what you're doing is really important. Yeah.

Vijay: Thanks. Yeah. You know, I think there's kind of this, um, maybe unwritten rule amongst the. Like the scientific community that if you're, um, talking in technical terms that you're smart. Right. And that it's kind of a shield from being able to actually converse with real people and bring people into the cause.

Right. We know right now that not enough people, especially in the U S talking about the climate problem. And I think part of that is that we as scientists have really put up walls and kind of awarded, you know, special stars and badges for people who are allowed to talk about the climate problem when the reality is that we're all supposed to be thinking about it, right.

It's going to affect, it's already affecting all of us. It's kind of like the defining issue. Right. So, um, yeah, I think more and more, I'm just trying to make the case that like, we can all see ourselves in this issue and there are clear, like, Villains to implicate. It's a fascinating story and it's one that we can all kind of engage in in our own way, you know?

Rachel: I have noticed that you're, you're calling it the climate problem, and we typically have been calling it the climate crisis. And I'm wondering if that is bad, if that is, if that is maybe encouraging some, some doomers.

Vijay: Yeah. You know, I think I kind of like bounce around with the language a little bit. Um, I do think that sometimes I get kind of like stuck on, on the climate crisis. Um, framing. I actually think that's probably like the truest way to talk about it. I do think, um, that maybe it's also, there's a little bit of fatigue with like, This is like the defining crisis of many decades to come.

And so, you know, it doesn't take away from the gravity of the problem, but we also, um, have solutions to it. I think a, a crisis sometimes leaves people feeling helpless and I try to just kind of mix it up too, honestly. But, yeah, it's, it's, it's an emergency, frankly, when it comes to public health. Um, we right now are seeing tens of thousands of Americans sent to emergency rooms and hospitals each year due to health problems.

You know, illnesses, injuries, even deaths caused by all these really scary threats. And so, you know, from a health perspective is certainly a crisis. Um, and it's, you know, not the only one out there, but it's one that's gonna make a lot of our existing health challenges, even harder to.

Steph: Well, yeah, I've, climate change, like a threat multiplier.

Right? So anything that you're having is so much is the biggest. This is a real question I have that I don't know. The answer to that I've asked you, um, is the biggest health problem related to climate change? Is it heat related? Um, is it, does it matter where you are like, obviously that can be heat related if you're in Maine, but maybe it is because they don't have AC in rural populations actually.

Vijay: Yeah, that's, that's a great question. You know, kind of the, the scary thing that I'll just tell you as a health researcher working on the issues that we really don't know.

 Extreme heat is extremely dangerous for people. It's kind of thought of as an inconvenience, like, oh, I need to turn on the AC or, oh, maybe I, you know, um, need to modify my day around a really hot, you know, um, temperature forecast. But the truth is that extreme hate can be deadly.

All sorts of these problems can be deadly. You know, if you think about wildfire smoke and the American west, that's spreading pretty much across the country every summer, um, you know, Hi, precipitation events, flooding. Um, all of these issues are implicated and then like a long, long list of pretty grim health problems.

We're talking about everything from, you know, preterm birth and pregnancy complications to all sorts of dangerous to mental health. Um, so, you know, I would say that we know. The climate crisis is going to make, um, existing health disparities, even wider. We know that, you know, communities of color, low income communities, people who lack access to affordable health insurance are all being hit hard.

And my research shows that in terms of the kind of expense of those problems, like the medical bills for hospitalizations and ER visits, those are disproportionately kind of falling on Medicare and Medicaid patients that people least able to pay.

Steph: I live in Richmond, Virginia, and because the urban heat island effect, uh, downtown Richmond, the poor neighborhoods are 16 degrees warmer than. More affluent neighborhoods and it, you can trace it all back to like redlining practices, right. And like structural racism, which is insane.

And it's, so I remember a few years ago, a Senator from Arizona was like, just get an, a seat. And I'm like, what a privileged asshole actually. Right? Because like, not everyone has an AC. People have to walk to work. There are cooling centers there aren't trees for shade where everybody lives and the same is true about people have to leave for floods and people have to work outside for wildfires are often migrant workers.

Um, yeah, we just have gone down a really dark

Rachel: let's switch it up.

Vijay: You know, I think, well, you've got to say that like, I'm that friend, you know, um, like coming to grips with the scale of the, of the problem I think is, is crucial. Um, just in terms of like waking our leaders up to the need for action, especially in adaptation now, you know, as much as the conversation really is crucial in terms of like, you know, shifting us away from deadly fossil fuels, we also need a whole lot more investment and understanding of how to prepare communities for, um, even worse harms in years to come.

So, um, yeah, it can be like kind of a grim thing but there's all sorts of ways that we could be improving population health right now, by being smarter about how we, how we design our cities, how we shape, you know, energy subsidies, um, how we direct federal aid, there's all sorts of work to do.

We just need, you know, kind of a coordinated effort and people will wake up to the, the scale of the issue with.

Steph: What I was going to say is what I think is so important about the work that you specifically do is you try and put dollar signs on all of these things, because it seems like most politicians only work in dollar signs.

So you're like, Hey, listen, if we don't address this it's Medicaid and Medicare. That's really expensive. Why don't we just solve climate change? Right. And then you have your, and then I won't complain about Joe Manchin in West Virginia and flooding. And so Rachel, now your point.

Rachel: I don't remember what I was gonna say, but that's okay.

Let's bring it back and talk a bit about what got you. Inspired and interested in working towards combating the climate problem in like in the first.

Vijay: Yeah. Um, I'd say kind of two different, um, paths like led me here at first was just like, traveling to India. My dad's from India. He came to the U S like 50 years to, you know, um, go to graduate school. And so I hadn't gone to India until like I was in, uh, actually what I was an undergrad. And I was like kind of the first time that I was exposed, um, and kind of opened my eyes to huge disparities in pollution around the world. Like I just vividly remember being at the Taj Mahal and like barely being able to see, see the thing.

And like kind of choking on, on the air pollution that especially around this time of year, which is when we went. Air pollution, that part of the country is typically pretty bad. Um, do, do you know, kind of crop burning that's happening and, um, you know, atmospheric kind of inversion layer, that's trapping pollution.

There's a whole lot of kind of science behind it, but to me it was just like very convinced circle to understand what people were breathing in day after day. Um, and so it was that kind of experience that got me kind of just interested in, um, environment and health and those connections, but also frankly, just like a lot of trial and error.

I knew that as a student, I was really interested in both, um, science as well as language. Um, I really love studying foreign languages. Um, and I, you know, Kind of interested in ways to merge those interests? I never did too well in like my kinda, um, walky science classes as an undergrad. It just really felt like I didn't, you know love organic chemistry and I wasn't great at physics, but I, I loved statistics.

Steph: Can we step back, even farther?

Like in high school, were you like a math and science? Do you have a first job where you like and what was your first job? Did you have a uniform?

Vijay: First job was, um, I was at grocery clerk. I actually like a small little mom and pop operation in Madison, Wisconsin. Um, yeah, it was, it was cool. Cause I, you know, like my friends would come in after school and we'd hang out. I got like a good lesson in, you know, customer relations and like talking to strangers and like doing some mental math and, um, yeah, it was a really good. . Um, and so that was kinda my first retail experience.

Steph: That's awesome. Did you stay in retail or like once I get to college, I'm done with groceries.

Vijay: I have so much respect for people and those professionals. Um, and you know, just because of like, you know, these days, especially like just dealing with the public is a huge challenge, but also, you know, it's really, it's really physically strenuous work.

Yeah. You mentioned like occupational health and climate. Um, the heat problem is one that we're paying a lot of attention to these days. Cause it's, you know, it's, it's definitely farm workers and others that have to work outside, but these days it's also, you know, people working in fulfillment warehouses as people in schools, you know, teachers needing to, um, you know, um, Do their work in buildings that have not been, um, you know, upgraded in so long.

Right. And in parts of the country that really haven't had to reckon with this type of, you know, these types of temperatures. Um, well, it's really when

Steph: I was in, I used to live in New Hampshire and we didn't have air conditioning because for what, the two days a year, and in the three last years we lived there we bought two window units. None of the older houses there are set up for that , none of the schools there are set up for that because you're not in school during the summer. Right. But what all of a sudden, September super hot June super hot it's it's unbearable.

But then were you, uh, or math and science kid in high school?

Vijay: Um, I did always, um, I always liked math and I'm really grateful for like the teachers that made learning math, um, like less scary, I think, um, you know, And what I gathered, you know, there's a lot of, kind of fear around, um, math education and there's kind of a, um, uh, you know, worry about like kind of taking risks.

And I think we don't teach math in the way. That's fun. We don't teach math in the way that we teach foreign language, even though it's basically a foreign language, you know? Um, it's a different way of kind of thinking about the world and connecting, um, um, How we understand and like go through the world.

Um, so I'm really grateful that I had teachers who like really encouraged me to, um, you know, like try things out and learn and fail and try again. And I feel like that really, um, allowed me to push. You know, some of the, like kind of cultural things around math education, just in terms of like, you know, people who are good at math or nerds or people who are good at math, can't do other things.

Right. Um, yeah, it was like, uh, I think that was something I always like kind of gravitated towards and that, but also just really like a love of reading. Um, Reading writing, like communicating. And I feel like I've found a sweet spot where I can do both things. And like, you know, even just like you talked about like a statistics class, being able to like explain what a statistic, you know, means, or like contextualize it or unpack it.

Um, I think can be really useful insight. I actually do like, quite a bit of that in terms of like talking to EPA about like where clean air standards should be set. It's all about like, okay, what did this epidemiology study say?

Rachel: . Did you know what you were going to major in, in college?

Vijay: Um, you know what I, I didn't, I think pretty early on, I realized some of the like kind of traditional paths didn't resonate with me. You know, I was looking at like, a big chemistry program. They're like Nobel prize, winning chemistry, people there, and like, you know, really impressive physics department.

And I was like, oh, you know, I like science, but I kind of hate science too. You know, like, um, the science that I saw happening. Um, and so. I stumbled upon environmental science, which is something that I didn't study really until that I was always interested in kind of earth science and stuff, but never really thought of it as a career.

Steph: Can I ask you accidentally stumbled into environmental science? Did you like, were like, oh, that's a fun class or,

Vijay: yeah, I was actually, um, like trying, I was kind of, you know, uh, at that point we were all kind of looking at like, um, like a directory of what all the majors were. Right. And you got to figure out what you're going to do. And I was, you know, cook up like my, my recipe for like four, four years or whatever. And I was looking at all the classes and I was like, oh, this is cool. I can do like a little chemistry, um, a little statistics. Um, I can still fit in my foreign language study because I'm interested in doing international work someday.

Um, and it just felt enough of a mix to like be interested and, and the way to, you know, at that point I was starting to learn more about the climate problem. Um, Inconvenient Truth had just come out and I was living in California and just like understanding like natural hazards out there, earthquakes and fires and the ocean.

And so it was really kind of like that, um, opportunity to merge a bunch of my interests in like, I didn't really have to like pick, right. I could do, um, you know, work on a career and, and in a way that would like keep me interested. And I got exposure to all sorts of like, you know, um, natural science through the major and realized that actually I wanted to work on human problems.

Steph: , was there an experience that you were like, or just like learning through these things? You're like, oh, this is cool, but what's more important is how this affects people. And you just found that through classes.

Vijay: Yeah, it was classes. It was actually a lot, like, I, I did a lot of, kind of like lab, lab work and field work, and honestly it all kind of sucked for me, like working on, um, a water quality monitoring product. I want if I don't want to say it all sucks. .

Rachel: It's funny because like, we're, I mean, at least I am like around geologists all day and it's like a group of people that had the exact opposite.

Vijay: Yeah. I think, you know, just feeling like, um, it wasn't my jam. Like I didn't feel like I was satisfied being out with like a pH monitor. I didn't feel fulfilled looking at, I was looking at like, Um, I was studying, um, greenhouse gas emissions from soils, which is like really interesting and important actually, but I was all alone, like in a field in Northern California all day, you know, it just felt really isolating.

And I didn't feel like, um, what I was doing really, you know, was, was challenging me in the right way, you know, like it was technically challenging maybe, but not like invigorating. Um, and so I kinda just learned to trust my gut and to keep trying out different things until I find. I stumbled upon what I'm doing now, which I love.

And it's just like, it's been a very kind of nonlinear path for me, but one that's, um, you know, I feel like each experience I've gained something from, even if it's been like, not the greatest experience when I'm in it.

Steph: So, in college you were like, definitely not chem, definitely not physics. Screw you Nobel prize winning department.

Also very stressful. I wouldn't wanna be in that department too many Type As a were like environmental science. Let's do it. But through college you're like, after all these experiences, you're like, I liked the environmental but also I needed to apply to people so after college, did you have a job where you, where you in environmental science immediately?

Or did you have a job where you were like, oh, I'm going to test out this like health environment or did you go straight into, I don't think you went through. PhD,

Vijay: No, I didn't. Um, it was my last semester at Berkeley that I, I, um, was able to take an environmental health class and that was really cool moment in class where I like was like, oh yeah, I'm going to office hours. Like, I'm going to read all that stuff. I love this, you know, it was like, oh shoot. I'm like about to graduate. And here, I finally figured out what I should have been doing. You know, two or three or four years or whatever. . Um, and that was also the time when we were all like going to career fairs and like feeling like, oh, like, everyone's like, oh, what are you going to do?

And, um, I like frankly hated like career day and career fairs and stuff. All I did was see like a bunch of basic people in there. It's like going to interview. And I was like, that's not for me. Right. And finally, someone convinced me there was like a public service career fair towards April? Like a month before graduation and everybody. I went like in, in a t-shirt right. I was like, bullshit. . There might be pizza. There was no pizza but there were people from EPA there and, um, they still have, you know, this recent grads program, they were looking for, um, students interested in water quality as it relates to, um, to people in terms of tribal water quality.

So working with tribal nations in the American west and trying to improve, um, monitoring of water quality on an reservoir. And, um, you know, very quickly from like kind of handing my, I didn't even have a resume, actually. I had to like go back and print it at the lab and, you know, run it back to the person. I mean, I didn't even expect to like talk to anybody at this thing and, um, you know,

thankfully they didn't, they didn't judge me for my, my casual attire, but, um, you know, then a few interviews later, I had a job offer actually. And it was like, oh my God. Wow, this is crazy. And I kind of panicked cause I was like, oh, you know, it was at that point, I was kinda thinking of like taking maybe a year off and looking into graduate school, but I didn't really have a plan.

Right. It was like, oh, well I guess I should do this. So then I ended up starting work like, uh, a few months later at EPA in San Francisco. And I worked for two years there got a lot of like fantastic experience with, um, understanding, um, tribal environmental policy, which is fascinating, um, understanding how the environmental protection agency works. This is that like the last year of the Bush administration. Um, interesting. And yeah, and then, but, you know, that was really a great experience for me, you know, just in terms of like absorbing all of that content and that new kind of. Ways of thinking about what I've been learning about, but also it made me realize, like I missed school actually, you know, and that I still have that like kind of fire in me to learn more about environment and health.

Um, and we, you know, I was learning about like water quality standards, um, and how they relate to health and how they're set and all that. And that was really like, um, I think my like aha moment where I was like, yeah, this is definitely what I want to be, like, become an expert in. And so I used that two year stint at EPA to like, get that work experience.

Um, You know, get some great professional mentorship, talk to people who are further along in their career and like kind of flat my next plot, my next steps.

Rachel: And did you say that that program is still in existence?

Vijay: Yeah. Um, yep. EPA, um, thankfully right now is like kind of staffing back up. Um, and there's like recent grad, um,

Steph: Awesome weird where they, where they, not four years ago or three

Vijay: , I feel bad cause I was one of the, like, you know, 300 or whatever, EPA scientists later on after my PhD, I went back to ETA and I was one of the ones that, um, jumped ship during the Trump years.

Steph: Do you want to talk about that for a little bit?

Vijay: Yeah. I mean, um, so, you know, fast forward through my PhD and we're, we're back in, um, now 2015, I went back.

Steph: Not academia, I guess.

Vijay: Yeah. You know, I came to graduate school kind of suspicious of academia. Both my parents were academics and I felt like I had this kind of, you know, I have a twin brother, who's a professor.

Steph: Um, failure.

Vijay: Um, no, you know, I think I, as the more I got to learn about like environmental problems and the climate crisis in particular, I realized that there was a deficit of technical expertise in shaping public policy. Um, and that I love talking to people.

It was what I missed doing when I was doing a lot of field work as an undergraduate. And so I kind of had this feeling when I went back to get my PhD, that I would ultimately not stay in academia. You know, um, be interested, I'm still publishing in peer review journals, but the difference now is that, um, the that's not kind of where the story ends from my work.

A lot of it's about kind of, um, you know, literally like translating what I did for members of Congress, you know, or, um, lawmakers.

You know, the, the, my pet peeve is the like peer reviewed space in terms of like all this taxpayer funded work that essentially. Sits behind paywalls, you know?

Rachel: It goes to like 10 other people that may read it.

Vijay: Yeah. And if you can access the PDF, like good luck understanding it. Right. You know? So, um, I really, um, I was kind of like thinking that, you know, as much as I would like get the lay of the land and like learn how to be an expert in something that I would like transfer that, um, way of thinking to try to like directly apply it to really like learning and policy problems.

Steph: As someone who is in academia, but always, always dreaming of better days. I'm like, I just think I look at what use do, Vijay and I'm like, you're making a difference and do so important.

Rachel: Steph, you were making a difference.

Steph: No, this is like, honestly, I think I, I wish. People, I wish I went into grad school knowing that I had mentors that supported that as an outcome .

I think you're so right. The half of the reason, 90% of the reason we're here is because politicians make decisions. Right. And they don't understand anything technical. And then you have those idiots in Congress who are like, it's a snowball or like, Plants love CO2 or whatever the hell they say that don't.

Vijay: Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, no, like legit, your science says that air pollution is killing people. You need to tell people that, you know, like that's not a controversial thing. Um, and there's been, I think, I think movement towards like more comfort, um, you know, in terms of like engagement with stuff, just cause we've seen like the crazy part of society, like on afraid to, to, you know, dismante stuff.

And so we really need to like fight back, frankly.

Steph: How far in did you make it in the Trump years?

Vijay: Um, so I lasted, I guess, uh, January, like almost a year, like January to December of the first year. Um, they, thankfully, yeah, I, you know, it was, it was a crazy time, you know, Uh, I remember election night, I was just like, I think he promised to like, eliminate the EPA.

Um, and you know, th there were just like little hints here and there that like, you know, what I wanted to be working on was not going to be welcome. You know, using phrasing like environmental justice was very quickly discouraged. A lot of the judgment calls on air pollution, you know, determinations was going to be like a political decision rather than a scientific ones.

Um, you know, and so I was kind of like had my eye on other opportunities and, um, this fellowship at NRDC opened up, um, and I, you know, applied and was fortunate to be able to leave the agency, but I have a lot of respect for federal scientists. They're doing incredible work under some really difficult circumstances.

And, um, a lot of it's kind of unsung, you know, um, effort. Um, it's, it's amazing. Um, how, how well they perform under some really trying circumstances.

Rachel: So, what did you do when you left?

Vijay: Yeah. Like, you know, um, I did feel like I was kinda making a stand against like, you know, working for a psychopath. I was like, I can't do this. You know, like I really care about the agency's mission. And at that point we didn't really have the political appointees in place yet, but you know, you can just tell forever.

Yeah. I mean, they could barely get like, Photo up in the, in the year that I was there, um, you know, the new, the new leader. So, um, it just didn't bode well for institutional management, getting things done. Yeah. But you know, within, within weeks at NRDC, it was, you know, um, kind of on the other side of things, in terms of needing to understand how to, how to take what I've learned about air pollution, science and translate into kind of advocacy.

Rachel: So, okay. If there say we're no climate problem or climate crisis or an emergency climate emergency, um, if, if there were no climate crisis, what do you think you would be doing?

Vijay: Um, you know, actually I really. I really love teaching. Um, and I really love foreign language. So I, I think I might teach, teach Hindi or teach Spanish. Um, I really love the process for me of like learning a foreign language. I feel like I just kind of like activate a part of my brain that has been dormant. Um, and I feel like it also just kind of allows me to.

Me to connect with my heritage. And I feel like I'm kind of sharing something with people when I can, um, you know, explain like my name. Is Hindi. It means victory in Hindi. And, you know, like just even knowing, learning how to like spell my name in another language, you know, and it's like native forum was really kind of poignant for me.

And so I think I, um, I really love to teach foreign language. I feel like it's a skill that's become, um, kind of sidelined and undervalued in the U S and kind of seen as like, oh, you're weird. Like you speak French or whatever, you know, and it's just not, it's not part of our core kind of training as much as I wish.

Rachel: Everyone else in the world speaks five languages.

Vijay: But you know, actually, um, I do a lot of work in India these days and I've found that, you know, Even, you know what, when I go over there and then I'm talking to people and I like respond to them in their native tongue, it just kind of like, um, it's a real kind of way to connect.

And I think it's kind of surprising that, um, For a bunch of people that I work with, but like I took some time in graduate school I spent a whole summer just studying Hindi. Yeah. And it's really like, you know, shaped, um, totally like how I think of. You know, um, addressing the problem over there and just being,

Steph: well, I think there's also just been this interesting through-line, Vijay. What I'm picking up is like you love, I mean, even from your work as a grocery store clerk, right? Like you love talking to people and you love doing that sort of outreach. And I think the Hindi, I mean, you have this connection to it personally, right.

But it allows you to create a much deeper connection with people in that when you build trust, that's how you convince people of stuff. Right. So I think that's really powerful. Yeah. Well, we can wrap up by asking what we always ask. Do you have a pet and do they have a social media presence? If you do?

Vijay: I don't have a pet sadly. Yeah.

Steph: You have a social media presence. .

Vijay: I do. I'm a, I'm a pretty active troll on Twitter,

Steph: Will you say what your Twitter handle is?

Vijay: Um, first initial, last name.

Steph: We can do that.

Rachel: Well, Vijay it has been such a pleasure to talk to you and hear about your very important work.