Anne Therese Gennari Literally Wrote the Book on Climate Optimism

Environmental advocate and self-described climate optimist Anne Therese Gennari has a Bruce Springsteen lyric tattooed on her left arm: "You can't start a fire without a spark."

Growing up in Sweden as a Springsteen fan because her father listened to him, she now sees a connection between that "Dancing in the Dark" lyric and the cause that has defined her career—a push for a more sustainable world. "It really comes back to, just, we've got to try this. We have to get curious and excited, and like, 'Let's do this.' I live my life according to this truth and this wisdom, but I think if we apply the same thinking to our climate work, we can get a lot done."

Author of 2022's The Climate Optimist Handbook, which will soon be in audiobook, and the presenter of a new Master Class, Gennari, 32, moved to New York City, her current home, when she was 23. After developing an appreciation for nature and bucolic settings in her childhood, she said the "disposable culture of city life" that she witnessed as an intern in a marketing role in New York is something that motivated her to take action on the environment.

"I realized this is such a cultural thing. It's not about pointing fingers at one individual and saying, 'You need to change,' because it is so ingrained in our culture," she told Newsweek over a Zoom call from her home office. "That was [a] time when I was like, 'OK, I see the scale of the issue now, and I just want to somehow find a way to dedicate my life and my work toward inspiring change on all levels.'"

In her book, Gennari, who was also a recent guest on Newsweek's Better Planet podcast, lists ways people can help achieve a more sustainable planet, such as introducing plant-based options into your diet, choosing aluminum, paper or glass packaging instead of plastic, bringing containers to restaurants to carry leftovers and rewearing outfits instead of buying new ones.

Gennari, of course, practices some of the advice that she gives (including by favoring a plant-based diet and carrying a non-disposable beverage container and her own silverware), and she points to one activity in particular as her most preferred way of helping the planet.

"Composting is my favorite climate action because it both helps minimize our negative footprint while at the same time maximizing a positive one, meaning we can give back to the Earth simply by taking our food trash and making it into fertilizer for the soil," she explained. "So it has so many beautiful ripple effects."

Healthy soil is a recurring priority in Gennari's book. She devotes large passages to explaining its importance and how people should take care to ensure that food is grown in fertile, beneficial soil. In her interview with Newsweek, she elaborated on the relationship between soil, which she said that people have been killing "for a very long time," and combatting climate change.

"Soil is a beautiful, magical place if we...help it out in the right [way]," she said. "Through permaculture, crop rotation, animal grazing—'regenerative agriculture' is the umbrella word—we can actually help the soil bounce back and become enriched again, and once the soil is heathy, it loves carbon. It will sequester carbon from the atmosphere, so it becomes an ally in fighting climate change."

Elsewhere in her book, Gennari describes the idea of "fox sleep," which is a Swedish term meaning when someone feigns being asleep in order to not have to deal with something. She uses the term as a metaphor for how people behave in the face of the climate crisis.

"When we don't want to believe something is real, we travel miles into the absurd to avoid seeing it," she wrote.

Speaking with Newsweek, she discussed where specifically she sees "fox sleep" in people's everyday behavior.

"It's such a normal thing now to use something once and just throw it away, and at the same time, we know that the oceans are filling up with plastics and that marine life is dying from it, and our beaches are just ugly because of all the plastic waste floating up," she said. "I think a little bit of healthy denial is important, but aren't we 'fox sleeping'—recognizing that this is an issue and then we continue every single day to fuel it further?"

Gennari, who encourages people to reach out to her via her website and Instagram, said that her book is "not necessarily a book about climate change; it's actually a book about you." A large portion of it is written to help people find the courage to say yes to change.

Addressing climate change can be overwhelming, she acknowledges, but Gennari believes that every behavior that increases sustainability is a step in the right direction.

"I will say—people don't always like this answer—but I think it's important to slow down," she explained. "Giving ourselves space to reflect and just breathe a little more and slow down—and then we start to recognize that it's pretty easy to change things in our lives."

Those changes, she said, will not produce results immediately, but they will be important over a longer timeline to stem the effects of climate change.

"We've baked in a certain degree of warming, so no matter what we do today, there will be more days to come where it's going to get worse. The weather will get more extreme—it's going to get hotter, and it might seem like we're going backwards, and we will for a little bit because there's no choice to that," she explained. "But we have to just keep sticking to it and keep showing up in faith that our actions will at some point tip over [and] will reach that tipping point."

Gennari is living up to the message in her Springsteen tattoo every day, aiming to spark sustainable changes one behavior at a time.