Season 4, Episode 25: “Queer Brown Vegan” with Isaias Hernandez
image credit | Jennifer Marquez
Thomas and Panu were joined by environmentalist Isaias Hernandez, creator of Queer Brown Vegan. Together, they explored the profound impact of identity on environmentalism, discussing how personal backgrounds, cultural heritage, and lived experiences shape one's approach to climate issues. Isaias shared his journey from growing up in Los Angeles as a first-generation immigrant to becoming a voice in the climate movement. The conversation delved into the intersectionality of race, identity, and environmental advocacy, and revealed the challenges and micro-aggressions faced by diverse students of climate science. A key take away was the importance of finding and claiming your unique place and style, not just taking in science and research but making it your own and sharing it in your own voice. Tune in to discover how embracing your identity can empower you to engage more deeply with environmental challenges.
Links
Animation: The Dance: Living with Eco-anxiety
Transcript
Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.
[music: “CC&H theme music”]
Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness (CC&H), an international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change. Your feelings, what the crisis means to you, and how to cope and thrive. And now, your hosts, Thomas Doherty and Panu Pihkala.
Doherty: Well, hello. I'm Thomas Doherty.
Pihkala: And I’m Panu Pihkala.
Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. This is our podcast, a show for people around the world who are thinking, and feeling, and acting deeply about climate change and environmental issues, as well as their connections with nature and the planet. Of course, that includes connections to our bodies, ourselves, our families, and our communities. And so, we're starting with this provocative question: What does it mean to be happy in the modern world and what does it mean to be happy in an era of climate change and then we go from there. And today we are really excited to have a guest with us.
Isaias Hernandez: Hi everyone. My name is Isaias Hernandez and I'm an environmentalist and the creator of Queer Brown Vegan, an educational media climate platform.
Doherty: Yeah, and you might have heard of Isaias if you're at all thinking about eco and climate issues, but Panu and I are familiar with his work and he's coming in from LA. So, we're just going to have a conversation today, personal and professional, much as we do. Panu, do you want to get us started?
Pihkala: Warmly welcome, Isaias, also on my behalf and lovely to see you again. We've had the pleasure of cooperating collaboratively with the progress of eco-anxiety and climate emotions and that's been wonderful. We often start this podcast by asking something about the guests' journey towards the place and identity where they are now. Would you like to share something about how you became who you are now, especially in relation to environmental issues?
Hernandez: Yeah, my passion for environmentalism is quite unique. Growing up in Los Angeles, as a first-generation immigrant kid, my parents were actually farmers from Mexico. So, for them, they actually had much more rich ecological relationships with the land than myself, I would say. And, when people ask me when did you realize you were an environmentalist, I actually didn't really identify with that word. I grew up watching Nat Geo and Discovery Channel, seeing biologists, conservationists, and all these amazing scientists around the world traveling and talking about their work. But I always told myself, I don't think it's possible for me to really do that because my situation is different and they're the true experts. They've studied the field, and they got the degrees. So, I think that got my curiosity of having parents who always wanted me to get a good education, they said we don't care what you do, and we just want you to follow what you truly want. So, I had the privilege of saying that my parents didn't care where I went for college, they just cared that I got a degree and that I actually chose to study what I want and that I end up getting a job.
I think it was in college when I was learning environmental science that I actually started to get more passionate about the subject and realize this is really what I truly want to do, and this is actually what I love. But one thing I felt the disconnect in academia is, how does this really relate to my lived experiences, but also the experiences of my other colleagues in these classes. We don't really relate to that, and I think that when you're graduating college, you have this illusion of I got my four-year degree and I'm going to work at one of the biggest green environmental NGOs (non-governmental organizations), and I'm going to become this famous scientist. And that really wasn't the case for me. I actually worked in a research lab in academia, and I absolutely did not enjoy my time doing it. I studied lizards and evolution and ecology, then I did food system work a year later for my senior thesis. I think after graduating college, I realized that social media was a way for me to actually delve into telling my own stories without feeling like I needed to be a scientist or a policymaker. I'm just an individual talking about these issues. And I think it was really unique to me that during that time there were barely any environmental creators online, but also people with lived experiences and the academic degrees that I had that were really getting to that. So, I would say I didn’t really fall into the role of an environmentalist until I was maybe 23, when I started to realize, I do think I'm an environmentalist. During college, I kept thinking, I’m still learning about how to be an environmental scientist, so I don't really know what that actually means or if I have to go to a master's program for that.
Panu: Yeah, thanks for sharing that. That's fascinating and a great example of how different backgrounds can still give resources for people to be intimately engaging with these issues. We have a video in your “Teaching Climate Together” series where we discuss climate emotions and the process model of eco-anxiety. There you tell a bit about the emotional dimension of this journey and also in relation to your college experiences. Listeners, I warmly recommend that video. Would you like to share just a bit about that since our podcast is so heavily geared towards the emotional dimension?
Hernandez: Yeah, absolutely. The “Teaching Climate Together” web series is a media project and initiative under the flagship of Queer Brown Vegan, where it was actually inspired back in my early days of social media when I would do infographics in 2019 of deconstructing climate words. So, it would be like, what is eco anxiety, what is climate grief, what is climate doomerism, and after a while of doing that for the first few years of my early career, I had a lot of followers asking if I could create videos on this. I said, I'm not an expert and didn't coin these words. I'm not a mental health researcher. Why would I put myself in these spaces when I don't have that background? And my team was actually very interested and kept saying, why don't you just interview the experts that already exist in these spaces and create an interview or like a web series show about it? People would watch it. And so that was actually the thing that got us to do “Teaching Climate Together.”
In our specific episode, which is the fifth episode, we were looking at the emotional dimensions of climate change in response to generations of people. And it really quite shocked me that there's very limited, and I think Panu, you can agree to this, but when you Google online for any videos around climate anxiety or emotions, there's barely any videos. There's a lot of recorded digital webinars and panels, of course, which are absolutely needed. But when you look at the personal relationships of saying to myself, I'm going to use myself as the client, Panu is like the therapist in a way, but also the research and the expert, how do we add a personal story to it? And it was really quite shocking how many people were messaging me after that episode and saying they really resonated with the fact that you got someone who was in the older field of the industry that's an expert, but you got a young person who understands some of these words and these experiences and you wove them in together to make sure that whoever's watching this video, whether you're someone younger or older, can relate to either Panu or they can relate to me.
Those are exactly the type of conversations a lot of young people today are having. It's like we feel embarrassed to talk to older people about these types of relationships or issues that we're having, or we sometimes feel almost neglected by the systems that it's almost like the adults are saying, you need to figure it out. When, in reality, it's not the truth. Adults are telling us that we actually want to talk about this because we are also experiencing eco-anxiety. And I think that really shifted the relationship of how young people see older people. Yes, I have eco-anxiety, but you also have eco-anxiety. And that does not make us less than or less human. It actually makes us more connected to the issues that we're trying to address.
Doherty: Yeah, excellent. Yeah, so many themes that are coming up that we can explore today. Just to follow up on the last point, it is a stereotype that younger people are more concerned or more aware than elders. When you look at the research from Yale Climate Program, there's a fairly equal percentage of people who are alarmed or concerned about climate in the population, whether they’re young or old. Likewise, there's a pretty equal percentage of dismissive people among young and elders as well. So, it's a stereotype that doesn't serve us because I've known many elders who have devoted their whole lives and careers to environmental work, and they have been doing this for ages and they feel incredibly deeply about these issues. Bringing the two ends of the spectrum together is super powerful. But because of technology and our social structures, we tend to be divided by social media and the way our culture is. That’s a larger story we can't get into, but I think one of the themes today is finding your place. It sounds like, similar to a lot of people, you had to struggle to find where do I fit in. And you were either lucky enough or capable enough to find a niche for yourself and then it goes from there. Once you start, there's a synergy. I had a question—Queer Brown Vegan, I would call it your brand or your platform, is obviously provocative. It seems maybe less provocative now than it did a few years ago, but could you say a bit about that because it seemed like that was almost like a manifesto or something that you were putting yourself out there.
Hernandez: Yeah, it's funny because traditionally, as a scientist myself, that comes from academia. I tried to claim Isaias Hernandez on Instagram, but it's already taken. So, I kind of struggled already to establish my public figure name. But I think the Queer Brown Vegan name actually came back in 2019 because during the time I remember in higher education, I was told never to talk about my identity and that race didn't matter. But then there were a lot of microaggressions that I would experience not just from my professors, but from my lab mentors or my lab grad students would say certain things to me that I just felt so visually uncomfortable. And I think this is something that’s a shared experience with a lot of people, whether you're a marginalized person in academia. There's certain things that were said to me that just never sat right with me. Like I had a professor once call me Mario, even though he knows I'm Isaias and the other guy who’s Latino that's on the other side of the classroom is named Mario. And it was just like those examples of dehumanization in academia. Yes, it shouldn't matter that someone misnamed you or said the wrong thing and said sorry, but it does matter because there's this ultimate sense of respect that needs to be given to students too, just as we give professors their accolades and their respective titles. But I think Queer Brown Vegan really came out of the fact that I just wanted to be very visibly like yes, I'm part of the LGBTQ community because in science people would be like, is he gay or what is he? People would always want to ask, and I just felt like what does it matter, I'm a scientist and that's really what I came here for, not for you to discuss what my identity is. And then second was the brown just being like yeah, I'm a proud Mexican person and I navigate the world. And I think the vegan part was actually funny. It's just that I had gone vegan just recently after I graduated college and then when I was coming out with the brand name, I was just like queer brown green or queer brown earth and I just said, you know what, Queer Brown Vegan just weaves in together, but it's very dynamic in your face. And I think at the time, it represented a lot of my early 20s and mid 20s. Not to say it doesn't represent me now, but I think it's always really interesting because people look at me and ask, well, what are you and then, they look into my work and they're like, you do climate education, that's very interesting. And they learn about my background, and they learn about the science that I have and everything. And they're like, okay. So, I think for me, like young people today, we're just very experimental on how we want to present ourselves to the world, but we're also not too serious because we recognize that social media is just a form of art for us too.
Panu: Yeah, that's fascinating. Warm thanks for sharing that and doing that. It reminds me of this book, which is nowadays quite widely read in environmental humanities, Nicole Seymour's Bad Environmentalism, which sort of challenges some of the standard tropes and frameworks of communication in the environmental sphere. It has tended to be too wide and sometimes too serious so, a certain queer playfulness, if we call it that, is very welcome for environmental communication. Also, it reminds me of the connection between education, communication, and advocacy. And that's a sort of language challenge because we don't usually use the word education for adult audiences, even though there is the subfield of adult education, but people tend to think of children and young people. But if we are trying to positively influence someone that's technically education, but for adult populations, it's perhaps voiced as communication or advocacy. But for my part, I see the work that you are doing as a sort of resonance of education, communication, and advocacy. If you want to speak to that, please do. But I also wanted to ask about this brown dimension and Latino environmentalism and your social media, which by the way listeners is very popular, there’s over 120,000 followers on Instagram, for example. So, I've gotten a window into Latino environmentalism which has been very educational for me. I wanted to ask you about your experiences of this broad and diverse field of Latino environmentalism.
Hernandez: Yeah, I think one of the reasons for being able to just lean in more to my identity is recognizing that Latinos are one of the most marginalized groups affected by climate change. And I think the issue with Latino communities today is that we're very vulnerable and susceptible to misinformation and disinformation. So, when I was looking in the environmental media sphere, even in the climate media sphere today, there's barely any Latinos that have bigger platforms. I could count maybe less than six or seven of us of Latino climate Americans that are representative in the U.S. And it was really saddening because I get a lot of messages from young Latinos or Latinas telling me that it's really hard for them to see themselves in these fields at times because as we know, environmental majors are not historically diverse if you look at any college from different universities across the United States. A lot of them ask me, how did you survive knowing the fact that there's no one that really looked like you or the professors were not representative of who you were? And I think it's a testament of when I talk about these Latin issues, I try not to just give them the science and data and say, this is what you should be listening to but also to relate it back to the culture.
One of those events that I recently produced here in Los Angeles Climate Week was called Climate Chisme to really bring together how we talk about gossip in our communities, but through a climate lens and get people informed. And this isn't about a climate panel and learning about why Latinos should care about climate change, but to talk about how gossip and storytelling has been used to protect our communities from floods and wildfires and to make sure that our neighbors have each other's backs and to create these types of systems of care. And I think that it was really resonant with so many people who attended the event because they had never seen it before. But two, I think that it's a testament of where we're at right now. We need all different directions to reach out to our communities and my direction is through community building and cultural storytelling. Not to say that the science and data isn't needed, because it's always needed. However, the science and data are what communicates to me, but it doesn't communicate to my mom who may not have that science degree or background and she's just trying to get through her daily life. So, we have to have these different strategies to be there. But also, for me, it's a really huge thank you because if I would have seen someone online who looked like me when I was young, I don't think I would have had so many doubts in academia every day thinking I don't think I'm good enough to be here compared to a lot of my other colleagues who came from very prestigious backgrounds and just knew what they always wanted to do like go to law school or to grad school. I had to figure out everything like how to do these things because I didn’t really have any mentorship or people who look like me.
Doherty: Yeah, this is great. And listeners, I know there are people out there that are identifying, and you don't have to be a Latina or Chicano to identify because Panu and I both dealt with this too. We've talked about this a lot on our podcast. People are trying to study these interdisciplinary issues, these intersectional issues and it's difficult to find a pathway through the disciplines and stuff like that. So, this intersectionality is really key because the difficulties in academia are intersectional, not just because of our culture, but also because there's no good department and the academic system to deal with these issues. We've been talking about this on the podcast recently with people, even established scientists, who were trying to study when they were younger. So, there's an age of intersectionality because young people come in with these new ideas and they can't find a space in the academic system. The psychology department says we don't study the environment, go to environmental studies and environmental studies are trying to be biological scientists and really hardcore experimental people who say they don’t do that emotional stuff, that’s for psychiatry, especially with anxiety or depression, you have to go to the psychiatry department for that or the social work department and they say, we’re too busy dealing with major mental illness or we're dealing with the houseless population and the fentanyl addiction so we don't have time for you. So, you just do this runaround—and if you're queer and brown, it's even worse.
Hernandez: Yeah, definitely. I think for many people, they identify with me, even if they're not the same race or identity as me. A lot of my followers always say they're very scattered from different generations, but I will say that a lot of moms always show up for me and they tell me they are teaching their kids about climate anxiety and climate education. I would say mothers have played such a huge role in being huge advocates of my work. I think there's definitely a lot of gratefulness for older generations showing up in that way.
Panu: Yeah, that's great to hear. Moms and grandmothers are some of the foundations of human communities after all. Some organizations have happened in the climate sphere. In Finland, we have Ilmastovanhemmat for example, climate grandparents organizing for climate action. But of course, their role is much larger and wider than just organized NGOs. Looking back, Isaias, to your active years, there are already many, but what comes to your mind as some of the very memorable moments on your journey, perhaps now in relation to the emotional and existential dimension of these issues?
Hernandez: Yeah, I think some of my most memorable moments are just when it comes to the planet and my relationship to mental health, I remember being a sophomore in college. I think I was 19 at the time and I think we talked about it briefly in the episode where we first learned the term eco-anxiety. I told you this, I laughed. The first reaction was laughing at it. I said, are you kidding me, people actually deal with this? And I laughed but then I talked to my friend who was next to me, and she was really scared, and she was telling me, I've been dealing with this for years, Isaiah. And we actually talked about it, and I think that was really a pivotal moment for me to recognize how many differences people have in terms of not their lived experiences, but how we can easily disregard different types of mental health issues. My mental health issue was actually the fear of not having enough money. So, I worked multiple jobs. My fear was I don't want to get kicked out of my housing and I need to pay my bills. I had more financial anxiety. For her, it was a different situation where the finances weren't really an issue for her. Her studying in this field and learning more about the depressing news that we were learning as young environmental scientists was a reality for her. And I think for me, I didn't really prioritize climate change and mental health for me because at the time, I had to deal with my own financial anxiety first.
So, when I learned that it actually helped me become more empathetic towards people and understanding that we all have different situations in life. And yes, some others have different forms of privilege, like me, do I have privilege being a male? I think to me, it helped me contextualize how we show up better for people, even if we don't understand each other and don't come from the same worlds. I think that's really helped me build the platform I have today. My platform is really focused on educating rather than interrogating individuals. I think in my early years, my writing was very aggressive. I remember some of my followers telling me that we love that we learn, but sometimes you sound mad. And now, over the years, I think I've really come more into who I am in my late twenties. And people say, I love that you're very slow in your writing and you don't judge me, and I feel like I can ask you anything and you're not going to tell me anything bad. I think those are the moments and I think with the web series, especially with our climate change mental health episode, it opened up really huge opportunities, not just for myself, but for young people to start talking about these subjects of matter in their own classrooms, which I thought was really fascinating. I remember a follower sent me a message saying, my professor is screening your episode and now a hundred of us saw it. And I was like, that's embarrassing, well not embarrassing, but it's like in those moments I didn't know that people were watching it. So, I do think that's a really pivotal time. We're headed for not just a cultural information era, but a connection era where we're trying to bid for connection and truly accept that connection for each other.
Doherty: Hmm, that's great. I'm glad you brought this up because we have a little bit of time left. We don't like to unpack two big issues at the end, but there's this phenomenon of dealing with shame, either feeling shamed or shaming other people and the microaggressions and all this sort of stuff. I'm thinking about an experience I had where there was an organization in Portland called Vive, which was a Hispanic environmental group here. I was doing a workshop with them a few years ago, and I led people in this environmental identity timeline exercise, which I do with people where they plot out their life and all their experiences in nature. It was a totally mixed group. Isaias, you would have fit well in there because half of the people were Hispanic, Chicana, of Mexican heritage, some were first generation, second generation, but with very discreet environmental experiences. And then the other half were all white environmental folks, who were more upper middle class, and then comparing people's eco timelines such as what people took for granted in terms of privilege about camping, being in the outdoors versus just basically needs and dealing with access issues and racism and stuff like that. There was a lot of shaming on the white people's side. They felt almost embarrassed that they were so lucky to have such a nice life. So, that just comes with the territory, but it seems like you're able to handle that like and it sounds like you're more sensitive to even your own passions about how you come across to people. Isn't shaming a short-term strategy that just shuts things down in the long run?
Hernandez: Yeah, I think it disempowers any movement building and I do think that there's certain types of people that are able to ground themselves in those conversations. As I've gotten older and have worked with so many people internationally and also domestically here in the US that come from different economic brackets, I think there's a lot of things that I had to do inward for my own healing of why am I acting this way or why am I trying to put it this way? And I think that's where humility in this generation and especially my generation, it’s not that it's hard to be built, because we've become such a secular society with these technological tools and not saying that social media has destroyed our mental health, but we've entered the very comparison culture and I think it's very hard for young people. It's like they're inheriting both the world that's not as stable as they were told that it was going to be, but at the same time, the people that are trying to really understand the realities.
Like even with my own best friends, who come from way different economic brackets from me, when we actually learned about our lives personally, they didn't understand how much I've had to go through to get to where I'm at but also how much they went through in their personal lives to do what they're doing. It’s not to say that my story is more superior than theirs or theirs is less than, but it's more to understand we can still love each other no matter what. And I think it's really hard to go back to those human roots at times because I think our political differences and our economic differences can try to separate us. But I have mentors who are older who have really guided me with rough conversations, and I think that's the importance of intergenerational friendships. I have friends from different age groups that have really changed the way I think and I'm very glad that I did that versus trying to just hang out only with young mid 20-year-olds or late 20s. My friends are from the ages of 20 to 60.
Pihkala: Yeah, great to hear and I think there's deep wisdom there. And I've been quite struck over the years by eco-psychologist Bill Plotkin's model of ecological centric human development, which is most extensively developed in his book Nature and the Human Soul. And there comes the idea that we also need elders, but basically people from all kinds of ages and there's developmental tasks and strengths associated with various ages. So, I’m very much resonating with this intergenerational cooperation and learning that compassion and humility. You've spoken about your environmental identity in your work. For example, we have a common love and interest in picking up mushrooms or foraging. We are coming close to the end of the episodes, even though there would be a lot more to talk about, but that's something I wanted to bring up. Would you like to speak a bit about that relationship to the land that you have and is partly shaped also by your family heritage.
Hernandez: Yeah, I think growing up, I was not really an outdoor workout kid. I was always the slower hiker, the walker in the family. My family is very athletic, but I ended up being the non-athletic one. I picked up foraging because I saw it as a way for ecological reverence. I think as a kid, I always looked at things on the ground. And I think there was this moment when I was in New Jersey living in the forest. It’s a perfect area to forage throughout the seasons or winters since there’s sometimes mushrooms there. I just picked it up and I remember just learning through how to forage different colors of mushrooms and berries in the summer season. I'm not good with plants but my mycelium is more my thing. It was really cool because when I was doing it and taking pictures, I showed my dad and my dad was like, it’s funny you said that because your own grandma actually used to forage for mushrooms in the forests of Mexico and she really loved doing that by herself and it's so weird that you picked it up. I said I didn't know that, and you don't really talk about our grandma because my grandma passed away from my dad's side at a very young age, so it was really hard for him to speak about it. I think that's one way I kind of honor my environmental identity and could reconnect with my roots even if it's not the area my grandma lived in. I think there's a way to honor your ancestors through that. And also, just teaching people about foraging. I think it's my favorite thing to do. My family thinks I'm weird for doing it sometimes, but I think it's funny because they want to just get to the top of the mountain, and I want to take my time to get there.
Doherty: Lovely. Yeah, there's so many intersections and physical ability is another unspoken intersection, not so much even just basic. I mean obviously there's different abilities, whether someone is able to walk or is in a wheelchair or things like that. But even just your preference about whether you're ‘outdoorsy’ or athletic or not is a huge unspoken stereotype in the environmental world. And a lot of people feel left out. I can't be that person because I'm not climbing a mountain or something like that. So, we've got to wrap it up. But this was a great episode. So, listeners, under the surface, we all have our origin stories, and we have our ancestors and our strengths and weaknesses and our little microshames that we have to share. So, Isaias, it's really a pleasure to have you. As always, we could do more and maybe we can do some more again in the future, but I want to wish you really well in your work and we'll be linking to a bunch of stuff in our show notes too. Listeners, we’ll have a bunch of links to various things you can follow-up that we talked about today. Panu, thank you very much for your time as well.
Pihkala: Warm thanks Isaias and as always Thomas, it's been a great pleasure to take part in this conversation.
Hernandez: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Doherty: We'll be in touch with everyone. Everyone, be well and take care.
[music: “CC&H theme music”]
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