What inspired your interest in Planetary Health? 

When I was a kid in the '80s and '90s, I learned about various aspects of the Earth crisis in school. Even then, kids were learning about climate change, ocean acidification, water and air pollution, the extinction of various fauna, and the depletion of the ozone layer, the loss of wild habitat, and more. For much of life as a young adult and now as a middle-aged person, these problems have felt both potent and intractable, and they've remained a constant underlying anxiety for me.

It's a little silly to say it, but outside of my own personal interventions (composting, vegetarianism, using mass transit and my bike, driving a hybrid vehicle), I never thought my own professional life could play a role in Planetary Health solutions. It wasn't until I met folks at JHIPH that the connections between my own professional interests and my desire to help mitigate the worst effects of the Earth crisis became clear. The colleagues, friends, connections, and resources I've encountered through my affiliation with JHIPH have energized my own teaching and have helped shape new course designs, assignments, and research projects of my own.

Tell us about your Planetary Health work at JHU 

I have taught for nearly 20 years, primarily in creative writing programs and composition departments. By working closely with JHIPH on a variety of programs at Johns Hopkins and through my relationships with JHIPH's staff, affiliated faculty, and via my engagement with JHIPH's remarkable resources, my own teaching and writing energies have shifted toward addressing the Earth crisis directly. In 2024, I designed a research trip that took me to the White Mountains of California to research the ancient bristlecone pine forest and talk to park rangers and ecologists about what global climate change is doing to the oldest living flora on the planet. 

In January of 2026, I will launch two sections of a new first-year writing course called "Eco-narratives, Cli-fi, and Rhetorics of the Natural World," which is a direct outgrowth of that research and of my affiliation with JHIPH.

I used to find the challenges of the Earth crisis essentially intractable. Outside of massive political change, it seemed that the continued degradation of the natural world was all but inevitable. And frankly, because my own field seemed so far away from questions of ecology and the natural world, I felt like I didn't have much of a place in finding viable solutions. That said, what became so clear to me in working alongside JHIPH on various initiatives at JHU was that I needn't be an oceanographer, ecologist, wildlife biologist, or climatologist myself in order to help address the Earth crisis. All I needed to do was ask myself how my own education, experience, interests, and desires aligned with potential solutions.

The answer I've come up with is manifestly simple, but it's had a profound effect on my own thinking and teaching. I may not be the person to devise a comprehensive plan for ridding the world of microplastics, but as a writer, researcher, journalist, and teacher, I can absolutely use my extant skills and interests to fight disinformation, tell potent stories about the Earth crisis, and teach students about the past, present, and potential future of ecologically and environmentally minded narratives.

Any complex, multifarious problem demands a multifarious and nuanced response, and humanists, writers, journalists, and rhetors all have a role to play in addressing the Earth crisis.

What excites you about the future of Planetary Health at JHU? 

I'm particularly excited by the cross-disciplinary nature of JHIPH. Because academia necessitates that we professionalize by specializing in some narrow channel of our fields, we sometimes lose the forest for the trees. Studying Planetary Health and participating in JHIPH as affiliated faculty and as a participant and collaborator in JHIPH programming, I've been able to step outside of my own disciplinary silo and meet people whose work—while quite different from my own—is now shaping my own understanding of Planetary Health and of the Earth crisis, helping me to grow as a thinker, teacher, and person.

The interdisciplinary nature of Planetary Health may be its greatest strength. It has certainly inspired me to step up my game and work beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.

More about Nate Brown:

Last fall, Nate published his first-ever work of "cli-fi," fiction inspired by global climate change. The story, entitled "The Sea of Cortés," was published by One Story magazine, and he is now working on two related stories that also imagine a future in which the world has been significantly changed by environmental degradation, the extinction of wild fauna, and chemical toxicity.