About Me — Andrea O’Ferrall

8 min readJun 1, 2022

An ordinary person stepping up to protect the planet

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash

My plan is to write about people I’ve met, ordinary people who are stepping up to protect the planet. I’m hoping they’ll provide inspiration to others. So I figured I’d start with myself. I am an ordinary person. I’m a teacher, a mother, a daughter, and a friend. I’m a good neighbor. I love coffee, dogs, and gardening.

I’ve never interviewed myself before but here goes.

What is your background?

I grew up in New York, on Long Island. I have always been interested in nature and wildlife but not to the point of majoring in environmental science or delving deeply into the climate and ecological crisis until fairly recently. I was a ‘professional student’ for a while getting a Master’s degree in geography and starting a Ph.D. program before I realized that I didn’t have the same passion as my professors.

After teaching English in Japan, I realized that I really enjoyed teaching elementary-age children. So I got my teaching certificate and taught for almost 30 years in the Highline School District in the suburbs of Seattle, WA.

What made you realize that the climate and ecological crisis was more serious than you’d previously thought?

For me, it really was Greta Thunberg saying — Wake up adults! We’re in serious trouble. The planet is suffering and governments are lying!!!

Those aren’t her words exactly, but that’s basically what I heard.

I finally watched, “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2019 and also joined the Climate Reality Project. I was scheduled to do the training in Las Vegas in February of 2020. That was the event I was attending that was canceled because of COVID and thank goodness it was. It would have been a super-spreader event.

I was getting really annoyed with the news — scientists, saying that we couldn’t really attribute this or that (droughts, hurricanes, fires…) to climate change and it made me feel unsettled. Greta’s passion made me realize it wasn’t me that was crazy. She called out that the Emperor was naked. She spoke the truth. It was time to act.

Now I know Oil Companies invest a lot of money to sow doubt and scientists are not the best at communicating about the climate crisis because it’s not really a scientific problem. It’s a societal problem.

In 2020 a friend recommended Joanna Macy’s book Active Hope. It was life-changing because it put all the pieces together for me. It opened my eyes to the story we are living in.

So what have you done about the problem?

Well, at first I tried to educate others. I thought if they just knew more they would take action.

I started by creating a blend of The Climate Reality Project slides with Joanna Macy’s work. I shared my 45-minute presentation with friends and family. I presented it to about 75 people. These were the first Zoom meetings that I led myself.

At that time, because of COVID, there wasn’t that much going on so I read a lot of books and tried to get others to read them too. Oftentimes they were too challenging so I gave people a summary. For example, I thought I’d get a book club going for This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein but then I read the book and realized it was not an easy read. So I shared the message instead, that capitalism is at the heart of the problem.

I found that All We Can Save edited by Katharine Wilkinson and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson was more digestible, so I began recommending it and I started doing book circles with friends and family. I’ve done three of the ten-week book circles so far. I’ve done the ten-week book circle program three times with a total of 30 participants.

I am a global thinker and interested in many things. As a classic Gemini, I definitely think breadth over depth. Currently, I am helping out with Meaningful Movies in West Seattle focusing on climate and social justice issues. I’m also part of Extinction Rebellion Seattle and 350 Seattle — my go-to climate groups. I’ve wheat-pasted posters on banks and participated in numerous actions focused on the climate crisis.

I’ve joined my local school to plant a native plant garden, helped a classroom learn about and present climate solutions, presented Active Hope (The Work that Reconnects) lessons to 5th graders, and joined the Student government to help their Global Warming committee.

I am interested in preventing Urban Heat islands and trying to work with the local government to provide trees for local residents to plant. I am promoting native plants by sharing Doug Tallamy’s work, buying plants in bulk from the King Conservation District, and sharing them with others. I’m a forest steward at a local park — just doing restoration work now, but I’d love to get youngsters more aware of the native plant life around them.

I read a lot of climate-related emails, news stories, and books. I share what I learn with others, which means I talk about it all the time, trying to bring the issue to the forefront of people’s minds. I believe many folks don’t have a clue how serious the situation is. I need them to know.

What is most important to you right now?

I don’t feel like the government is functional with the two-party system. I think the Republicans are off the rails. As you see in a time of transition (in this case off fossil fuels) life gets hard — folks losing power will go to great lengths to try to keep it. Corporations are not people and do not have society’s interests at heart. Capitalism is killing us.

So I’m focused on local resilience. I’m interested in Transition US and as in the examples above, working locally. I just listened to a wonderful webinar on the Compassionate Cities Movement.

How do you find the inner strength to face the work?

I do what I can. I enjoy what I do. When I feel like the future looks grim and I’m not doing enough, I remind myself that I’m not causing harm. I have to be satisfied with what I do. I’m constantly resetting priorities so that I’ll be focused on what will do the most good. As in The Work that Reconnects, I start with gratitude.

Getting people to join me gives me hope. For a while I tried getting people at church to do more, to care more, but it wasn’t really happening so I’ve set my sights elsewhere.

I try not to follow the details of bad things happening in the world too much because it can be distracting not to mention distressing and depressing.

Writing in Medium helps me process my thoughts, share ideas, and hopefully motivate others to act.

I’ve made ‘climate friends’ that are very supportive. We lift each other up.

Final Thoughts?

I believe too many people think working toward a livable future is a science problem, but it’s not. It’s intersectional — capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, racism, income inequality, consumption, waste, endless economic growth, and plastics. These are not science issues. They are social justice issues. They are societal problems.

I mean we expect science to figure out how to get rid of plastics when capitalism is allowing companies to overproduce them in the first place. We can’t make laws to reign it in because corporations have so much money in the game they sway opinion and the vote.

I see we’re in serious trouble and would love for people to step up. I won’t find any joy in saying “I told you so” when things just get worse. Climate change and the ecological destruction we’re perpetuating aren’t something to deal with in the future. People need to stop entertaining themselves and set their mental energy on compassionately caring for other humans, other beings, and life.

We each need to look into our hearts, look at our special talents, and look forward to a more local, fossil-free future treating ourselves and other beings with compassion.

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