Cover artwork by Ale Silva
Chapters
Part 1 — Climate Feelings:
2:38 — Introduction by Judee Burr and Naomi Klein
19:05 — Connection to Jericho Willows by Ali Tafreshi
22:27 — Connection to the Water by Foster Salpeter
27:06 — Connection to Family and Land by Sara Savino
31:01 — Scientists and Feelings by Annika Ord
36:00 — Biking away from the Smoke by Ruth Moore
39:32 — Climate Sensitivity on the Bus by Nina Robertson
43:13 — Grief and Climate Change Economics by Felix Giroux
46:36 — The Age of Sanctuary by Melissa Plisic
52:04 — Age of Tehom by Maggie O’Donnell
Part 2 — Eulogies:
02:15 — Clione by Annika Ord
12:49 — The Abundance Will Be Forever by Judith Burr
24:03 — A Eulogy for Wolves by Niki
33:33 — Return of the Hidden Worlds by Sadie Rittman
44:59 — Eulogy for the Bees by Rhonda Thygesen
Summary
Future Ecologies presents "The Right to Feel," a two episode mini-series on the emotional realities of the climate crisis.
The first episode, “Climate Feelings” is a collection of students’ non-fiction essays and reflections on their personal realities of living with and researching the climate crisis. The first episode opens with an introductory conversation between Naomi Klein and series producer Judee Burr that contextualizes how this class was structured and the writings it evoked.
The second and final episode, “Eulogies” is based on fictional writing from the class. Students imagine and eulogize something that could be harmed by the climate emergency, and then imagine a speculative future in which action was taken to mitigate that harm.
Over a two-year period, associate professor of climate justice and co-director of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice Naomi Klein taught a small graduate seminar designed to help young scholars put the emotions of the climate and extinction crises into words. The students came from a range of disciplines, ranging from zoology to political science, and they wrote eulogies for predators and pollinators, alongside love letters to paddling and destroyed docks. Across these diverse methods of scholarship, the students uncovered layers of emotion far too often left out of scholarly approaches to the climate emergency. They put these emotions into words, both personal reflections and fictional stories.
“The Right to Feel” was produced on the unceded and asserted territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.
Click here to read a transcription of Part 1 — Climate Feelings
Click here to read a transcription of Part 2 — Eulogies
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Show Notes and Credits
This episode was produced by Judith Burr, with the voices of Felix Giroux, Ruth Moore, Niki, Maggie O’Donnell, Annika Ord, Melissa Plisic, Sadie Rittman, Nina Robertson, Foster Salpeter, Sara Savino, Ali Tafreshi, and Rhonda Thygesen. Sadie Rittman’s full story is available online, and the link is in the citations list below.
With music licensed from Blue Dot Sessions.
Judith (Judee) Burr is a PhD student in the Geography Program at the University of British Columbia. She is an interdisciplinary feminist scholar of the fire-prone ecosystems of Western North American and the historical geographies of power, governance, and knowledge that shape them. She produced the peer-reviewed scholarly podcast “Listening to Fire Knowledges in and around the Okanagan Valley,” which uses creative audio storytelling techniques to create a multi-vocal narration of regional fire history. It is published in the journal BC Studies, and available on podcasting platforms.
Thanks to everyone in the “Ecological Affect” classes at UBC whose thoughtful ideas fostered such generative discussion and meaningful writing. Thanks to Kendra Jewell, Audrey Irvine-Broque, Lorah Steichen, and Maggie O’Donnell for reviewing drafts of this audio story. Finally, thanks to the University of British Columbia’s Hampton Grant program for funding work on this project.
Citations
Part 1 — Feelings:
Bauman, Whitney A. "Creatio Ex Nihilo, Terra Nullius, and the Erasure of Presence." Ecospirit. Edited by Laurel Kearns, and Catherine Keller. Fordham University Press, New York, USA, 2020.
Burr, Judith, with Mathieu Bourbonnais, Amy Cardinal Christiansen, John Davies, Jeff Eustache, Don Gayton, Joe Gilchrist, Dave Gill, Sonja Leverkus, David Lind, Wendy Pope, Gord Pratt, Karis Shearer, Daryl Spencer, Sharon Thesen, Nancy Turner, and Kelsey Winter. “PODCAST: Listening to Fire Knowledges in and around the Okanagan Valley.” BC Studies no. 220 Winter 2023/24, pp. 93-108. Available at https://bcstudies.com/podcasts_new_media/podcast-listening-to-fire-knowledges-in-and-around-the-okanagan-valley. Also available wherever you get your podcasts, with an earlier version of the epilogue.
Guenther, Genevieve. "The Practice of Anger in a Warming World." The Kenyon Review, vol. 44, no. 4, 2022, pp. 69-72.
Johnson, Ayana E. and Katharine K. Wilkinson. All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. One World, New York, 2020.
Keller, Catherine. Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming. Routledge, New York, 2003.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. “Nature Needs a New Pronoun: To Stop the Age of Extinction, Let’s Start by Ditching ‘It’.” Yes Magazine, March 30, 2020, https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/together-earth/2015/03/30/alternative-grammaranew-language-of-kinship
Klein, Naomi. Doppleganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World. Penguin Random House Canada, Toronto, 2023.
Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Knopf Canada, Toronto, 2014.
Labbé, Stefan. “In B.C., ER doctor says patients are attempting suicide over climate anxiety.” Vancouver is Awesome, March 28, 2022, Available online at https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/highlights/in-bc-er-doctor-says-patients-areattempting-suicide-over-climate-anxiety-5198699.
Lawrance, Emma, Rhiannon Thompson, Gianluca Fontana, & Neil Jennings. “The impact of climate change on mental health and emotional wellbeing: current evidence and implications for policy and practice,” Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment, 2021. Available online at https://www.imperial.ac.uk/grantham/publications/briefing-papers/the-impact-of-climate-change-on-mental-health-and-emotional-wellbeing-current-evidence-and-implications-for-policy-and-practice.php.
Read, Bridget. “Weathering the Weather.” The Cut, October 28, 2021, Available online at https://www.thecut.com/2021/10/climate-change-mental-health-therapy.html.
Roy, Arundhati. “‘The pandemic is a portal’.” The Financial Times, April 3, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca.
Stern, Nicholas. Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006.
Sultana, Farhana. "Critical Climate Justice." The Geographical Journal, vol. 188, no. 1, 2022, pp. 118-124.
Sultana, Farhana. "The Unbearable Heaviness of Climate Coloniality." Political Geography, vol. 99, 2022.
Weintrobe, Sally. Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis: Neoliberal Exceptionalism and the Culture of Uncare. Bloomsbury Publishing, New York, 2021.
Part 2 — Eulogies:
Apffel-Marglin, Frédérique. Subversive Spiritualities: How Rituals Enact the Earth. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012.
Aguon, Julian. The Properties of Perpetual Light. University of Guam Press, Mangilao, 2021.
brown, adrienne maree. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, AK Press, Chico, 2017.
Christianson, Amy, and Matthew Kristoff. “The Abundance Will Be Forever with Victor Steffensen and Ado Webster” [Podcast]. The Good Fire Podcast, September 19, 2022. Available at https://yourforestpodcast.com/good-fire-podcast/2022/3/13/10.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. Spiegel & Grau, New York, 2015.
Doubleday, Ayla J., and Russell R. Hopcroft. "Interannual Patterns during Spring and Late Summer of Larvaceans and Pteropods in the Coastal Gulf of Alaska, and their Relationship to Pink Salmon Survival." Journal of Plankton Research, vol. 37, no. 1, 2015, pp. 134-150.
Dupigny-Giroux, Lesley-Ann, et al., “2018: Northeast.” In Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II, U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 669–742. doi: 10.7930/NCA4.2018.CH18.
Eisenstein, Charles. Climate: A New Story. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, 2018.
Greenwood, Susan. The Anthropology of Magic. Routledge, New York, 2009.
Hallmundsson, May, and Hallberg Hallmundsson. Icelandic Folk and Fairy Tales. Iceland Review, Reykjavík, 1987.
Perry, Imani. “A Little Patch of Something.” The Paris Review, June 2020. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/06/03/a-little-patch-of-something/
Rittman, Sadie. “Return of the Hidden Worlds” A Wider World, 2024.
Sundberg, Juanita. “Decolonizing Posthumanist Geographies.” Cultural Geographies, vol. 21, no. 1, 2014, pp. 33-47.
Tessier, Laura. “The response of Pacific salmon and their prey to changing ocean conditions and acidification.” North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission Newsletter no. 47, January 2020, pp. 12-19.
The Weather Station, “Atlantic,” recorded February 2021, track 2 on Ignorance [Album], Fat Possum Records.
Weintrobe, Sally. Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis: Neoliberal Exceptionalism and the Culture of Uncare. Bloomsbury Publishing, New York, 2021.
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Future Ecologies is recorded and produced on the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the WSÁNEĆ, Penelakut, Hwlitsum, and Lelum Sar Augh Ta Naogh, and other Hul'qumi'num speaking peoples, otherwise known as Galiano Island, British columbia, as well as the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh), and Tsleil-Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, British Columbia.
Part 1 Transcription
Mendel Skulski 00:00
Testing 1, 2, 1, 2.
Adam Huggins 00:03
Wow, that is a fire.
Mendel Skulski 00:07
That's hot. Well... Mendel,
Adam Huggins 00:14
Adam,
Mendel Skulski 00:14
this is Future Ecologies
Adam Huggins 00:17
on vacation!
Mendel Skulski 00:18
We are back at base camp for our annual —
Adam Huggins 00:22
Semi-annual?
Mendel Skulski 00:23
Semi-annual summit meeting. And normally when we are here in the offseason, we like to feature episodes of podcasts we really like. But today, we are doing something different. Today we are premiering a piece of original audio, not from another podcast feed, but from the UBC Centre for Climate Justice.
Adam Huggins 00:51
Mendel and I think of what we do here as mostly art. But it's also a bit of science and a bit of journalism, maybe a bit of science journalism. And so we spent a fair amount of time thinking about both of those things. And they have some similarities, right? They're both primarily concerned with uncovering the truth, in a way. And both science and journalism have historically been really concerned with this idea of objectivity, right? Of like, an objective observer that can then deliver us the truth. And, you know, that idea is complicated... especially in journalism, but increasingly in science, right? The idea that it actually matters who is doing the observing, and what questions they're asking, right? In terms of what results we're gonna get, and what the truth is going to look like. In science as in journalism, we now acknowledge that the observer is actually affecting whatever they're observing — they're having an impact on the thing that they are trying to understand. What this piece is asking is what kind of impact is what we're observing, having on us... as scientist or as journalists, and in the case of a lot of these students, both.
Mendel Skulski 02:22
We're going to hand it off to Judee Burr and Naomi Klein to take it from here. So, from the UBC Centre for Climate Justice, this is The Right to Feel.
Judee Burr 02:40
Hi, Naomi.
Naomi Klein 02:41
Hi, Judee.
Judee Burr 02:43
I wanted to start by briefly introducing this podcast series. For many of our listeners, you need no introduction. But to introduce you in the context of the work we'll hear in this podcast: Naomi Klein is a professor at the University of British Columbia's Geography department, an award-winning author, including of the recent book "Doppelganger," an award-winning journalist, and co-founder of UBC's Centre for Climate Justice. My name is Judee Burr, and I’m a graduate student in the Department of Geography, and I took your class called “Ecological Affect” in the fall of 2022. In that class, you brought us graduate students together to think through – and more importantly, feel through – our experiences of climate change. We talked and wrote about the emotionality of grappling with the changes we are living through here on unceded Musqueum territory in the Pacific Northwest and the changes we are witnessing in other geographies around the world. The writings we did in your class became the impetus for making this audio story. Can you start by telling me more about designing the class and the experience of teaching it?
Naomi Klein 03:52
Sure, and thank you, Judee. So, this course, as you said is called "Ecological Affect", but its unofficial name was Climate Feelings. And I designed it in conversation with my collaborator and research assistant Kendra Jewell. What we were specifically thinking about was the work of young scientists and scholars who are immersed in studying various aspects of the climate crisis. What we know is that these researchers who are studying extinction who are studying habitat loss and glacier loss, live in the same world that we all live in — which is a world that is very much on fire. So that work is necessarily deeply emotional. But the academy — the academic world in which they're being trained — often doesn't have much room to recognize those kinds of have emotional impacts. And I remember really being struck by this in 2021, when there was a devastating heatwave in In British Columbia, and just seeing these reports that were quoting young scientists, many of them still students — and what they were doing was cataloging mass human and non-human death because of this so-called heat dome. And, you know, what became clear is that the scientists were essentially working as undertakers for many different kinds of life being lost to the climate crisis. And that was something that I had witnessed before in my reporting. I had seen young scientists doing desperately sad work cataloging extinction in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, in the midst of a mass die-off, or in the Gulf of Mexico on research vessels in the midst of the BP oil disaster. Scientific research requires a kind of distancing and compartmentalizing when you're doing the work. But it really had me wondering: what happens to those feelings? You know, these young researchers are not robots, and many of them went into this work because they have a deep love of the natural world. So I had been thinking for a long time that we need more spaces or containers to explore the affective side of difficult climate research. And that's what this class was really designed to be one of those spaces where we could engage with those feelings. And I want to be clear, we talked about this in the very first class, Judee, that often when we think about climate emotions, people immediately go to grief, anxiety, rage — and we do all of that in the course. But we also look at love and solace, and, you know, the positive emotions that come out when we work in the natural world. So I think it's important for all of our mental health not to pretend that we are detached — to acknowledge that we all have skin in the game. I think it makes us better researchers. I don't think it compromises us. I think it makes us better colleagues and generally better human beings. And that is going to help improve our chances of building the kind of countervailing forces that are required to have thriving futures. So that's what it was all about for me.
Judee Burr 07:27
Yes, that really came through in being in the class, and I really appreciated that space that you created. It felt like everyone was eager for it. And talking about this now hits hard. Last summer, I just felt devastated witnessing the effects of extreme heat again, drought, and wildfire in our region of so-called British Columbia. I've been studying land governance and environmental history in fire-prone geographies. And then in 2021 and 2022, I made a podcast about the history of living with fire in the Okanagan Valley in the southern interior of BC. And so then this past summer of 2023, I was watching the news from Vancouver as the McDougall Creek fire swept into West Bank First Nation, West Kelowna, Kelowna, and Lake Country in the Okanagan. It sent more than 10,000 people evacuating and destroyed homes. It was devastating to witness. And I think that's the one that hit me particularly hard last summer because I knew people there, I was texting them, I'd been studying fire there. But it was just one of the many fires in what was, we now know, the most destructive fire season ever recorded in Canada. The evacuations from Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories were happening at the same time. And this was all just weeks after the hurricane-fueled wildfire in Lahaina, Hawaii killed at least 100 people, making it the deadliest wildfire in a century in the US. And so just thinking about all of this in the context of last summer's fire season, and how it felt — it just felt terrible. And in thinking with our class, I'm trying to just sit with how bad that feels as a way of staying in the present moment, and grappling more fully with what's happening and thinking that those feelings can kind of keep me engaged and keep me motivated to dream up a different world.
Naomi Klein 09:24
Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Judee. It reminds me... it takes me back to the class and how I was often struck. You know, this was a very international group. Very few of the graduate students are actually from British Columbia. And many of them, I think, like you, part of the reason why you ended up in British Columbia is because it's a very beautiful place. I mean, we're surrounded by natural beauty. But, you know, there's a phrase that I've used, and maybe you remember me saying it in class, "BC breaks your heart." Because we're so close to it, but what draws us there — and I include myself in it, I'm a late comer to British Columbia, my parents moved here when I was in university and I just fell in love with it and decided to move here too — the mountains, the ocean, you know that these incredibly rich Indigenous cultures. But we are witnessing the collapse of the salmon stocks, you know, this keystone species that so much depends upon. So, you know, what you're describing is — you should feel it. It's healthy to feel that. That's why you do what you do. And we have to stay in touch with it. This past the summer that you're describing, I think, is the summer when a lot of people started paying attention to Canadian wildfires, because, of course, the smoke rolled in south of the border and even reached New York City. That was Ontario wildfire smoke, but suddenly it was international news, because that's what happens when the Brooklyn Bridge is coated in Canadian wildfire smoke, or choked in it. Yeah, you know, I wrote a piece in 2017, it's the first time I really tried to grapple with what it feels like to live in this very flammable, increasingly flammable landscape. You know, every summer that it seems like the fires get worse. In 2017, I wrote a piece called... the original title was "Summer of Smoke", then I think it was changed to "Season of Smoke." And I wrote this line that I've thought about often, which is, "it begins to strike you how precarious it all is, this business of not being on fire." And what I was trying to capture there is this feeling of flammability, you know, you can smell it in the air, and you really start to feel like it could happen anytime. I hate to even articulate this, but I sometimes feel like all of our homes are just on loan from the flames.
Judee Burr 12:04
Yeah, and something I've learned from Indigenous Fire Keepers and knowledge keepers and fire historians who have studied this is... just how unreasonable of an expectation it is to live in this part of the world and expect that we could have a smoke-free, or a fire-free life here. But thankfully, a lot of people also have good ideas about how to make those fires less disastrous, and how to bring back fire at the right times of year.
Judee Burr 12:35
Something else that struck me in our class and in curating this audio story is the way that we foregrounded climate justice, how climate change exacerbates inequality and injustice, and needs to be understood in connection to structures of capitalist and colonial power that have created it. The way we paid attention to power in this class also encouraged us to pay close attention to each of our positions in relation to these structures. That's something you cultivated quite intentionally in our work. Is that right?
Naomi Klein 13:07
Yeah, I think it'd be difficult for me not to. This is sort of how I came to really engage with the reality of climate change. I'm somebody whose work has focused on what I've called disaster capitalism, and how, in the midst of crisis and shocks, we often see inequalities deepen. And climate disasters are no different. They follow the fault lines of race and class and gender and physical and mental disability and hierarchy that already divide and scar our world. But at the same time — and this is I think, what has kept me in this struggle, because that's all very depressing — is that the flip side of that is I really deeply believe that meeting the enormous challenges of the climate crisis means an opportunity to heal some of those wounds. In fact, I think it's the only way that we can rise to the systemic crisis that we're in — the overlapping and systemic crises. So we designed a syllabus that is filled with great writing from many positionalities. Black and Indigenous poets and scholars like Leanne Simpson and Ross Gay, essayists like Kyo Maclear and Julian Aguon. And I am a very firm believer that nothing inspires good writing like good reading, and good writers. So my favorite part of the course really was witnessing how these beautiful writers helped so many of you access new and different registers for your own voices. I think it was a safe place to experiment with voice and the results were incredible.
Judee Burr 15:01
It was really inspiring. And as we'll hear in this episode and the next, many of the excerpts that students will share today were inspired by specific pieces of writing, and they'll mention those in the introductions to their excerpts. So in this two-part audio story, we have a gathering of writing on climate feelings. We asked some of the students from the class to record excerpts of the writing and reflections. These pieces take us through many kinds of emotions: from grief and fear of climate change, and its uneven impacts to loving observance of the beauty and complexity of the places and planet we share. These authors all have something to say about what it feels like to build a life here and now as climate change is happening. This first episode is "Climate Feelings," which gathers writings and reflections on climate change in this present moment, including some examples of students thinking about alternative names for the so-called Anthropocene. We called those the "Age of" pieces as alternatives to the Age of the Anthropocene. The second episode is called Eulogies. This is a gathering of fictional pieces that we wrote as part of a final assignment. And in that assignment, you asked us to eulogize something that could be lost to the climate crisis, and then write a fictional forward-looking account of how that loss was avoided or mitigated. And this was an exercise in thinking about what we love and could lose, and then, strategically, how to imagine opportunities to build a different future together. Naomi, is there anything else that you'd like to share with our listeners as they go on this audio journey with us?
Naomi Klein 16:38
Just that I'm so happy to have a chance to share some of this wonderfulness with you. Teaching this seminar really was a joy. And the best part of the course was how interdisciplinary it was. So I really want to stress this: that we had graduate students that came from zoology who were studying extinction crises in caribou and bees. We had physics students doing glacier modeling and geography students like you, Judee, studying fire and anthropologists studying New Age conspiracy theories. And we all learned so much from each other. Academics often complain about grading. You'll often hear professors talk about grading as like the worst time in the semester. I had the absolute opposite experience with this seminar. I loved getting these essays, particularly the longer ones that you just just described where different futures were imagined. And I often had this feeling while I was reading them, that I cannot keep this to myself, that would be much too selfish. And these are too remarkable. More than once I wept — particularly while reading these imagined futures. And I always hope to find a way to share the work world more widely. So I'm so grateful to you, Judee, that you have woven together this these podcast episodes, where our listeners are going to hear some highlights from our class.
Judee Burr 18:07
Naomi, thanks for teaching this class and for talking about it with me.
Naomi Klein 18:12
Thanks Judee.
Judee Burr 18:18
This first episode is called “Climate Feelings.” It includes three parts: Part 1 – Connections; Part 2 – Changes; and Part 3 – Names for a New Age. In this episode, we will hear excerpts from the writings of Ali Tafreshi, Foster Salpeter, Sara Savino, Annika Ord, Ruth Moore, Nina Robertson, Felix Giroux, Melissa Plisic, and Maggie O’Donnell. We begin with three pieces of reflective writing that center on connection and care in a changing world. Here is Part 1 — Connections.
Ali Tafreshi 19:15
My name is Ali. I'm a PhD student working on evolutionary theory at the Biodiversity Research Centre at UBC. This is a reading inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer's word for replacing "it" with respectful language "kin" or "ki" that acknowledges the animacy all around us. The writing is about two kin that I often visit: a pier and a pair of trees in Jericho.
Ali Tafreshi 19:42
If you walk to Jericho Beach from 4th Street there is a grass field at the entrance where two willow trees hung out by themselves. Always looking well put together, even at night. My afternoon breaks were walking in between them with my coffee and back to my house. The pier and the two trees were broken in the same storm this winter.
Ali Tafreshi 20:03
For my birthday this year, the pier was filled with logs and the concrete slabs of the walkway that had been ripped out. Each section of the wooden railing held memories and rituals, none of which were there anymore. I went through the broken pieces of wood, but I couldn’t tell apart which piece held what memory and which piece I was supposed to do my hello/goodbye ritual with. I sat on top of the backrest of my usual bench and got comfy with the concrete leaning on ki. I drank my tea, breathed in, and accepted the wind. The wind accepted me too, which I was grateful for. Regardless, it felt like my birthday at the pier. It’s nice to be there with friends when things are different and its difficult — even if you don’t know what to do in that moment. In that way, it’s just nice to know our relationship is real, and after a couple of laughs and sips of tea, the broken concrete and logs are just where we are right now.
Ali Tafreshi 21:00
When I first saw the two fallen willows, and stood still by them with my coffee, an elderly lady came and stood close by. We stood there silently. She walked closer and looked at me. She told me in small sentences that this is as sad as it feels, like she knew I needed validation. I didn’t say anything, I smiled. She stood for a little while more, then left. The next day, Jericho was flooded. The pond with the beavers and ducks had taken over the whole park. It looked magical. I walked with my coffee to see what was happening from all angles. Near when I was about to leave, I was taking a picture of a tree that looked different that day, surrounded by water. When I put my phone down, an elderly lady was standing next to me, wearing a bright yellow poncho and holding a rainbow umbrella. She confirmed how beautiful it is. She then stood there and looked at the landscape with me. She told me she’s been coming to Jericho for 20 years and has never seen it like this. She said it’s beautiful and the ducks seem to love it, but these changes will destabilize this habitat. This is climate change, she said, smiling, while looking down. She was sad but she was there with her park. She then, in her yellow rainboots, walked into the water that had overtaken the walkways.
Foster Salpeter 22:39
This is Foster Salpeter and I'm a graduate student in political theory, having just completed an MA thesis on non-sovereign approaches to food security. This is a reading from a reflection on the connection to place.
Foster Salpeter 22:55
Alexis Bonogofsky, a goat farmer, an environmentalist from southeastern Montana provides a genuine account of connection to place. Talking about deer hunting, Bonogofsky says, “you just watch these huge herds come through, and you know they’ve been doing that for thousands and thousands of years. And you sit there and you feel connected to that”. Bonogofsky then draws a relation between “That connection to this place and the love that people have for it”. As extractive industries tear through the region, Bonogofsky is convinced that it "...is not the hatred of the coal companies or anger, but love that will save that place."
Foster Salpeter 23:42
My rootedness to place passes through my canoe. For as long as I can remember, the perfect canoe stroke has been described to me as one that connects with the water. Often when we do something or hear something repeatedly, we can lose sense of its meaning. I think this is why the significance of this language here only dawns on me now. Why is it that we describe a canoe stroke this way? For the amateur canoeist, the intention of the stroke is often seen as an attempt to pull water backwards, as a way of propelling the boat forwards. In order to perfect the canoe stroke, a reorientation is required. The intention of the stroke is not to propel water backwards; rather, the goal is to root the blade of the paddle as firmly as possible to the water, and then to pull yourself, bringing the boat with you, towards that anchored point, eventually gliding beyond it. In order to achieve this, the paddler has to create the strongest possible connection between boat, body, arms, hands, paddle, and water. Establishing this connection has a particular feeling and sound that practiced paddlers seek out. For auditory reference, a coach once instructed me to listeen for and to recreate a "puck" sound, as I paddled down the lake.
Foster Salpeter 25:13
In a given year, I aim to paddle around 4,500km. At a comfortable pace, traveling one kilometer takes about 200 strokes. This adds up to 900,000 strokes per year. I see that as 900,000 opportunities per year to connect with the water. Sometimes, on a calm day with good visibility, I can achieve a unique sensation that I cherish immensely. After thousands of consecutive strokes, when a practice becomes quite meditative, and the movement mostly subconscious, it can begin to feel as though my paddle’s point of anchor is larger than one particular spot in the water. As I fall on the blade of my paddle, and draw myself towards it, it is as though I am being supported by the body of water in its totality.
Foster Salpeter 26:29
I have paddled and trained everywhere from pristine lakes, to brackish lagoons, to industrial canals, and even the Harlem River in New York City. I promise, this described sensation remains the same on all of these bodies of water. They are all kin, and they are all equally deserving of love.
Sara Savino 27:14
My name is Sara, and I researched the impacts of deforestation on the relationships between humans and elephants in India. This is an excerpt from my reflection on the lessons I've learned from my grandfather about hope.
Sara Savino 27:25
I spent my early summers climbing my granddad’s fig trees. They are his pride and joy, and grow on a small, sunny plot in the South of Italy. My grandfather would wake up at 5 AM most days to sneak in a good few hours on the land before it would get too hot to work. A lifetime of making time for what he loves and believes in has made him strong, joyful and silly – even at 96, even as my grandmother’s death has uprooted him to the North of the country, and even as rising temperatures scorch his now mostly abandoned land. In Ash Sanders’ “Under the Weather,” Chris Foster beautifully proposes “ignore-ance” as a word for “returning from a state of consciousness to a willed state of not knowing.” I would like a word for the reverse too — a word for the moment you can no longer ignore the emotional weight of climate change, when you first reach that state of consciousness. The moment the veil is lifted and you let yourself feel it all. Reve-loss?
Sara Savino 28:23
Covid lifted that veil for me. In the early stages of the pandemic, it felt like we might collectively be reminded that humans are part of a complex web of reciprocal relationships, and be forced to reckon with the weight of that responsibility. When the global consequences of Covid quickly aligned themselves according to the usual class, racial, and gender divides, my mental health plummeted. Being isolated didn't help, and worrying about my friends and family did not help either. Ultimately, however, it was the realization that, this too, would be insufficient for us to “rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves” - as Arundhati Roy beautifully describes it - that dulled that burgeoning sense of hope.
Sara Savino 29:00
I don’t think it is a coincidence that those who experience deteriorating mental health as a result of climate change are ignored, belittled or patronized; that the words to describe these experiences do not really exist. Depression, anxiety, rage, fear, grief – they are more than justified responses to what is happening. They are acts of resistance in a culture that is trying to tell us we are selfish, uncaring and, ultimately, alone.
Sara Savino 29:30
Back to my grandfather. He is a man of few words and would never proselytize for his belief that connection to the land, reciprocity, getting your hands dirty literally and figuratively are a balm for the aches that most of us are going through right now. As an illiterate immigrant who built a life for his family in what was, at the time, an especially under-served part of Western Europe, his life speaks to those Randian virtues of “Reason, Purpose, and Self-Esteem.” And yet, he is a passionate proponent of a government that fulfills its social contract with its people, for a society that is built around abundance, that incentivizes love and care.
Sara Savino 30:12
My grandfather is preparing for death. He has asked us to plant a fig tree in our much colder garden in Belgium. This small transplant will have to get used to a new climate, but should it survive, it will ensure that his values find root somewhere long after he dies.
Sara Savino 30:26
I want a word for the radical healing that comes from living a life aligned with your values, as much as much as feasible in a broken system; from planting small seeds that might not change everything all at once (what will?), but that might help tip the scales ever so slightly in favor of a world different from the one our neoliberal Gods have designed for us.
Sara Savino 30:49
Avant-gardening?
Judee Burr 31:08
As Naomi described in the introduction, this class encouraged us to put into words the complex emotions evoked by climate change – yes, this includes sorrow and anxiety, but also anger, wonder, appreciation, and love for our changing human and more-than-human ecological communities. Now we’ll hear selections from students’ reflections on the emotional landscapes of life in a changing world. Here is Part 2 — Changes.
Annika Ord 31:39
My name is Annika Ord and I'm a master's student in Geography at the University of British Columbia. This is a reading from my reflection on scientists and feelings in the climate crisis.
Annika Ord 31:50
I’m sitting outside in the sun writing this reflection. It’s February 7th but it feels like a day in late March or early April. The sun holds heat, my hands are not cold typing, and the birds sound as though they’re celebrating, or at least have a lot to say. Another moment of seasonal disorientation. It feels common now, these days superimposed from another season. Today, I celebrate the chance to work in February outdoors, to sit in my thoughts without the cloistering of walls and distraction of internet tabs. Outside, with the world; it’s my favorite way to be. But still, this day feels misplaced in the season; a voice tells me I should feel concern.
Annika Ord 32:01
The last few weeks I’ve felt a kind of whiplash, or I might call it geographic disorientation. The return to screens, city grids, and zoom meetings contrast sharply with my last month at home in Alaska playing in snow, shoveling overburdened roofs, caring for boats and a dad with a replaced knee, feeling deeply connected to the place that is my home. But it’s more than that. This sense of disorientation grows as I read of powerful climate emotions and datasets of loss, while learning through a screen that seems to reinforce the disconnection from the earth that I’ve come here to question. And it makes me wonder if the ways in which we teach and learn, work, and interact with the world mediated through a screen are reinforced by this great divide. The divide that allows us to emotionally detach and stand by as our only home and out very existence hangs in a balance that is rapidly deteriorating.
Annika Ord 33:44
So here I sit. Outside in a day that feels unreasonably warm, to write while being a part of a world that includes but is so much bigger than human. The readings this week felt familiar and personal. I appreciated the words of Genevieve Guenther, to write from a place that is both tangible and local, and build outwards from there. I found the letters from the scientists who spoke from their own experiences of climate change from a place of emotional vulnerability and through story to be the most moving. For some time, I have been trying to share in this way. I am practicing now, and it is comforting to hear the words of others doing the same. Ariaan Purich’s letter gave me pause, she spoke of terror for the world her children would inherit but also the world of today. It makes me reflect on a thought I’ve had before: will our own homes need to be the ones that are burning or flooding before we are shaken awake? I hope not.
Annika Ord 34:48
I’m having a moment, buoyed by this outdoor writing. I imagine classrooms and congresses, gatherings of world leaders, held outdoors. Observing the songbirds and lichen, making carbon emission commitments beneath rolling heat waves, lining up for water deliveries when aquifers run dry, hauling sandbags in relentless rain, learning how to find and pick fiddleheads in the spring. I imagine this from a place of both love and rage. I appreciate the practical advice of Genevieve Guenther, “fight the people in power,” not the “disembodied force” of climate change. I think of the words my advisor, Michele Koppes, shared with me — that we must bring our whole selves to this work. It is heartening and energizing to hear from others, like Rachel Carson, Kim Cobb, and Joelle Gergis, who recognize the power of emotion to move people to action.
Ruth Moore 36:09
My name is Ruth Moore. I'm a geophysics master's student in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at UBC. I research how climate change is impacting precipitation, such as rain and snow in the Canadian Arctic.
Ruth Moore 36:28
It's October 2nd, 2022. my friend Thanky and I decided to go on a gravel ride towards Bunsen lake. We spent most of the summer cycling around the Lower Mainland on Vancouver Island. Everywhere from the Sunshine Coast to the Cowichan Valley. We would bike pack, where we packed up our belongings and embarked on two and three night self-propelled adventures around this beautiful place that we get to call home. Worries related to ecological breakdown are easier to manage when it's just you, a friend, a tent, and some bear spray against the elements. On this particular day, we decided to go out and explore somewhere a little closer to home in order to enjoy the uncharacteristically mild autumn weather we were having before the foreshadowed rain closed in. This was planned to be an overall mood boosting, head clearing, adrenaline-rushing end to a week of working indoors.
Ruth Moore 37:31
When I woke up that morning, I felt a strange sense of heaviness in the air and a density that I had not noticed before. As we ventured closer to Coquitlam we noticed that the air was smelling smoky with a strange haze over the water. The mountains were getting harder to see. It was a wildfire of a nondescript human cause, a fire which would eventually halt our cycling plans for the day and require over 20 firefighters to tend to a blaze, which at times was out of control. Where I'm from, we do have wildfires, but it's nothing to the extent of what we get here in BC, and certainly not in October, which is meant to be a wet and saturated month. The air was hot and heavy and began to close in. With the visibility lowering and in an attempt to protect our lungs, we got the skytrain back to Vancouver where the smoke had not yet arrived.
Ruth Moore 38:29
In the readings for this class, we had heard of stories of people from communities which were affected by forest fires, and specifically the ways in which individuals are learning to cope with the heaviness. We explored and discussed how climate change is affecting our mental health. The ability to stay cool and calm is being decreased. And individuals everywhere are becoming more overwhelmed with the impending reality that we all face. The ability to calmly choose to take the train back to breathable air quality and remove oneself from the situation is not the case for those who have experienced devastating forest fires in their regions. It is therefore difficult to reconcile with the concept of climate anxiety, since this is not just something which is happening in the mind. It is tangible, here for us to feel, mentally and physically.
Nina Robertson 39:42
This is "On the Bus," by Nina Sky Robertson.
Nina Robertson 39:46
On the bus, I read the Grantham Institute’s Report about the impact of climate change on mental health and emotional wellbeing. My phone's blue light penetrates my eyes, and nausea almost overcomes me as the vehicle jostles forward. I eat a piece of raw ginger to soothe my stomach, focusing on the burning sensation under my tongue. Although I am reading, my headphones are in. I am trying to block my sensitive nervous system from being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stimulus on the bus – all those smells, all those tiny beautiful moments and interactions between strangers, all those days and hopes and worries playing on peoples faces.
Nina Robertson 40:26
I am reminded of a vignette Sally Weintrobe uses in her book "Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis" to introduce systems of care. In the scene, tension rises between a disabled man and a young father on the bus, on a bus just like this. I wonder what it would look like to create a system of care that supported people like me, people who are extremely sensitive, to ride the bus or adequately deal with climate change? Although later I would learn that sensitivity can result from trauma, then I understood my sensitivity as a kind of mental health death sentence, or as the pre-curser to the psychiatric maladies which haunt me. For as long as I can remember the distinction between myself and others has felt quite thin. In a world plagued by inequalities, extraction, and abuse, by the cruelty of capitalism and the permutations of trauma, disconnection, dissociation and un-meaning, being hyper-aware is a difficult state to maintain without dipping into periods of personal suffering, fugue states of overwhelm.
Nina Robertson 41:31
The Grantham Report and Weintrobe’s book ask, when it comes to climate change is that suffering not rational? But from my seat, as someone with what the report calls “pre-existing mental illnesses”, I wounder if my sensitivity-induced experience has ever been un-rational? It’s not a gripe or criticism, but a statement of appreciation for a discourse broaching collectivity. Systems of care designed to support the sensitive, ill, or disabled will be better equipped support us all. It is a well-known design phenomena called the curb-cut effect. And so, it is no wonder that the Institute’s number one recommendation may be boiled down to take action on climate change itself in order to deal with the emerging climate-related mental health crisis.
Nina Robertson 42:17
I cry as we jostle through Railtown and along Powell. I feel strangely seen by the legalistic call to action. I have often felt gas-lit by those better able to direct their attention and modulate their emotional intensity, for my concerns over climate change, for my worries about how systems fail people, and how trauma is folded through generations. This is the first time I have encountered a narrative that describes my experience as a rational reaction to a world gone awry, rather then a personal or biological deficiency, and it feels good and true to be understood as an organism who lives in relation with the world.
Nina Robertson 42:56
The driver turns a blind eye to woman who smells of oranges and gets on the bus through the back doors, while a man in a thin coat shouts his thanks and thumps the window next to me.
Felix Giroux 43:27
My name is Felix Giroux, and this is a reading from my reflective essay.
Felix Giroux 43:34
On October 28, 2021 – already three years ago – Lord Stern gave a talk to celebrate 15 years since he published his well-known report, "The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review."
Felix Giroux 43:46
In the conference hall, there weren’t a lot of people as we were all spaced out two metres apart. I sat in the back, thinking I was just there to listen, take notes, and prepare for COP26, which was a few weeks away. His talk was full of "new speak" and “bank speak”, promoting the idea that innovation, growth, investments and global shifts will solve the problem of GHG emissions. He ended his presentation on the hope that young people gave him, referring to Fridays for the Future and other youth activist groups, mostly from the global North. At that moment, I couldn’t understand how he connected innovation, investment, and youth as the solutions to the climate crisis. In what world does bank speak AND rebellion against bank speak make sense?
Felix Giroux 44:36
One of the first questions came from a student, wondering if and how capitalism was responsible and how his models accounted for radical systems change. He brushed the answer off, replying that we didn’t have time to change the system. I raised my hand. I asked something along the lines of “how dare you use young climate activists as a solution for the future in your slides alongside mainstream capitalist ideas of investment and innovation? As young people, our politics are the opposite of what you’ve just presented!” At least, that’s what I was trying to express. His reply was a short lecture on Amartya Sen’s definition of justice, not answering my question at all. After his talk, I walked up to him to ask if he would accept a meeting at COP26 with youth climate activists so they could express their climate politics and understandings of climate justice. He refused, stating that he was too busy at COP meeting with world leaders.
Felix Giroux 45:40
This was supposed to be a climate champion, heralded by mainstream environmentalists and the UK government for his work on climate economics. The climate crisis doesn’t come from one single source, GHG emissions; it’s the symptom of larger problems like capitalism and colonialism. We can't just put a price on carbon and expect the market to solve it. I think back on this moment, and I’m realizing I should have grieved. Grieved for the system that I wish we could have. Grieved for the change Stern is refusing. Grieved for loss. Loss of words, loss of understanding, loss of solidarity. Our loss.
Judee Burr 46:31
We’ll end the episode with two readings from an assignment to re-name what is often called “the Anthropocene” — to put our own ideas into the name of this moment of living on a damaged and unequal planet. Here is Part 3 — Names for a New Age.
Melissa Plisic 47:05
Howdy, my name is Melissa Plisic, and I do work in critical animal studies and queer ecologies. This is an excerpt from my poem "The Age of Sanctuary."
Melissa Plisic 47:20
Welcome to the Age of Sanctuary. Searching for sanctuary means you’ve been dealing with some serious shit. Refuge is good, but short-term, plus I want to avoid the ricochets of xenophobia that one extra "E" makes. Refugees have human rights. Sanctuaries have something less flimsy. Sanctuary is sacred, unlike Eden. You are never alone even if you are the only homo sapiens sapiens. It means you breathe with the community that holds you. The Age of Sanctuary is beyond time — always already happening, always a possibility. Exists independent of you, exists within you, if you know where to look — never the same way twice. Eluding time, to catch it is to be profoundly present. Sanctuary does not ask for hope when quieting a frantic heart, does not ask you to pretend to be okay. Sanctuary is where you can lick your wounds, and gather strength for the task at hand.
Melissa Plisic 48:46
This summer I visited Toronto for the first time for The North American Association for Critical Animal Studies First Biennial Meeting On Extinction. Three extraordinary days of preaching to the choir, three attendees under thirty and queer. A recipe for instant-friendship, and a crush or two. On Saturday morning before my flight, I invited them to Allen Gardens Conservatory, a 10-minute walk from the Holiday Inn Express Toronto Downtown. Let’s look at all these exotic plants that need constant watering and pruning and probably heating had it not been mid-August. I was skeptical but ultimately a tourist, and I had smoked a joint outside waiting for my friends while listening to the cicadas. So at least I was enjoying it, but also resisting the urge to tell my new comrades that despite the greenhouse’s illusion of outdoor-ness, inside voices would be more appropriate.
Melissa Plisic 49:55
I walked ahead to passively look for some peace and quiet, turned the corner to find a small koi pond, all green with dots and slashes of red, beneath a stone statue of a nude maiden holding a pitcher mid-pour, gazing at her duck friend, the duck gazing back. The koi looked small, compared to those I usually see outdoors. But these koi, these were babies. Some actual babies. Feeling magic, I was consumed by the pond for a moment with a white woman a generation or two older than me. Then a Black man a generation or two older than me wearing an Allen Gardens t-shirt, dirty jeans, and work boots came over and started talking to the fish, himself, the woman, me, nobody, all of the above. He said that in the 17 years of working there, taking care of this pond, this was the first time there had been baby koi. He told them how happy he was to see them, how proud he was of them, how much he loved them. He was so taken by these koi — radiating so much awe, that my friends who caught up finally shut up. Then he told them he’d be back soon and went on his day. My friends were more attuned after that.
Maggie O’Donnell 52:08
Hi, I'm Maggie O'Donnell. I'm a master's student in geography, and I study urban environmental politics. This is part of my essay "Age of Tehom."
Maggie O’Donnell 52:17
"When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.” (Genesis 1: 1-4, NRSV)
Maggie O’Donnell 52:40
Since the second century, Christian theologians have used the first verses of the Book of Genesis to advance the doctrine of creation ex nihilo or “creation from nothing.” On this basis, the beginning begins with God, ascribing order and form where there was chaos and creating light where it was formerly dark. The supremacy of order and lightness was reinforced in subsequent centuries, at the expense of the deep, translated from the Hebrew tehom, and those identified with the feminine, dark, or mystical Other.
Maggie O’Donnell 53:12
When I considered how I could intervene productively in the ongoing conversations about the Anthropocene, I turned to the relationship Western society has with tehom, as both a possible origin point for chronicling our current unfolding ecological crisis, and also as a place to look to now for a potential source of a new beginning. By embracing the tehomic waters of the primordial moment, along with the ways those who embody its depths continue to resist erasure, we might start to imagine a collective path toward a different future.
Maggie O’Donnell 53:45
The relegation of tehom to the edges of the creation story — God creates and there’s no looking back — sparked a pattern of violent oppression and marginalization repeated throughout Western Europe’s pursuit to control the globe. As Whitney Bauman cogently argues in his chapter “Creatio ex Nihilo, and the Erasure of Presence,” the doctrine of creation ex nihilo directly informed the colonial legal concept of terra nullius by allowing European colonizers to justify their suppression and annihilation of indigenous peoples as part of a larger ordained missions to spread order and eradicate chaos.
Maggie O’Donnell 54:23
These histories all feed, and, as a result, sustain what theologian Catherine Keller refers to as Western Christianity’s “dominology.” Keller elaborated on this dominology stating, “Appropriation and annihilation comprise the twin idols of dominology, the engines by which the denigrated chaos (its peoples, its species) gets reduced either to raw stuff for use, or simply to nothing.” From the exploitation of migrant farm workers expected to toil in extreme heat to the proliferation of sacrifice zones in racialized communities along Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” these engines of dominology continue into the present, fueling cultural destruction and ecological collapse. For those with dark, mysterious, disordered, feminine, or otherwise tehomic qualities, these devices of dominology compound into a constant, crushing weight.
Maggie O’Donnell 55:21
This is not to say that those who have been consigned to the depths, including various tehomic human and more-than-human kin, are powerless in resisting the hegemonic structures of oppression. In fact, the hard-fought successes won by Indigenous peoples fighting for land repatriation and young people engaged in intersectional climate justice protests demanding government accountability illustrate best the fissures in settler colonial dominology.
Maggie O’Donnell 55:49
Our collective relationship to tehom will determine how we face the future. We can turn to the space colonizers, lab meat moguls, and carbon credit financiers to sweep down and blow their winds of technocratic climate solutions over the face of our unfolding polycrisis. Or we could dive into the tehom. Swim in the depths. Lose track of where our limbs, swirling and kicking, end and where the waters begin. We could begin the story of a new age with one that is very old, one that humbly invites you to consider finding threads of even earlier cosmologies within its layers and shadows. An origin story that welcomes an infinity of origin stories.
Judee Burr 56:40
We'd like to thank all of the students who contributed their work to this episode, and everyone in the Ecological Affect class whose thoughtful ideas fostered such generative discussion and meaningful writing. Thanks also to Kendra Jewell, Audrey Irvine-Broque, Lorah Steichen, and Maggie O’Donnell for their support in reviewing drafts of this audio story. Finally, we’d like to thank the University of British Columbia’s Hampton Grant program for funding work on this project. Now make sure to listen to the second and final episode in this series — "Eulogies"
Judee Burr 57:12
Thanks for listening.
Part 2 Transcription
Mendel Skulski 00:00
Hey, this is Mendel, and you're listening to part two of an audio series we're featuring from the UBC Centre for Climate Justice called "The Right to Feel." I'll pass it over to producer Judee Burr to tell you more.
Judee Burr 00:19
Hi, it's Judee. This is the second and final episode of a two part series of writings that grapple with the emotionality of climate change. These essays and stories were written in the graduate class Ecological Affect, taught in 2021 and 2022 at the University of British Columbia, on the unceded territory of the Musqueam people. It was taught by Naomi Klein and assisted by Kendra Jewell. I was a student in that class. If you're joining us for the first time, I recommend going back and starting with Episode One — "Climate Feelings."
Judee Burr 00:55
The excerpts you'll hear in the second episode are works of fiction. In this class, we were assigned to write a eulogy for something that could be threatened by climate change, and then to imagine a different future, and to write a speculative fiction piece about how that loss might be avoided or mitigated. You'll hear excerpts of five of those pieces in this episode, eulogies merged with speculative futures. We begin with Annika Ord, who stories threats to tiny pteropods in the North Pacific. Next, my story imagines a future in which a small organic farm is pressured to shut down. Third, Niki's eulogy for wolves is a story of how wolves avoided extinction when human communities relearned to center ecological interdependence. Fourth, Sadie Rittman's story considers the loss of Icelandic understandings of enchantment, and how one researcher manages to carve out a space to see differently. Finally, the episode ends with Rhonda Thygesen considering the plight of bees through the eyes of an aging scientist. Now let's listen.
Annika Ord 02:24
Hi, my name is Annika Ord. I'm from Southeast Alaska, and I study what place-based knowledges can teach us of climate change, glacier retreat, and climate resilience in Lingít Aaní, or Southeast Alaska. This is an excerpt from my fictional story Clione.
Annika Ord 02:42
Dissolution of fine bodies, soft and translucent. Slivers of light propelled by small wings like large ears, rowing in figure 8’s. A red center and soft ears like owls.
Annika Ord 02:59
Pteropods are zooplankton, they belong to a group of free-floating mollusks which include sea angels and sea butterflies. Mostly, they live in the top 10m of the sea and are less than 1 cm long. They are found in all major oceans and at all latitudes and are an important food for species such as salmon, herring, and whales. For pink salmon and chum salmon, pteropods make up an essential food source. Pteropod swarming behavior allows salmon to efficiently feed on large schools without having to work too hard for their food. In some years, these small, winged zooplankton make up 60% of juvenile pink salmon’s food and there seems to be a clear correlation between pteropod abundance and pink salmon populations. Both the sea angel and the sea butterfly rely on a calcium carbonate shells, however sea angels shed theirs shortly after hatching. When pteropods and shelled zooplankton die, they sink to the ocean floor and their shells are slowly turned into sediment, storing the carbon, which came from the atmosphere, in the seafloor. Millions of tiny bodies cooling the planet, removing carbon from the sea that came from the air that we put there. As oceans absorb more and more carbon dioxide they acidify, and the shells of these tiny and essential creatures are slowly eaten away. They’ve been around for 133 million years, evolving in the early Cretaceous, and have survived several bouts with ocean acidification since then. However, in the past 200 years, oceans have become 30% more acidic, increasing at a level not observed for over 50 million years. They are dissolving in the current onslaught.
Annika Ord 04:57
It was the little ones who left first. Barely noticed by the relentless drone of memes and media, take out dinners and seductive silver devices mining attention, rains that never came and the drama of political stalemate. In fact, they gained more attention as ghosts than they did in life. After all, there’s not much glory in sea slugs. Of course, not everyone was lulled by the seductive static, the steady tread upwards and outwards, the promise of infinite convenience, luxury. Dragon fruit in Alaska; migrants turned away at the border. But yes, on the whole, we slept. We began to notice when the salmon stopped coming back. Salmon after all, along the Pacific Coast of North America, are like the quarterback in football, sail to a dingy, berries to my pie. Without them, there’s not much action. We like to be focused; we pick our mascots. So much energy went into measuring the incremental changes, confirming the confirmed and then confirming it again. We marked the losses and walked on. We thought, maybe next time this rigorous document of science will tip the scales. We believed that with the right science, the right argument, policy and politics would follow, corporations would fall in line. But money and power had broken that agreement a long time ago. We knew the truth. Governments knew the truth, but the Dream held fast. A Dream that Ta-Nehisi Coates identifies as resting on the exploitation and violence against black and brown people.
Annika Ord 06:41
He writes: "The forgetting is habit, is yet another necessary component of the Dream. They have forgotten the scale of theft that enriched them in slavery; the terror that allowed them, for a century, to pilfer the vote; the segregationist policy that gave them their suburbs. They have forgotten, because to remember would tumble them out of the beautiful Dream and force them to live down here with us, down here in the world. I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world." That's an excerpt from Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Between the World and Me."
Annika Ord 07:23
The change we needed would not come from measurements, at least not those of climate science. The measurement needed was of the system. The system that funded the American military complex and the prison-industrial complex, sanctioned the stealing of Indigenous lands and children, policed black and brown bodies while privileging white, encouraged the indiscriminate extraction of fossil fuels, forests, fish, etc. by capitalist revered corporations the world round. What had remained peripheral to the nearsighted vision of colonial, capitalist gaze all this time is that nothing, I mean nothing, exists by itself. I feel bad saying it, but it helped to lose some of our mascots. In the North Pacific, when the salmon left, the party began to grind to a desperate stop. Bears, boats, legislation, wolves, trees, trout, mines, fishing families, fishing nations. What we, predominately Western white majorities, had failed to see was the coordination and relationality of all life and systems on earth . Brick by brick we were removing the foundation that held up the increasingly gaudy and top heavy house of the West.
Annika Ord 08:50
Enter Clione. The mist hangs low over the hazy blue islands. Over the overlapping blue mountains. Rain falls softly and constantly, except for the times when it pummels. I work in the kelp forests. We pull on our wetsuits and slip into the water. It’s time to check on the kelp forests and their inhabitants - sea stars, mollusks, kelp crabs and kelp fishes, abalone along the cliffs. We tend to this forest, using old labs and classrooms as seaweed nurseries, helping to rear the young and offset the deaths. We visit each forest and farm along the coastline, caring for the kelp which cares for the fish. We harvest when its ready and reseed when we must.
Annika Ord 09:40
Today, I swim out to the reef. The bottom pulls away. The world is a soft deepening green. Cold spring water trickles between my suit and skin, it always enters through the neck. I pause, looking at the space just beyond my nose. Particles of algae, diatoms, and a few ejected barnacle fronds float by. That’s when I see her. Rowing wings drawing slow figure-8s through her watery sky. Red heart and owl ears barely visible against the clear skin of her body. Clione. She is the 32nd I’ve seen since I started working in the kelp.
Annika Ord 10:25
When everything began to collapse, when the sea angels and salmon, cedar trees and songbirds, and so many others started dropping, falling, disappearing, our human systems too began to stutter, surge, collapse. We didn’t fall softly. The neoliberal machine has never been one for downsizing with grace. But, while systems of extraction and power rumbled on with terrible momentum, people were waking up. I won’t gloss, it got a lot worse before the tide began to turn. We learned from communities who had always been fighting the system. People rallied around Indigenous Nations and communities of color. Just transition and just housing, racial justice and gender equality, land back and clean water movements coalesced. We recognized that fighting climate change was fighting racism, was fighting dispossession of land, was fighting for clean water. The lines of separation that capitalism had worked so hard to draw, blurred.
Annika Ord 11:35
Later, I peel off the cold black neoprene skin from my shivering body. I wrap myself in a thick wool blanket and sit down with a strip of smoked salmon and Labrador tea to write to Ellie. It will take about a month to get to her. Things take more time now; we are learning patience. It seems incredible, almost inconceivable, that our patchwork of responses has made a difference. That restoration, local trade and production networks, carefully managed carbon drawdown and enhanced coastal weathering, sustainable harvests and green energy together have reduced acidification, slowed the warming. I’ve come to have more faith in humanity lately. And in the persistence of life. I draw the outlines of her small, determined body, red heart, owl ears, delicate transparent wings. I write, Ellie, they’re coming back.
Judee Burr 13:00
Hi again, it's Judee. This is an excerpt from my fictional story “The Abundance Will Be Forever.” This title is a quote from Indigenous Fire Keeper, writer, and filmmaker Victor Steffensen from an interview he did about caring for country with fire on the Good Fire Podcast.
Judee Burr 13:20
Part One: The Eulogy. From the Globe, February 20 2044. Page four headline — "Local Farm Closes After 60 Years; Farmer Confesses ‘It Just Stopped Making Sense To Grow Food."
Judee Burr 13:36
Solace Knoll Farm closed its doors last week after 60 years in business. The farm was started in 1984 and passed down in the Carden family. It has been run by Martina Carden for the past 23 years, despite the questionable economics of producing food in our Northeast region. Food security experts attest that dry summers and heavy precipitation events in the region have encouraged shifts in the local food economy. Martina Carden acknowledged the impracticalities of running a local farm business. “You can’t compete against the corporations,” she told a small crowd at the farm’s closing gathering. “With the latest rise in water prices and the refusal of state regulators to help local, sustainable businesses like ours pay, we needed to shut down.” Martina continued, “It just stopped making sense to grow food here.” The 30-acre Solace Knoll Farm began as an organic farm, but it lost its organic status in 2035 along with a number of other farms in the region due to issues with pollution. Farmers continue to blame local water system management for exacerbating this pollution crisis, but water officials say that farms have been unrealistic in depending on a communal system already sapped by more essential uses. Many farms have closed in the last decade. Neighboring residents have some fond memories of the farm, but most see the closing as a natural evolution of the food system. Neighbors to the farm have complained that it is taking up valuable space that could be used for housing development. “It was nice to walk by with the kids and see the animals and the vegetables,” said Marion, a 44 year-old dental assistant and mother of two children who lives down the street from the farm. “But it’s just seems more sanitary to get food from the grocery store after all those pollution problems we’ve been having.” “We used to talk about local food, back in my hippie days,” said Greg Kim, a 60 year-old town resident and local businessman. “You can’t do it anymore. We need that water for residents and the industries that keep money flowing into town.” A footnote to this article reads "Some quotes have been edited for clarity. This paper is supported in part by Amber Corporation and Devon Corporation.”
Judee Burr 15:55
From Mirage Magazine, front page headline February 20 2044 — “Beloved Solace Knoll Farm Closes: Activist and Farmer Martina Carden Speaks Out Against Water Diversions for Toxic Corporate Extractivism and Local Inaction on Ecological Crises”.
Judee Burr 16:15
The article reads — Martina Cardin took over Solace Knoll Farm from her grandmother more than two decades ago. Now the community has to say goodbye to this precious source of locally grown food. Martina's family has collaborated with leaders from the Pokanoket, Wampanoag, and Narragansett Tribes, and with the local community to sustain this place as a beacon in the local, organic food movement these last 60 years. But government officials continue to see regional fracking as a more important water use than local farming, and PFAS pollution rates have skyrocketed. National and international food conglomerates have tightened their hold on food markets. The cost of land has been at a premium in the Northeastern United States for the past few decades, and it has become unaffordable to most farmers who want to grow food at a communal scale. The most significant tipping point for the farm, Martina says, was the water shortages and PFAS pollution crisis in 2034. She blames the rise of industry in the area, and the lack of any precautionary action to regulate what businesses were dumping into the water. Martina shared a short eulogy for the farm which we have printed in full below.
Judee Burr 17:31
“I remember the abundance that made me fall in love with this place. Grandma kept the edges of the fields wild, which kept the bees coming and gave local animals a refuge from the pavement, cars, and commercial noise just a few streets away. Wild animal diversity isn’t in the standard farmer playbook, but, I admit, I loved seeing the deer and the fawns eating grass in the first dewy light of morning. Grandma talked about the farm like that – like a more-than-human community. We had so many birds – scarlet tanagers, black-and-white warblers, and pileated woodpeckers. These are only the English names. We are on Indigenous land where traditions of care so much older than these processes of destruction continue to exist and be practiced. Our grandchildren deserve an inheritance of abundance. It has been a gift to try and offer that to the land and people I love. I don’t know whether this spot will be a farm or an apartment complex in the years to come. But our work does not end. Our community does not end. The existence of this place has been a form of resistance against the extractive world too many see as the only possible future. Writer and lawyer Julian Aguon said, “I cannot think of anything more terrifying than children who do not believe this world can be changed.” Children, friends – the world can be changed. We must continue to fight, and continue to foster liberatory spaces elsewhere. Let this place remind us of what is possible, and what is at risk of being lost.”
Judee Burr 19:14
Part Two: The Farm — Alternative Timeline, 10 years earlier, 2034.
Judee Burr 19:22
Carson. “Get in the truck – hey! Grab three more crates!” Carson was already sweating. The farm was supposed to be a reprieve from the stifling monotony of desk work, but this crashing into tables, dropping the parsley into the compost pile, almost getting trampled by a cow – this was something else. She clumsily pushed three crates into the truck bed. Her arms, thin and pale from desk work, were sporting lines of red scratches and bruises blossoming from the lifting and setting down, the act of trying to keep up, like careening through a video game she hadn’t grasped the mechanics of. Except Solace Knoll Farm was very real. It was unusual to see a clearing of land between the residential lots. A large apartment complex had gone in on one edge, and the fields seemed to shape themselves around its shadow. It was green in squares of beet greens and lettuces, and there were shrubs and trees around the edges. The chickens clucked rhythmically by the barn. It was already getting warm in the hazy pale dew of the early October morning. “Gotta hustle out here my friend,” Linda said, once Carson had jumped up and was crouched tensely in the truck bed with eight other people. “Not like that sweet office job you’ve got.” She grinned cheekily, revealing two cracked teeth. Carson nodded tersely and looked away. I don’t have to come back next week, she reminded herself, feeling a flash of anger at the indignity of it. She glanced over at another worker with two nose rings and a neck tattoo who was bobbing his head to some music; Carson could just make out a few sounds from the near invisible ear pieces. “15 bunches each!” Linda called out, as they filed out of the truck at the field of kale and cabbage. “We have a bulk order.” They filed through the field. Carson followed nose ring guy, copying his movements, trying not to pick too many of the bug eaten leaves. Was it worth it, not using pesticides, she wondered. She should calculate the efficiency savings. She might be able to really help these people. After 15 minutes, most everyone was done picking, but Carson was swatting at the plants, feeling a bit panicked, still 7 short. Nose Ring grabbed her arm. “I picked some extra for you, Amber Corp.” Carson was too grateful to protest. They filed back after the group, heading toward the carrots. “What are you listening to?” Carson asked Nose Ring, whose name was actually Blythe. “You wouldn’t know them,” he said, looking bored. “Cli-pop stuff. The Weather Station.” He gave Carson an earpiece though, and she continued to follow him as they picked kale together.
Judee Burr 22:02
The office plants had pushed Carson over the edge. Most of the plants in the office were fake – the fancy kind that were designed to clean the air – “They’re just like plants!” the ads said – but were really just bots. Something about the inability to tell what was a real plant from what was a fake plant left Carson cold. Her grandma had a big fig tree down by the river in the 2000s. She’d planted it in the 80s in her yard. The tree died more than a decade ago, a couple years after Grandma did. But the rich figs still shimmered in Carson’s memory – plump and fat. So that’s how the farm happened. Carson felt that she had to jump into something boldly. She had no experience of easy transitions. She knew about Solace Knoll farm from Amber Corp Grocery’s audits of the regional food industry; it was an object of ridicule. The organic farm movements a few decades ago turned out to be just a bunch of privileged kids acting out. They only stayed in it a few years before giving up on a needlessly difficult life in the dirt when it turned out to be all cows and no vacation. At Amber Corporation Grocery, they were feeding the masses. Who could argue with that math?
Judee Burr 23:12
Yet, here she was on a truck for some reason, heading toward a patch of dirt in the back the farmers called “Fern Gully” where the salad mixes were grown. She noticed Linda was eyeing her over along with the other newcomers as the truck bounded over the rutted road. Blythe started having a loud conversation with Linda about Amber Corporation workers and the psychology of “exceptionalists deregulating their mind from care.” Was this hazing? She felt another flash of annoyance. They still drive a truck, Carson thought. The hypocrites.
Niki 24:21
Hi, my name is Niki. I research wolf-caribou dynamics using mathematical models and spatial analyses. This is an excerpt from my story, "A Eulogy for Wolves," that begins with a eulogy and then turns to another possible future.
Niki 24:42
They did not pass away gently, rather they ripped a page from Mr. Thomas’s book until they were overcome with our relentlessness. Wolves were the first major predator species to be driven to extinction, and given the current rate of extraction and hubris towards the ability to control natural systems, most large predator species are expected to follow. Wolves and their ancestors have been dancing with caribou and their ancestors on this landscape since time immemorial, and only recently have our institutions of power attempted to change the tune, and what clumsy dancers they are.
Niki 25:17
Wolves were found in many diverse ecosystems across the globe harboring close relationships with their ungulate neighbors. Though the specific step or name of the dance partners shifted over time and space, wolves were always incredibly attentive to the mood swings of their partners, often mirroring the leaps and dips they witnessed. In their early days, wolves were able to listen and quickly adapt to changes in the rhythm of the dance; they were intricately connected to the delicate strides of their prey and understood the fragility of the partnership. As time went on, however, our institutions of power requested that more and more of our own music be played and the unfamiliar cadence reverberated over the natural rhythms of the original song.
Niki 26:01
Wolves weren’t originally our opponents, but rather competitors in a friendly game of survival. Dreams developed in manifest destinies brought us into increasing contact with our cheeky rivals, and they certainly kept their competitive edge. Like all storybook rivals, the competition was rooted in a healthy respect for the opponent, that is until technology allowed us to shift from the values that encouraged coexistence. Wolves held fast to their instinct for reciprocity within their communities, while institutions praised individuality. No man should be tied down by unseen forces of nature, apparently just the invisible hand of the market. Wolves laughed at our antics, and tried to continue the dance.
Niki 26:49
Wolves are survived by their family, their neighbors and communities. They will be particularly missed by their close friend, caribou, who is left to fend for themselves in the front line of the confusing rhythms we step to. We lead the dance in a rigid and forceful fashion; our vice grip on their upper arm is the only way caribou can follow our misguided steps. They are now forced into a fraction of the original dancefloor while we slice across and unearth the floorboards, creating wounds that won’t heal for hundreds of years, yet are impatient when caribou can’t leap across the chasms we’ve created. Caribou had a complicated relationship with wolves that was based more on structural necessity rather than warm, fuzzy feelings, but they felt stable and secure in their future, which is more than they can say with us in the lead.
Niki 27:36
As the people that are left to remember, we ask how many martyrs must die for our sins, how many extinguishes of a flame in the name of suppressing freak wildfires before we admit we are the ones holding the matches. In lieu of thought and prayers, we are asked by close relatives of wolves to reflect on what we are connected to, what depends on us and what we depend on, and whether we are honestly honoring that call-and-response or just turning a deaf ear to the entire song.
Niki 28:09
Niki, 2060, looking back.
Niki 28:13
The world was sending distress signals long before the 2020s but only then did the institutions of wealthy nations that catapulted us into this mess, feel the cracks in their technologically advanced armor. Dreams of rich geniuses lifting our helpless bodies out of the toxic quagmire, with geoengineering silverlined clouds, quickly dissipated as the seasons became waves of pandemics interspersed with heat domes, floods, and freak cold snaps. No Messiah arrived.
Niki 28:43
As a biologist in the 2030s, it was a terrifying and intriguing time to study the natural world. Nothing was constant,so the traditional methods like “before-after-control-impact” became impossible to enact as a study design because every living being was either leaving or arriving in attempts to track their natural climate. The idea of “invasive species” became useless as every year ushered in a new world record in temperature, storm or earthquake intensity, and with it brought a continuous upheaval of species dispersal and birth of novel ecosystems. It was like a gambler down on their luck shaking the dice of biodiversity every year, desperately hoping for a winning combination.
Niki 29:26
I graduated with my PhD and worked as a wildlife consultant in northern Canada, focusing on a rapidly declining barren ground caribou herd. I felt a bit sheepish being so involved with caribou; so much money was poured into the conservation of this species while others fluttered and extinguished silently without so much as a coin flipped towards their salvation. It’s not that I didn’t think caribou weren’t important or didn’t understand the cultural and ecological significance they held, but I saw the circus act of federal and provincial governments talking out both sides of their mouths.
Niki 30:00
Hundreds of thousands of federal and provincial dollars were funneled towards caribou decline while several orders of magnitude more dollars were spent in subsidies towards the very industries that were the direct cause of their demise. I grew weary of the narrative presented - proximate causes of decline like wolf and moose populations - had to be enacted in the short-term in order for all of us to organize and painstakingly monitor the gruelingly slow long-term solutions of habitat restoration. We all had to accept the necessary evils of wildlife management if we wanted to save caribou from certain extinction. I, meanwhile, seriously considered removing myself from the narrative and dreamed about teaching music instead, and reconnecting with nature in a mindset completely apart from p-values and assessment impacts.
Niki 30:48
Southern Mountain Caribou, a subspecies of Woodland Caribou, went extinct at the beginning of the 2030s, despite intense culling programs across British Columbia. Small cries of exasperation and indignation grew in volume across the country. Then, British Columbia's resident Orca whales went extinct soon after a particularly hot year warmed the hatching tributaries of Chinook salmon enough to essentially cook the eggs. Suddenly, all the individual voices sounding alarm bells about dwindling local species, impacts to community health, food security, and more, united in a resounding and demanding cry for immediate change. A wave of biologists, Indigenous rights activists, medical professionals, and many more, emerged from individual marches to question the structure of Canadian Wildlife Management Systems and beyond.
Niki 31:38
In public debates, biologists cited numerous studies that showed the highest levels of biodiversity were consistently found in areas under Indigenous sovereignty. Academic and government biologists, myself included, started leaving our positions to join movements organized around Land Back, which fundamentally fought for legally and holistically reuniting Indigenous peoples with the land they were forced off centuries ago. As more species and systems faced a very public demise, the validity of federal and provincial systems of wildlife management crumbled. Networks of local and regional wildlife management committees were founded on the fundamental understanding of connectedness. Hindsight might be 20-20, but this was a novel concept, not in theory, but definitely in practice. An abnormal observation in a community would be investigated as a symptom of a larger issue without the dreams of historical baselines clouding our judgment, or acting as an impetus for entirely suppressing a partner in that broken link. The consequences of climate change were still raining down on the world. But with the start of restructuring systems, communities could weather the storms together. Many people were still forced to flee their homes in response to climate change, but they were no longer described as immigrants with the same connotation that the word was used in the early 2000s. The idea of illegal aliens was not only considered horribly cruel, but asinine. Because who could be illegal on land that was stolen to begin with?
Sadie Rittman 33:44
Hi, my name is Sadie Rittman. I research re-enchantment and spiritual and ontological implications of climate crisis. This is an excerpt from my story "Return of the Hidden Worlds."
Sadie Rittman 34:00
Eulogy. The world was once an enchanted place. Humans coexisted with various “hidden beings” - elves, trolls, fairies and more - inhabiting dimensions alongside ours. Every culture had its stories. There were the Huldufólk of Icelandic lava fields; the Aos Sí of ancient Ireland; Patupaiarehe of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s misty forests; Hawaiian Menehune in hidden valleys; Cree Mannegishi between rapids and rocks; shape-shifting Arabic Jinn. All were liminal, mystical mediators of our relations in the more-than-human world. In our interactions with the land and its creatures, we had to consider and respect these beings of the hidden world, or else suffer their punishment, or loss. Icelanders considered Huldufólk inhabitants before detonating large stones to build roads; Hawaiians thought of the Menehune that might seek revenge should they kill birds too fast to harvest feathers; and Irish farmers appeased the Aos Sí who in turn ensured the health of their crops. In the world shared with those hidden, there could be no “natural resource.”
Sadie Rittman 35:21
But in an age where “seeing is believing,” “the unseen” by definition can’t be believed, much less known. Now we have only what science proves. Charles Eisenstein writes that “so deeply embedded it is in our understanding of what is real and how the world works,” that “science in our culture is more than a system of knowledge production or a method of inquiry.” Moreover, “when someone demands we be realistic, often they are referring either to money, or to scientifically verifiable fact.”
Sadie Rittman 35:55
This connection between money, science, and the bounds of reality is not accidental. The world as we’ve “known” it rests on a configuration for reality, and corresponding science, that serves the interest of capital. Anthropologist Frédérique Apffel-Marglin explores how with “the first conceptualization of the market economy in the seventeenth century,” “the disentanglement of the individual from a web of community and spiritual obligations gave rise to the individual subject acting on the basis of his perceived self-interest.” This produced concomitantly “the individual subject” and land as “economic resource.” In turn, this separation could only be enabled by the Cartesian split between, as anthropologist Susan Greenwood wrote, “the thinking mind, which had a soul, from mechanistic soulless matter.”
Sadie Rittman 36:54
On my first research trip to Iceland as a 20 year old student from New York, I was mystified by how a “modern,” “developed” European country could purportedly believe in elves. I came away with a few linked factors towards an answer: the “aliveness” of nature, the nearness of “the past,” the landscape cultured by stories rather than capitalism, and a cosmopolitical attitude in which stories did not necessarily have to be “believed” to be real. As so many of my informants so patiently put it: “In Iceland we live so close to nature. And here, nature is alive. Because of this, the elves live here, and we can see and feel their energy.” Far, far away from the “objective world,” in Iceland with its howling wind, bubbling hot springs, flowing lava and northern lights, Icelandic writers May and Hallberg Hallmundsson wrote: “the land was never an accumulation of inanimate matter… but a living entity by itself. Each feature of the landscape had a character of its own, revered or feared as the case might be, and such an attitude was not a far cry from the belief that it was actually alive, or, at the very least, full of life.” Icelanders were overpowered by more-than-human life, and they expressed to me themselves that this “aliveness” was the condition in which elves could live, or be believed in.
Sadie Rittman 38:28
I regret to report that the juxtaposition between landing in JFK and Keflavik is no longer so stark. Increasingly, Iceland is also cluttering with the architecture of capitalism. I've been told that what’s pivotal is the rapidly melting Snaefellsjokull glacier, once an “energy center” for the elves. It might be fully melted by 2050, and is already the build site of another luxury resort. Grandparents no longer grew up in turf houses; they are urbanites who’ve had their TVs, internet and smartphones to mediate their lands with stories of elsewhere. The popular TV show Game of Thrones shot scenes “north of the wall” in the Icelandic highlands, layering the landscape with new meanings, which tourists would flock to for photographs. Also layered are more highways, shopping malls, fast food chains, and the infrastructure for the new Dreki pipeline. Grandparents no longer point out the “hidden worlds” alongside the highways, now smothered with Wendy’s and Burger King. Even if they did, their grandchildren’s attention is algorithmically stripped by surveillance capitalism, sucked down into smartphones which also mediate the landscape. What interest may be left for the old stories in the passing landscape does not extend to consider anything capitalism doesn’t deem “real.” I’m afraid my obituary only repeats a long-told story. As one elderly Icelander summarized back on my first research trip, “the elves leave with electricity.” Yes. The same knowledge paradigm that drills for energy to light up the earth - “Enlightenment” - is also that which has driven out the hidden worlds. Amidst environmental pollution, industry, rationalism and capitalism, we find ourselves alone in a human world. Capitalism must cover everything, and so the fairies retreat."
Sadie Rittman 40:44
20 years later. For my retirement address at the Centre for Cosmopolitical Collaboration and Research, I’ve been asked to dig up this old obituary from back when nobody read my work, and explain how we brought back the “hidden.” Regrettably, we learned the hard way that one worldview, one sociocultural context, one “reality,” was never meant to overtake and strangle the whole planet. Just as a monocrop perishes while biodiversity flourishes, a system and corresponding “reality” so totalizing and invasive as capitalism could not allow human survival. In our delusions of separation, superiority and corresponding objectivity, spread so aggressively across the planet, we very nearly went extinct. In looking at how the “hidden” returned from the banishment of “unreality,” I’ll start with instructions from an elf himself, Fróði, in his book How to See an Elf, co-written with seer Ragga Jonsdottir. They wrote: “Find a rock you feel drawn to. Sit down and be comfortable. Maybe you find it amusing to sit down and talk to an elf. But that is alright, because it is through joy that we can make a positive connection between worlds. Examine the rock, the texture of the stone, colors of the flowers and the moss, and watch the straws dance softly in the breeze. Maybe you notice something special, something especially beautiful, or amusing, something that catches your attention. Now we practice and find the joy in trying to regain this long awaited friendship.” “Listen beyond and through these beautiful sounds of nature. There is silence… Perhaps you hear something else, maybe a soft song, or the light sound of voices, that seem to come from afar, even from inside the rock. With your eyes half closed, or completely closed, you might even see a pointy hat behind a rock, hear a soft sound of bells or see small twinkling eyes looking at you.”
Sadie Rittman 43:08
“Did it work? Did you see me? If not, it’s also fine, it was a beautiful moment, wasn’t it? I am sure that the colors around you seem brighter now, the sounds of nature stronger and you even feel more joy within. A peaceful moment in nature can strengthen the bond between us, elves and humans.” As we find in Fróði’s instructions, elves and other “hidden worlds” always belonged to the realm of connection.
Sadie Rittman 43:40
At my retirement, we now live in a world resembling Ragga’s old image of “the many worlds of the stone”. One world, many realities — a pluriverse. As the Zapatista's had it in their “Pluriverse Principle,” we “walk” worlds into being “in a world in which many worlds fit”. With decolonizing processes of Land Back, there is space for this. With our release from capitalism’s stronghold, there is also time. Time no longer money, economic contributions no longer identity markers, partaking in financial exchange no longer a matter of partaking in “life”, our bounds for reality have widened beyond just “money” and “science.” No longer fully extrapolated within a totalizing capitalist logic, we’ve been released into a wider world.
Rhonda Thygesen 45:13
Hi, my name is Rhonda Thygesen. I research the proteome of honeybees, and I'm a student in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. This is an excerpt from my story "Eulogy for the Bees."
Rhonda Thygesen 45:30
Eulogy. My love story with pollinators started when I was young and living in rural Alberta. I grew up on a farm with fields decorated in canola seed, known as Brassica napus, which bees tended to regularly. I watched them come in June and leave in July. This timing of pollination for the blooming crop was decently regular since the 1980’s. In my naivety I thought that the bees and canola plant were just friends and wanted to say hello to each other. When I was doing my undergrad in biology, I applied to work with Alberta’s apiculture team for research experience. Through that job I learned that the hello I thought bees were giving to canola flowers was a serious work visit. I got hooked on studying pollinators after that. I was surprised that there was a developed field of researchers trying to help pollinators live better against the stressors in their environment. I didn’t make the link as a young researcher that these stressors were correlated with climate change. Nor did I feel brave enough to share my realization that those trying to research the effects of agrochemicals and disease on bee populations were trying to also please the industry instead of changing it. It would have been brave of me to show up to research meetings as the youth who called out each of us for being a part of the problem and not the solution. I felt a lot of anger in those days, and I swore to never be naïve to their important work and silent suffering in health and population. This could be why I am writing this eulogy to the bees today.
Rhonda Thygesen 47:14
It was Albert Einstein that said “if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” Einstein maybe wasn’t factually correct in his timeline, but he is honest in the important bond between bees and humans. There was indeed no other species on planet earth that was such a force of nature nor one that gave us so many gifts. The worker bee is a very literal term, working hard to upkeep the ecosystems it participates in to keep the animals of this planet healthy. Our mouths were the receivers of their labour. Almonds, apples, blueberries, coffee, dairy, cereals, and cotton will not see the future without them, and we will cherish those things while we still have them. We will never be able to taste warm honey comb fresh from a hive on a July afternoon. Our plates will look less vibrant without you here, in fact, they will look almost bare. Our tastebuds will miss the diversity. Our clothing will surely not be as extensive. You were the true gods of the farmland.
Rhonda Thygesen 48:39
Future. My grandson Ethan and I had taken up a new Saturday ritual of sitting nearby different garden beds, crops, and greenhouses to watch for bees. We’d set up our seats now in a canola field in southern Alberta and it was April. Patches of the yellow plant were hard to come by and my childhood intuition told me inside that we were sure to see a fuzzy honey bee on of the flowers we sat in front of. We waited patiently to hear a buzz.
Rhonda Thygesen 49:12
“But we might never find them?”
Rhonda Thygesen 49:14
“Exactly right,” I said. “We might never find them.”
Rhonda Thygesen 49:19
I always tried to tell him the truth, if I knew the answer. He could tell if I lied. Maybe they’re too far away. Too much empty space or something. What if they can’t smell the canola flowers any more? What if they don’t recognize it’s bright yellow colour? It had become a lot more difficult to spot pollinators as the world has seen massive insect decline amongst the impacts of climate change. Floods and droughts or water disasters and wildfires were of immediate danger to people, but other species were suffering too. Only certain parts of my home province were able to still grow canola seed as the plant couldn’t survive in areas with too much drought or intense heat. I’m 66 years old now and have witnessed canola seed barely survive in the country that laboured it. The yellow fields used to signify summertime and now time and climate have become so unfamiliar that canola basically grows in what should be our early spring. An Indigenous friend of mine tells me horror stories of how her people know that Earth’s signs have changed. They used to use snow drifts and star patterns to guide themselves in the Canadian winter to and from hunting. It’s been a long time since you could take the signs of mother nature as truthful, she says.
Rhonda Thygesen 50:42
We saw the effects of climate change on our in our daily life which we called the “long goodbye”. Droughts often impacted our resources for cooking and dishes and baths. We grew food that was able to survive on our land between Edmonton and Calgary. Some heat waves ruined our small harvests. Some days we didn’t go outside because of the air quality. On many occasions we lost friends to natural disasters and didn’t travel much to see family. Aspyn’s friends told her stories from their old homes. I became friends with parents, and we silently suffered with the costs of living. Despite climate doom being perpetuated by corporations and the government there was no assistance. The public was restless, and it was common for angry mobs to form protesting the little action that was happening. Those working with pollinators and fighting for them were also getting agitated. Much reform has occurred since then. We always understood that change was never going to be an overnight process. We weren’t going to be able to quit everything we’ve been doing to harm the environment for decades all at once. We were too deep in our ways to ever have that be a reality. But big moments of change did happen. The public never gave up. Each artist, scientist, and activist continued to work hard to lobby global leaders to do better. As disaster struck closer to people’s homes they could no longer be ignorant to the issues at hand. We were losing the planet we knew and we were going to be next. It has been decades of this since I was young in the 2000’s and climate activism started way before that. We have been at war with the climate for too long.
Rhonda Thygesen 52:32
"She’s here! She’s here! She’s here!" Ethan said. A small foraging honey bee was trying to descend on one of the canola flowers. I took a breath and tried to calm my own happiness. This always reminds me of when I was a little girl growing up in seas of canola bees. Hives were never far away. “She’s here,” I said as I opened my eyes.
Rhonda Thygesen 52:57
Ethan and I are watching the bees in their hive. We see them leave and return home. There are nurse bees poking their heads into cells to clean larvae and feed them. We see the notorious figure-eight bee dance to communicate to others where the good flowers are for food. Resin is being built onto the frames by worker bees as an antimicrobial product to protect the hive from disease. The queen is in the hive laying eggs in empty cells with her long and skinny abdomen. My favourite lesson from bees is that each of them has a unique role. And that role is important. Without a worker, nurse, forager, drone, or queen, the whole hive would be unable to function. That’s a lot of power for one individual. It’s crucial that they work together for survival. They never give up on each other and they haven’t proven to give up on Earth yet either.
Judee Burr 54:06
We’d like to thank all of the students who contributed their work to this episode, and everyone in the Ecological Affect class whose thoughtful ideas fostered such generative discussion and meaningful writing. Thanks to Kendra Jewell, Audrey Irvine-Broque, Lorah Steichen, and Maggie O’Donnell for reviewing drafts of this audio story. Finally, we’d like to thank the University of British Columbia’s Hampton Grant program for funding work on this project. For my part, it was a gift to be part of this class and to curate this gathering of our writing. Thanks to all of you for listening to this series.