Transcript
[Idyllic 1950s American neighbourhood soundscape] Away by Meydän
Mendel Skulski 00:15
What is normal, routine, customary? Practically, every aspect of how we act is shaped by the orthodoxy of our surroundings. Our community, purposefully selected or chosen by fate, calibrates our sense of how the world ought to be, and how we ought to be within it. From our family, our friends, our neighbors, we are constantly getting cues on language, behavior, attitudes. And they, in turn, are taking cues from us. We are woven in to our social fabric; how it moves, how it responds to changes in fashion is the sum of the flexibility of each thread. As familiar ground shifts underneath our feet, as we face a rising tide, we look to our communities not only for answers, but for the questions we might ask, the fears we might speak aloud, and the hope we might share. The climate crisis promises to upend our ways of life. How willingly, how gracefully we accept those changes, is often determined by the dragons of social comparison. These dragons have always been with us, and while you can't see their bodies, you can see their tracks. These are the dragons of climate inaction, their habitat is in our minds, and this podcast is your field guide. Welcome to Chapter 3, "Writing on the Wall."
[Theme song] D7 by Loam Zoku – Composed and produced by Schuyler Lindberg and Y'honatex
Introduction Voiceover 02:09
This is Scales of Change: A field guide to the Dragons of Climate Inaction. Join us as we learn to spot them in the wild, and discover how they can be disarmed. Produced by Future Ecologies on the traditional territories of the Lekwungen and WSÁNEĆ peoples, with support from the University of Victoria.
Mendel Skulski 02:48
Hey, Adam.
Adam Huggins 02:49
Mendel.
Mendel Skulski 02:50
Robert.
Robert Gifford 02:51
Hi, nice to see you.
Mendel Skulski 02:52
And hello listener! If you're just tuning in, and all of this dragon talk is not making any sense, pause this episode and go back and check out the introduction. Don't worry, we'll wait.
[Ambient music in background]
Mendel Skulski 03:05
So, today we're on to the dragons of social comparison, or as we've dubbed in Latin, the genus Communis, which just translates to "public", "common", and "ordinary".
Robert Gifford 03:22
A social comparison is a very important genera in general, because, like it or not, we're very influenced by other people around us. In fact, we tend to deny that we're influenced by other people. But you know, if anybody's honest, they'll say their... in terms of what they dress, what they say, what they listen to, whatever, we're very much influenced by people, we compare ourselves to other people, what are the norms. You know, because I'm doing this job, I must have this kind of car or it won't look right, it's the social norm for me.
Adam Huggins 03:54
There are four dragons in this genus. The first two are very closely related. So close that some people would consider them a single species. These are Communis invidia...
Mendel Skulski 04:06
That's the namesake of this genus, social comparison. We tend to model our behavior on the behavior of the people we consider to be our peers, whether we know them or not.
Adam Huggins 04:17
... and also the dragon Communis vicinia.
Mendel Skulski 04:20
Also known as the dragon of social norms, and networks. These are the standards we hold in our neighborhoods, and in our friend groups.
Adam Huggins 04:29
Then there's the dragon of perceived inequality, or Communis illibria, who said...
Robert Gifford 04:35
"Why should I ride my bike, if everybody else is going to drive their car? It's not fair." Or "If the Chinese are going to do this, why should we Canadians do that?"
Media Clips 04:46
[Unspecified news anchor] ...greenhouse gas emissions and China doesn't show any sign to cut this.
Robert Gifford 04:50
So this notion of inequity is very strong, not only in climate change, but in life in general. So if we feel something's unfair, "he's getting away with something and I can't get away with it", or "this is what we should all do". Or the one... one of the baby dragons now I call it in half joking "my boss made me do it", that is, "I had to go on this business trip because my boss told me to do it". The reality is that the boss said, "You don't have to do this, but it might be good to do that." So I use that excuse to go visit New Orleans when I didn't really have to go there, but I say "My boss made me do it".
Mendel Skulski 05:29
We're calling that one Communis obsequium. And sadly, when it comes to social comparison, we all fall victim to something called "the better-than-average effect".
[Drum beat begins as chorus of vocals sing “Better than average]
Robert Gifford 05:46
You ask somebody, "What are you doing for the environment?" and the person will say, "Well, I'm not doing much but I'm doing more than most people are."
[Chorus sings “more than most people are”]
Robert Gifford 05:54
And this comes out of a long tradition in psychology where you ask people what percentile they are in terms of attractiveness, and the average is about 75% [laughs]. You ask people about intelligence, and they're... the average is like 75th percentile.
[Chorus sings “75th percentile.”
Robert Gifford 06:11
You ask people their health risk for their age, and they're healthier than other people their own age. So these are ways to make us feel good, to have a positive attitude, but they're wrong [laughs].
[Chorus harmonizes “Wrong”]
Robert Gifford 06:29
And so the better-than-average effect is, "I'm already doing more than most people are".
Mendel Skulski 06:35
And while I'm ahead, I may as well bask in the glow of my own accomplishments.
Adam Huggins 06:41
Yeah, I'm so glad I'm not like that. But I can definitely see how the better-than-average effects really impact some people, you know...
Mendel Skulski 06:52
Errr...
Robert Gifford 06:52
Ask the people in a household how much of the chores they're doing, and added up, it comes out to 150% at least [laughs]... every time.
[Drum beat ends]
Adam Huggins 07:04
The truth is we look to one another to determine what constitutes acceptable behavior, which can be a very low bar in terms of climate, at least here in North America. So how do we help each other to better, and not just better than average? I think many of us have discovered that debating our climate denying uncle is not the most effective approach.
Monster Truck Announcer 07:26
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! At the dinner table, podcast listener destroys relative with facts and logic.
Mendel Skulski 07:34
... No. At the same time, people are remarkably responsive to rapid shifts in social norms as we are all currently witnessing. The realities of climate change will reach everyone, eventually. But the call to action will differ from group to group. If climate resilience is a process, we need to process it together.
Adam Huggins 07:59
And a great way to process this together is to externalize all of these internal narratives that we have, to become part of a conversation, where we listen to and learn from one another. If you live in a community where people don't talk to each other very often about climate change, this is really difficult and really important work. But what if you live in a community that already recognizes the climate crisis as a serious issue? In my small community called Galiano Island, it can seem like many people here care a great deal about climate change already. And so there are times when I get complacent. And I think to myself, "Well, isn't talking more about climate change here just kind of like preaching to the choir?"
Mendel Skulski 08:43
Ahh... the choir fallacy.
[Deep chanting fades in] Cinematic Holiness by Aner Andros
Adam Huggins 08:45
Evidently, I'm susceptible. And so earlier this year, I attended an event on the island that was entirely devoted to community members sharing stories and having conversations in the context of, and I quote, "climate changing times". The house was packed, which is no mean feat for a little island of just over 1000 people in the wintertime. And while there was a wonderful performance by a real honest-to-goodness choir, that's where the similarities ended. Afterwards, I sat down with the organizer to ask her about it.
Cate Sandilands 09:19
I think there is an assumption that the choir all thinks the same thing.
Adam Huggins 09:24
This is Cate Sandilands. She's my friend and neighbor here on Galiano Island. And she knows a thing or two about choirs, because she sang in one that evening. Also...
Cate Sandilands 09:34
I'm a professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. And I'm the editor of a volume called "Rising Tides: Reflections for Climate Changing Times" that was just published in October by Caitlin Press.
Adam Huggins 09:46
Featuring 47 contributing authors, "Rising Tides" is a collection of poetry, memoirs, and stories, fictional and otherwise. It revolves around the past, present, and speculative future of climate change. The evening in question was to celebrate the launch of this volume, and give contributors the opportunity to read their work before a live audience. But if you were to just walk in and listen to the performances without knowing the theme of the evening, it might take you a while to guess it's just how they were connected.
Cate Sandilands 10:17
Climate change wasn't always the topic of the story, as much as it was an ever-present. It's not background, just present everywhere in all of the stories at all moments, which is actually kind of how we live our lives, like climate change is never not there. But it's not necessarily the thing that everybody's talking about all the time.
Mendel Skulski 10:40
Leaning into the choir metaphor, the climate crisis isn't the sheet music, it's the paper. Or, it's not the song, it's the air that holds the sound. And even when we're in the same choir, we might all still be singing different parts.
Cate Sandilands 10:57
In the climate movement, it is a bit similar, there's got to be some coordination. But individuals don't necessarily have to agree on absolutely everything in order to come together and do something in particular. You know, even on this little island that might seem like the choir that I'm preaching to, there are people that I disagree with about a range of things, but we might agree on the need for some kind of community transportation system.
Adam Huggins 11:28
And in a small community like Galiano Island, a community transport system would be a huge step forward.
Mendel Skulski 11:35
And it's a job that's probably beyond the capacity of your average choir.
Cate Sandilands 11:39
The choir is quickly going to disintegrate as a metaphor because a choir needs a good director.
[Choir wobbles and fades away into burbling soundscape]
Adam Huggins 11:57
So... at this point, we'll abandon the choir metaphor in favor of something more ecological. "Rising Tides" is broken up into sections, with these beautiful illustrations of members of our more than human community. There's a sand dollar, a jellyfish, a type of bull kelp, and a grasshopper. Taken alongside the stories, these images remind us that we all come to this world that we share from sometimes very different perspectives. And that's our strength. Through projects like "Rising Tides", it's possible to expand our notions of what the climate crisis is, and what it means, by taking in the perspectives of those around us, without necessarily having to collapse it into one monolithic, objective reality. In this way, we're a lot more like an ecosystem made up of unique contributors, than a choir of like-minded individuals. And, as in an ecosystem, we have to be really attentive to one another. That's how we grow together and adapt to life in climate changing times.
Cate Sandilands 13:04
I think that there's a variety of different things that people can be doing. I think that we do them better when we talk about them. And I think we do them better when we do them collectively. Because collectively we can get things done that we can't do as individuals.
Mendel Skulski 13:21
... which is important because we're really vulnerable as individuals. Reading through the stories, one of the common threads is the isolation and grief that kind of company even the most everyday activities in climate changing times, to say nothing of the loss that many of us are bearing witness to, day by day.
Adam Huggins 13:42
... which can be so lonely. The climate crisis affects each one of us differently. And so every story in the collection reflects that, whether it's about lamenting the loss of bull kelp and familiar waters, or witnessing a father's progressive dementia, sailing through a sea of jellyfish, or just taking the walk to the post office. But by placing the stories together, even though they're all very different, Cate has created this unique multi-dimensional conversation. And that conversation is healing.
Cate Sandilands 14:17
I got an email from a reader this morning who said that reading the book, and she's is a climate activist in Victoria, that reading the book made her feel that she was in good company. And that's a good outcome for me [laughs] that it made her feel like she was in a room having a good conversation with a bunch of really interesting people who all have interesting things to say about climate change, and it made her feel less alone.
Adam Huggins 14:45
Being a part of a conversation makes us feel less alone, in part because we're often told that our individual experiences just aren't meaningful, right? They're like the weather, they're not the climate. In other words, they're subjective, not objective, and therefore not particularly valuable.
Cate Sandilands 15:05
I think that we tend to think about climate change in very, very, very, very large terms, in terms of the global, in terms of weather patterns. I think we experience climate change in very local terms. I'm happy to say I think that might be changing. I think there has been for a very long time a disjuncture between what legitimately counts as a conversation about climate and people's perception of the weathers and ecologies that surround them on an everyday basis. I know the line that no individual weather event can be predicted by, you know, any particular climate change model. But I think it's also really important to honor people's individual and particularly community perceptions of the things that are currently changing. I think there are whole knowledge traditions that are based on that kind of deep attentiveness and observation and conversation. And I think that for a lot of people who rely on media to tell them about climate change that that more deeply personal sense of observation tends to be deprivileged.
Mendel Skulski 16:09
And it's not just mass media that can tend to deprivilege personal observation. This happens in the sciences, too.
Adam Huggins 16:15
Oh, yeah?
Mendel Skulski 16:16
You've read enough academic papers to know what I'm talking about.
Adam Huggins 16:19
Yeah yeah, but I want to hear you explain it. [Laughs]
Mendel Skulski 16:22
Sure. So, there's this idea that comes out of Fisheries biology, and it's called "shifting baseline syndrome". It was originally used to describe kind of how our impressions of what a natural healthy population of fishes, how those impressions change over time, generation to generation, but it's become a pretty common notion more generally, in environmentalist circles.
Adam Huggins 16:49
Okay. So, maybe can you explain it in terms that relate more to personal observation?
[Melancholic piano solo begins] Verity by Hildegard’s Ghost
Mendel Skulski 16:57
So like, once upon a time, you were born.
Adam Huggins 17:02
So they say.
Mendel Skulski 17:03
And as you grew up, the world was a certain way. And like, maybe you lived in a city, and there weren't any tall buildings in your neighborhood. Or maybe you grew up on a farm, and the creek never ran dry in the summer. And there were always frogs and bugs around.
Adam Huggins 17:21
Or maybe you grew up here on the west coast, and you can remember an annual salmon run in a river near your home.
Mendel Skulski 17:29
So that's your baseline, the world you grew up in, where all of your childhood nostalgia still lives. That's what's normal to you, that's what's comfortable and familiar. And any change in your life is measured against that starting point.
Adam Huggins 17:47
Right.
Mendel Skulski 17:48
So, generation after generation, the world just keeps changing, and the baseline keeps shifting. But if you're relying on personal experience, then however the world changed before you were born doesn't factor in, it just gets swallowed up by a big, nebulous, timeless history. And as a consequence, you're less concerned by ecological crises than you might be if you saw the bigger picture.
Adam Huggins 18:18
So the concern that shifting baseline syndrome raises is that our personal observations of change in the world around us can be misleading. Because they're based on these sort of ingrained assumptions that we pick up as we grow up about what is natural. And this relates to social norms, because what we understand to be normal or natural, as Robert points out, is often influenced by the communities around us.
Mendel Skulski 18:43
Yeah, exactly. But the issue is that shifting baseline syndrome comes with its own assumptions. For example, that there is some kind of objective, natural baseline state, and that scientists and experts are the only ones who can determine what that is. So an alternative perspective on shifting baseline syndrome would be that what we perceive as normal or natural changes, not because we're getting farther and farther away from some pre-determined baseline, but because what we perceive as normal is socially mediated, and it changes as we change.
Adam Huggins 19:22
So if we're hoping to co-create climate resilience, stories like those in "Rising Tides" remind us that the goal isn't to get to a certain parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere, or to return to some baseline state. No one can say what the world should look like. So a good place to start is to continue to be in conversation with one another, across our many differences, and to keep checking in and keep deepening our understanding of one another. So that when we move, as we move, we can move in directions that benefit everyone, every being on this planet.
Cate Sandilands 19:57
The social relations of our... that mediate our relationships to the natural world are just as important as the economic ones, are just as important as the technological ones. It's not just about fossil, it's, you know, it's not just about fossil fuels. It's about an understanding of privilege that includes the idea of the right to world travel. There are aesthetic and cultural, and normative and social problems that lie at the heart of our relationship to oil, our relationship to space, our relationship to place, and those are just as important as reducing fossil fuel consumption.
Adam Huggins 20:44
We can't address the climate crisis without dramatically shifting our social relations. And to do that, we have to keep the conversation going, and make sure it's inclusive. That way more and more people will be inspired to join in.
Mendel Skulski 20:59
Well, either inspired or just embarrassed to be left behind. And that brings us to another introduction, another animal from Robert Giffords' psychological menagerie.
Adam Huggins 21:12
Right. We didn't warn you, but there are more than just dragons on this series.
Mendel Skulski 21:17
Introducing the unsung hero of the climate revolution.
Mendel Skulski 21:22
The mule.
[Carnival band and mule braying]
Robert Gifford 21:28
When I do a talk, I can see people's face light up because they all can think of some mule that they know. And that's how it started in the first place. Because somebody said "You should see what Margaret does". And it was like an actual person in the room because there's always... every group has a mule in it, or maybe several.
Mendel Skulski 21:45
If we know our listenership, then it's probably a safe bet that you are a mule to some degree or another. And please don't take offense. It's a badge of honor.
Robert Gifford 21:56
And I never know where I should explain it but I usually tell people that I go to the Saanich fair, and there's an actual mule there that I take a selfie with every year. And I really liked this mule. And so this mule was my... was my inspiration for the metaphorical mule, of the person who does everything possible, carrying the load and all that.
Mendel Skulski 22:14
Mules are motivated largely by environmental need, doing whatever they can even at the cost of some comfort or convenience.
Adam Huggins 22:23
And doing whatever you can might be exactly what you're imagining.
Mendel Skulski 22:28
Composting at home, riding bikes, eating less beef, buying less stuff, maybe even growing your own food.
Adam Huggins 22:36
Or it could be like those of us who make like actual mules and don't reproduce, you know, deciding not to have children. I have friends who are making this sort of ultimate sacrifice because of the climate crisis.
Mendel Skulski 22:49
Well, I mean, real mules are sterile, so it's not as much of a decision for them.
Adam Huggins 22:55
True, that... that might be where the metaphor breaks down.
Mendel Skulski 22:58
We've got a lot of broken metaphors [laughs] in this chapter. Anyways... like I was saying, mules do whatever they can to bear the climate burden for those around them, in all sorts of ways.
[Carnival music ends]
Adam Huggins 23:13
But there are some burdens that no one individual can bear. And that really don't even belong to us as individuals at all. Still, most of us do carry some of the guilt and the grief and anxiety that the climate crisis engenders. And in most contexts, it just isn't considered socially acceptable to express these feelings in public, right?
Mendel Skulski 23:36
Hm.
Adam Huggins 23:37
We all feel fear. And most of us feel a sense of personal blame and shame. But no one really deserves that. And so no one wants to be singled out as well and have it leveled against them. It's just not fair.
Mendel Skulski 23:51
Sure. But that said, I can think of a handful of CEOs that really do merit a good public shaming.
Adam Huggins 23:59
Well, yeah.
Mendel Skulski 24:00
But you're right. For the most part, it really isn't socially acceptable, or fair, to criticize other people's behavior from a climate perspective. I mean, we were all kind of born into the systems that we exist within. On the other hand, I feel like the fear of being publicly called out or chastised is such an important factor in responding to these collective crises. Like for example, COVID-19, social distancing and stay at home orders have been prescribed from above, but for most of us, they are enforced primarily socially.
Adam Huggins 24:34
You've got a point there. Yeah, the new social norms are actually a huge tool in preventing the spread of coronavirus. But old social norms are still blocking climate action. What we need are creative ways to deal with all of that shame and anxiety that we're feeling. And that's how I found myself sneaking into a condemned house late at night this past November.
[Spooky bass synthesizer begins] The Wasteland by Sunfish Moon Light
Adam Huggins 25:01
From a distance, the house looked like many older homes tucked away in the quieter corners of Victoria, British Columbia, three storeys, wooden, with a steeply pitched gable roof and a brick chimney. You could even dismiss the freshly dug graves and eerie statues in the front yard as leftover Halloween decorations. But as I approached in the darkness, it became clear that the entire house had been covered in a gigantic mural. Sunburst orange and pink on the roof, fading down into charcoal black, and front and center, a cartoon of a decomposing polar bear carcass. I walked up the blood red front steps, in through a creaky entranceway, and was greeted by bizarre, nightmarish images on every wall: sewer outflows in the foyer; giant dead bees and bacteria floating in the hallways; in the dining room, humongous sculptures of a heart and a brain made out of refuse emerged out of the airduct and electrical outlet; and up the stairs, dead trees and tsunami waves made of plastic bottles dominated the bedrooms. I'm not even going to describe the repulsive scenes I was met with in the bathrooms.
[Faint scream in background]
Adam Huggins 26:24
Suddenly, I heard voices downstairs. And I descended to find a small group of young people with razor blades, deeply engaged in removing a chunk of the painted drywall to take home as a souvenir.
Unnamed Artist 1 26:38
They worked with the knife, guys. I got excited.
Unnamed Artist 2 26:41
Oh boy.
Unnamed Artist 3 26:41
[Laughs]
Adam Huggins 26:44
But these were no ordinary vandals. These were some of the artists behind the creation of the art I was standing inside, aptly titled "The Wasteland: A Climate Anxiety Haunted House". And after figuring out who I was and why I was sneaking around in their installation late at night, one of the organizers, Kay Gallivan, escorted me down into the basement to talk about the project.
Mendel Skulski 27:09
[Laughs] Wait... After everything you'd seen so far, you... you followed her into the basement?
Adam Huggins 27:17
Yeah, why not?
Adam Huggins 27:18
Oh there's a piano... there was a giant pile of garbage right?
Kay Gallivan 27:22
There was a garbage fort...
Adam Huggins 27:23
A garbage fort?
Kay Gallivan 27:25
But it was destroyed in the rain.
Adam Huggins 27:27
A garbage toss too!
Kay Gallivan 27:29
Yeah.
Kay Gallivan 27:33
This is where the Wax Collective had their installation, but they took it all down. I guess what’s remaining is what they want demolished.
Mendel Skulski 27:41
Okay. Err... what is going on here?
Adam Huggins 27:47
Long story short: Kay and her fellow artists had found out just a little bit more than a month before that this house had been condemned and was slated for demolition. And so they convinced the owners to let them try turn it into an art installation for a month. And I had arrived at the very end of the exhibition, just as all the artists were coming to dismantle their pieces and take away whatever they didn't want to become rubble.
Kay Gallivan 28:11
These ideas of permanence and impermanence and playing with that tension was something that was really juicy. And one of the central things I wanted to do with Wasteland was to take a moment for us to appreciate and create from things that we would have otherwise demolished or thrown away.
Adam Huggins 28:32
So we're talking, sitting cross legged on the floor in this tiny basement room that actually reminded me of places that I've lived in, especially in my early 20s, except that the walls are covered in this detailed collaborative artwork.
Kay Gallivan 28:46
Yeah, and through these collaborations, people are really exploring a lot of anxiety about climate change and a lot of fear. And it's, it's neat to collectivize that very individualized grief.
Adam Huggins 28:57
Wherever you look in the Wasteland, you can feel this grief and anguish just dripping out of the walls. But it doesn't feel oppressive. It actually feels kind of cathartic. It's not on the inside anymore, right? It's out there for everyone to see. And for us to explore and talk about and sit with. For the artists, it's like this group of people just took all of their rage, and apprehension, and self-loathing, and love, and engraved it into the walls of this house. And you can feel being there how good it felt to break all of the normal rules.
Kay Gallivan 29:37
The freedom to mess up in these pre-demolition houses lies in the fact that it's pre-demolition, so it's going to be destroyed no matter what, you know. So there's this sort of like, who cares, kind of thing about it, it's easier to access that spirit of just try. And I think also because like, a lot of the time our first forays into making art or into creativity happen in intimate space, and so being in a space that feels intimate is an interesting place for art-making. A lot of people have nostalgic memories of, you know, maybe like wanting to draw on a bedroom wall, or getting in trouble for drawing on a bedroom wall. And so in the case of the professional artists, to get paid to paint all over bedroom wall or like, even in the case of the participants, we had one room, the living room, that where people were allowed to paint, it really does feel like it's living as it's pulsing, because so many people painted on it.
Adam Huggins 30:25
Before I leave, I head up to see the living room for myself.
Adam Huggins 30:30
So this is the living room. You can identify it by the fact that there are no dead people in here.
Mendel Skulski 30:38
Okay, so... so this room is just set up for people to write all over it. It's like a public graffiti wall.
Adam Huggins 30:45
Yeah, the original idea was to have one half of the room reserved for negative thoughts, and the other half reserved for empowering thoughts, but it clearly just devolved into a free for all. There were layers upon layers of writing, in a chaos of shame and hope, and the walls echoed with familiar thoughts.
Climate Graffiti 1 31:06
Wind turbines kill birds.
Climate Graffiti 2 31:08
Your home is made from a slaughtered ecosystem.
Climate Graffiti 3 31:12
Your vacation is killing coral reefs.
Climate Graffiti 4 31:14
You drive?
Kay Gallivan 31:16
And did you just touch plastic? [Laughs]
Adam Huggins 31:22
And then scattered throughout, there were these little rays of hope.
Climate Graffiti 5 31:28
Resilient.
Climate Graffiti 6 31:30
Just bees.
Climate Graffiti 7 31:31
Affinity groups.
Climate Graffiti Chorus 31:33
I f$%#ing love my life.
Climate Graffiti 4 31:38
I f$%#ing love my life.
Adam Huggins 31:42
Standing in that room felt just like standing inside of our collective climate unconscious. And it definitely did not feel hopeful. To be honest, it felt kind of like a hot mess. But also, it felt so good to have a place where we could all just scream into the void, together.
[Hopeful synthesizers fades in] Communis invidia by Loam Zoku – Composed and produced by Schuyler Lindberg and Y'honatex
Kay Gallivan 32:02
I never really made art about climate change or resisting climate change, because I don't really have a lot of hopefullness when it comes to resisting climate change, unfortunately. It's not that I don't care, because I care a great deal, but I just don't have a lot of hope. And so it's hard to participate in activism when you feel a sense of hopelessness. But then what happens is people unfortunately get isolated in their hopelessness. So this is a place where people could come together and share their hopelessness, and express hopelessness, and come together, and maybe something will come from that, maybe some more hope will be sparked. I think hope for some things has been sparked... for me, at least, the hope that we can come together, and that there are a lot of people who care a lot, and then we can create a community from a genuine place.
Mendel Skulski 32:53
So did you leave your mark on the wall of this living room?
Adam Huggins 32:57
I did. I picked up the paint brush I wrote...
Kay Gallivan 33:01
"The writing is on the wall." Yes.
Mendel Skulski 33:05
Yes!!
Adam Huggins 33:07
I mean, what I was feeling was that it's all there for all of us to see, right? And we have this choice. We either treat our planet like a house that's about to be demolished. We leave our marks on every surface and create mountains of artful rubbish. And we cut little pieces that we want to save off the walls as souvenirs. Or... we come together and express all of that grief and fear and anxiety. And then we roll up our sleeves and get to work repairing the roof, you know?
Mendel Skulski 33:39
Yeah. It sounds like this experience really had an impact on you.
Adam Huggins 33:44
It really did. It reminded me that so many of us are sharing these feelings. And yet we need to keep reminding each other in these small and big ways that things are not okay. And I think that's how we transform the dragons of social comparison into agents of change in a climate revolution.
Mendel Skulski 34:08
Whether they resemble a choir, or a place to scream into the void, or a semi authoritarian system of social policing, the dragons of social norms and social comparison aren't necessarily good or bad. They'll simply always be with us. These dragons are the reason that the bold, the highly motivated, the mules, can be leaders in their communities. They're the reason we have communities at all.
Robert Gifford 34:38
Exactly. And that's a very good point. I usually make that point in my talk, that social comparison can work for good or evil, so to speak. That's true. Well, in fact, here's an actual example from the literature on cul-de-sacs. If one person puts up solar panels, the odds of somebody else in the cul-de-sac putting up solar panels is like double a non cul-de-sac. And so you see there's social comparison in a field experiment or quasi-experiment. And it's been shown in several studies that people look across the cul-de-sac and they say, "I guess I better get some solar panels", and on a straight street they don't.
Adam Huggins 35:13
[Laughs] Yeah, and if one person creates a climate anxiety haunted house on the cul-de-sac, who knows what might follow.
Mendel Skulski 35:21
When the shape of our community makes that much of a difference on our choices, we should all recognize our power as sculptors.
[Percussion enters]
Adam Huggins 35:37
This has been Chapter 3 of Scales of Change, a field guide to the dragons of climate inaction. We'll be back next week with Chapter 4: Driving Decisions.
Mendel Skulski 35:48
Whether or not we can avoid climate collapse is still an open question. But we know for sure, one thing is inevitable, change.
Mendel Skulski 36:01
Scales of Change is a production of Future Ecologies, with support from the University of Victoria.
Adam Huggins 36:07
In this chapter, you heard Robert Gifford, Cate Sandilands, Kay Gallivan.
Mendel Skulski 36:14
My dad, David.
Adam Huggins 36:16
Myself, Adam Huggins.
Mendel Skulski 36:17
And me, Mendel Skulski. Special thanks to all of our climate graffiti artists: Kevin Caners, Laura Garbes, Oskar Gambony, Alex Waber, McKenna Hadley-Burke, Rosa Tobin, Poly Leger, and Wesley Leathem.
Adam Huggins 36:34
Extra special thanks to all the contributors to "Rising Tides" who informed our conversation, especially Rosemary Georgeson, Levi Wilson, Emily Menzies, Sonnet L’Abbé, and Ann Ericksson.
Mendel Skulski 36:45
And thanks to Suzanne Ahearne, Anne MacLaurin, Will O’Connel, Simone Miller, and Ilana Fonariov. Besides discovering the dragons of inaction, Robert Gifford is the author of the textbook "Environmental Psychology: Principles and Practice".
Adam Huggins 37:01
Cate Sandilands is a professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at York University, and the editor of "Rising Tides: Reflections for Climate Changing Times", which you can add from Caitlin Press, or whatever bookmonger you choose.
Mendel Skulski 37:14
You can learn more about Kay Gallivan and The Wasteland Project at wastelandclimateanxiety.com. The Wasteland house has since been demolished, but you can still take a 3D tour online.
Adam Huggins 37:26
Our theme song and composition for this chapter is by Loam Zoku. Other music in this episode was contributed by Meydän, Vincent van Haaff, Aner Andros, Hildegard’s Ghost, and Sunfish Moon Light.
Mendel Skulski 37:38
You can tweet at us or follow us on Facebook and Instagram at 'futureecologies'.
Adam Huggins 37:43
To learn more about each one of the dragons of inaction, including silly things like the Latin names we gave them, go to futureecologies.net/dragons.
Mendel Skulski 37:52
And if you want to support the work that we do, join our community at patreon.com/ futureecologies.
Adam Huggins 37:58
That's it for now. See you all next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai and edited by Phanh Nguyen