Future Ecologies presents "The Right to Feel," a two episode mini-series on the emotional realities of the climate crisis.

This 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.

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.

Find a transcript, citations, credits, and more at www.futureecologies.net/listen/the-right-to-feel

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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

Testing 1, 2, 1, 2.

Wow, that is a fire.

That's hot. Well... Mendel,

Adam,

this is Future Ecologies

on vacation!

We are back at base camp for our annual —

Semi-annual?

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.

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.

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.

Hi, Naomi.

Hi, Judee.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

Naomi, thanks for teaching this class and for

talking about it with me.

Thanks Judee.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

In a given year, I aim to paddle around 4,500km. At a comfortable

instructed me to listeen for and to recreate a "puck" sound, as I

pace, traveling one kilometer takes about 200 strokes. This

paddled down the lake.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Avant-gardening?

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.

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.

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 last few weeks I’ve felt a kind of whiplash, or I might

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's October 2nd, 2022. my friend Thankee 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.

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.

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.

This is "On the Bus," by Nina Sky Robertson.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My name is Felix Giroux, and this is a reading

from my reflective essay.

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."

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?

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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: 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."

"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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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"

Thanks for listening.