Future Ecologies presents: The Right to Feel (Part 2 — Eulogies)

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

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.

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

— — —

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

Episode Transcript

Mendel Skulski (00:00):
Hey, this is Mendel, and you're listening to
part two of an audio serieswe're featuring from the UBC
Centre for Climate Justicecalled "The Right to Feel." I'll
pass it over to producer JudeeBurr 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 writingsthat grapple with the
emotionality of climate change.These essays and stories were
written in the graduate classEcological Affect, taught in
2021 and 2022 at the Universityof British Columbia, on the
unceded territory of theMusqueam people. It was taught

(00:42):
by Naomi Klein and assisted byKendra Jewell. I was a student
in that class. If you're joiningus for the first time, I
recommend going back andstarting with Episode One,
"Climate Feelings."
The excerpts you'll hear in thesecond episode are works of
fiction. In this class, we wereassigned to write a eulogy for

(01:02):
something that could bethreatened by climate change,
and then to imagine a differentfuture, and to write a
speculative fiction piece abouthow that loss might be avoided
or mitigated. You'll hearexcerpts of five of those pieces
in this episode, eulogies mergedwith speculative futures. We
begin with Annika Ord, whostories threats to tiny

(01:24):
pteropods in the North Pacific.Next, my story imagines a future
in which a small organic farm ispressured to shut down. Third,
Niki's eulogy for wolves is astory of how wolves avoided
extinction when humancommunities relearned to center
ecological interdependence.Fourth, Sadie Rittman's story

(01:47):
considers the loss of Icelandicunderstandings of enchantment,
and how one researcher managesto carve out a space to see
differently. Finally, theepisode ends with Rhonda
Thygesen considering the plightof bees through the eyes of an
aging scientist. Now let'slisten.

Annika Ord (02:24):
Hi, my name is Annika Ord. I'm from Southeast
Alaska, and I study whatplace-based knowledges can teach
us of climate change, glacierretreat, and climate resilience
in Lingít Aaní, or SoutheastAlaska. This is an excerpt from
my fictional story Clione.
Dissolution of fine bodies, softand translucent. Slivers of

(02:47):
light propelled by small wingslike large ears, rowing in
figure 8’s. A red center andsoft ears like owls.
Pteropods are zooplankton, theybelong to a group of
free-floating mollusks whichinclude sea angels and sea
butterflies. Mostly, they livein the top 10m of the sea and

(03:11):
are less than 1 cm long. Theyare found in all major oceans
and at all latitudes and are animportant food for species such
as salmon, herring, and whales.For pink salmon and chum salmon,
pteropods make up an essentialfood source. Pteropod swarming
behavior allows salmon toefficiently feed on large

(03:33):
schools without having to worktoo hard for their food. In some
years, these small, wingedzooplankton make up 60% of
juvenile pink salmon’s food andthere seems to be a clear
correlation between pteropodabundance and pink salmon
populations. Both the sea angeland the sea butterfly rely on a
calcium carbonate shells,however sea angels shed theirs

(03:56):
shortly after hatching. Whenpteropods and shelled
zooplankton die, they sink tothe ocean floor and their shells
are slowly turned into sediment,storing the carbon, which came
from the atmosphere, in theseafloor. Millions of tiny
bodies cooling the planet,removing carbon from the sea

(04:16):
that came from the air that weput there. As oceans absorb more
and more carbon dioxide theyacidify, and the shells of these
tiny and essential creatures areslowly eaten away. They’ve been
around for 133 million years,evolving in the early
Cretaceous, and have survivedseveral bouts with ocean

(04:38):
acidification since then.However, in the past 200 years,
oceans have become 30% moreacidic, increasing at a level
not observed for over 50 millionyears. They are dissolving in
the current onslaught.
It was the little ones who leftfirst. Barely noticed by the

(05:00):
relentless drone of memes andmedia, take out dinners and
seductive silver devices miningattention, rains that never came
and the drama of politicalstalemate. In fact, they gained
more attention as ghosts thanthey did in life. After all,
there’s not much glory in seaslugs. Of course, not everyone

(05:20):
was lulled by the seductivestatic, the steady tread upwards
and outwards, the promise ofinfinite convenience, luxury.
Dragon fruit in Alaska; migrantsturned away at the border. But
yes, on the whole, we slept. Webegan to notice when the salmon
stopped coming back. Salmonafter all, along the Pacific

(05:44):
Coast of North America, are likethe quarterback in football,
sail to a dingy, berries to mypie. Without them, there’s not
much action. We like to befocused; we pick our mascots. So
much energy went into measuringthe incremental changes,
confirming the confirmed andthen confirming it again. We

(06:06):
marked the losses and walked on.We thought, maybe next time this
rigorous document of sciencewill tip the scales. We believed
that with the right science, theright argument, policy and
politics would follow,corporations would fall in line.
But money and power had brokenthat agreement a long time ago.

(06:28):
We knew the truth. Governmentsknew the truth, but the Dream
held fast. A Dream thatTa-Nehisi Coates identifies as
resting on the exploitation andviolence against black and brown
people.

He writes (06:41):
"The forgetting is habit, is yet another necessary
component of the Dream. Theyhave forgotten the scale of
theft that enriched them inslavery; the terror that allowed
them, for a century, to pilferthe vote; the segregationist
policy that gave them theirsuburbs. They have forgotten,

(07:02):
because to remember would tumblethem out of the beautiful Dream
and force them to live down herewith us, down here in the world.
I would not have you descendinto your own dream. I would
have you be a conscious citizenof this terrible and beautiful
world." That's an excerpt fromTa-Nehisi Coates' "Between the
World and Me."

(07:23):
The change we needed would notcome from measurements, at least
not those of climate science.The measurement needed was of
the system. The system thatfunded the American military
complex and theprison-industrial complex,
sanctioned the stealing ofIndigenous lands and children,
policed black and brown bodieswhile privileging white,

(07:45):
encouraged the indiscriminateextraction of fossil fuels,
forests, fish, etc. bycapitalist revered corporations
the world round. What hadremained peripheral to the
nearsighted vision of colonial,capitalist gaze all this time is
that nothing, I mean nothing,exists by itself. I feel bad

(08:05):
saying it, but it helped to losesome of our mascots. In the
North Pacific, when the salmonleft, the party began to grind
to a desperate stop. Bears,boats, legislation, wolves,
trees, trout, mines, fishingfamilies, fishing nations. What

(08:28):
we, predominately Western whitemajorities, had failed to see
was the coordination andrelationality of all life and
systems on earth . Brick bybrick we were removing the
foundation that held up theincreasingly gaudy and top heavy
house of the West.

(08:50):
Enter Clione. The mist hangs lowover the hazy blue islands. Over
the overlapping blue mountains.Rain falls softly and
constantly, except for the timeswhen it pummels. I work in the
kelp forests. We pull on ourwetsuits and slip into the
water. It’s time to check on thekelp forests and their

(09:12):
inhabitants - sea stars,mollusks, kelp crabs and kelp
fishes, abalone along thecliffs. We tend to this forest,
using old labs and classrooms asseaweed nurseries, helping to
rear the young and offset thedeaths. We visit each forest and
farm along the coastline, caringfor the kelp which cares for the

(09:34):
fish. We harvest when its readyand reseed when we must.
Today, I swim out to the reef.The bottom pulls away. The world
is a soft deepening green. Coldspring water trickles between my
suit and skin, it always entersthrough the neck. I pause,

(09:55):
looking at the space just beyondmy nose. Particles of algae,
diatoms, and a few ejectedbarnacle fronds float by. That’s
when I see her. Rowing wingsdrawing slow figure-8s through
her watery sky. Red heart andowl ears barely visible against
the clear skin of her body.Clione. She is the 32nd I’ve

(10:20):
seen since I started working inthe kelp.
When everything began tocollapse, when the sea angels
and salmon, cedar trees andsongbirds, and so many others
started dropping, falling,disappearing, our human systems
too began to stutter, surge,collapse. We didn’t fall softly.

(10:44):
The neoliberal machine has neverbeen one for downsizing with
grace. But, while systems ofextraction and power rumbled on
with terrible momentum, peoplewere waking up. I won’t gloss,
it got a lot worse before thetide began to turn. We learned
from communities who had alwaysbeen fighting the system. People

(11:07):
rallied around IndigenousNations and communities of
color. Just transition and justhousing, racial justice and
gender equality, land back andclean water movements coalesced.
We recognized that fightingclimate change was fighting
racism, was fightingdispossession of land, was
fighting for clean water. Thelines of separation that

(11:29):
capitalism had worked so hard todraw, blurred.
Later, I peel off the cold blackneoprene skin from my shivering
body. I wrap myself in a thickwool blanket and sit down with a
strip of smoked salmon andLabrador tea to write to Ellie.
It will take about a month toget to her. Things take more

(11:52):
time now; we are learningpatience. It seems incredible,
almost inconceivable, that ourpatchwork of responses has made
a difference. That restoration,local trade and production
networks, carefully managedcarbon drawdown and enhanced
coastal weathering, sustainableharvests and green energy

(12:16):
together have reducedacidification, slowed the
warming. I’ve come to have morefaith in humanity lately. And in
the persistence of life. I drawthe outlines of her small,
determined body, red heart, owlears, delicate transparent

(12:37):
wings. I write, Ellie, they’recoming back.

Judee Burr (13:00):
Hi again, it's Judee. This is an excerpt from
my fictional story “TheAbundance Will Be Forever.” This
title is a quote from IndigenousFire Keeper, writer, and
filmmaker Victor Steffensen froman interview he did about caring
for country with fire on theGood Fire Podcast.

Part One (13:20):
The Eulogy. From the Globe, February 20 2044. Page
four headline — "Local FarmCloses After 60 Years; Farmer
Confesses ‘It Just StoppedMaking Sense To Grow Food."
Solace Knoll Farm closed itsdoors last week after 60 years

(13:40):
in business. The farm wasstarted in 1984 and passed down
in the Carden family. It hasbeen run by Martina Carden for
the past 23 years, despite thequestionable economics of
producing food in our Northeastregion. Food security experts
attest that dry summers andheavy precipitation events in
the region have encouragedshifts in the local food

(14:03):
economy. Martina Cardenacknowledged the
impracticalities of running alocal farm business. “You can’t
compete against thecorporations,” she told a small
crowd at the farm’s closinggathering. “With the latest rise
in water prices and the refusalof state regulators to help
local, sustainable businesseslike ours pay, we needed to shut

(14:23):
down.” Martina continued, “Itjust stopped making sense to
grow food here.” The 30-acreSolace Knoll Farm began as an
organic farm, but it lost itsorganic status in 2035 along
with a number of other farms inthe region due to issues with
pollution. Farmers continue toblame local water system
management for exacerbating thispollution crisis, but water

(14:47):
officials say that farms havebeen unrealistic in depending on
a communal system already sappedby more essential uses. Many
farms have closed in the lastdecade. Neighboring residents
have some fond memories of thefarm, but most see the closing
as a natural evolution of thefood system. Neighbors to the
farm have complained that it istaking up valuable space that

(15:08):
could be used for housingdevelopment. “It was nice to
walk by with the kids and seethe animals and the vegetables,”
said Marion, a 44 year-olddental assistant and mother of
two children who lives down thestreet from the farm. “But it’s
just seems more sanitary to getfood from the grocery store
after all those pollutionproblems we’ve been having.” “We
used to talk about local food,back in my hippie days,” said

(15:31):
Greg Kim, a 60 year-old townresident and local businessman.
“You can’t do it anymore. Weneed that water for residents
and the industries that keepmoney flowing into town.” A
footnote to this article reads"Some quotes have been edited
for clarity. This paper issupported in part by Amber
Corporation and DevonCorporation.”

(15:55):
From Mirage Magazine, front pageheadline February 20 2044 —
“Beloved Solace Knoll FarmCloses: Activist and Farmer
Martina Carden Speaks OutAgainst Water Diversions for
Toxic Corporate Extractivism andLocal Inaction on Ecological
Crises”.

(16:15):
The article reads — MartinaCardin took over Solace Knoll
Farm from her grandmother morethan two decades ago. Now the
community has to say goodbye tothis precious source of locally
grown food. Martina's family hascollaborated with leaders from
the Pokanoket, Wampanoag, andNarragansett Tribes, and with
the local community to sustainthis place as a beacon in the

(16:38):
local, organic food movementthese last 60 years. But
government officials continue tosee regional fracking as a more
important water use than localfarming, and PFAS pollution
rates have skyrocketed. Nationaland international food
conglomerates have tightenedtheir hold on food markets. The
cost of land has been at apremium in the Northeastern

(16:59):
United States for the past fewdecades, and it has become
unaffordable to most farmers whowant to grow food at a communal
scale. The most significanttipping point for the farm,
Martina says, was the watershortages and PFAS pollution
crisis in 2034. She blames therise of industry in the area,
and the lack of anyprecautionary action to regulate

(17:21):
what businesses were dumpinginto the water. Martina shared a
short eulogy for the farm whichwe have printed in full below.
“I remember the abundance thatmade me fall in love with this
place. Grandma kept the edges ofthe fields wild, which kept the
bees coming and gave localanimals a refuge from the

(17:43):
pavement, cars, and commercialnoise just a few streets away.
Wild animal diversity isn’t inthe standard farmer playbook,
but, I admit, I loved seeing thedeer and the fawns eating grass
in the first dewy light ofmorning. Grandma talked about
the farm like that – like amore-than-human community. We

(18:03):
had so many birds – scarlettanagers, black-and-white
warblers, and pileatedwoodpeckers. These are only the
English names. We are onIndigenous land where traditions
of care so much older than theseprocesses of destruction
continue to exist and bepracticed. Our grandchildren
deserve an inheritance ofabundance. It has been a gift to

(18:26):
try and offer that to the landand people I love. I don’t know
whether this spot will be a farmor an apartment complex in the
years to come. But our work doesnot end. Our community does not
end. The existence of this placehas been a form of resistance
against the extractive world toomany see as the only possible

(18:47):
future. Writer and lawyer JulianAguon said, “I cannot think of
anything more terrifying thanchildren who do not believe this
world can be changed.” Children,friends – the world can be
changed. We must continue tofight, and continue to foster
liberatory spaces elsewhere. Letthis place remind us of what is

(19:08):
possible, and what is at risk ofbeing lost.”

Part Two (19:14):
The Farm — Alternative Timeline, 10 years earlier, 2034.
Carson. “Get in the truck – hey!Grab three more crates!” Carson
was already sweating. The farmwas supposed to be a reprieve
from the stifling monotony ofdesk work, but this crashing

(19:36):
into tables, dropping theparsley into the compost pile,
almost getting trampled by a cow– this was something else. She
clumsily pushed three cratesinto the truck bed. Her arms,
thin and pale from desk work,were sporting lines of red
scratches and bruises blossomingfrom the lifting and setting
down, the act of trying to keepup, like careening through a

(19:57):
video game she hadn’t graspedthe mechanics of. Except Solace
Knoll Farm was very real. It wasunusual to see a clearing of
land between the residentiallots. A large apartment complex
had gone in on one edge, and thefields seemed to shape
themselves around its shadow. Itwas green in squares of beet
greens and lettuces, and therewere shrubs and trees around the

(20:19):
edges. The chickens cluckedrhythmically by the barn. It was
already getting warm in the hazypale dew of the early October
morning. “Gotta hustle out heremy friend,” Linda said, once
Carson had jumped up and wascrouched tensely in the truck
bed with eight other people.“Not like that sweet office job
you’ve got.” She grinnedcheekily, revealing two cracked

(20:41):
teeth. Carson nodded tersely andlooked away. I don’t have to
come back next week, shereminded herself, feeling a
flash of anger at the indignityof it. She glanced over at
another worker with two noserings and a neck tattoo who was
bobbing his head to some music;Carson could just make out a few
sounds from the near invisibleear pieces. “15 bunches each!”

(21:04):
Linda called out, as they filedout of the truck at the field of
kale and cabbage. “We have abulk order.” They filed through
the field. Carson followed nosering guy, copying his movements,
trying not to pick too many ofthe bug eaten leaves. Was it
worth it, not using pesticides,she wondered. She should
calculate the efficiencysavings. She might be able to

(21:25):
really help these people. After15 minutes, most everyone was
done picking, but Carson wasswatting at the plants, feeling
a bit panicked, still 7 short.Nose Ring grabbed her arm. “I
picked some extra for you, AmberCorp.” Carson was too grateful
to protest. They filed backafter the group, heading toward
the carrots. “What are youlistening to?” Carson asked Nose

(21:47):
Ring, whose name was actuallyBlythe. “You wouldn’t know
them,” he said, looking bored.“Cli-pop stuff. The Weather
Station.” He gave Carson anearpiece though, and she
continued to follow him as theypicked kale together.
The office plants had pushedCarson over the edge. Most of
the plants in the office werefake – the fancy kind that were
designed to clean the air –“They’re just like plants!” the

(22:11):
ads said – but were really justbots. Something about the
inability to tell what was areal plant from what was a fake
plant left Carson cold. Hergrandma had a big fig tree down
by the river in the 2000s. She’dplanted it in the 80s in her
yard. The tree died more than adecade ago, a couple years after
Grandma did. But the rich figsstill shimmered in Carson’s

(22:33):
memory – plump and fat. Sothat’s how the farm happened.
Carson felt that she had to jumpinto something boldly. She had
no experience of easytransitions. She knew about
Solace Knoll farm from AmberCorp Grocery’s audits of the
regional food industry; it wasan object of ridicule. The
organic farm movements a fewdecades ago turned out to be

(22:54):
just a bunch of privileged kidsacting out. They only stayed in
it a few years before giving upon a needlessly difficult life
in the dirt when it turned outto be all cows and no vacation.
At Amber Corporation Grocery,they were feeding the masses.
Who could argue with that math?
Yet, here she was on a truck forsome reason, heading toward a

(23:15):
patch of dirt in the back thefarmers called “Fern Gully”
where the salad mixes weregrown. She noticed Linda was
eyeing her over along with theother newcomers as the truck
bounded over the rutted road.Blythe started having a loud
conversation with Linda aboutAmber Corporation workers and
the psychology of“exceptionalists deregulating
their mind from care.” Was thishazing? She felt another flash

(23:40):
of annoyance. They still drive atruck, Carson thought. The
hypocrites.

Niki (24:21):
Hi, my name is Niki. I research wolf-caribou dynamics
using mathematical models andspatial analyses. This is an
excerpt from my story, "A Eulogyfor Wolves," that begins with a
eulogy and then turns to anotherpossible future.

(24:42):
They did not pass away gently,rather they ripped a page from
Mr. Thomas’s book until theywere overcome with our
relentlessness. Wolves were thefirst major predator species to
be driven to extinction, andgiven the current rate of
extraction and hubris towardsthe ability to control natural
systems, most large predatorspecies are expected to follow.

(25:03):
Wolves and their ancestors havebeen dancing with caribou and
their ancestors on thislandscape since time immemorial,
and only recently have ourinstitutions of power attempted
to change the tune, and whatclumsy dancers they are.
Wolves were found in manydiverse ecosystems across the
globe harboring closerelationships with their
ungulate neighbors. Though thespecific step or name of the

(25:25):
dance partners shifted over timeand space, wolves were always
incredibly attentive to the moodswings of their partners, often
mirroring the leaps and dipsthey witnessed. In their early
days, wolves were able to listenand quickly adapt to changes in
the rhythm of the dance; theywere intricately connected to
the delicate strides of theirprey and understood the

(25:46):
fragility of the partnership. Astime went on, however, our
institutions of power requestedthat more and more of our own
music be played and theunfamiliar cadence reverberated
over the natural rhythms of theoriginal song.
Wolves weren’t originally ouropponents, but rather
competitors in a friendly gameof survival. Dreams developed in

(26:08):
manifest destinies brought usinto increasing contact with our
cheeky rivals, and theycertainly kept their competitive
edge. Like all storybook rivals,the competition was rooted in a
healthy respect for theopponent, that is until
technology allowed us to shiftfrom the values that encouraged
coexistence. Wolves held fast totheir instinct for reciprocity

(26:30):
within their communities, whileinstitutions praised
individuality. No man should betied down by unseen forces of
nature, apparently just theinvisible hand of the market.
Wolves laughed at our antics,and tried to continue the dance.
Wolves are survived by theirfamily, their neighbors and

(26:51):
communities. They will beparticularly missed by their
close friend, caribou, who isleft to fend for themselves in
the front line of the confusingrhythms we step to. We lead the
dance in a rigid and forcefulfashion; our vice grip on their
upper arm is the only waycaribou can follow our misguided
steps. They are now forced intoa fraction of the original

(27:12):
dancefloor while we slice acrossand unearth the floorboards,
creating wounds that won’t healfor hundreds of years, yet are
impatient when caribou can’tleap across the chasms we’ve
created. Caribou had acomplicated relationship with
wolves that was based more onstructural necessity rather than
warm, fuzzy feelings, but theyfelt stable and secure in their

(27:33):
future, which is more than theycan say with us in the lead.
As the people that are left toremember, we ask how many
martyrs must die for our sins,how many extinguishes of a flame
in the name of suppressing freakwildfires before we admit we are
the ones holding the matches. Inlieu of thought and prayers, we

(27:54):
are asked by close relatives ofwolves to reflect on what we are
connected to, what depends on usand what we depend on, and
whether we are honestly honoringthat call-and-response or just
turning a deaf ear to the entiresong.
Niki, 2060, looking back.
The world was sending distresssignals long before the 2020s

(28:17):
but only then did theinstitutions of wealthy nations
that catapulted us into thismess, feel the cracks in their
technologically advanced armor.Dreams of rich geniuses lifting
our helpless bodies out of thetoxic quagmire, with
geoengineering silverlinedclouds, quickly dissipated as
the seasons became waves ofpandemics interspersed with heat

(28:37):
domes, floods, and freak coldsnaps. No Messiah arrived.
As a biologist in the 2030s, itwas 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 astudy design because every
living being was either leavingor arriving in attempts to track

(29:01):
their natural climate. The ideaof “invasive species” became
useless as every year ushered ina new world record in
temperature, storm or earthquakeintensity, and with it brought a
continuous upheaval of speciesdispersal and birth of novel
ecosystems. It was like agambler down on their luck
shaking the dice of biodiversityevery year, desperately hoping

(29:23):
for a winning combination.
I graduated with my PhD andworked as a wildlife consultant
in northern Canada, focusing ona rapidly declining barren
ground caribou herd. I felt abit sheepish being so involved
with caribou; so much money waspoured into the conservation of
this species while othersfluttered and extinguished

(29:43):
silently without so much as acoin flipped towards their
salvation. It’s not that Ididn’t think caribou weren’t
important or didn’t understandthe cultural and ecological
significance they held, but Isaw the circus act of federal
and provincial governmentstalking out both sides of their
mouths.
Hundreds of thousands of federaland provincial dollars were
funneled towards caribou declinewhile several orders of

(30:06):
magnitude more dollars werespent in subsidies towards the
very industries that were thedirect cause of their demise. I
grew weary of the narrativepresented - proximate causes of
decline like wolf and moosepopulations - had to be enacted
in the short-term in order forall of us to organize and
painstakingly monitor thegruelingly slow long-term

(30:26):
solutions of habitatrestoration. We all had to
accept the necessary evils ofwildlife management if we wanted
to save caribou from certainextinction. I, meanwhile,
seriously considered removingmyself from the narrative and
dreamed about teaching musicinstead, and reconnecting with
nature in a mindset completelyapart from p-values and
assessment impacts.

(30:48):
Southern Mountain Caribou, asubspecies of Woodland Caribou,
went extinct at the beginning ofthe 2030s, despite intense
culling programs across BritishColumbia. Small cries of
exasperation and indignationgrew in volume across the
country. Then, BritishColumbia's resident Orca whales
went extinct soon after aparticularly hot year warmed the

(31:10):
hatching tributaries of Chinooksalmon enough to essentially
cook the eggs. Suddenly, all theindividual voices sounding alarm
bells about dwindling localspecies, impacts to community
health, food security, and more,united in a resounding and
demanding cry for immediatechange. A wave of biologists,
Indigenous rights activists,medical professionals, and many

(31:32):
more, emerged from individualmarches to question the
structure of Canadian WildlifeManagement Systems and beyond.
In public debates, biologistscited numerous studies that
showed the highest levels ofbiodiversity were consistently
found in areas under Indigenoussovereignty. Academic and
government biologists, myselfincluded, started leaving our

(31:52):
positions to join movementsorganized around Land Back,
which fundamentally fought forlegally and holistically
reuniting Indigenous peopleswith the land they were forced
off centuries ago. As morespecies and systems faced a very
public demise, the validity offederal and provincial systems
of wildlife management crumbled.Networks of local and regional

(32:14):
wildlife management committeeswere founded on the fundamental
understanding of connectedness.Hindsight might be 20-20, but
this was a novel concept, not intheory, but definitely in
practice. An abnormalobservation in a community would
be investigated as a symptom ofa larger issue without the
dreams of historical baselinesclouding our judgment, or acting

(32:37):
as an impetus for entirelysuppressing a partner in that
broken link. The consequences ofclimate change were still
raining down on the world. Butwith the start of restructuring
systems, communities couldweather the storms together.
Many people were still forced toflee their homes in response to
climate change, but they were nolonger described as immigrants

(32:58):
with the same connotation thatthe word was used in the early
2000s. The idea of illegalaliens was not only considered
horribly cruel, but asinine.Because who could be illegal on
land that was stolen to beginwith?

Sadie Rittman (33:44):
Hi, my name is Sadie Rittman. I research
re-enchantment and spiritual andontological implications of
climate crisis. This is anexcerpt from my story "Return of
the Hidden Worlds."
Eulogy. The world was once anenchanted place. Humans

(34:05):
coexisted with various “hiddenbeings” - elves, trolls, fairies
and more - inhabiting dimensionsalongside ours. Every culture
had its stories. There were theHuldufólk of Icelandic lava
fields; the Aos Sí of ancientIreland; Patupaiarehe of

(34:25):
Aotearoa/New Zealand’s mistyforests; Hawaiian Menehune in
hidden valleys; Cree Mannegishibetween rapids and rocks;
shape-shifting Arabic Jinn. Allwere liminal, mystical mediators
of our relations in themore-than-human world. In our

(34:46):
interactions with the land andits creatures, we had to
consider and respect thesebeings of the hidden world, or
else suffer their punishment, orloss. Icelanders considered
Huldufólk inhabitants beforedetonating large stones to build
roads; Hawaiians thought of theMenehune that might seek revenge
should they kill birds too fastto harvest feathers; and Irish

(35:10):
farmers appeased the Aos Sí whoin turn ensured the health of
their crops. In the world sharedwith those hidden, there could
be no “natural resource.”
But in an age where “seeing isbelieving,” “the unseen” by
definition can’t be believed,much less known. Now we have
only what science proves.Charles Eisenstein writes that

(35:33):
“so deeply embedded it is in ourunderstanding of what is real
and how the world works,” that“science in our culture is more
than a system of knowledgeproduction or a method of
inquiry.” Moreover, “whensomeone demands we be realistic,
often they are referring eitherto money, or to scientifically
verifiable fact.”

(35:55):
This connection between money,science, and the bounds of
reality is not accidental. Theworld 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

(36:17):
the market economy in theseventeenth century,” “the
disentanglement of theindividual from a web of
community and spiritualobligations gave rise to the
individual subject acting on thebasis of his perceived
self-interest.” This producedconcomitantly “the individual
subject” and land as “economicresource.” In turn, this

(36:42):
separation could only be enabledby the Cartesian split between,
as anthropologist SusanGreenwood wrote, “the thinking
mind, which had a soul, frommechanistic soulless matter.”
On my first research trip toIceland as a 20 year old student
from New York, I was mystifiedby how a “modern,” “developed”

(37:02):
European country couldpurportedly believe in elves. I
came away with a few linkedfactors towards an answer: the
“aliveness” of nature, thenearness of “the past,” the
landscape cultured by storiesrather than capitalism, and a
cosmopolitical attitude in whichstories did not necessarily have

(37:23):
to be “believed” to be real. Asso many of my informants so

patiently put it (37:29):
“In Iceland we live so close to nature. And
here, nature is alive. Becauseof this, the elves live here,
and we can see and feel theirenergy.” Far, far away from the
“objective world,” in Icelandwith its howling wind, bubbling
hot springs, flowing lava andnorthern lights, Icelandic

(37:51):
writers May and HallbergHallmundsson wrote: “the land
was never an accumulation ofinanimate matter… but a living
entity by itself. Each featureof the landscape had a character
of its own, revered or feared asthe case might be, and such an
attitude was not a far cry fromthe belief that it was actually

(38:12):
alive, or, at the very least,full of life.” Icelanders were
overpowered by more-than-humanlife, and they expressed to me
themselves that this “aliveness”was the condition in which elves
could live, or be believed in.
I regret to report that thejuxtaposition between landing in

(38:32):
JFK and Keflavik is no longer sostark. Increasingly, Iceland is
also cluttering with thearchitecture of capitalism. I've
been told that what’s pivotal isthe rapidly melting
Snaefellsjokull glacier, once an“energy center” for the elves.
It might be fully melted by2050, and is already the build

(38:56):
site of another luxury resort.Grandparents no longer grew up
in turf houses; they areurbanites who’ve had their TVs,
internet and smartphones tomediate their lands with stories
of elsewhere. The popular TVshow Game of Thrones shot scenes
“north of the wall” in theIcelandic highlands, layering

(39:16):
the landscape with new meanings,which tourists would flock to
for photographs. Also layeredare more highways, shopping
malls, fast food chains, and theinfrastructure for the new Dreki
pipeline. Grandparents no longerpoint out the “hidden worlds”
alongside the highways, nowsmothered with Wendy’s and

(39:37):
Burger King. Even if they did,their grandchildren’s attention
is algorithmically stripped bysurveillance capitalism, sucked
down into smartphones which alsomediate the landscape. What
interest may be left for the oldstories in the passing landscape
does not extend to consideranything capitalism doesn’t deem

(40:00):
“real.” I’m afraid my obituaryonly repeats a long-told story.
As one elderly Icelandersummarized back on my first
research trip, “the elves leavewith electricity.” Yes. The same
knowledge paradigm that drillsfor energy to light up the earth
- “Enlightenment” - is also thatwhich has driven out the hidden

(40:22):
worlds. Amidst environmentalpollution, industry, rationalism
and capitalism, we findourselves alone in a human
world. Capitalism must covereverything, and so the fairies
retreat."

(40:44):
20 years later. For myretirement address at the Centre
for Cosmopolitical Collaborationand Research, I’ve been asked to
dig up this old obituary fromback when nobody read my work,
and explain how we brought backthe “hidden.” Regrettably, we
learned the hard way that oneworldview, one sociocultural

(41:06):
context, one “reality,” wasnever meant to overtake and
strangle the whole planet. Justas a monocrop perishes while
biodiversity flourishes, asystem and corresponding
“reality” so totalizing andinvasive as capitalism could not
allow human survival. In ourdelusions of separation,

(41:29):
superiority and correspondingobjectivity, 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 withinstructions from an elf
himself, Fróði, in his book Howto See an Elf, co-written with

(41:52):
seer Ragga Jonsdottir. Theywrote: “Find a rock you feel
drawn to. Sit down and becomfortable. Maybe you find it
amusing to sit down and talk toan elf. But that is alright,
because it is through joy thatwe can make a positive
connection between worlds.Examine the rock, the texture of

(42:16):
the stone, colors of the flowersand the moss, and watch the
straws dance softly in thebreeze. Maybe you notice
something special, somethingespecially beautiful, or
amusing, something that catchesyour attention. Now we practice
and find the joy in trying toregain this long awaited
friendship.” “Listen beyond andthrough these beautiful sounds

(42:41):
of nature. There is silence…Perhaps you hear something else,
maybe a soft song, or the lightsound of voices, that seem to
come from afar, even from insidethe rock. With your eyes half
closed, or completely closed,you might even see a pointy hat
behind a rock, hear a soft soundof bells or see small twinkling

(43:04):
eyes looking at you.”
“Did it work? Did you see me? Ifnot, it’s also fine, it was a
beautiful moment, wasn’t it? Iam sure that the colors around
you seem brighter now, thesounds of nature stronger and
you even feel more joy within. Apeaceful moment in nature can

(43:26):
strengthen the bond between us,elves and humans.” As we find in
Fróði’s instructions, elves andother “hidden worlds” always
belonged to the realm ofconnection.
At my retirement, we now live ina world resembling Ragga’s old
image of “the many worlds of thestone”. One world, many

(43:49):
realities — a pluriverse. As theZapatista'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 forthis. With our release from

(44:09):
capitalism’s stronghold, thereis also time. Time no longer
money, economic contributions nolonger identity markers,
partaking in financial exchangeno longer a matter of partaking
in “life”, our bounds forreality have widened beyond just
“money” and “science.” No longerfully extrapolated within a

(44:33):
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 astudent in the Department of
Biochemistry and MolecularBiology. This is an excerpt from
my story "Eulogy for the Bees."
Eulogy. My love story withpollinators started when I was

(45:34):
young and living in ruralAlberta. I grew up on a farm
with fields decorated in canolaseed, known as Brassica napus,
which bees tended to regularly.I watched them come in June and
leave in July. This timing ofpollination for the blooming
crop was decently regular sincethe 1980’s. In my naivety I

(45:56):
thought that the bees and canolaplant were just friends and
wanted to say hello to eachother. When I was doing my
undergrad in biology, I appliedto work with Alberta’s
apiculture team for researchexperience. Through that job I
learned that the hello I thoughtbees were giving to canola
flowers was a serious workvisit. I got hooked on studying

(46:19):
pollinators after that. I wassurprised that there was a
developed field of researcherstrying to help pollinators live
better against the stressors intheir environment. I didn’t make
the link as a young researcherthat these stressors were
correlated with climate change.Nor did I feel brave enough to
share my realization that thosetrying to research the effects

(46:41):
of agrochemicals and disease onbee populations were trying to
also please the industry insteadof changing it. It would have
been brave of me to show up toresearch meetings as the youth
who called out each of us forbeing a part of the problem and
not the solution. I felt a lotof anger in those days, and I

(47:02):
swore to never be naïve to theirimportant work and silent
suffering in health andpopulation. This could be why I
am writing this eulogy to thebees today.
It was Albert Einstein that said“if the bee disappeared off the
surface of the globe, then manwould have only four years of
life left. No more bees, no morepollination, no more plants, no

(47:28):
more animals, no more man.”Einstein maybe wasn’t factually
correct in his timeline, but heis honest in the important bond
between bees and humans. Therewas indeed no other species on
planet earth that was such aforce of nature nor one that
gave us so many gifts. Theworker bee is a very literal

(47:51):
term, working hard to upkeep theecosystems it participates in to
keep the animals of this planethealthy. Our mouths were the
receivers of their labour.Almonds, apples, blueberries,
coffee, dairy, cereals, andcotton will not see the future
without them, and we willcherish those things while we

(48:13):
still have them. We will neverbe able to taste warm honey comb
fresh from a hive on a Julyafternoon. Our plates will look
less vibrant without you here,in fact, they will look almost
bare. Our tastebuds will missthe diversity. Our clothing will
surely not be as extensive. Youwere the true gods of the

(48:34):
farmland.
Future. My grandson Ethan and Ihad taken up a new Saturday
ritual of sitting nearbydifferent garden beds, crops,
and greenhouses to watch forbees. We’d set up our seats now
in a canola field in southernAlberta and it was April.

(48:57):
Patches of the yellow plant werehard to come by and my childhood
intuition told me inside that wewere sure to see a fuzzy honey
bee on of the flowers we sat infront of. We waited patiently to
hear a buzz.
“But we might never find them?”
“Exactly right,” I said. “Wemight never find them.”

(49:19):
I always tried to tell him thetruth, if I knew the answer. He
could tell if I lied. Maybethey’re too far away. Too much
empty space or something. Whatif they can’t smell the canola
flowers any more? What if theydon’t recognize it’s bright
yellow colour? It had become alot more difficult to spot
pollinators as the world hasseen massive insect decline

(49:42):
amongst the impacts of climatechange. Floods and droughts or
water disasters and wildfireswere of immediate danger to
people, but other species weresuffering too. Only certain
parts of my home province wereable to still grow canola seed
as the plant couldn’t survive inareas with too much drought or
intense heat. I’m 66 years oldnow and have witnessed canola

(50:06):
seed barely survive in thecountry that laboured it. The
yellow fields used to signifysummertime and now time and
climate have become sounfamiliar that canola basically
grows in what should be ourearly spring. An Indigenous
friend of mine tells me horrorstories of how her people know
that Earth’s signs have changed.They used to use snow drifts and

(50:29):
star patterns to guidethemselves in the Canadian
winter to and from hunting. It’sbeen a long time since you could
take the signs of mother natureas truthful, she says.
We saw the effects of climatechange on our in our daily life
which we called the “longgoodbye”. Droughts often
impacted our resources forcooking and dishes and baths. We

(50:52):
grew food that was able tosurvive on our land between
Edmonton and Calgary. Some heatwaves ruined our small harvests.
Some days we didn’t go outsidebecause of the air quality. On
many occasions we lost friendsto natural disasters and didn’t
travel much to see family.Aspyn’s friends told her stories

(51:12):
from their old homes. I becamefriends with parents, and we
silently suffered with the costsof living. Despite climate doom
being perpetuated bycorporations and the government
there was no assistance. Thepublic was restless, and it was
common for angry mobs to formprotesting the little action
that was happening. Thoseworking with pollinators and

(51:35):
fighting for them were alsogetting agitated. Much reform
has occurred since then. Wealways understood that change
was never going to be anovernight process. We weren’t
going to be able to quiteverything we’ve been doing to
harm the environment for decadesall at once. We were too deep in

(51:55):
our ways to ever have that be areality. But big moments of
change did happen. The publicnever gave up. Each artist,
scientist, and activistcontinued to work hard to lobby
global leaders to do better. Asdisaster struck closer to
people’s homes they could nolonger be ignorant to the issues

(52:16):
at hand. We were losing theplanet we knew and we were going
to be next. It has been decadesof this since I was young in the
2000’s and climate activismstarted way before that. We have
been at war with the climate fortoo long.
"She’s here! She’s here! She’shere!" Ethan said. A small

(52:37):
foraging honey bee was trying todescend on one of the canola
flowers. I took a breath andtried to calm my own happiness.
This always reminds me of when Iwas a little girl growing up in
seas of canola bees. Hives werenever far away. “She’s here,” I
said as I opened my eyes.

(52:57):
Ethan and I are watching thebees in their hive. We see them
leave and return home. There arenurse bees poking their heads
into cells to clean larvae andfeed them. We see the notorious
figure-eight bee dance tocommunicate to others where the
good flowers are for food. Resinis being built onto the frames

(53:17):
by worker bees as anantimicrobial product to protect
the hive from disease. The queenis in the hive laying eggs in
empty cells with her long andskinny abdomen. My favourite
lesson from bees is that each ofthem has a unique role. And that
role is important. Without aworker, nurse, forager, drone,
or queen, the whole hive wouldbe unable to function. That’s a

(53:41):
lot of power for one individual.It’s crucial that they work
together for survival. Theynever give up on each other and
they haven’t proven to give upon Earth yet either.

Judee Burr (54:06):
We’d like to thank all of the students who
contributed their work to thisepisode, and everyone in the
Ecological Affect class whosethoughtful ideas fostered such
generative discussion andmeaningful writing. Thanks to
Kendra Jewell, AudreyIrvine-Broque, Lorah Steichen,
and Maggie O’Donnell forreviewing drafts of this audio
story. Finally, we’d like tothank the University of British

(54:29):
Columbia’s Hampton Grant programfor funding work on this
project. For my part, it was agift to be part of this class
and to curate this gathering ofour writing. Thanks to all of
you for listening to thisseries.