Small Planet Heroes

Climate change is poised to worsen the refugee crisis badly as people flee floods and fires, as life becomes untenable in places with prolonged droughts, and rising seas swallow low-lying islands. The suffering of vulnerable people has not always received much attention from the environmental community.  Instead, there's a disturbing history of people being displaced in creating parks and protected areas. As we seek a future in which people and nature coexist harmoniously, today we'll delve into the refugee crisis and the systems we have in place to resettle refugees from someone who has experienced these firsthand.  A key theme in today's conversation—this season's last episode—is community. Understanding the community in the refugee system will help us welcome refugees warmly and without backlash. It also offers insights into how we might build a community to effect the system change necessary to combat the climate and ecological crisis. If you want to support the refugee community in BC, donate or volunteer at mosaicbc.org or other local refugee organizations.

The path to sustainable futures is one that overcomes polarization, not just about the climate crisis and solutions to it, but all manner of things. We can't change systems to work for people and the planet if we're deeply divided and fighting about the most basic issues. Our guest believes, and shows, that art and effective communication are key to overcoming divides, that they offer a path to empathy, and that if we can laugh together and cry together, we can work together. But neither art nor communication is intrinsically powerful. They are only powerful in the context of our audience, and the relationship we build with them. So today's themes are diversity, listening, actually hearing people, and building relationships.   Maia joins as well virtually due to a case of covid at the time!

Self-sacrifice: We tend to celebrate it. But when celebrating self-sacrifice becomes a culture of overworking for the sake of one's employer and one's own career, as if that's heroic, the economy seems to grow, but people suffer. Families suffer. And the planet suffers. When we overwork, we often lose sight of what really matters. We're too busy for key relationships or being good citizens. We overspend, and that fuels a cycle of resource extraction and production that pollutes the planet, warms the climate, and degrades nature. Join Dr. Chan in talking with Derek Strokon!

In today's economy, people are being guided to move back home or take on roommates to make housing affordable. This may seem strange and unwelcome after decades of it being normal to live apart. But some people argue that living with others can be deeply rewarding, if we approach it right. All this has deep connections to the climate and ecological crisis. As nuclear families and single-occupant homes became normal, consumption was boosted by the proliferation of households. For the same number of people, more households means more stuff and more energy, which means more pollution, climate change, and habitat destruction. This episode we speak with Dr. Tanya Gee on the importance of love and empathy. These traits are not only important if you're hoping to live with others; they're also key to being a small-planet hero. Overcoming the division and polarization that surrounds environmental and social issues will take a hippo's dose of love and empathy.

Our vision of a sustainable future embraces a diversity of people as equals, whether they're unlike us in their gender, sexuality, or in their understanding of these topics. On Small Planet Heroes, we seek to understand how people are bringing about the social and system change that enables a benign climate and healthy biosphere. As a parallel, one area that has seen rapid progress is diversity and inclusion about gender and sexuality. In recent years, gender has also been a battleground, inciting backlash from the conservative right, and a deep polarization across political divides. Much like climate change. So, today we embrace gender and sexuality diversity and inclusion, as topics of intrinsic interest, and for what we can learn about the path to a planet both better and wilder. A key theme is overcoming polarization by accepting apparently contradictory truths. Along the way, understandably, we will hit some dark spots, including discussions of alcoholism, which may be triggering or traumatizing for some listeners.

On today's episode, we'll be speaking to Kai Chan, our future host and an interdisciplinary professor and Canada Research Chair at UBC. He is a sustainability scientist whose work straddles social and natural systems with a focus on values, rewilding, and transformative change. Kai takes us on a journey through his academic career, what inspired him to create Cosphere, and how it led to launching this podcast.