Podcasts about climate emergency unit

Premier Eby walks away from the carbon tax…what's next? GUEST: Anjali Appadurai, Campaigns Director at The Climate Emergency Unit, and climate & economic justice advocate  B.C Lions 70th season celebration GUEST: Duane Vienneau, President of the B.C Lions The Week That Was in BC Politics GUEST: Keith Baldrey, Global BC Legislative Bureau Chief Tales from the road (rage) GUEST: Geri Mayer-Judson, Show Contributor Would the province ever consider an inquiry into the North Shore wastewater treatment plant debacle? GUEST: Daniel Anderson, spokesperson for the North Shore Neighbourhood's Alliance The Wrap - Have you ever gotten close to road rage? Guest: Leah Holiove, TV Reporter and Radio Host & Geri Mayer-Judson, Show Contributor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

GUEST: Anjali Appadurai, Campaigns Director at The Climate Emergency Unit, and climate & economic justice advocate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We talk about upcoming demonstrations, overthrowing Trudeauism, the Texas grid, Bitcoin, Electricity Canada, wheat, and the Mackenzie River. Stefan interviews Bushra Asghar of the Climate Emergency Unit about their campaign to build a Canadian youth climate corps.

On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Seth Klein, Team Lead and Director of Strategy of the Climate Emergency Unit, a 5-year project of the David Suzuki Institute that Seth launched in early 2021. Am and Seth discuss how he and his team are working to mobilise Canada for the climate emergency, including their latest project evaluating how the CBC reports on climate. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/241-seth-klein.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/241-seth-klein.html Resources: Seth Klein: https://www.sethklein.ca/ Climate Emergency Unit: https://www.climateemergencyunit.ca/ A Good War: https://ecwpress.com/collections/books/products/a-good-war CBC Climate Emergency Campaign: https://www.climateemergencyunit.ca/cbc-climate-emergency-campaign Bio: Seth Klein is the Team Lead and Director of Strategy of the Climate Emergency Unit (a 5-year project of the David Suzuki Institute that Seth launched in early 2021). Prior to that, he served for 22 years (1996-2018) as the founding British Columbia Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a public policy research institute committed to social, economic and environmental justice. He is the author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency (published by ECW press in 2020) and writes a regular column for Canada's National Observer. He is an adjunct professor with Simon Fraser University's Urban Studies program, an honorary research associate with the University of British Columbia's School for Public Policy and Global Affairs, and remains a research associate with the CCPA's BC Office. Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “The Politics of Climate Emergency Mobilization — with Seth Klein.” Below the Radar, SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, May 7, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/241-seth-klein.html.

Seth Klein is a public policy researcher and writer based in Vancouver, BC. He's the Director of Strategy with the Climate Emergency Unit and the author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, which is the basis of a lot of the questions that I ask in this interview. He talks about how the focus of the book was not always the sorts of lessons we can take from the Second World War. He was looking for reminders that we have done this before, mobilized to address a real existential threat. So, as COP28 concludes, we are confronted with a “Global Stocktake” that shows we are not on track to limit catastrophic climate change. Barbara Creecy and Dan Joergensen made this clear recently in their presentation to delegates there. They also emphasized, importantly, that equity is not the opposite of ambition when it comes to the radical action necessary to fight climate change. In fact, they argued that, because we can't negotiate with nature and the laws of physics, we are going to have to negotiate with and within the laws and policies that determine the scope of climate action. That means we have to negotiate with each other. And there are some reasonable concerns about whether COP is a place where people can meet and actually figure out ways to navigate the planet into a livable future. But was it worth it? Did this clearly very compromised COP28 achieve anything tangible to offset all of these serious issues? One of the biggest risks is that the army of oil and gas lobbyists that have descended on COP28 will succeed in extending their careers and the lifespan of toxic fuels by adjusting the language of any deals, any regulations that are established. Emissions reduction is what we need, and energy producers want, instead, to go in a senselessly destructive direction. All of this distraction and delay is part of what Seth Klein calls the “new climate denialism,” a technique of obstruction that doesn't care in the least about the health of our environment, about human life, or about what we used to call “sustainability,” but now increasingly should be described as “survivability.” One of the “curses,” Seth explains, about climate action is that we don't actually feel the emergency for a period that is long enough to warrant the kind of radical action we have witnessed during wars or pandemics. The disaster is diffuse, spread out, and somewhat sporadic, so it doesn't “galvanize us all at once.” And just as troubling is the fact that our “memories” of these traumatic events “tend to recede fairly quickly,” until they occur again. This speaks to the fact that, as Klein puts it, phase-out of fossil fuels and the post-carbon revolution is “not largely a technical problem,” it is a problem of a lack of political will. In this context, he says that we simply “don't know the answer” to the question of whether we have people who can collectively rise to the challenge, hold extractive regimes accountable, and lead us out of the path to disaster.

David has a petulant outburst. We talk about news media's depression messaging, oil companies, and the climate corps. Stefan interviews Bushra Asghar of the Climate Emergency Unit.

(Claude Schryer n 2023)It's March 6, 2023 and I'm at Trout Lake Park in Vancouver. About 2 years ago, I went for a long soundwalk with climate activist, and now politician, Anjali Appadurai, which became episode 23 of season 2 of this podcast. It was the first time that Anjali did a soundwalk and it was a very powerful moment for me because I've often thought back about what Anjali said that day. It has informed my work as a climate activist and on the role of art in the climate emergency. I encourage you to read, to listen to it. Today, we are going to hear an excerpt from that conversation, near the end, about the issue of privilege which comes back again and again in this sounding modernity season. So here's Anjali from our soundwalk in 2021….(Anjali Appadurai in 2021)This really meshes with what I was talking about. It circles back to the beginning of the conversation when we were talking about who's the ‘we' and that privilege is the central question to that. Looking at the issue as this multi-layered thing and looking at it as a spectrum of history. What have the power dynamics been? Say you can take a slice of history, say the last 500 years. What were the advantages? Privilege can go back as far as you wanted to go back, right? And of course it's so nuanced. Not every white guy has this much privilege, but you do have a privilege that goes back hundreds of years and I think one aspect of privilege, one that a lot of people leave out is this economic aspect, right, of class and resources. And that is not often talked about in the climate conversation, but it's a huge piece of it. Because when we talk about the extinction of our species, this extinction doesn't happen overnight. It happens in a spectrum. Who are the last ones standing? Those with the most resources and who are the first ones to go? It's those with the least, the most disenfranchised. So I don't think you can talk about climate without talking about privilege ultimately. And I think it's on each of us to unpack that for ourselves and to bring that into the conversation. (Claude in 2023)Back in 2023 again now. I'm going to skip ahead to another excerpt of our conversation from 2021 with Anjali. This time she talks about privilege in a more global context. (Anjali in 2021)I'll just leave with one more thought. There's a lot of framing about how to divide up in an equitable way, the remaining emissions, the sort of carbon budget of the world. So the carbon budget is a framing in and of itself and then there's this other framing that floats around the right to atmospheric space and how, if you look at atmospheric space as a human right, and if you divide up how much we have left in the world, how many people have way more than what would be their fair share, how many people have way less? And that's a deep question of privilege as well. And talking about the global north, I mean, that really plays into our global privilege.(Claude in 2023)My question for you is ‘what are the privileges in your life?'*This episode is an excerpt from e23 appadurai – what does a just transition look like?. Thanks to Anjali for her permission to use our 2021 conversation in this context. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the Climate Emergency Unit.For more information on Anjali's work see : https://www.linkedin.com/in/anjali-appadurai-44645a69/  *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

We talk about Canada's federal budget, the IPCC report and Vanuatu's victory at the UN. Stefan interviews Juan Vargas of the Climate Emergency Unit about the 2% for Our Future campaign.

The climate crisis continues to grow more urgent. Despite the many clarion calls from the scientific community, the emergency continues to build unabated, due to our collective inability to take meaningful, decisive measures in opposition. Mountains of evidence, and many recent examples of storms and other weather events that set records in terms of intensity and financial impact, don't seem to be enough to galvanize the population and move us toward action. Why aren't we doing more? We'll find out on this episode of Cleantech Forward.On this episode, Foresight CEO and Cleantech Forward Host Jeanette Jackson is joined by Seth Klein, the Team Lead and Director of Strategy at the Climate Emergency Unit, and the author of The Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. Seth and Jeanette discuss the state of cleantech adoption in Canada and what we can do to accelerate that process. They take a look at our national progress in the fight against climate change while comparing it to similar existential crises and how they were handled.Seth Klein is the Team Lead and Director of Strategy of the Climate Emergency Unit (a 5-year project of the David Suzuki Institute that Seth launched in early 2021). Prior to that, he served for 22 years (1996-2018) as the founding British Columbia Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a public policy research institute committed to social, economic and environmental justice. He is the author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency (published in 2020) and writes a regular column for the National Observer.Never miss an episode. Don't forget to subscribe to the Cleantech Forward podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen.The Cleantech Forward Podcast is Supported by Gowling WLG.

We talk about COP27, Canada setting up a shell company for TMX, and the wood pellet scam in BC. Stefan and Lauren interview Sabah Ibrahim, Ontario Organizer for the Climate Emergency Unit.

Banyen Books & Sound hosts Seth Klein about his roadmap and vision for confronting the climate crisis and his book A Good War. Seth Klein is the Team Lead and Director of Strategy with the Climate Emergency Unit. Prior to that, he served for 22 years as the founding director of the British Columbia office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), Canada's foremost social justice think tank. He is now a freelance policy consultant, speaker, researcher and writer, and author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. Seth is a columnist with the National Observer, an adjunct professor with Simon Fraser University's Urban Studies program, and remains a research associate with the CCPA's BC Office.

British Columbia is closing schools on Monday, as it has declared September 19 a day of remembrance for the Queen. We'll talk to a principal about the effect on students and families. And in our second half, a new report on climate change is ringing alarm bells, but will policy-makers heed them? We'll talk to team lead with the Climate Emergency Unit, Seth Klein, and Clean Energy Canada's chief innovation officer, Merran Smith.

In episode #468 of Talking Radical Radio, Scott Neigh interviews Emma Norton, a climate activist based in Nova Scotia. They talk about her work as the operations director at the ReCover Initaitive and the Atlantic director with the Climate Emergency Unit, and about the crucial interconnection between practical measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and grassroots political work aimed at policy change. For a more detailed description of this episode, go here: https://talkingradical.ca/2022/08/30/radio-practical-climate-action-in-atlantic-canada/

Climate activist Anjali Appadurai, one of the leaders of the Climate Emergency Unit, has thrown her hat into the ring to be the next leader of the BC NDP. We get a local look at the top political stories with the help of  Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer.

This year, the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts holds its 40th annual festival from August 11–14, at the Rockwood Centre in Sechelt, BC. We sat down for a Q+A with Jane Davidson, Artistic and Executive Director of the Festival. Jane shares what makes this year's festival special, and reflects on some of her favourite memories and achievements from the past 15 years, as she prepares to pass on the torch. Next, hear a special release of the 2021 Rockwood Lecture, delivered by Seth Klein, from the SCFWA's archives. The Director of Strategy with the Climate Emergency Unit, Klein's book, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency explores how we can fight the climate crisis using lessons from the Second World War. Called “a compelling call to arms”, A Good War shows us how far we have to go, but how averting the climate crisis is well within our reach.

For the first segment of this special two-part episode, climate justice activist and originator of Land Back, Bryanna Brown discusses the critical need for Indigenous rights and ways of knowing and youth leadership to combat a climate crisis rooted in systems of colonial oppression and capitalist greed.   Making the connection between climate and colonialism, Bryanna Brown says:  “One quote that Indigenous Climate Action uses that I really like is: ‘Colonialism caused climate change; Indigenous Rights are the solution.' We are left out from so many spaces and so many decision making processes and tables throughout history. Because our culture is to protect the land. I think Indigenous Peoples are very important to be investing in, in terms of being able to come up with solutions, not false solutions, actual solutions to the climate crisis. But because of the colonial violence that we continue to experience and because it is a culture of honoring profit over people; it's really, really hard to get a say when your values are rooted in protecting the land and protecting something of non-market value. And it's not just the responsibility of Black, Indigenous, People of the Global Majority to do that; allies are really, really, really important. There's so many things that we need to deconstruct or decolonize, or just eliminate entirely from our practices and systems and policies to be able to get to a place of having ways to come together to find solutions.” Reflecting on the power of Land Back, Brown says:  "I was really, really impressed by how it had gained so many different definitions, but very similar definitions across organizations … And I think it's extremely important that it is about the collective energy of Indigenous Peoples and our allies, Black and Indigenous Peoples and People of Color who are protecting the land throughout the world. I was really surprised that it was a global movement. And something that I really noticed was the solidarity that began to grow amongst so many people because of it. And for me, it was really about consent and Free Prior and Informed Consent over our land and our body.”  About today's guest:  Brown is Inuk and Mi'kmaq from Nunatsiavut, Labrador. She is the originator of the Land Back movement and advocates for the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples, as well as Black and People of Colour communities and land ownership and reclamation as a means of environmental protection and self-determination. Bryanna is a traditional storyteller, knowledge-keeper and public speaker. She is on the National Steering Committee and Climate Policy Advisory Council of Indigenous Climate Action and is currently working with the Keepers of the Circle and the Climate Emergency Unit with the David Suzuki Foundation to establish a Just Transition campaign in Newfoundland and Labrador. She consults on anti-human trafficking and advocates for the rights of women, Indigenous Peoples Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and environmental injustice in relation to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and persons with disabilities. The Courage My Friends podcast series is a co-production between The Tommy Douglas Institute (at George Brown College), rabble.ca, with the support of the Douglas Coldwell Layton Foundation. Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute Image: Bryanna Brown / Used with permission.  Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased Intro Voices: Chandra Budhu (Podcast Announcer), Nayocka Allen, Nicolas Echeverri Parra, Doreen Kajumba (Street Voices); Bob Luker (Tommy Douglas quote) Courage My Friends Podcast Organizing Committee: Resh Budhu, Breanne Doyle (for rabble.ca), Chandra Budhu and Ashley Booth.  Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca Host: Resh Budhu

In this week's episode of This Must be The Place, Shawna speaks to passionate climate advocate Emma Norton. She is the Director of Government Relations at the Climate Emergency Unit ( a project of the David Suzuki Institute). Not afraid to “pound the climate emergency drum”, she is working tirelessly to reduce emissions through deep-energy retrofits and more responsive policy. In this episode: • We discover why her passion for the environment was ignited in university. • We learn that she has TWO jobs-including a non-profit that she cofounded. • Learn why she doesn't think governments are acting fast enough and what she's doing to sound the alarm on the climate emergency. climateemergencyunit.ca recoverinitiative.ca Book: A Good War by Seth Klein https://www.sethklein.ca/book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42397849-burnout Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emmalnorton LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/enorton1/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/climateemergencyunit Twitter: @climate_unit LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-climate-emergency-unit/ Host/Producer - Shawna Henderson shawna@bluehouseenergy.com Producer - Tanya Chedrawy tanya@tanyamedia.com Technical Producer - Michael Boyd michaelboyd@podcastatlantic.com Social Media – Anita Kirkbride www.twirp.ca A Production of: Blue House Energy bluehouseenergy.com/ Tanya Media tanyamedia.com Podcast Atlantic podcastatlantic.com/ Blue House Energy's Website by R & G - The Sustainability Agency https://www.rgstrategic.com/ Music from Arches Audio - https://archesaudio.com/ Title of Song - "Road Trip"

We talk about gigantic fish, celebrating divestment, TMX, the DFO and more. Stefan interviews Emma Norton of the Climate Emergency Unit about Atlantic Canada's climate plans.

GUESTS:Julian Brave NoiseCat is a National Observer columnist and writer, as well as Vice President of Policy & Strategy for Data for Progress. Jesse Firempong is a columnist for National Observer and has worked with Greenpeace and Oxfam as well as on human rights projects in Canada, Ghana and Botswana. Naomi Klein is a filmmaker, activist and writer. Her most recent book is On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal. She's currently an Associate Professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia. Seth Klein is a contributor to National Observer. He's the author of  A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. He is also an adjunct professor with Simon Fraser University's Urban Studies program, the Director of Strategy with the Climate Emergency Unit, and was the founding director of the British Columbia office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.CREDITS:Final audio mix by Aftertouch Audio. Fact check by Luke Ottenhof. Artwork by Ata Ojani. Communications from Suzanne Dhaliwal.Original video sound in this episode from Brad Mueller, Guillotino Shuxley, Michael Toledano, and the Parkland Institute. Music provided by Blue Dot Sessions. Additional sfx from freed of freesound.org CLIMATE NERD RESOURCES:Links to studies we mention in the show:To see the full video from Michael Toledano, click hereTo see that video Polly can't stop watching of the cows being rescued, click hereTo see Seth and Linda talk about his latest book Related articles from CNO: https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/11/16/opinion/climate-talks-tokenize-indigenous-peopleshttps://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/06/28/opinion/one-indigenous-girls-brave-response-residential-schoolshttps://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/08/11/opinion/canada-profited-fossil-fuels-moral-obligation-climate-refugeeshttps://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/11/16/opinion/women-climate-movement-inclusion-green-recoveryhttps://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/11/22/opinion/battle-our-liveshttps://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/09/17/opinion/why-tackling-inequality-and-climate-crisis-must-go-handhttps://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/05/17/opinion/time-stop-playing-nice-fossil-fuel-companies-blocking-climate-action

Seth Klein, a public policy researcher, was the founding British Columbia Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He is the Team Lead and Director of Strategy of the Climate Unit — a five-year project of the David Suzuki Institute. To learn more about the Climate Emergency Unit and sign up for the CEU newsletter, visit: https://climateemergencyunit.ca. Seth's 2020 book “A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency” makes the case that Canada needs a war-time approach to Canada. Seth is also a columnist for Canada's National Observer.

Seth Klein, a public policy researcher, was the founding British Columbia Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He is the Team Lead and Director of Strategy of the Climate Unit — a five-year project of the David Suzuki Institute. To learn more about the Climate Emergency Unit and sign up for the CEU newsletter, visit: https://climateemergencyunit.ca. Seth's 2020 book “A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency” makes the case that Canada needs a war-time approach to Canada. Seth is also a columnist for Canada's National Observer.

'What's starting to interest me is stories of resilience for a post carbon world. What are we going to need for our emotional well-being? It's going to be a different world not long from now. If we do this, and we must do this, this transition has to happen and there's going to be a sense of loss and sacrifice and challenge, not just with what's happening externally from a climate point of view, but in how we're going to have to make changes to our lives and reorient our energies in terms of our advocacy. I feel like there's an opportunity for artists - I'm more connected to the film and television sector and the documentary community - throughout the system, to be able to provide realistic and yet reassuring narratives about what the upside of all this might be.'Tracey Friesen, Vancouver, November 2021I first met Tracey on September 21, 2021 at a Processing the federal election during a climate emergency Zoom event organized by the Climate Emergency Unit. Since then, we have kept in touch through our participation in SCALE (the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency network). Our 30-minute conversation covered a lot of ground, however, we only touched the surface of Tracey's vast experience and network of collaborators in the cultural industries, so I hope that another conversation is in order down the road!Tracey has over 30 years' experience in Canada's cultural sector. She spent more than a decade at the National Film Board in Vancouver, where she earned producer or executive credits on dozens of documentary film, animation and digital projects. She's also held contracts with organizations like Inspirit Foundation, Mindset Foundation, DOC, Roundhouse Radio, and the David Suzuki Foundation. Tracey is author and founder of Story Money Impact, the charitable society that brought us Good Pitch Vancouver and Story to Action, plus other initiatives to advance education around media impact. In 2013 she was named ‘Woman of the Year' by Women in Film & TV Vancouver. She is currently Managing Vice-President, BC Branch, at the Canadian Media Producers Association, where she passionately represents and supports BC-based independent film and television producers.  I was touched by this quote from Tracey near the end of the conversation:I'm mindful that with the climate emergency, it's so existential that it's captured my attention perhaps most strongly because I really hope that in the kind of complicated dynamic of the wonderful, wild world that we're in right now, that it's one thing that will impact all of us. Not the same way, certainly, there are those of us living in different parts of the world that will be affected in different ways, but it's such a global community, it has to come together in all the ways that they can. So, we do need the scientists and we do need all of the work being done across all of the important social issues that are happening right now. And we really do need the storytellers to validate that their story driven, narrative driven, emotionally driven pieces of work will help to touch people now to change their behaviour or will help to soothe or reassure or be with them in the world post transition.Tracey mentioned the following links during our conversation:Being CaribouCanadian Media Producers Association (CMPA)Climate Emergency UnitGood Pitch VancouverReel GreenShamelessStory Money Impact *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

'I think the same model (climate emergency coalitions) could and should be used by SCALE to have these arts and culture groups come together, identify a shared vision and a shared set of actions that together constitute a true climate emergency agenda for the arts and culture sector. That's step one and then agreement to jointly campaign all with your individual constituencies on that declaration on that list of actions so that if you are the federal minister of culture or provincial minister of culture, you keep hearing over and over again from all of these different groups that are part of your portfolio. This is what we want.'Seth Klein, October 2021, VancouverMy first conversation with seth klein was on april 16, 2021 (see e26 klein – rallying through art). This follow-up conversation on November 2, 2021 (again once again at Trout Lake Park, Vancouver) looks at what has happened with the Climate Emergency Unit since then and includes a suggestion on how the arts and culture sector can identify a shared vision and a shared set of actions that constitute a true climate emergency agenda and how to create a joint campaign. We also talked about radical listening, the 85th anniversary of the CBC (founded 2 november 1936) and life as a climate emergency worker. This episode includes an excerpt from e41 rae, from Jen Rae, in response to e26 klein.While I chose the ‘identifying a shared vision and a set of actions' as an excerpt to promote this episode I also want to quote this passage from later on in our conversation, which touched me deeply. Thanks for this and all the work you do, Seth. ClaudeThe theme of this season is radical listening. It's something I've been trying to do because I think radicality is necessary now, but also listening very carefully to the people around us and to knowledge that we might not have really understood in the past. I'm thinking about indigenous knowledge, but other types of knowledge. So that's, to me a bit of a contradiction, because if you're in an emergency mode, how can you slow down and listen? You can actually walk and talk at the same time. That's what we're doing right now. SethYou're right to name the tension and I actually I speak to that tension in the chapter on Indigenous Leadership in the book (A Good War) : the tension between trying to move at the speed of trust, which is often not very speeding, particularly when doing coalition work, and yet feeling the panic and the urgency of this moment. I remember Khelsilem in the book, a local indigenous leader from Squamish nation. When I asked him about that tension, he just said, just start. You know, and it has to be okay to make mistakes.Seth Klein is a public policy researcher and writer based in Vancouver who served for 22 years as the founding director of the British Columbia office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), Canada's foremost social justice think tank. He is now a freelance policy consultant, speaker, researcher and writer, and author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. Seth is also an adjunct professor with Simon Fraser University's Urban Studies program and remains a research associate with the CCPA's BC Office. For more information on Seth work, see https://www.sethklein.ca/ Note: there is a section on this web page about ‘Art and Music' and http://www.climatechangetheatreaction.com/marcus-youssef-with-seth-klein that I recommend. *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

'To me, radical listening is about stepping out of our comfort zone when we listen. Radical listening about thinking beyond what we think we know when we listen. Radical listening is about recognizing our biases, both conscious and unconscious. It's about listening actively and sincerely. Ultimately, it's about getting to the truth and facing reality.'Claude Schryer, FKL's Unheard Landscapes Symposium, October 29, 2021 e75 radical listening as climate action is my presentation and Q&A period at the FKL's Unheard Landscapes Symposiumon October 29, 2021 about ‘music as acoustic ecology' and ‘radicality' in the context of listening and the climate emergency, with excerpts from e54 mahtani, é55 trépanier and e22 westerkamp ScriptNote: audio on podcast is slightly different due to improvised elements during the presentation. The question-and-answer period below was transcribed using TEMI and slightly edited for concision.Good morning, Bonjour Welcome to radical listening as climate action.It's 7.35am here in Vancouver on Friday, October 29th, 2021. The sun is just rising here on the west coast of Turtle Island. I know you've already had a long day of presentations and deliberations where you all are in Blois, France so I'll try and be brief in my presentation and get to questions as soon as possible. Je vais parler en anglais mais il me fera plaisir de répondre à vos questions en français aussi. But before I start my presentation, I want to let you know that I'm recording this talk as episode 75 of my conscient podcast, which is a podcast, sometimes in English, des fois en français, that explores art and the ecological crisis. The third season of this podcast is on the theme of radical listening, so I thought it would make sense to include this presentation as an episode. Please let me know if you do not want to be recorded when we get to the question period, ok? I understand that the Symposium is also doing a podcast of this presentation, which is great so there will be 2 versions, I'll be publishing this recording later today. Let me begin by saying that I'm speaking to you from the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. I would like to acknowledge these nations as the traditional keepers of these lands and reiterate my commitment to indigenous people as an ally. Some of you might know that I'm a composer by training and worked in acoustic ecology for most of the 1990s, with the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology and other similar organizations - before joining the Canada Council for the Arts for 21 years. I retired from the Council in 2020 in order to focus my work on art and the climate emergency through my podcast and a new organization in Canada called SCALE, the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency: which is an example of a collective action that the Symposium has suggested we undertake. I can talk about that more later if you wish. I was very pleased to see that the Unheard Landscapes Symposium is exploring climate emergency issues, such as changing soundscape of our endangered planet today and, importantly, future soundscapes and thefuture of listeningitself as the climate emergency deepens. And the crisis will unfortunately get much worse as emissions are currently actually rising worldwide in spite of efforts at COP26, which starts in a few days just north of you in Scotland. So big thanks and Graci to Stefano Zorzanello and the FKL Symposium on Soundscapes team for this timely event and for having me here today. I also want to thank you in the audience for taking the time to be here today – I wish I was there with you - and for sharing your thoughts today, and online afterwards if you wish. I'd want to start my presentation with a short story. Now I'm not a storyteller but I like the format as a way to bring information to life. I once upon a time, a composer gave a workshop called Reality, Extinction, Grief and Art at a festivalsomewhere in Europe. The audience was most professors, composers and music students from around the world. The theme of the festival was soundscapes during a pandemic. The composer talked about the issues that kept him up at night, including the deepening climate crisis, the real possibility of civilization collapse, the lack of understanding about ecological grieving and the role of arts and culture in all of this. Now the question-and-answer period was quite intense: one participant asked how to deal with the rise of fascism and war as the climate crisis worsened and resources become scarcer. This person had seen conflict before in her home country.  Another asked how can we address the debilitating sense of sadness that comes from environmental loss? Someone else kindly suggested that we should stop using printed programs for our concerts, which was recognized as a good idea but not nearly enough of a change. Finally, one participant proposed that from now that all music should be considered as acoustic ecology…the workshop leader said ‘now there's a radical idea': all music as acoustic ecology.Now, this is, of course, a true story, though I did dramatize bits here and there for effect. It took place on April 23 of this year at the BEASTFeAST2021: Recalibration festival under the direction of Dr. Annie Mahtani at the University of Birmingham. I gave this workshop because I wanted to raise these issues in my peer community of electroacoustic and soundscape composers and am happy for this opportunity to continue the conversation today and at any time in the future. So, let's dig a bit deeper into this idea of music as acoustic ecology. I realise that it is a provocative proposal. What did this person mean? I'll remind you that acoustic ecology is defined as the ‘relationship, mediated through sound, between all living beings and their environment.' The concept was developed right here in Vancouver at the World Soundscape Project by a composer, R. Murray Schafer and his colleagues at Simon Fraser University. One of their goals was to point out that the world was out of balance and that we needed to listen much more carefully to our environment and to respond to issues through deep listening and heightened environmental awareness. Music, on the other hand, is defined as the ‘art of arranging sounds in time through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre'. No mention of the environment here though it might be implied with the idea of timbre. So, in other words, acoustic ecology is about our relationship to our environment, through sound, whereas music is about organizing sound to make art. What's the connection between these two? How can we consider music as acoustic ecology and why should we?Here's a theory.What I think that person was saying is that music, in the context of the ecological crisis, needs to take place in relation with all living beings and their environments. In other words, music should not be separated from its context. It never should have. For example, if the world is on fire, music and all other art forms for that matter, need to emerge from, and engage with that reality in ways that we have not yet imagined (a form of unheard landscape).I won't get into stories about fiddling while Rome burns… but that's another story.  I'm curious to know what you think about this when we get to the questions period in a few minutes. Let me share my screen now. This is the conscient podcast website. I'd like to play you three excerpts from conversations I had in the second season of the conscient podcast, which was about reality and ecological grief. The first is with Dr. Annie Mahtani from episode 52 :If we can find ways to encourage people to listen, that can help them to build a connection, even if it's to a small plot of land near them. By helping them to have a new relationship with that, which will then expand and help hopefully savour a deeper and more meaningful relationship with our natural world, and small steps like that, even if it's only a couple of people at a time, that could spread. I think that nobody, no one person, is going to be able to change the world, but that doesn't mean we should give up.Annie's point here is that everything is local and that listening, with our ears and hearts, is how we need to move forward, even if the future looks bleak. Annie reminds us that we should never give up on leaving a livable world for our children and their children. One of the questions raised by the organizers of this Symposium is about collective actions. What kind of collective actions can the soundscape community undertake about something as massive and amorphous - some might say invisible or unheard - as the climate crisis? For example, we could focus on mitigation – which is about raising awareness about imminent threats, many soundscape compositions try to do this – or maybe we put more energy into adaptation – about learning to live our damaged planet and how to listen even more carefully - or maybe we could priorise regeneration – which is about rebuilding and providing a vision for a sustainable future? These are admittedly complex and uncomfortable issues, in part because people do not feel empowered to address them, so most of us live in denial and with deep, repressed sadness, right? Let me tell you another short story. This one is also true.During the fall of 2019, I was at a meeting about how the arts and cultural sector, and in particular the indigenous traditional knowledge community, could play a much larger role in the fight against climate change. We were sitting around a table – remember that this was pre-pandemic times - with each person sharing knowledge and stories. I spoke about how we need to walk our talk in order to be credible with environmental issues. Then, a representative from an indigenous cultural organization said that it would ‘likely take as long to resolve the ecological crisis as it did to create it'. I repeated what he said in my head: ‘take as long to resolve the ecological crisis as it did to create. How is this possible, I asked myself, so I said: ‘but, but we do not have that kind of time'. We all looked at each other in silence. (moment of silence) This is what I mean by ‘radical listening'. To me, radical listening is about stepping out of our comfort zone when we listen. Radical listening about thinking beyond what we think we know when we listen. Radical listening is about recognizing our biases, both conscious and unconscious. It's about listening actively and sincerely. Ultimately, it's about getting to the truth and facing reality.(moment of silence) (Share screen) I'll give you another example from season 2 of the conscient podcast. This is Indigenous artist France Trepanier who is a visual artist, curator and researcher of Kanien'kéha:ka and French ancestry. This is from episode 55 and it's in French.Je pense que ce cycle du colonialisme, et de ce que ça a apporté, on est en train d'arriver à la fin de ce cycle là aussi, et avec le recul, on va s'apercevoir que cela a été un tout petit instant dans un espace beaucoup plus vaste, et qu'on est en train de retourner à des connaissances très profondes. Qu'est-ce que ça veut dire de vivre ici sur cette planète? Ce que ça implique comme possibilité, mais comme responsabilité aussi de maintenir les relations harmonieuses? Moi, je dis que la solution à la crise climatique c'est cardiaque. Ça va passer par le cœur. On parle d'amour avec la planète. C'est ça, le travail.What Trépanier is saying here is that she thinks that the 500 plus year cycle of colonialism on Turtle Island is coming to an end and that it's everyone's responsibility to maintain harmonious relationships in their respective communities. She is also saying that we need to fall back in love with our planet in order to save humanity. She said that this is the work that is ahead of us: c'est ca, le travail and I agree.So, let's think about this. How do we maintain harmonious relationships with all living beings as a soundscape community?I'd like to conclude my presentation with a proposal. It's from soundscape composer Hildegard Westerkamp, who lives here in Vancouver and is a living legend in the soundscape community. This is from conscient podcast episode 22, which was recorded in April of 2020 here in Vancouver. We need toallow for time to pass without any action, without any solutions and to just experience it. I think that a slowdown is an absolute… If there is any chance to survive, that kind of slowing down through listening and meditation and through not doing so much. I think there's some hope in that.This, to me, is also an example of ‘radical listening as climate action'. I now invite comments or questions. I'll remind you that I'm recording this presentation as episode 75 of the conscient podcast. Merci Stefano et chers collègues. Questions, comments? En anglais ou en français. Question and AnswersStefano Zorzanello  It's quite interesting to think about listening as an action. When we think about listening, we tend to think about a passive kind of action, which is receiving and not really changing anything. It's getting something from the world out there, but we know also from an ecological point of view that listening is an act of selection of messages that is active and not passive. It's a way of taking away something away from too crowded world, which is full of things: full of noise, full of information, full of life. The act of taking something away and making room for other things or maybe nothing at all is in itself a kind of ecological action. I think we should be more careful about this. What do you think? Claude SchryerI'll respond briefly because I'm interested in other thoughts or at least initial reactions, but Stefano, I agree that a lot of what we need to do is to stop the destruction and to take away things that are inhibiting natural processes. And the most obvious is ecological systems. For example, with trees, if we stopped cutting them and polluting their environment, they will flourish and they will bring back life: air and sounds. And so that's something that we don't think of as progress, right? We think of progress as building and new and better and bigger. And we have to find a positive way to get into a subtractive space so that we think of less as more and think of quiet, as an example, in the sound world, but there are so many ways that we could do things less and better for all life forms. That's why I played the example from France Trépanier (é55), who's a senior indigenous artist here in Canada who has a lot to say about indigenous non-indigenous relations and how difficult they have been from the very beginning in Canada because of what the Europeans essentially brought as an ideology. So, there's a conflict of ideology that needs to be resolved here and yet we have so little time to resolve it. That's why I told the story about that indigenous knowledge keeper who said that it's going to take a long time... So, we're facing unthinkable situations and we, as soundscape artists, one of the things we can do, is talk about our profession, because we're professional listeners, we're professional recorders, we're professional analysts of sound and that's why I liked so much the questions that you ask you and your colleagues ask in Unheard Landscapes. You're looking at unknown issues, things that we don't know about yet. I think those are the right questions to ask. Personally, I try to reduce my carbon footprint. I do what I can, but I'm producing podcasts and using energy. I'm aware that everything we do has a footprint at, but to be aware of it is already to start to change. So, listening to me, radical listening, is about listening with the intent of changing, not just the intent of saying, well, that was nice, but it's not going to affect me at all, or that was sort of fun. It's not entertainment. When you receive information, you take it seriously and it challenges your worldview. Then you not only think about it, but you receive it in your body and then you start changing your behavior. And even that's why I put the Annie Mahtani example. Even the smallest things like going into a garden and talking with somebody and planting a seed, those seeds will grow. And if we all do that, and I don't mean to lecture anybody here, I know people are aware about the seriousness of the environmental issues we face, but I do think that we need, as a community, to be much more in climate emergency mode. There's a group here in Canada called the Climate Emergency Unit. I think everybody on the planet in particular, those who have consumed more than their fair share, need to be in climate emergency mode and behave that way. And so, music as acoustic ecology, is an interesting idea, but really what we need is to be in climate emergency mode. Any other thoughts from people in the room? I'd be happy to hear.Olivier GaudinI'm one of the organizers. I work here at this school, and I teach a history of landscapes. So basically, I was wondering about the way you use the adjective radical. Could you make possible connections between radical and indigenous people and whether that makes sense to you, because in France, there is still a discussion about radicality. It's also the way you connected it with emergency that is interesting. I wonder how you manage this possible connection between radicality and indigenous. And I interested in that and why. Claude SchryerWell, there's lots of connections. The word radical can be used in different ways, but it basically means cutting through certain conventions and going to the most basic essential element. In Canada we have about 15,000 years of knowledge in indigenous communities. Colonization was about 500 of those. That's why France Trépanier was saying that the colonization period is starting to end. We use the term reconciliation in Canada, not unlike what happened in South Africa. We had our own a truth and reconciliation process a few years ago, which had some positive outcomes, but we're struggling with the deep, deep issues of how we can share this land because we, the non-indigenous people, have exploited it so much and have lost the trust of indigenous people through treaties that weren't respected. So, there's lots of that kind of talk now talk and action and our government's making, I think, an effort at addressing these issues, but it's not enough. And now the population is rising and starting to demand that of not just governments, but all institutions. So, there's a positive dynamic, or at least a forward motion in Canada around thinking about things in a totally different way in our relations with each other, with the land and the people with a a lot more listening going on with indigenous people, not necessarily dialogue, sometimes it's dialogue, but it's mostly listening. There's are so many interesting initiatives right now, in Canada, I'm thinking of the indigenous climate action network and so many others that are doing great work. So it's really a question of listening.Olivier GaudinThank you for this answer I am interested if to some people to know this attitude that you share with us today is perceived as a counterproductive, meaning that in France, you, if you present yourself radically, you will be told that you lose the majority of the population, you know, too much excitement. Do you manage to frame it differently in Canada? I would be interested to know that. And maybe you can enlighten us a little bit about the differences between Western Canada and Québec. Claude SchryerI can't really speak on behalf radicals in Canada. There are some very politically radical people. I'm not really one of them. I consider myself a progressive, but what I'm talking about is radical listening, which is a process and, and hopefully it leads to radical actions. I use the radical in the sense that the status quo is unlivable. We are living far, far beyond our means. And so, you can't sot of piece meal or go incrementally. If people are uncomfortable with the word radical, you can think of other words, but I'm not talking about only radical political action. I'm talking about radical lifestyle change and of radical rethinking through listening. That's my own personal point of view. Canada is an oil and gas producing country, so we have tremendous challenges with the climate emergency, because a lot of our economy is based on gas and oil. So, we're struggling with that too. We have a new minister of environment and climate change right now. So, there's, there's that that debate is going on. Your other question about Western and Eastern Canada, or in Quebec in particular. There are definitely regional different regional approaches in Canada right now. I'm in Vancouver where there's the David Suzuki Foundation and the World Soundscape Project legacy, and lots of going on on the environmental front, but in Quebec you also have very strong environmental sensitivity. You have it across Canada, but in Quebec, you have street movements, like when the Fridays for Future movement happened in 2019, there were, you 400,000 or 500,000 people in the streets. There is a sense of mobilization and action that we're seeing in Canada and Quebec is very good and strong at that. You're also seeing it also in the arts community. There are all kinds of organizations now that are rethinking how they work, in part because of the COVID crisis, but also because of the climate emergency. I can't get into it too much because I don't think there'll be time, but I mentioned this group, SCALE as an example of a national initiative to bring us all together in Canada to talk about the role of arts and culture in the climate emergency and we're working with Julie's Bicycle and Creative Carbon Scotland and others who are doing similar kinds of work. And I know that there's initiatives in Europe and in France as well. I think that's what we need to do is get out of our little silos of my art form and my interests and think broadly together and create coalitions so that we can identify the things that we want to do together and do them, as your symposium has suggested, as collective actions, because individual actions, while important for the person, are not as effective as collective actions. It's easy to find my email claude@conscient.ca . I think it's an ongoing conversation. Thank you. I know you've had a long day, so I'm going to go have a shower and it's been a lot of fun. I think I appreciate your being there and let's keep in touch.Unheard Landscapes group in Blois, France delivering 'radical listening as climate action' and me on October 29, 2021, Vancouver *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

'What I'm looking for, ultimately, is an anchoring point: where are we at and what can we do to ensure the continuation of life?'Claude Schryer, Duhamel QC(transcript)This is Claude Schryer, conscient podcast, the first episode of season 3. I took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do in season 3, because there are so many things that podcasts can do : interviews, or you can do, monologues, but after season 2, which was pretty darn intense – BTW I'm on a kayak right now, so you can hear that - pretty darn intense : 41 interviews in French, in English, almost 30 hours of content, so I thought I'd take a break from that and just think out loud, but also do it in the moment, like I'm doing now. I think there's a lot of fleshing out of the issues that I discovered in season 2 that can be set out over time, with a bit of time with each issue, so I'll do that and maybe quote a little bit some of the people in season 2. I might also interview people once in a while if I'm feeling out of my depth, but there's something about using this forum for those who were interested, as a way to not only continue my re-education, which is, will never end in a way, but to actually share the learnings and the process - there's a duck... you hear.... di-di-di... the wings are so beautiful … - and share the process of a failure and attempts to change that didn't work, in a very straightforward kind of way, because that's life: where we make mistakes and stumble and learn and get excited and then look back and we observe that. So that's what season three will begin like as like actually can't predict what it will end, like, because, well, I'm just starting but this is the episode, what is it? I don't even know anymore because, I will have published ‘a case study' piece. I can't remember what episode that is, but it doesn't matter, somewhere in the sixties, like me and my age… So, I'm going to continue down the river here. I wanted to thank the listeners who have hung in there with me who have listened to the conscient podcast and the first two seasons. I appreciate the time and I hope that it's useful but what I'm going to do now is, in a way, go back to what I started way back in the simplesoundscapes project, the very first season in 2016, which is not erased (I have a copy), but it's no longer publicly available. I did a series of soundscape, um, observations. I would start, each episode with a comment on the soundscape, describing it or, or talking about it, and then we'd listened to it and they'd be a 10 minute episodes and I kind of want to come back to that spontaneity and like no second takes, no preparation in the sense of scripting, just, when it feels right to speak in not too long, but long enough to say something useful and authentic and possibly provocative because I'd be provoking myself trying to push myself ever so gently into new areas of thoughts and more or less what I consider to be the truth, although, you know, in season 2, I explored reality, right, and that was, that was quite a journey and its ongoing, like, what is reality? … One thing I do know though, but about all of this is that I know what my motivation is and, some might be surprised that it keeps coming back to me very clearly that what I'm looking for, ultimately, is an anchoring point, where are we at and what can we do to ensure the continuation of life? That sounds very broad, but what I mean is I want to know what - there's a book called, All We Can Save- I want to know not only what we can save, but where we can put energy, that's going to make a difference and contribute with as much impact as possible, to life continuing, all forms of life, including human life, but not only. So, for example, the idea of short-term objectives, of trying to do projects to raise awareness.... I think we're past the point of trying to get people to wake up to the climate emergency and their ecological crisis. It's still really important work, but, in fact, we are going to crash It will be gradual and it will be worse in some places than others. In fact, I'll play an excerpt of Dr. Todd Dufresne (e21). It's one of my favorite quotes from season two, who talks about that:Dr. Todd Dufresne (e21): There are a couple things around capitalism that are very important. People often will talk about how part of the cause of the crisis that we're facing is the way we live our lives and a major feature of the way we live our lives is for example, consumer capitalism, or they'll call it neo-liberalism. I think sometimes it's just important to call it what it is, is its various forms of capitalism. And to get comfortable with the idea that maybe capitalism has caused this problem, as it combines, with the history of ideas, which also support the role of capitalism place and the think that we need to find a way forward that isn't based on perpetual growth and the production, the endless production of stuff, we don't need, to maintain civilization. How do we maintain civilization moving forward without producing lots of tchotchkes and crap, how do we live meaningful, well, it's really easy: we don't need any of that stuff? Meaningful lives as we move forward, have nothing to do with tchotchkes, but there's certain things we do need, we need food, we need water, we need certain things and then we can leave, you know, meaningful, creative, decent lives that are civilized still in a different way, but maybe even more civilized in a certain way. So, the thing that I'm really interested in is: sometimes people aren't discussing how we're moving towards more and more AI and full automation. If you have full automation of the workforce, what are people going to do with their time? Well, I'll tell you one thing they're going to have to learn how to do with their time, they're going to have to be educated to become creatives in their own way, artists in their own way. It doesn't mean that if you don't want to do that, then do something else, but you're going to have to find something to do that doesn't involve toiling away for capitalism, because capitalism has been killing us. So, it's a really big, big thought. How do we get from where we are here to something in the future? I'm happy to take steps with Bernie Sanders and democratic sort of socialism, but I think we need to defang the word socialism. So, people aren't so scared of it, not as big of a deal in Canada, but because of what's happening in the world is still kind of a boogeyman for everybody. We need to think about what communism means and what it has meant in the past and maybe come up with a new word. As I say to my students, let's not talk about communism. Let's talk about communalism. We know communism has been a failure. Can we talk about some other version that maybe if we all got behind it, that would work some sort of communalism, forget, all the things that have gone wrong with communism? We need to have something like it moving forward to save us and this means we have to step away from capitalism, even as capitalism is failing and dying, in my opinion, right now, if it's not already a form of zombie capitalism, as I argue that it is. I think capitalism is over, but the problem is we have nothing to replace it with and here's where we need our artists and others to tell us what kind of vision, they have for a future that is different than that. Well, a future of play and work, meaningful work would be one future that I think is not just utopic, but very possible. So, there's a possible future moving forward that could be much better than it is right now, but we're not going to get there without democracy of suffering as we're experiencing it now. And we'll at least over the next 20, 30, 40 years until we figure this out, but we need to figure it out quickly.Dr. Todd DufresneThat's the idea. How do we rebuild? How do we maintain positive energy? That's what interests me and everything else seems to be less important than focusing on.... I mean, it's easy to get distracted by... we'll be okay if we just keep everything as it is, but reduce, keep it under 1.5 degrees Celsius. The problem, the real problem, what Anjali Appadurai calls... What does she call it now in episode 23? Anyway, the real problems, the othering, that's how she called it and I'll play that quote right now: Anjali Appadurai (e23):  It's not exactly the role that many people think, which is that people will create some environmental art about the beauty of - and this is all important, by the way. I'm not knocking it - but it's not just art that highlights the beauty of what we want to preserve, which is the majority of the climate art that I see,, like we want to preserve this, you know, protect our coast, protect these trees, protect the bear and the whale and all of that is absolutely necessary but also we want art that can help us imagine different way of being, because ultimately what we want... Yes, we want to build back better and better doesn't mean keeping everything the way it is but with renewable energy reduced emissions, zero emissions, but the same power dynamics, that's actually not... The climate crisis and the broader ecological crisis is to me, a symptom of the deeper disease and the deeper disease, which is that rift from nature, that seed of domination and of accumulation and of greed and of the urge to dominate others through colonialism, through slavery, though, othering, the root is actually othering. That is something that artists can touch and that's what has to be healed. And when we heal that what could come of it, what does the, what does the world on the other side of that look like? And it in simpler terms, it's what does the world on the other side of adjust transition look like and I'd really like to believe it doesn't look like exactly this, but with solar. The first language that colonization sought to suppress, which was that of indigenous peoples is where a lot of the answers are held. Anjali AppaduraiSo, the idea of othering is interesting because that's the source of the problem. Othering with different people, othering with nature so when you identify what is essentially the real reason we are in a massive ecological crisis, then it changes your approach to it so there isn't the sense of patchwork. There's a sense that we've gone too far, and we have to rethink and rebuild not only a sustainable society, but a just society. Those things are talked about a lot, but I can kind of feel that in my bones, it's actually hard to explain, but - and I know I'm a privileged person, and I know that I have lots of issues - but I am trying to get to what seems real and useful. What was that quote from my Zen teacher? I'll find it in and read it out because that's what guides my way:   Zen practice shows us how to take care and take responsibility with, and as each moment, by opening attention to reality and responding to what actually needs to be done.So. So. So... Do you hear the echo here, it's a beautiful sound on this river? I'm on the Nation, no, I'm on the Preston leading to the Nation River. What's the day today, September 13th, 2021. One of my favorite things to do in the whole world is to let this floating device go downstream and just experience that sensation of flowing down a river. A type of abandonment, so that, metaphorically, instead of swimming or paddling upriver, which we do a lot in life challenges, once in a while, you just let yourself go and let yourself go with the flow - I'm about to hit a rock here - and that flow is very, very beautiful and we just have to trust that it'll take you to the right place. So, on that note, I will leave you with this very short episode. Not the first of the third season, because that will have been 'a case study', but the first of this type of this little monologue. So, a la prochaine.(recording: sound of paddle in kayak hittin *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

'Welcome to the History of 2021 in Canada seminar. We're going to do a case study today of the second season of the conscient podcast.'Claude SchryerThe setting is an undergraduate university history seminar course called ‘History of 2021 in Canada'. I want to thank my son Riel, student of history, for the idea. It is set in the distant future, where a professor is presenting a ‘case study' based on the second season of the conscient podcast as part of a class on art in 2021. The episode is in two parts, episode 63 is part 1 and episode 64 is part 2. You'll see that they are separated by an event, that you'll hear.There are four people in the classroom: the teacher played by myself, Claude Schryer, a young male student is played by my son Riel Schryer, a young female student, who is online, is played by my daughter Clara Schryer and a female adult student is played by my wife Sabrina Mathews. I want to thank the cast.A reminder that most of the narration is in English, but there are elements and excerpts of the interviews that are in French and some of the narrations as well.Thanks for listening. Here are the excerpts from season 2 in this episode (in order of appearance):e54 garrett (2m50s) (with Claude Schryer speaking)é55 trépanier (4m57)e47 keeptwo (7m27s)e21 dufresne (8m38s)e23 appadurai (11m 26s)e26 klein (11h42s)é60 boutet (17m24s)e40 frasz (19m17s)e42 rosen (20m35s)e45 abbott (22m51s)e53 kalmanovitch (25m42s)e51 hiser (27m08s)e25 shaw (28m45s)e63 in Reaper editing softwareThe cast : Sabrina Mathews as 'adult student', Claude Schryer as 'professor' and Riel Schryer as 'male student', September 2021, Ottawa*The cast: Clara Schryer as 'female student', September 2021, OttawaScript (note: the recording has additional elements that were improvised during the recording)(Sounds of students chatting, arriving in class and sitting down)Teacher: Hello students. Let's start OK. Welcome to the History of 2021 in Canada seminar. How is everyone doing? OK? I see that we have 2 students in class and one online. So, today's topic is the arts and the ecological crisis in 2021… comme vous le savez, le cours Histoire de 2021 au Canada est une classe bilingue, alors sentez-vous à l'aise de parler dans la langue de votre choix. Please feel free to speak in the language of your choice in this class or in writing of any of your assignments. Alright, where shall we begin here? We're going to do a case study today of the second season of the conscient podcast, which ran from March to August 2021. It was produced by an Ottawa based sound artist, Claude Schryer, who is passed away now, but I was very fortunate that his children, Riel and Clara, kindly helped me do some of the research for this class. I want to check if you have all had a chance to listen to the course materials, which were… conscient podcast episodes…  19 reality and 62 compilation. Were you…Male student (interrupting): Excuse me, but can you tell us why did you choose this podcast? Historically speaking, you know, there were other podcasts in Canada in 2021 that also explored issues of art and environment. Why this one?Teacher: That's a very good question. I chose the second season of this podcast because Schryer was exploring the themes of reality and ecological grief, which were timely in 2021 and still are today. Also because it gives us a snapshot of what artists and cultural workers were thinking about in relation to the ecological crisis at that time. It was an interesting year, 2021.  This is when the Sixth IPCC report was released, it's when much of western Canada was on fire, which unfortunately become the norm across Canada, it's also when SCALE, the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency, which an arts and climate emergency organization, was created and so many other things, It was a pivotal year. I'll start by playing a recording of Schryer himself explaining what season 2 is about in conversation with Ian Garrett in episode 54. Let's give that a listen.Why did I ask that question? The reason is because I was living it myself. I was feeling that accepting reality was necessary for me to move on into a more active, engaged... I had to kind of deal with that. The fact that it's so bad, that if I don't actually accept it - especially the baked in things that we can't change - I can't function and just today, May 25th, I had a really bad dark day. I was crying inside my head about how bad things are and just losing hope and then I read this beautiful piece by Rebecca Solnit, who was saying, that there's some hope out there because the combination of all these efforts. You have been made doing a lot, but when you combine that with so many like millions and millions of people around the world who are making a difference, it will come together and there will be a tipping point towards some kind of... not just an awakening, but action... collective action. That's where we need to go and that's where we are going.Female student (interrupting)OK, mais ce balado a été produit par un homme blanc avec tous les préjugés de l'époque…  Teacher: That's a good point. Schryer had good intentions did carry some unconscious biases in his discourse that were typical of his generation and his times but we're focusing on his guests, who were very interesting, and they come from a wide range of cultural backgrounds, ages, and points of view. Why don't we start with one my favorite quotes from episode 55, because I was able to listen to them all as part of my work for this class. It's by indigenous artist France Trepanier, who was a visual artist, curator and researcher of Kanien'kéha:ka and French ancestry. Trepanier was known in the arts community in particular for a project called Primary Colours which placed Indigenous arts at the centre of the Canadian arts system. This excerpt is in French, so I'll let you listen to the original recording then I'll explain what France was talking about for those who don't understand French, and of course, you can use the simultaneous translation function on your computers as well. Je pense que ce cycle du colonialisme, et de ce que ça a apporté, on est en train d'arriver à la fin de ce cycle là aussi, et avec le recul, on va s'apercevoir que cela a été un tout petit instant dans un espace beaucoup plus vaste, et qu'on est en train de retourner à des connaissances très profondes. Qu'est-ce que ça veut dire de vivre ici sur cette planète? Ce que ça implique comme possibilité, mais comme responsabilité aussi de maintenir les relations harmonieuses? Moi, je dis que la solution à la crise climatique c'est cardiaque. Ça va passer par le cœur. On parle d'amour avec la planète. C'est ça, le travail.Teacher: What Trépanier is saying here is that she thinks that the 500 plus year cycle of colonialism on Turtle Island was coming to an end and we now know that she was right, with the Indigenization of Canadian Culture movement that started around then. People began to understand the true meaning of reconciliation during this era. In this quote Trépanier talks about how it's everyone's responsibility to maintain harmonious relationships in their communities and our need to love the planet. Does anyone have any questions so far? No, then I'll move on to…  Female student (interrupting): Wait, professor, are you saying that indigenous arts and culture were not at the heart of Canadian culture in 2021?  Female adult student: Can I answer that one? Teacher: Sure, please go ahead.  Female adult student: Throughout the early history of Canada the arts and culture scene was  dominated by European art forms and left little space for Indigenous voices. This was part of the colonial structure, but it changed when people started listening to indigenous voices and learning about indigenous culture and languages at school, like I did. This re-education led to massive change in cultural institutions and shift in people's worldview…Teacher: That's exactly right. Thank you for that. Let me give you another example of an indigenous artist from season 2. Suzanne Keeptwo was a Métis writer and teacher who wrote a book in 2021 called We All Go Back to the Land : The Who, Why, and How of Land Acknowledgements. This excerpt is from episode 47:In the work that I do and the book that I've just had published called, We All Go Back to the Land, it's really an exploration of that Original Agreement and what it means today. So I want to remind Indigenous readers of our Original Agreement to nurture and protect and honor and respect the Earth Mother and all of the gifts that she has for us and then to introduce that Original Agreement to non-indigenous Canadians or others of the world that so that we can together, as a human species, work toward what I call the ultimate act of   reconciliation: to help heal the earth.Teacher: We'll come back to more indigenous perspectives at the end of today's class. The next recording I want you to listen to isfromepisode 21 with philosopher Dr Todd Dufresne,who wrote a book in 2020 called The Democracy of Suffering:I think capitalism is over, but the problem is we have nothing to replace it with. Here's when we need artists, and others, to tell us what kind of vision they have for a future that is different than that: a future of play and meaningful work would be one future that I think is not just utopic, but very possible. So, there's a possible future moving forward that could be much better than it is right now, but we're not going to get there without democracy of suffering as we're experiencing it now and will at least over the next 20, 30, 40 years until we figure this out, but we need to figure it out quickly.Teacher: Well, overall, Dr. Dufresne was right. We did go through a lot of physical and mental anguish, didn't we, and we still are, in fact, with the resettlements, the food rations and all of that, but we survived and it's interesting to see that Dufresne was right in predicting that artists would help articulate a vision for the future. Artists have always done this, but it was particularly important at this time when the window of time before irreparable damage… was narrowing. There was a sense at the time that there were only a few years left and they were right. So we'll come to see how this happened a bit later but let's move on now to look at some of the causes of the ecological crisis. Why did this happen and what were some of the underlying conditions? Episode 23 features environmental activist Anjali Appadurai and provides insights on range of social and ecological justice issues. BTW does anyone know why Appadurai is famous in the history of climate activism?Male Student: Wasn't she the one that give that speech in 2011 in South Africa. I saw it on You Tube the other day in my History of Social Equity class. I think I can play it for you from my laptop. Here it is:I speak for more than half the world's population. We are the silent majority. You've given us a seat in this hall, but our interests are not on the table.  What does it take to get a stake in this game? Lobbyists? Corporate influence? Money? You've been negotiating all my life. In that time, you've failed to meet pledges, you've missed targets, and you've broken promises.Teacher: Thanks.That's right. Check out the entire speech when you get a chance. Now let's listen to Anjali in her conversation with Schryer. This except is quite fun because they are doing a soundwalk in a park in Vancouver and you hear some of the soundscapes from that time, like crows and those loud gas-powered vehicles during the conversation that were typical of that noisy era. Of course, it all sounds much different today. Here is an excerpt of their conversation. The climate crisis and the broader ecological crisis is a symptom of the deeper disease, which is that rift from nature, that seed of domination, of accumulation, of greed and of the urge to dominate others through colonialism, through slavery, through othering – the root is actually othering – and that is something that artists can touch. That is what has to be healed, and when we heal that, what does the world on the other side of a just transition look like? I really don't want to believe that it looks like exactly this, but with solar. The first language that colonisation sought to suppress, which was that of indigenous people, is where a lot of answers are held.Teacher: So Appadurai worked closely with fellow activist Seth Klein on a project called Climate Emergency Unit which made a parallel between Canada's effort during World War 2 and the efforts required to achieve the just transition and avoid the worse outcomes of climate change based on Seth's book A Good War : Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency.Female student: Can you tell us more about the…  Climate Emergency Unit? What happened to them? Teacher: Well, I know that they were funded by the David Suzuki Institute and that they had four goals. Let's see if I can remember them, oh, I have them right here: to spendwhat it takes to win, to create new economic institutions to get the job done, to shift from voluntary and incentive-based policies to mandatory measures and to tell the truth about the severity of the crisis and communicates a sense of urgency about the measures necessary to combat it.The unit was dissolved once they achieved those goals or at least were sufficiently advanced to be able to move on to other things.  Female student: (interrupting): That's amazing. Teacher: Yes, it was, but it was an uphill battle, but we are thankful that they persisted, along with thousands of other similar environmental initiatives around the world at that time, and most importantly once they were combined and people worked together as a community and they were able to push us away, and all living beings, from the precipice of catastrophe and towards the recovery that we are experiencing today. Of course, we're still in crisis now but back in 2021, they had no idea whether they would succeed. It was a time of great uncertainty, like the beginning of World War 2 in 1940 when Canada and its allies did not know whether their efforts to fight fascism in Europe would succeed. Let's listen to Seth Klein, leader of the Climate Emergency Unit from episode 26 and his interest in the arts to help rally people to this cause: Here would be my challenge to artists today. We're beginning to see artists across many artistic domains producing climate and climate emergency art, which is important and good to see. What's striking to me is that most of it, in the main, is dystopian, about how horrific the world will be if we fail to rise to this moment. To a certain extent, that makes sense because it is scary and horrific, but here's what intrigued me about what artists were producing in the war is that in the main, it was not dystopian, even though the war was horrific. It was rallying us: the tone was rallying us. I found myself listening to this music as I was doing the research and thinking, World War II had a popular soundtrack, the anti-Vietnam war had a popular soundtrack. When I was a kid in the peace and disarmament movement, there was a popular soundtrack. This doesn't have a popular soundtrack, yet.Female student: Yah, but we have a popular soundtrack now for the climate emergency. I sometimes listen to them on my oldie's playlist on Spotify. Do you know that tune from 2025, how did it go (mumbling words and a song, improvised)?Male student (interrupting): But professor, I have trouble understanding what was their problem? The issues seemed so obvious. All the scientific data was there from the COP reports and much more. Why did they have their heads in the sand?Teacher: That's another good question. Let's look at the social structure at the time. The oil and gas industry were extremely wealthy, and powerful and they were desperate to maintain their grip on power, despite the cost to the environment and life on earth it might be, but to be fair, people were also complicit in this dynamic because they were users of this oil and gas, but also because western society had built a massive infrastructure with essentially nonrenewable resources that was destroying the planet and continued to behave in destructive ways. How can we understand this? Schryer talked to a lot of researchers and thought leaders who provides context and insights. Let's listen to arts researcher Dr. Danielle Boutet. This one is in French. She explains the lack of collective awareness inepisode 60. This one is in French, so I'll give you a summary afterwards. Collectivement, on est inconscient. On cherche à parler de la conscience écologique. On cherche à parler de ça, mais en réalité… S'il y a une psyché collective, ce que je crois, je pense qu'il y a une espèce d'esprit collectif, mais c'est un esprit qui est inconscient, qui n'est pas capable de se voir aller, de se réfléchir et donc pas capable de méditer, pas capable de se transformer, donc soumis à ses peurs et ses pulsions. Je suis assez pessimiste par rapport à ça, mais c'est que le deuil écologique, tout le chagrin et toute la peur est refoulée présentement. Il y a des activistes qui crient dans le désert, qui hurlent, et les gens entendent, mais comme dans un brouillard. Ce n'est pas suffisant pour amener à une action collective. Donc, le deuil il est loin d'être fait, collectivement.Teacher: What Boutet is saying here, is that people in 2021 were collectively unconscious or unaware of the severity of environmental issues. Boutet, who was a leading expert on contemporary art, but also on social issues, explains that people were not capable of changing their ways and that their grief and fears were being repressed. She admits that some activists were screaming out loud, and that some people were listening, but was all in a fog, which she calls un brouillard as she says in French, and that there was simply not enough momentum to bring about collective action. Of course, thankfully, this would change once people finally woke up to reality a few years later. At the time it seemed quite grim.One of the issues at the time was also a lack of agency. Let's listen to researcher and arts strategist Alexis Frasz in episode 40 was very articulate about this:There is a lot of awareness and interest in making change and yet change still isn't really happening, at least not at the pace or scale that we need. It feels to me increasingly like there's not a lack of awareness, nor a lack of concern, or even a lack of willingness, but actually a lack of agency. I've been thinking a lot about the role of arts, and culture and creative practice in helping people not just wake up to the need for change, but actually undergo the entire transformational process from that moment of waking up (which you and I share a language around Buddhist practice). There's that idea that you can wake up in an instant but integrating the awakeness into your daily life is actually a process. It's an ongoing thing.Female student (interrupting): Ok, so I get that it's an ongoing thing but what made the difference then?  Do you really think that something as ephemeral and marginal as art had an impact?  Teacher: Well, yes, actually, it did, and we'll get to that soon but first, I'd like to give you another example of the social dynamic at the time. Speaking of time, how are we doing for time, ok?  Here's an excerpt from episode 42 architect Mark Rosen: The idea of enough is very interesting to me. The idea that the planet doesn't have enough for us on our current trajectory is at the heart of that. The question of whether the planet has enough for everyone on the planet, if we change the way we do things is an interesting way. Can we sustain seven, eight, nine billion people on the planet if everyone's idea of enough was balanced with that equation? I don't know, but I think it's possible. I think that if we've shown nothing else as a species, as humans, it's adaptability and resiliency and when forced to, we can do surprisingly monumental things and changes when the threat becomes real to us.Male student: Ok. I get it. When the threat became real, they changed their ways, out of self interest, I suppose… but I have a question. Schryer talks about reality and grief as the two main topics in season 2, right. Why did he do that? I know that he was a zen buddhist and that are interested in reality, but why did he explore those specific issues?Teacher : Schryer asked each of his 41 guests in season 2 how they viewed reality and ecological grief and he got, well, 41 different answers. I've listened to some of them all as part of my research for this class. One of my favorite responses to Schryer's questions about ecological grief is by filmmaker Jennifer Abbott, who was an activist film maker at this time…Male student (interrupting): I found some info her, let me see, I think she co-director and editor of, um (sound of typing) The Corporation (2003), wow, that became most awarded documentary in Canadian history at that time. She was also Co-Director of a sequel called…  The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel(2020)Adult student: I've seen both of those films in film studies class. Amazing documentaries. I bet they scared the living… Female student (interrupting) And she was also… director of The Magnitude of all Things (2020) which is kind of a classic of the ecological grief film. Teacher: Yes, that's right. Let's listen to an excerpt from episode 45 where Abbott talks about delusion and brainwashing:The notion of reality and the way we grasp reality as humans is so deeply subjective, but it's also socially constructed, and so, as a filmmaker - and this is relevant because I'm also a Zen Buddhist - from both those perspectives, I try to explore what we perceive as reality to untangle and figure out in what ways are we being deluded? And in what ways do we have clear vision? And obviously the clearer vision we can have, the better actions we take to ensure a more compassionate, just and sustainable livable world. I'm all for untangling the delusion while admitting wholeheartedly that to untangle it fully is impossible.Teacher: Let's move on now to the other main issue in season 2, ecological grief, which, at the time, was defined as psychological response to loss caused by environmental destruction. The term Solastalgia, coined by Australian Glenn Albrecht, was also used at the time. What it basically means is how to deal the emotional charge of environmental loss. Of course, we're still dealing with ecological grief today, but at least now we know that one of the best ways to address loss is through regeneration and rebuilding. But back in 2021, ecological grief was something people were becoming aware of and not able to turn it into a positive force, not at first anyway. I would like to start with musician Dr. Tanya Kalmanovitch.Kalmanovitch is an interesting case because she was both an accomplished musician and a leading climate activist. She was raised in the heart of the oil sands in Alberta in Fort McMurray…Female adult student (interrupting): I've heard some of her recordings. She was a great violist and improvisor. Pretty cool lady. Teacher: Great she was also a performer in a project called the Tar Sand Songbook, that actually became now a classic of the climate art canon. Let's listen to her talk about grief and art in episode 53:Normal life in North America does not leave us room for grief. We do not know how to handle grief. We don't know what to do with it. We push it away. We channel it, we contain it, we compartmentalize it. We ignore it. We believe that it's something that has an end, that it's linear or there are stages. We believe it's something we can get through. Whereas I've come to think a lot about the idea of living with loss, living with indeterminacy, living with uncertainty, as a way of awakening to the radical sort of care and love for ourselves, for our fellow living creatures for the life on the planet. I think about how to transform a performance space or a classroom or any other environment into a community of care. How can I create the conditions by which people can bear to be present to what they have lost, to name and to know what we have lost and from there to grieve, to heal and to act in the fullest awareness of loss? Seeing love and loss as intimately intertwined.Teacher: So you can see that people were struggling with grief, including educators, who were trying to figure out how to support their students, many whom were demoralised and had given up hope… but it's around this time that tools starting being created such as the Creative Green Tools and the Existential ToolKit for Climate Justice Educators. One of Schryer's interviews was with climate educator Dr. Krista Hiser, Let's listen to Hiser from episode 51:There's a whole range of emotions around climate emergency, and not getting stuck in the grief. Not getting stuck in anger. A lot of what we see of youth activists and in youth activism is that they get kind of burned out in anger and it's not a sustainable emotion. But none of them are emotions that you want to get stuck in. When you get stuck in climate grief, it is hard to get unstuck, so moving through all the different emotions — including anger and including hope — and that idea of an anthem and working together, those are all part of the emotion wheel that exists around climate change.Female Student: OK. I understand about not getting stuck in climate grief, but now we're paying the price of their neglect. It makes me very angry to think that they could easily have prevented most of the current climate damage during that critical decade in the 2020s, I don't know, by shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and professor, you say that artists played a key role but how did this… Teacher (interrupting): Thank you.  I hear your anger and I understand and I promise we'll get to the role of artists in just a minute, but before that I would you hear Australian Michael Shaw, who produced a film 2019 called Living in the Time of Dying. He talks about fear and grief but also support structures in episode 25: It's a real blessing to feel a sense of purpose that in these times. It's a real blessing to be able to take the feelings of fear and grief and actually channel them somewhere into running a group or to making a film or doing your podcasts. I think it'simportant that people really tune in to find out what they're given to do at this time, to really listen to what the call is in you and follow it. I think there's something that's very generative and supportive about feeling a sense of purpose in a time of collapse.Teacher: Both Shaw and Schryer were influenced by dharma teacher Catherine Ingram, who wrote an essay in 2019 called Facing Extinction. Here's Schryer reading an excerpt from Facing Extinction in episode 19: Despite our having caused so much destruction, it is important to also consider the wide spectrum of possibilities that make up a human life.  Yes, on one end of that spectrum is greed, cruelty, and ignorance; on the other end is kindness, compassion, and wisdom. We are imbued with great creativity, brilliant communication, and extraordinary appreciation of and talent for music and other forms of art. … There is no other known creature whose spectrum of consciousness is as wide and varied as our own.Teacher: (alarm sounding) Darn. It's an air pollution alarm. You know the drill. We have to go to safe area until the air is breathable again. I'm sorry about this. An unfortunate disruption to our class. Why don't we call it a day and pick this up next week? Male Student: These damned things always go off when things are getting good. I really hope one does not go off next week. Teacher : Now let's get out of this smog. (coughing).Note: this episode continues in e64 a case study (part 2) *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

Today, The Pulse talks to Seth Klein, team lead and Director of Strategy with the Climate Emergency Unit, a project of the David Suzuki Institute, as well as the author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. The Pulse spoke with Seth Klein about the current federal election and asked for his assessment of the political party platforms regarding the current climate emergency.

Community leader and climate justice activist Anjali Appadurai joins Am Johal for the second instalment of Below the Radar's Climate Justice & Inequality series. Anjali is a Climate Justice Lead at Sierra Club BC, the Sectoral Organizer for the Climate Emergency Unit, as well as the founder of Padma Centre for Climate Justice. Anjali and Am talk about the growth of the climate movement, and shifting the focus from being ‘green' to centering justice for all in the fight against climate change. They speak about lifting up the youth and Indigenous leaders at the forefront of the struggle, as well as how to get involved and make the movement accessible to all. Read the transcript:http://www.sfu.ca/sfuwoodwards/community-engagement/Below-the-Radar/transcripts/ep132-anjali-appadurai.html More in this series: https://www.sfu.ca/sfuwoodwards/community-engagement/Below-the-Radar/climate-justice-and-inequality.html Resources: - Sierra Club BC: https://sierraclub.bc.ca/ - Climate Emergency Unit: https://www.climateemergencyunit.ca/ - Padma Centre for Climate Justice: https://medium.com/@padmaclimate - West Coast Environmental Law: https://www.wcel.org/ Bio: Anjali is a climate justice activist, communicator and organizer. She works to strengthen climate change messaging and discourse in Canada by centring the stories of those on the front lines of the climate crisis. She brings a strong justice lens to climate change messaging and keeps her work connected to social movements that have been demanding climate justice in the Global South for decades. Anjali is Climate Justice Lead at Sierra Club BC and Sectoral Organizer with the newly formed Climate Emergency Unit.

'I think capitalism is over, but the problem is we have nothing to replace it with. Here's when we need artists, and others, to tell us what kind of vision they have for a future that is different than that: a future of play and meaningful work would be one future that I think is not just utopic, but very possible. 'dr. todd dufresne, e21 conscient podcastVideo version:Transcriptione21 dufresne : capitalism is over, my conversation with philosopher Dr. Todd Dufresne about reality, grief, art and the climate crisis.Democracy of SufferingI think capitalism is over, but the problem is we have nothing to replace it with. Here's when we need artists, and others, to tell us what kind of vision they have for a future that is different than that: a future of play and meaningful work would be one future that I think is not just utopic, but very possible. So there's a possible future moving forward that could be much better than it is right now, but we're not going to get there without democracy of suffering as we're experiencing it now and will at least over the next 20, 30, 40 years until we figure this out, but we need to figure it out quickly.e22 westerkamp : slowing down through listening, my conversation with composer and listener Hildegard Westerkamp about acoustic ecology and the climate crisis.Some HopeWe need toallow for time to pass without any action, without any solutions and to just experience it. I think that a slowdown is an absolute - if there is any chance to survive - that kind of slowing down through listening and meditation and through not doing so much. I think there's some hope in that.e23 appadurai: what does a just transition look like?,my ‘soundwalk' conversation with climate activist Anjali Appadurai about the just transition and the role of the arts in the climate emergency.The deeper diseaseThe climate crisis and the broader ecological crisis is a symptom of the deeper disease, which is that rift from nature, that seed of domination, of accumulation, of greed and of the urge to dominate others through colonialism, through slavery, through othering – the root is actually othering – and that is something that artists can touch. That is what has to be healed, and when we heal that, what does the world on the other side of a just transition look like? I really don't want to believe that it looks like exactly this, but with solar. The first language that colonisation sought to suppress, which was that of indigenous people, is where a lot of answers are held.e24 weaving : the good, possible and beautiful, my conversation with artist jil p. weaving about community-engaged arts, public art, the importance of the local, etc.The roles that artists can playThe recognition, and finding ways to assist people, in an awareness of all the good, the possible and the beautiful and where those things can lead, is one of the roles that artists can specifically play. e25 shaw : a sense of purpose, my conversation with Australian climate activist Michael Shaw about support structures for ecogrief and the role of art.Listen to what the call is in youIt's a real blessing to feel a sense of purpose that in these times. It's a real blessing to be able to take the feelings of fear and grief and actually channel them somewhere into running a group or to making a film or doing your podcasts. I think it's important that people really tune in to find out what they're given to do at this time, to really listen to what the call is in you and follow it. I think there's something that's very generative and supportive about feeling a sense of purpose in a time of collapse.e26 klein : rallying through art, my conversation with climate emergency activist Seth Klein about his book A Good War : Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, the newly formed Climate Emergency Unit and his challenge to artists to help rally us to this causeMy challenge to artists todayHere would be my challenge to artists today. We're beginning to see artists across many artistic domains producing climate and climate emergency art, which is important and good to see. What's striking to me is that most of it, in the main, is dystopian, about how horrific the world will be if we fail to rise to this moment. To a certain extent, that makes sense because it is scary and horrific, but here's what intrigued me about what artists were producing in the war is that in the main, it was not dystopian, even though the war was horrific. It was rallying us: the tone was rallying us. I found myself listening to this music as I was doing the research and thinking, World War II had a popular soundtrack, the anti-Vietnam war had a popular soundtrack. When I was a kid in the peace and disarmament movement, there was a popular soundtrack. This doesn't have a popular soundtrack, yet.é27 prévost : l'énergie créatrice consciente (in French), my conversation with sound artist, musician and radio producer Hélène Prévost about the state of the world and the role of artists in the ecological crisis.The less free art is, the less it disturbsIt is in times of crisis that solutions emerge and that would be my argument. It is in this solution to the crisis that, yes, there is a discourse that will emerge and actions that will emerge, but we can't see them yet. Maybe we can commission them, as you suggest: Can you make me a documentary on this? or Can you make me a performance that will illustrate this aspect? But for the rest, I think we must leave creative energy be free, but not unconscious. That's where education, social movements and education, or maybe through action. You see, and I'm going to contradict myself here, and through art, but not art that is servile, but art that is free. I feel like quoting Josée Blanchette in Le Devoirwho, a week ago, said 'the less free art is, the less it disturbs'.é28 ung : résilience et vulnérabilité (in French), my conversation with educator and philosopher Jimmy Ung about the notion of privilege, resilience, the role of the arts in facilitating intercultural dialogue and learning, education, social justice, etc. Practicing resilienceResilience, at its core, is having the ability to be vulnerable and I think often resilience is seen as the ability to not be vulnerable, and for me, the opposite, more like resilience is the ability to be vulnerable and to believe with hope. Maybe we have the ability to bounce back, to come back, to rise again, to be reborn? I think that's a way of practicing resilience, which is more and more necessary. Because if we want to move forward, if we want to learn and learn to unlearn, we will have to be vulnerable and therefore see resilience as the ability to be vulnerable.e29 loy, : the bodhisattva path my conversation with professor, writer and Zen teacher David Loy about the bodhisattva path, the role of storytelling, interdependence, nonduality and the notion of ‘hope' through a Buddhist lens.The ecological crisis as a kind of the karmaSome people would say, OK, we have a climate crisis, so we've got to shift as quickly as possible as we can from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy, which is right. But somehow the idea that by doing that we can just sort of carry on in the way that we have been otherwise is a misunderstanding. We have a much greater crisis here and what it fundamentally goes back to is this sense of separation from the earth, that we feel our wellbeing, therefore, is separate from the wellbeing of the earth and that therefore we can kind of exploit it and use it in any way we want. I think we can understand the ecological crisis as a kind of the karma built into that way of relating and exploiting the earth. The other really important thing, which I end up talking about more often, is I think Buddhism has this idea of the bodhisattva path, the idea that it's not simply that we want to become awakened simply for our own benefit, but much more so that we want to awaken in order to be a service to everyone. e30 maggs : art and the world after this, my conversation with cultural theorist David Maggs about artistic capacity, sustainability, value propositions, disruption, recovery, etc.Entanglements of relationshipsComplexity is the world built of relationships and it's a very different thing to engage what is true or real in a complexity framework than it is to engage in it, in what is a modernist Western enlightenment ambition, to identify the absolute objective properties that are intrinsic in any given thing. Everyone is grappling with the fact that the world is exhibiting itself so much in these entanglements of relationships. The arts are completely at home in that world. And so, we've been sort of under the thumb of the old world. We've always been a kind of second-class citizen in an enlightenment rationalist society. But once we move out of that world and we move into a complexity framework, suddenly the arts are entirely at home, and we have capacity in that world that a lot of other sectors don't have. What I've been trying to do with this report (Art and the World After This) is articulate the way in which these different disruptions are putting us in a very different reality and it's a reality in which we go from being a kind of secondary entertaining class to, maybe, having a capacity to sit at the heart of a lot of really critical problem-solving challenges.e31 morrow : artists as reporters, my conversation with composer, sound artist, performer, and innovator Charlie Morrow about the origins of the conscient podcast, music, acoustic ecology, art and climate, health, hope and artists as journalists. In tune with what's going on in the worldI think that artists are for the most part in tune with what's going on in the world. We're all reporters, somehow journalists, who translate our message into our art, as art is in my mind, a readout, a digested or raw readout of what it is that we're experiencing. Our wish to be an artist is in fact, in order to be able to spend our lives doing that process.é32 tsou : changer notre culture (in French), my conversation (in French) with musician and cultural diplomacy advisor Shuni Tsou about citizen engagement, cultural action, the ecological crisis, arts education, social justice, systemic change, equity, etc,Cultural change around climate actionCitizen engagement is what is needed for cultural change around climate action. It's really a cultural shift in any setting. When you want to make big systemic changes, you have to change the culture and arts and culture are good tools to change the culture.e33 toscano : what we're fighting for, my conversation podcaster and artist Peterson Toscano about the role of the arts in the climate crisis, LGBTQ+ issues, religion, the wonders of podcasting, impacts, storytelling, performance art, etc. Where the energy is in a storyIt's artists who not only can craft a good story, but also we can tell the story that's the hardest to tell and that is the story about the impacts of climate solutions. So it's really not too hard to talk about the impacts of climate change, and I see people when they speak, they go through the laundry list of all the horrors that are upon us and they don't realize it, but they're actually closing people's minds, closing people down because they're getting overwhelmed. And not that we shouldn't talk about the impacts, but it's so helpful to talk about a single impact, maybe how it affects people locally, but then talk about how the world will be different when we enact these changes. And how do you tell a story that gets to that? Because that gets people engaged and excited because you're then telling this story about what we're fighting for, not what we're fighting against. And that is where the energy is in a story.é34 ramade : l'art qui nous emmène ailleurs (in French), my conversation (in French) with art historian, critic, curator and art and environment expert Bénédicte Ramade on the climate emergency, nature, music, visual arts, ecological art, etc.With music, you can convey so many thingsI am thinking of artist-composers who write pieces based on temperature readings that are converted into musical notes. This is also how the issue of global warming can be transmitted, from a piece played musically translating a stable climate that is transformed and that comes to embody in music a climatic disturbance. It is extraordinary. Is felt by the music, a fact of composition, something very abstract, with a lot of figures, statistical curves. We are daily fed with figures and statistical curves about the climate. ‘They literally do nothing to us anymore'. But on a more sensitive level, with the transposition into music, if it is played, if it is interpreted, ah, suddenly, it takes us elsewhere. And when I talk about these works, sometimes people who are more scientific or museum directors are immediately hooked, saying ‘it's extraordinary with music, you can convey so many things.e35 salas : adapting to reality, my conversation with Spanish curator + producer Carmen Salas on reality, ecogrief, artists & the climate crisis, arts strategies, curating and her article Shifting ParadigmsArtists need help in this processI find that more and more artists are interested in understanding how to change their practice and to adapt it to the current circumstances. I really believe artists need help in this process. Like we all do. I'm not an environmental expert. I'm not a climate expert. I'm just a very sensitive human being who is worried about what we are leaving behind for future generations. So, I'm doing what I can to really be more ethical with my work, but I'm finding more and more artists who are also struggling to understand what they can do. I think when in a conversation between curators or producers like myself and people like you - thinkers and funders - to come together and to understand the current situation, to accept reality, then we can strategize about how we can put things into place and how we can provide more funding for different types of projects.e36 fanconi : towards carbon positive work, my conversation with theatre artist and art-climate activist Kendra Fanconi, artistic director of The Only Animal about the role of the arts in the climate emergency, carbon positive work, collaboration and artists mobilization.Ecological restorationBen Twist at Creative Carbon Scotland talks about the transformation from a culture of consumerism to a culture of stewardship and we are the culture makers so isn't that our job right now to make a new culture and it will take all of us as artists together to do that? …  It's not enough to do carbon neutral work. We want to do carbon positive work. We want our artwork to be involved with ecological restoration. What does that mean? I've been thinking a lot about that. What is theatre practice that actually gives back, that makes something more sustainable? That is carbon positive. I guess that's a conversation that I'm hoping to have in the future with other theatre makers who have that vision.é37 lebeau : l'art régénératif (in French), my conversation with Écoscéno co-founder and executive director Anne-Catherine Lebeau on collaboration, circular economies, the role of art in the climate crisis, moving from ‘Take Make Waste' to ‘Care Dare Share' and creating regenerative art.From 'Take Make Waste' to 'Care Dare Share'For me, it is certain that we need more collaboration. That's what's interesting. Moving from a 'Take Make Waste' model to 'Care Dare Share'. To me, that says a lot. I think we need to look at everything we have in the arts as a common good that we need to collectively take care of. Often, at the beginning, we talked in terms of doing as little harm as possible to the environment, not harming it, that's often how sustainable development was presented, then by doing research, and by being inspired, among other things, by what is done at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in England, around circular economies, I realized that they talk about how to nourish a new reality. How do you create art that is regenerative? Art that feeds something.e38 zenith : arts as medicine to metabolize charge, my conversation with animist somatic practitioner, poet, philosopher, ecologist and clown Shante' Sojourn Zenith about reality, somatics, ecological grief, rituals, nature, performance and ecological imaginations.The intensity that's left in the systemArt is the medicine that actually allows us to metabolize charge. It allows us to metabolize trauma. It takes the intensity that's left in the system, and this goes all the way back to ritual. Art, for me, is a sort of a tributary coming off from ritual that is still sort of consensually allowed in this reality when the direct communication with nature through ritual was silenced, so it comes back to that wider river…e39 engle : the integral role of the arts in societal change, my conversation with urbanist Dr. Jayne Engle about participatory city planning, design, ecological crisis, sacred civics, artists and culture in societal and civilizational change.How change occursThe role of artists and culture is fundamental and so necessary, and we need so much more of it and not only on the side. The role of arts and culture in societal and civilizational change right now needs to be much more integral into, yes, artworks and imagination - helping us to culturally co-produce how we live and work together into the future and that means art works - but it also means artists perspectives into much more mainstream institutions, ideas, and thoughts about how change occurs.e40 frasz : integrated awakeness in daily life, my conversation with researcher and strategic thinker Alexis Frasz about ecological crisis, creative climate action, community arts, Buddhism, leadership and cross-sectoral arts practices. A lack of agencyThere is a lot of awareness and interest in making change and yet change still isn't really happening, at least not at the pace or scale that we need. It feels to me increasingly like there's not a lack of awareness, nor a lack of concern, or even a lack of willingness, but actually a lack of agency. I've been thinking a lot about the role of arts, and culture and creative practice in helping people not just wake up to the need for change, but actually undergo the entire transformational process from that moment of waking up (which you and I share a language around Buddhist practice). There's that idea that you can wake up in an instant but integrating the awakeness into your daily life is actually a process. It's an ongoing thing.e41 rae : a preparedness mindsetmy conversation with artist-researcher, facilitator and educator Jen Rae about art and emergency preparedness, community arts, reality, ecological grief, arts and climate emergency in Australia How artists step upThe thing about a preparedness mindset is that you are thinking into the future and so if one of those scenarios happens, you've already mentally prepared in some sort of way for it, so you're not dealing with the shock. That's a place as an artist that I feel has a lot of potential for engagement and for communication and bringing audiences along. When you're talking about realities, accepting that reality, has the potential to push us to do other things. It's great to hear about Canada Council changing different ways around enabling the arts and building capacity in the arts in the context of the climate emergency. It'll be interesting to see how artists step up.e42 rosen : when he climate threat becomes real, my conversation with architect Mark Rosen about what is enough, green buildings, how to change the construction industry, barriers and constraints in finding solutions to the climate crisis and deferred ecological debt.The idea of enoughThe idea of enough is very interesting to me. The idea that the planet doesn't have enough for us on our current trajectory is at the heart of that. The question of whether the planet has enough for everyone on the planet, if we change the way we do things is an interesting way. Can we sustain seven, eight, nine billion people on the planet if everyone's idea of enough was balanced with that equation? I don't know, but I think it's possible. I think that if we've shown nothing else as a species, as humans, it's adaptability and resiliency and when forced to, we can do surprisingly monumental things and changes when the threat becomes real to us.ConstraintsOne of the things that I find very interesting in my design process as an architect is that if you were to show me two possible building sites, one that is a green field wide open, with nothing really influencing the site flat, easy to build, and then you show me a second site that is a steep rock face with an easement that you can't build across. Inevitably, it seems to be that the site with more constraints results in a more interesting solution and the idea that constraints can be of benefit to the creative process is one that I think you can apply things that, on the surface, appear to be barriers instead of constraints. Capitalism, arguably, is one of those, if we say we can't do it because it costs too much, we're treating it as a barrier, as opposed to us saying the solution needs to be affordable, then it becomes a constraint and we can push against constraints and in doing so we can come up with creative solutions and so, one way forward, is to try and identify these things that we feel are preventing us from doing what we know we need to do and bringing them into our process as constraints, that influence where we go rather than prevent us from going where we need to go.e43 haley: climate as a cultural issue my conversation with British ecoartist David Haley about ecoart, climate change as a cultural issue, speaking truth to power, democracy, regeneration, morality, creating space and listening.Deep questions and listeningClimate change is actually a cultural issue, not a scientific issue. Science has been extremely good at identifying the symptoms and looking at the way in which it has manifest itself, but it hasn't really addressed any of the issues in terms of the causes. It has tried to use what you might call techno fix solution focused problem-based approaches to the situation, rather than actually asking deep questions and listening.A regenerative way of doing and thinkingGoing back to reality, one of the issues that we are not tackling is that we're taking a dystopian view upon individual activities that creates guilt, syndromes, and neuroses which of course means that the systems of power are working and in terms of actually addressing the power - of speaking truth to power - we need to name the names, we need to name Standard Oil, IG Farben who now call themselves ESSO, Chevron, Mobil, DuPont, BP, Bayer, Monsanto BASF, Pfizer and so on. These are the people that control the governments that we think we're voting for and the pretense of democracy that follows them. Until those organizations actually rescind their power to a regenerative way of doing and thinking, we're stuffed, to put pretty bluntly.Create the space for life to move onwardsWhat I have learned to do, and this is my practice, is to focus on making space. This became clear to me when I read, Lila : An inquiry into morals by Robert Pirsig. Towards the end of the book, he suggests that the most moral act of all, is to create the space for life to move onwards and it was one of those sentences that just rang true with me, and I've held onto that ever since and pursued the making of space, not the filling of it. When I say I work with ecology, I try to work with whole systems, ecosystems. The things within an ecosystem are the elements with which I try to work. I try not to introduce anything other than what is already there. In other words, making the space as habitat for new ways of thinking, habitat for biodiversity to enrich itself, habitat for other ways of approaching things. I mean, there's an old scientific adage about nature abhors a vacuum, and that vacuum is the space as I see it.e44 bilodeau : the arts are good at changing culture, my conversation with playwright and climate activist Chantal Bilodeau about theatre, cultural climate action, the role of art in the climate emergency and how to build audiences and networksLet's think about it togetherI think of the arts as planting a seed and activism as being the quickest way you can get from A to B. So activism is like, this is what we're going to do. We have to do it now. This is a solution. This is what we're working towards and there's all kinds of different solutions, but it's about action. The arts are not about pushing any one solution or telling people, this is what you need to do. It is about saying here's a problem. Let's think about it together. Let's explore avenues we could take. Let's think about what it means and what it means, not just, should I drive a car or not, but what it means, as in, who are we on this earth and what is our role? How do we fit in the bigger ecosystem of the entire planet? I think the arts are something very good to do that and they are good at changing a culture.e45 abbott : a compassionate, just and sustainable world, my conversation with filmmaker Jennifer Abbott about her film The Magnitude of all Things, reality, zen, compassion, grief, art and how to ensure a more compassionate, just and sustainable livable world.Untangling the delusionThe notion of reality and the way we grasp reality as humans is so deeply subjective, but it's also socially constructed, and so, as a filmmaker - and this is relevant because I'm also a Zen Buddhist - from both those perspectives, I try to explore what we perceive as reality to untangle and figure out in what ways are we being diluted? And in what ways do we have clear vision? And obviously the clearer vision we can have, the better actions we take to ensure a more compassionate, just and sustainable livable world. I'm all for untangling the delusion while admitting wholeheartedly that to untangle it fully is impossible.We're headed for some catastropheIn terms of why people are so often unable to accept the reality of climate change, I think it's very understandable, because the scale and the violence of it is just so vast, it's difficult to comprehend. It's also so depressing and enraging if one knows the politics behind it and overwhelming. I don't think we, as a species, deal with things that have those qualities very well and we tend to look away. I have a lot of compassion, including for myself, in terms of how difficult it is to come to terms with the climate catastrophe. It is the end of the world as we know it. We don't know what exactly the new world is going to look like, but we do know we're headed for some catastrophe. e46 badham : creating artistic space to think, my conversation with Dr Marnie Badham about art and social justice practice Australia and Canada, research on community-engaged arts, cultural measurement, education and how the arts create space for people to think through issues such as the climate emergency.There's a lot that the arts can doI think going forward, there's a lot that the arts can do. Philosophically art is one of the only places that we can still ask these questions, play out politics and negotiate ideas. Further, art isn't about communicating climate disaster, art is about creating space for people to think through some of these issues.e47 keeptwo : reconciliation to heal the earth, my conversation with Indigenous writer, editor, teacher and journalist Suzanne Keeptwo about Indigenous rights and land acknowledgements, arts education, cultural awareness and the role of art in the climate emergency.Original AgreementIn the work that I do and the book that I've just had published called, We All Go Back to the Land, it's really an exploration of that Original Agreement and what it means today. So I want to remind Indigenous readers of our Original Agreement to nurture and protect and honor and respect the Earth Mother and all of the gifts that she has for us and then to introduce that Original Agreement to non-indigenous Canadians or others of the world that so that we can together, as a human species, work toward what I call the ultimate act of reconciliation to help heal the earth.é48 danis : l'art durable (in French), my conversation with author and multidisciplinary artist Daniel Danis on sustainable art, consciousness, dreams, storytelling, territory, nature, disaster and the role of art in the ecological transitionImages of our shared ecology are bornIt's like saying that we make art, but it's an art that, all of a sudden, just like that, is offered. We don't try to show it, rather, we try to experience something and to make people experience things and therefore, without being in the zone of cultural mediation, but to be in a zone of experiences, of exchanges and therefore that I don't control. For example, in the theatre, a bubble in which I force the spectator to look and to focus only on what I am telling them, how can we tell ourselves about the planet? How can we tell ourselves about our terrestrial experiences, where we share a place between branches, clay, repair bandages and traces of the earth on a canvas or ourselves lying on the earth? No matter, all the elements that one could bring as possible traces of a shareable experience are present, and from there, all of a sudden, images of our shared ecology are born.Art must emit wavesFor me, a manifestation of art must emit waves and it is not seen, it is felt and therefore it requires the being - those who participate with me in my projects or myself on the space that I will manifest these objects there - to be in a porosity of my body that allows that there are waves that occur and necessarily, these waves the, mixed with the earth and that a whole set, we are in cooperation. It is sure that it has an invisible effect which is the wave, and which is the wave of sharing, of sharing, not even of knowledge, it is just the sharing of our existence on earth and how to be co-operators?e49 windatt : holistic messages, my conversation with Indigenous artist Clayton Windatt of about visual arts, Indigenous sovereignty, decolonization, the arts and social change, communications, artists rights, the climate emergency and hope.Make a changeWhat if you tasked the arts sector with how to make messages, not about the crisis, but on the shifts in behavior that are necessary on a more meaningful basis. When the pandemic began and certain products weren't on the shelves at grocery stores, but there was still lots of stuff. There were shortages, but there wasn't that much shortage. How much would my life really change if half the products in the store were just not here, right and half of them didn't come from all over in the world? Like they were just: whatever made sense to have it available here and just having less choice. How terrible would that be: kind of not. How can we change behavior on a more holistic level, and have it stick, because that's what we need to do right now, and I think the arts would be a great vehicle to see those messages hit everybody and make a change.e50 newton : imagining the future we want, my conversation with climate activist Teika Newton about climate justice, hope, science, nature, resilience, inter-connections and the role of the arts in the climate emergency.There are no limitsThere are so many amazing people across this country who are helping to make change and are holding such a powerful vision for what the future can be. We get trapped in thinking about the paradigm limit in which we currently live, we put bounds on what feels like reality and what feels possible. There are no limits, and the arts helps us to push against that limited set of beliefs and helps us to remember that the way that we know things to be right now is not fixed. We can imagine anything. We can imagine the future we want.We need to love the things around usI see that there are a lot of ways in which people in my community use the landscape in a disrespectful way. Not considering that that's someone's home and that a wild place is not just a recreational playground for humans. It's not necessarily a source of wealth generation. It's actually a living, breathing entity and a home to other things and a home to us as well. I find that all really troubling that there is that disconnection and it sometimes does make me despair about the future course that we're on. You know, if we can't take care of the place that sustains us, if we can't live with respect for not just our human neighbours, but our wilderness neighbors, I don't know how well we're going to fare in the future. We need to love the things around us in order to care for them.Feel connected to othersHaving the ability to come together as a community and participate in the collective act of creating and expressing through various media, whether that's song, the written word, poetry, painting, mosaic or mural making, so many different ways of expressing, I think are really, really valuable for keeping people whole grounded, mentally healthy and to feel connected to others. It's the interconnection among people that will help us to survive in a time of crisis. The deeper and more complex the web of connections, the better your chances of resilience.e51 hiser : the emotional wheel of climate, my conversation with educator Dr. Krista Hiser on research about climate education, post-apocalyptic and cli-fi literature, musical anthems, ungrading, art as an open space and the emotional wheel of the climate emergency.Help them see that realityWhat motivates me is talking to students in a way that they're not going to come back to me in 10 years with this look on their face, you know, Dr. Hiser, why didn't you tell me this? Why didn't you tell me? I want to be sure that they're going to leave the interaction that we get to have that they're going to leave with at least an idea that someone tried to help them see that reality.The last open spaceThe art space is maybe the last open space where that boxiness and that rigidity isn't as present.Knowledge intermediariesThe shift is that faculty are really no longer just experts. They are knowledge brokers or knowledge intermediaries. There's so much information out there. It's so overwhelming. There are so many different realities that faculty need to interact with this information and create experiences that translate information for students so that students can manage their own information.Not getting stuck in the griefThere's a whole range of emotions around climate emergency, and not getting stuck in the grief. Not getting stuck in anger. A lot of what we see of youth activists and in youth activism is that they get kind of burned out in anger and it's not a sustainable emotion. But none of them are emotions that you want to get stuck in. When you get stuck in climate grief, it is hard to get unstuck, so moving through all the different emotions — including anger and including hope — and that idea of an anthem and working together, those are all part of the emotion wheel that exists around climate change.e52 mahtani : listening and connecting, my conversation with composer Dr. Annie Mahtani about music, sound art, the climate emergency, listening, nature, uncertainty, festivals, gender parity and World Listening DayThat doesn't mean we should give upIf we can find ways to encourage people to listen, that can help them to build a connection, even if it's to a small plot of land near them. By helping them to have a new relationship with that, which will then expand and help hopefully savour a deeper and more meaningful relationship with our natural world, and small steps like that, even if it's only a couple of people at a time, that could spread. I think that nobody, no one person, is going to be able to change the world, but that doesn't mean we should give up. Exploration of our soundscapesFor the (BEAST) festival we wanted to look at what COVID has done to alter and adjust people's practice, the way that composers and practitioners have responded to the pandemic musically or through listening and also addressing the wider issues: what does it mean going forwards after this year, the year of uncertainty, the year of opportunity for many? What does it mean going forward to our soundscape, to our environmental practice and listening? We presented that goal for words, as a series of questions, you know, not expecting necessarily any answers, but a way in a way to address it and a way to explore and that's what the, the weekend of concerts and talks and workshops was this kind of exploration of our soundscapes, thinking about change and thinking about our future.e53 kalmanovitch : nurturing imagination, my conversation with musician Dr. Tanya Kalmanovitch about music, ethnomusicology, alberta tar sands, arts education, climate emergency, arts policy and how artistic practice can nurture imaginationThe content inside a silenceOne of the larger crises we face right now is actually a crisis of failure of imagination and one of the biggest things we can do in artistic practice is to nurture imagination. It is what we do. It's our job. We know how to do that. We know how to trade in uncertainty and complexity. We understand the content inside a silence, it's unlocking and speaking to ways of knowing and being and doing that when you start to try to talk about them in words, it is really challenging because it ends up sounding like bumper stickers, like ‘Music Builds Bridges'. I have a big problem with universalizing discourses in the arts, as concealing structures of imperialism and colonialism.GriefNormal life in North America does not leave us room for grief. We do not know how to handle grief. We don't know what to do with it. We push it away. We channel it, we contain it, we compartmentalize it. We ignore it. We believe that it's something that has an end, that it's linear or there are stages. We believe it's something we can get through. Whereas I've come to think a lot about the idea of living with loss, living with indeterminacy, living with uncertainty, as a way of awakening to the radical sort of care and love for ourselves, for our fellow living creatures for the life on the planet. I think about how to transform a performance space or a classroom or any other environment into a community ofcare. How can I create the conditions by which people can bear to be present to what they have lost, to name and to know what we have lost and from there to grieve, to heal and to act inthe fullest awareness of loss? Seeing love and loss as intimately intertwined.StorytellingMy idea is that there's a performance, which is sort of my offering, but then there's also a series of participatory workshops where community members can sound their own stories about where we've come from, how they're living today and the future in which they wish to live, what their needs are, what their griefs are. So here, I'm thinking about using oral history and storytelling as a practice that promotes ways of knowing, doing and healing … with storytelling as a sort of a participatory and circulatory mechanism that promotes healing. I have so much to learn from indigenous storytelling practices. Nature as musicWe are all every one of us musicians. When youchoose what song you wake up to on your alarm or use music to set a mood. You sing a catchy phrase to yourself or you sing a child asleep: you're making musical acts. Then extend that a little bit beyond that anthropocentric lens and hear a bird as a musician, a creek as a musician and that puts us into that intimate relationship with the environment again.AlbertaI guess this is plea for people to not think aboutoil sands issues as being Alberta issues, but as those being everyone everywhere issues, and not just because of the ecological ethical consequences ofthe contamination of the aquifer, what might happen if 1.4 trillion liters of toxic process water, if the ponds holding those rupture, what might happen next…That story will still be there, that land and the people, the animals and the plants, all those relationships will still be imperiled, right? So to remember, first of all, that it's not just an Alberta thing and that the story doesn't end just because Teck pulled it's Frontier mining proposal in February, 2020. The story always goes on. I want to honor the particular and the power of place and at the same time I want touplift the idea that we all belong to that place.e54 garrett : empowering artists, my conversation with theatre artist Ian Garrett about ethics, theatre, education, role of art in Climate Emergency, Sustainability in Digital Transformation & carbon footprint of Cultural Heritage sector. Complete guarantee of extinctionI don't want to confuse the end of an ecologically unsustainable, untenable way of civilization working in this moment with a complete guarantee of extinction. There is a future. It may look very different and sometimes I think the inability to see exactly what that future is – and our plan for it - can be confused for there not being one. I'm sort of okay with that uncertainty, and in the meantime, all one can really do is the work to try and make whatever it ends up being more positive. There's a sense of biophilia about it.A pile of burning tiresThe extreme thought experiment that I like to use in a performance context is: if you had a play in which the audience left with their minds changed about all of their activities, you could say that that is positive. But, if the set that it took place on was a pile of burning tires – which is an objectively bad thing to do for the environment – there is a conversation by framing it as an arts practice as to is there value in having that impact, because of the greater impact. And those sorts of complexities have sort of defined the fusion and different approaches in which to take; it's not just around metrics.Individual values towards sustainabilityThe intent of it [the Julie's Bicycle Creative Green Tools] is not like LEED in which you are getting certified because you have come up with a precise carbon footprint. It's a tool for, essentially, decision-making in that artistic context, that if you know this information, then you have a better way to consider critically the way that you are making and what you're making and how you are representing your values and those aspects, regardless of whether or not it is explicitly part of the work. And so there's lots of tools in which I've had the opportunity to have a relationship with which that are really about empowering artists, arts makers, arts collectives to be able to make those decisions so that their individual values towards sustainability – regardless of what they're actually making – can also be represented and that they can make choices that best represent those regardless of whether or not they're explicitly creating something for ‘earth day'.The separation of the artist from the personThe separation of the artist from the person and articulating as a profession is a unique thing, whereas an alternative to that could just be that we are expressive and artistic beings that seeks to create and have different talents but turning that into a profession is something that we've done to ourselves and so while we do that, we exist within systems, our cultural organizations exist within systems, that have impacts much farther outside of it so that a systems analysis approach is really important.é55 trépanier : un petit instant dans un espace beaucoup plus vaste (in French), my  conversation with indigenous artist France Trépanier about colonialism, indigenous cultures, ecological transition, time, art, listening, dreams, imagination and this brief moment…The responsibility to maintain harmonious relationshipsI think that with this cycle of colonialism, and what it has brought, that we are coming to the end of this century, and with hindsight, we will realize that it was a very small moment in a much larger space, and that we are returning to very deep knowledge. What does it mean to live here on this planet? What does it mean to have the possibility, but also the responsibility to maintain harmonious relationships? I say that the solution to the climate crisis is ‘cardiac'. It will go through the heart. We are talking about love of the planet. That's the work.Terra nulliusFor me, the challenge of the ecological issue or the ecological crisis in which we find ourselves is to understand the source of the problem and not just to put a band-aid on it, not just to try to make small adjustments to our ways of living, but to really look at the very nature of the problem. For me, I think that something happened at the moment of contact, at the moment when the Europeans arrived. They arrived with this notion of property. They talked about Terra Nullius, the idea that they could appropriate territories that were 'uninhabited' (I put quotation marks on uninhabited) and I think that was our first collision of worldviews.Eurocentric vision of artistic practicesIf we take a longer-term view of how the eurocentric view of artistic practices have imposed itself on the material practices of world cultures, this is going to be a very small moment in history. The idea of disciplines, the way in which the Eurocentric vision imposed categories and imposed a certain elitism of practices. The way it also declassified the material culture of the First Nations, or it was not possible, it was not art. Art objects became either artifacts or crafts. It was completely declassified, we didn't understand. I think the first people who came here didn't understand what was in front of them.The real tragedyThe artist Mike MacDonald was telling a story, Mike, who is a Mi'kmaq artist, who is with us now, but who has done remarkable work, a new media artist, he was telling a story once about one of the elders in his community, he was saying that the real tragedy of Canada, it's not that people have been prevented from speaking their language. The real tragedy is that the newcomers have not adopted the cultures here. So 'there have been great misunderstandings. Rewriting the worldI don't think we need to rewrite anything at all. I think we just need to pay attention and listen. We just need to shut up a little bit for a while. Because it's in the notion of authoring there is the word 'author' which presupposes the word authority and I'm not sure that's what we need right now. I think it's the opposite. I think we need to change our relationship to authority. We need to deconstruct that idea when we're being the decision makers or the masters of anything. I don't think that's the right approach. I think you have to listen. I'm not saying that we shouldn't imagine - I think that imagination is important in this attentive listening - but to think that we are going to rewrite is perhaps a little pretentious.é56 garoufalis-auger : surmonter les injustices (in French), my conversation with activist Anthony Garoufalis-Auger about sacrifice, injustices, strategies, activism, youth, art, culture, climate emergency and disaster SacrificeIt's going to take sacrifice and it's going to take a huge commitment to change things, so maybe getting out of our comfort zone will be necessary at this point in history. What's interesting is looking at the past and the history of humanity. It has taken a lot of effort to change things, but at least we have examples in history where we have come together to overcome injustices. We need to be inspired by this.We are really heading for disasterThe people around me, the vast majority, understand where we are with climate change. There is a complete disconnect with the reality that we see in our mass culture and in the news which is not a constructed reality. What science tells us is reality. We are really heading for disaster. é57 roy : ouvrir des consciences (in French), my conversation with artist Annie Roy on socially engaged art, grief, cultural politics, nature, how to open our consciousness, the digital and the place of art in our livesThe contribution of artIs being creative also about getting away from the world, pure to the source as it is, rather than just accepting that we're small and we should go back to the basics? I don't know if art brings us back to the essential versus brings us back to drifting completely. Maybe creativity or creation takes us so far away that we imagine ourselves living on Mars in a kind of platform that doesn't look like anything, or we won't need the birds, then the storms, then the this and that. We will have recreated a universe from scratch where it is good to live. That could be the contribution of art. I don't like this art too much.Opening consciousness If we are in reality and then we say to ourselves in the current world, it is necessary that it insufflate desire and power towards a better future. But it is not the artist who is going to decide and then that disturbs me. It bothers me to have a weight on my shoulders, to change the world while not having the power to do it, real. The power I have is to open consciousness, to see dreams in the minds of others and to instill seeds of possibility for a future.On the back of artThe artist is a being who lives in his contemporaneity, who absorbs the 'poop' in everything that happens and tries to transform it into something beautiful, then powerful for a springboard to go towards better. But we could leave it at that, in the sense that people, how do they use art in their lives? The artist may have all his wills, but what is the place of the art that we make in our lives? Because they are between four walls, in a museum or in very specific places. It's not always integrated into the flow of the day as something supernatural. It's a framed moment that we give away like we consume anything else. Then, if you consume art like anything else, like you go to the spa or you go shopping and then you buy a new pair of pants and then it feels good to have gone to a play. Wasn't that good? Yeah, it's cool but it's not going to go any further than anything other than a nice thrill that's going to last two or three hours and then you're going to get in your Hummer and go home all the same. I think that's putting a lot on the back of art.e58 huddart : the arts show us what is possible, my conversation with Stephen Huddart about dematerialization, nature, culture, capital, supporting grassroots activity, innovation and how the arts can show us what is possible.Existential crisisThis is now an existential crisis, and we have in a way, a conceptual crisis, but just understanding we are and what this is, this moment, all of history is behind us: every book you've ever read, every battle, every empire, all of that is just there, right, just right behind us. And now we, we are in this position of emerging awareness that in order to have this civilization, in some form, continue we have to move quickly, and the arts can help us do that by giving us a shared sense of this moment and its gravity, but also what's possible and how quickly that tipping point could be reached.DematerializationI think we have to more broadly, dematerialize and move from a more material culture to some more spiritual culture, a culture that is able to enjoy being here, that experiences an evolutionary shift towards connection with nature, with all of that it entails with the human beings and the enjoyment and celebration of culture and so I think those two perspectives that the arts have an essential and so important and yet difficult challenge before them.Gabrielle RoyLet's just say that on the previous $20 bill, there's a quote from Gabrielle Roy. It's in micro-type, but it basically says : 'how could we have the slightest chance of knowing each other without the arts'. That struck me when I read that and thought about the distances, that have grown up between us, the polarization, the prejudices, all of those things, and how the arts create this bridge between peoples, between lonely people, between dreamers and all people and that the arts have that ability to link us together in a very personal and profound and important ways. Capital A lot of my time is really now on how do we influence capital flows? How do we integrate the granting economy with all that it has and all of its limits with the rest of the economy: pension funds, institutional investors of various kinds, family offices and so on, because we need all of these resources to be lining up and integrated in a way that can enable grassroots activity to be seen, supported, nurtured, linked to the broader systems change that we urgently need, and that takes the big capital moving so that's a space that I'm currently exploring and I'm looking for ways to have that conversation.e59 pearl : positive tipping points, my conversation with arts organiser Judi Pearl about theatre, climate emergency, collaboration, arts leadership, intersection of arts and sustainability and the newly formed Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency (SCALE)That gathering placeIt's (SCALE, the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency) a national round table for the arts and culture sector to mobilize around the climate emergency. A few months ago, you and I, and a few others were all having the same realization that while there was a lot of important work and projects happening at the intersection of arts and sustainability in Canada, there lacked some kind of structure to bring this work together, to align activities, to develop a national strategy, and to deeply, deeply question the role of arts and culture in the climate emergency and activate the leadership of the sector in terms of the mobilization that needs to happen in wider society. SCALE is really trying to become that gathering place that will engender that high level collaboration, which hopefully will create those positive tipping points.é60 boutet : a la recherche d'un esprit collectif (in French), my conversation with arts practice researcher Dr. Danielle Boutet on ecological consciousness, reality, activism, grief, art as a way of life, innovation and spiritualityUnconsciousCollectively, we are unconscious. We try to talk about ecological consciousness. If there is a collective psyche, which I believe there is, I do think there is a kind of collective mind, but it is a mind that is unconscious, that is not capable of seeing itself, of reflecting and therefore not capable of meditating, not capable of transforming itself, and therefore subject to its fears and its impulses. I am quite pessimistic about this, in the sense that ecological grief, all grief and all fear is repressed at the moment. There are activists shouting in the wilderness, screaming, and people are listening, but in a fog. It is not enough to bring about collective action. Therefore, our grieving is far from being done, collectively.Changing our relationship to nature We need to change our relationship to nature, our way of relating to others, and it's not the generalizing science that's going to tell us, it's this kind of science of the singular and the experience of each person. For me, it is really a great field of innovation, of research and I see that the artists go in this direction. You know, you and I have been watching the changes in the art world since the 1990s. I see it through the artists who talk about it more and more and integrate their reflection in their approach. How art can help humans evolveI hear a lot of people calling for artists to intervene and of artists also saying that something must be done, etc. I think that art is not a good vehicle for activism. I'm really sorry for all the people who are interested in this. I don't want to shock anyone, but sometimes it can risk falling into propaganda or ideology or a kind of facility that I am sorry about, in the sense that I think art can do so much more than that and go so much deeper than that. Art can help humans to evolve. It is at this level that I think that we can really have an action, but I think that we have always had this action, and it is a question of doing it again and again and again.e61sokoloski: from research to action, my conversation with arts leader Robin Sokoloski about cultural research, arts policy, climate emergency, community-engaged arts, creative solution making and how to create equitable and inclusive organizational structuresConnections to truly impact policyI think that there needs to be greater capacity within the art sector for research to action. When I say that the art sector itself needs to be driving policy. We need to have the tools, the understanding, the training, the connections to truly impact policy and one thing that Mass Cultureis really focused on at the moment is how do we first engage the sector in what are the research priorities and what needs to be investigated together and what that process looks like, but then how do you then take that research create it so that it drives change.Creative Solution MakingI'm very curious to see what the arts can do to convene us as a society around particular areas of challenges and interests that we're all feeling and needing to face. I think it's about bringing the art into a frame where we could potentially provide a greater sense of creative solution making instead of how we are sometimes viewed, which is art on walls or on stages. I think there's much more potential than that to engage the arts in society.Organizational StructuresWe do have the power as human beings to change human systems and so I think I'm very curious of working with people who are like-minded and who want to operate differently. I often use the organizational structure as an example of that because it is, as we all know is not a perfect model. We complain about it often and yet we always default to it. How can we come together, organize and, and bring ideas to life in different ways by changing that current system, make it more equitable, make it more inclusive, find ways of bringing people in and not necessarily having them commit, but have them come touch and go when they need to and I feel as though there'll be a more range of ideas brought to the table and just a more enriching experience and being able to bring solutions into reality by thinking of how our structures are set up and how we could do those things differently.  *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

Full notes available from the Centre for Climate Safety. Thank you to the Sustainable Hour for sharing this episode with us.  The threat, the solution and the plan. Here's the why, the who and the how. This podcast episode is dedicated to the climate campaigner who has burned out. Podcast content – in order of appearance - apologies these are 2:31 earlier than they appear in the Climactic release.  00:05 Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General00:25 Movie clip: Marvel, Thor: Kaorg speaks to Thor about revolution (also at 53:52)00:46 Jose Ramos: “What is my role and my place?”00:54 Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director, Greenpeace International, quotes Bob Hunter01:01 7News Sydney: NSW Rural Fireservice firefighter01:16 Californian firefigther on SBS News01:24 BBC World Service during Second World War: “This is London calling”01:50 Stuart Scott speaking in Stockholm in 2018 (also at 27:57, 29:40, 35:49)06:20 9-year-old Eve speaking in London at Extinction Rebellion rally07:31 Reuters: Deadly floods hit western Europe09:18 Kinya Seto, CEO, LIXIL Corporation10:11 Chris Hayes on MSNBC: extreme weather news12:01 Movie clip: Marvel, The Avengers: “And the humans, what can they do but burn?”12:42 Movie clip: The 100, s1 e5 at 26:20: “This will cause a riot! Good. We need one.”12:48 Movie clip: The 100, s2 e8 at 8:20: Abby talks about trust12:55 Breakthrough interview with Admiral Chris Barrie14:45 Jennifer Atkinson at 6:00 in Episode 1 of Facing It podcast, ‘Facing Down Climate Grief'16:19 Amitav Ghosh, Indian author, interviewed by Rune Lykkeberg, editor of Information17:50 Adam Bandt, leader of the Australian Greens, addresses Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack in the Australian Parliament on 17 June 202120:31 Arnold Schwarzenegger speaking at the Austrian World Summit 202122:32 Angela Francis speaking at TEDxLondonWomen in December 201925:46 Emily Atkin, Heated podcast producer, interview on CNN27:31 MacKenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister, speaking during the Second World War, featured in Climate Emergency Unit's 4 Hopeful Lessons from WW2 to Confront Climate Change (also at 52:31)28:32 Greta Thunberg: “You cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis.”29:13 ABC News: Landmark climate court ruling against Royal Dutch Shell puts Australian firms on notice

Full notes available from the Centre for Climate Safety. Thank you to the Sustainable Hour for sharing this episode with us.  The threat, the solution and the plan. Here's the why, the who and the how. This podcast episode is dedicated to the climate campaigner who has burned out. Podcast content – in order of appearance - apologies these are 2:31 earlier than they appear in the Climactic release.  00:05 Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General 00:25 Movie clip: Marvel, Thor: Kaorg speaks to Thor about revolution (also at 53:52) 00:46 Jose Ramos: “What is my role and my place?” 00:54 Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director, Greenpeace International, quotes Bob Hunter 01:01 7News Sydney: NSW Rural Fireservice firefighter 01:16 Californian firefigther on SBS News 01:24 BBC World Service during Second World War: “This is London calling” 01:50 Stuart Scott speaking in Stockholm in 2018 (also at 27:57, 29:40, 35:49) 06:20 9-year-old Eve speaking in London at Extinction Rebellion rally 07:31 Reuters: Deadly floods hit western Europe 09:18 Kinya Seto, CEO, LIXIL Corporation 10:11 Chris Hayes on MSNBC: extreme weather news 12:01 Movie clip: Marvel, The Avengers: “And the humans, what can they do but burn?” 12:42 Movie clip: The 100, s1 e5 at 26:20: “This will cause a riot! Good. We need one.” 12:48 Movie clip: The 100, s2 e8 at 8:20: Abby talks about trust 12:55 Breakthrough interview with Admiral Chris Barrie 14:45 Jennifer Atkinson at 6:00 in Episode 1 of Facing It podcast, ‘Facing Down Climate Grief' 16:19 Amitav Ghosh, Indian author, interviewed by Rune Lykkeberg, editor of Information 17:50 Adam Bandt, leader of the Australian Greens, addresses Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack in the Australian Parliament on 17 June 2021 20:31 Arnold Schwarzenegger speaking at the Austrian World Summit 2021 22:32 Angela Francis speaking at TEDxLondonWomen in December 2019 25:46 Emily Atkin, Heated podcast producer, interview on CNN 27:31 MacKenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister, speaking during the Second World War, featured in Climate Emergency Unit's 4 Hopeful Lessons from WW2 to Confront Climate Change (also at 52:31) 28:32 Greta Thunberg: “You cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis.” 29:13 ABC News: Landmark climate court ruling against Royal Dutch Shell puts Australian firms on notice 30:35 9News reporting on Antonio Guterres call for governments to declare a climate emergency 31:26 Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director, Greenpeace International, quotes Bob Hunter 31:36 Movie clip: The 100, s2 e13 at 18:50: Bellamy and Maya talk about revolution 31:52 BBC World Service during Second World War (also at 53:40) 37:56 Jem Bendell: Living in the Time of Dying 40:47 Movie clip: Marvel, Guardians Of The Universe: “I have a plan” 41:09 Dr Giselle Wilkinson speaks about her doctorate “Mobilising whole communities to restore a safe climate” at the webinar Finding a Safe Passage to a Safe Climate (also at 42:46, 50:08 and 51:59) 41:53 Movie clip: Larry Kramer in ‘Love and Anger': “Nobody knows what to do next!” 42:33 Brenna Quinlan, illustrator, interviewed in ABC's Gardening Australia 44:40 Michael Shaw, teacher and therapist, in Conscient podcast 46:36 Rob Hopkins, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Stephan Harding and others in an excerpt from last part of Peter Armstrong's documentary film ‘The Sequel' 52:15 Movie clip: Enola Holmes: “The future is up to us!” 52:27 “All revolutions seem impossible until they are inevitable.” 52:44 Jason Bordoff in ‎Planet A podcast with Dan Jørgensen on 3 July 2021 54:14 David Attenborough, excerpt from BBC's ‘Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World': “There just could be a change in moral attitude from people world-wide, politicians world-wide, to see that self-interest is for the past, common interest is for the future.” 54:41 The Kookaburra laughs 54:55 Prince Ea: Three seconds Music 00:00 Alex Aidt: Icecream (also at 04:58 and 26:40) 00:49 Twin Musicom: A Dream Within a Dream (also at 02:56, 7:26 and 16:58) 01:24 Serge Pavkin: Dawn 03:11 Wayne Jones: Connection (also at 30:05) 03:35 Serge Pavkin: Reflections on Life (also at 23:36) 06:60 The 126ers: Water Lily 08:30 Density & Time: Ether-Real (also at 52:36) 09:18 Hang Massive: Heritage of Queens and Kings 09:24 Colin Mockett in The Sustainable Hour 09:58 Peekaboo: Arrival 12:10 Wayne Jones: Resolution (also at 13:42) 15:25 Climate Clock (also at 42:25) 32:07 Hang Massive: The Moon's Reflections on Countless Ponds (also at 51:42) 42:45 New Oddyssey 44:40 Wayne Jones: A Quiet Thought 45:45 Louis Wilson: Droplets 50:05 South London HiFi: Sunrise Drive 53:20 Gil Scott-Heron: “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, 1970 A big thank you to the musicians for allowing us to use this music in the podcast. Listening tip If you think an hour-long podcast is too long for you, we recommend you think about it diffently. The overall idea with us doing these long podcasts (we've done 400 of them by now, and they are all one hour long) is that our listeners listen to them for instance when they are in transport – sitting in a car or train – and press the pause button in the podcast player when they reach their destination. And then press play and listen onwards next time they are back in transport. In other words, cut it up in smaller bits suitable to you. You, not we, decide where to make the breaks yourself.  Support the show: https://www.climactic.fm/p/support-the-collective/

Full notes available from the Centre for Climate Safety.Thank you to the Sustainable Hour for sharing this episode with us. The threat, the solution and the plan. Here's the why, the who and the how. This podcast episode is dedicated to the climate campaigner who has burned out.Podcast content – in order of appearance - apologies these are 2:31 earlier than they appear in the Climactic release. 00:05 Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General00:25 Movie clip: Marvel, Thor: Kaorg speaks to Thor about revolution (also at 53:52)00:46 Jose Ramos: “What is my role and my place?”00:54 Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director, Greenpeace International, quotes Bob Hunter01:01 7News Sydney: NSW Rural Fireservice firefighter01:16 Californian firefigther on SBS News01:24 BBC World Service during Second World War: “This is London calling”01:50 Stuart Scott speaking in Stockholm in 2018 (also at 27:57, 29:40, 35:49)06:20 9-year-old Eve speaking in London at Extinction Rebellion rally07:31 Reuters: Deadly floods hit western Europe09:18 Kinya Seto, CEO, LIXIL Corporation10:11 Chris Hayes on MSNBC: extreme weather news12:01 Movie clip: Marvel, The Avengers: “And the humans, what can they do but burn?”12:42 Movie clip: The 100, s1 e5 at 26:20: “This will cause a riot! Good. We need one.”12:48 Movie clip: The 100, s2 e8 at 8:20: Abby talks about trust12:55 Breakthrough interview with Admiral Chris Barrie14:45 Jennifer Atkinson at 6:00 in Episode 1 of Facing It podcast, ‘Facing Down Climate Grief'16:19 Amitav Ghosh, Indian author, interviewed by Rune Lykkeberg, editor of Information17:50 Adam Bandt, leader of the Australian Greens, addresses Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack in the Australian Parliament on 17 June 202120:31 Arnold Schwarzenegger speaking at the Austrian World Summit 202122:32 Angela Francis speaking at TEDxLondonWomen in December 201925:46 Emily Atkin, Heated podcast producer, interview on CNN27:31 MacKenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister, speaking during the Second World War, featured in Climate Emergency Unit's 4 Hopeful Lessons from WW2 to Confront Climate Change (also at 52:31)28:32 Greta Thunberg: “You cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis.”29:13 ABC News: Landmark climate court ruling against Royal Dutch Shell puts Australian firms on notice

Full notes available from the Centre for Climate Safety. Thank you to the Sustainable Hour for sharing this episode with us.  The threat, the solution and the plan. Here's the why, the who and the how. This podcast episode is dedicated to the climate campaigner who has burned out. Podcast content – in order of appearance - apologies these are 2:31 earlier than they appear in the Climactic release.  00:05 Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General 00:25 Movie clip: Marvel, Thor: Kaorg speaks to Thor about revolution (also at 53:52) 00:46 Jose Ramos: “What is my role and my place?” 00:54 Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director, Greenpeace International, quotes Bob Hunter 01:01 7News Sydney: NSW Rural Fireservice firefighter 01:16 Californian firefigther on SBS News 01:24 BBC World Service during Second World War: “This is London calling” 01:50 Stuart Scott speaking in Stockholm in 2018 (also at 27:57, 29:40, 35:49) 06:20 9-year-old Eve speaking in London at Extinction Rebellion rally 07:31 Reuters: Deadly floods hit western Europe 09:18 Kinya Seto, CEO, LIXIL Corporation 10:11 Chris Hayes on MSNBC: extreme weather news 12:01 Movie clip: Marvel, The Avengers: “And the humans, what can they do but burn?” 12:42 Movie clip: The 100, s1 e5 at 26:20: “This will cause a riot! Good. We need one.” 12:48 Movie clip: The 100, s2 e8 at 8:20: Abby talks about trust 12:55 Breakthrough interview with Admiral Chris Barrie 14:45 Jennifer Atkinson at 6:00 in Episode 1 of Facing It podcast, ‘Facing Down Climate Grief' 16:19 Amitav Ghosh, Indian author, interviewed by Rune Lykkeberg, editor of Information 17:50 Adam Bandt, leader of the Australian Greens, addresses Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack in the Australian Parliament on 17 June 2021 20:31 Arnold Schwarzenegger speaking at the Austrian World Summit 2021 22:32 Angela Francis speaking at TEDxLondonWomen in December 2019 25:46 Emily Atkin, Heated podcast producer, interview on CNN 27:31 MacKenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister, speaking during the Second World War, featured in Climate Emergency Unit's 4 Hopeful Lessons from WW2 to Confront Climate Change (also at 52:31) 28:32 Greta Thunberg: “You cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis.” 29:13 ABC News: Landmark climate court ruling against Royal Dutch Shell puts Australian firms on notice 30:35 9News reporting on Antonio Guterres call for governments to declare a climate emergency 31:26 Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director, Greenpeace International, quotes Bob Hunter 31:36 Movie clip: The 100, s2 e13 at 18:50: Bellamy and Maya talk about revolution 31:52 BBC World Service during Second World War (also at 53:40) 37:56 Jem Bendell: Living in the Time of Dying 40:47 Movie clip: Marvel, Guardians Of The Universe: “I have a plan” 41:09 Dr Giselle Wilkinson speaks about her doctorate “Mobilising whole communities to restore a safe climate” at the webinar Finding a Safe Passage to a Safe Climate (also at 42:46, 50:08 and 51:59) 41:53 Movie clip: Larry Kramer in ‘Love and Anger': “Nobody knows what to do next!” 42:33 Brenna Quinlan, illustrator, interviewed in ABC's Gardening Australia 44:40 Michael Shaw, teacher and therapist, in Conscient podcast 46:36 Rob Hopkins, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Stephan Harding and others in an excerpt from last part of Peter Armstrong's documentary film ‘The Sequel' 52:15 Movie clip: Enola Holmes: “The future is up to us!” 52:27 “All revolutions seem impossible until they are inevitable.” 52:44 Jason Bordoff in ‎Planet A podcast with Dan Jørgensen on 3 July 2021 54:14 David Attenborough, excerpt from BBC's ‘Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World': “There just could be a change in moral attitude from people world-wide, politicians world-wide, to see that self-interest is for the past, common interest is for the future.” 54:41 The Kookaburra laughs 54:55 Prince Ea: Three seconds Music 00:00 Alex Aidt: Icecream (also at 04:58 and 26:40) 0

Seth Klein, a writer and public policy researcher, joins Dr. Keefer to discuss his book, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. Klein draws on the history of Canada during World War II, when the country massively industrialized to help Britain with the war effort in what he describes as a "true society-wide mobilization." He uses this history to argue for a similar society-wide, wartime-like mobilization to fight climate change. Klein makes a bold argument: We have tried and fail for 30 years to "incentivize our way to victory," and we will lose the climate battle if we think strategic subsidies, incentives, and taxes alone will lead to decarbonization. Rather, we need the state to take charge and institute rapid, mandatory measures. During crises, Klein argues, populations actually respond positively to mandatory measures. For example, in World War II the backlash feared from rationing and other mandatory measures rarely manifested. We have seen a similar phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite some dissent, there has been wide support for social distancing and mask requirements. On climate change, Klein argues that people "in the main" are ahead of the political curve and demanding strong climate action. In this episode, Dr. Keefer and Seth Klein discuss the nuances of this argument, including the important question of the technological choices made during a hypothetical wartime-like mobilization, and how we can avoid making progress in the wrong direction. Seth Klein recently launched the Climate Emergency Unit following over two decades of experience at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and in various other policy roles focused on poverty reduction, social, and environmental justice. Learn more about the Climate Emergency Unit: https://www.climateemergencyunit.ca/

Today's episode is a special one, as Yuko and Maia interview Seth Klein about his recently released book: A Good War - Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. Seth has a wealth of experience on climate activism and the political stage of Canada, and his new book is well worth the read for anyone interested in learning how this country in currently dealing (or not dealing) with the climate emergency, and how so much more can and should be done similar to Canada's push for action during the second World War.   For more information on Seth's work and where to purchase his book, visit www.sethklein.ca  Check out the Climate Emergency Unit https://www.climateemergencyunit.ca/ for information on how to get involved.   

We talk about new studies, news, the IEA, despair, inspiration, and our colony. Stefan interviews Jaden Philips and Sophie Krouse of Friday's For Future about their banking campaign and Stefan and Lauren interview Seth Klein about his new Climate Emergency Unit.

Here would be my challenge to artists today. We're beginning to see artists across many artistic domains producing climate and climate emergency art, which is important and good to see. What's striking to me is that most of it, in the main, is dystopian, about how horrific the world will be if we fail to rise to this moment. To a certain extent, that makes sense because it is scary and horrific, but here's what intrigued me about what artists were producing in the war is that in the main, it was not dystopian, even though the war was horrific. It was rallying us: the tone was rallying us. I found myself listening to this music as I was doing the research and thinking, world war II had a popular soundtrack, the anti-Vietnam war had a popular soundtrack. When I was a kid in the peace and disarmament movement, there was a popular soundtrack. This doesn't have a popular soundtrack, yet.seth klein, conscient podcast, april 16, 2021, vancouverSeth Klein is a public policy researcher and writer based in Vancouver who served for 22 years as the founding director of the British Columbia office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), Canada's foremost social justice think tank. He is now a freelance policy consultant, speaker, researcher and writer, and author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. Seth is also an adjunct professor with Simon Fraser University's Urban Studies program and remains a research associate with the CCPA's BC Office.I first heard about A Good War from Stephen Huddart, then CEO of the McConnell Foundation. Stephen suggested that I ‘read this book'. I did not get around to it until March 2021 when Anjali Appadurai (see e23 appadurai) contacted me on Seth's behalf to see if I would join their Climate Emergency Unit arts campaign. Needless to say, I joined the campaign, and you'll hear in the conversation that I also read the book, completing it the morning of our conversation on April 16. Seth and I exchanged on a wide range of issues including the dichotomy between reality and denial, his rationale for the book, the book's four pillars: (1. spend what it takes. 2. create new institutions 3. move from voluntary to mandatory 4. tell the truth). We also talked about the role of artists and cultural workers, to whom he launched a challenge.   As I did in previous episodes, I have integrated excerpts from e19 reality in this episode. I would like to thank Seth for taking the time to speak with me, for sharing his vision for our shared future in A Good War and for putting us on high alert about the climate emergency. For more information on Seth work, see https://www.sethklein.ca/ and https://www.climateemergencyunit.ca *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

The climate crisis and the broader ecological crisis is a symptom of the deeper disease, which is that rift from nature, that seed of domination, of accumulation, of greed and of the urge to dominate others through colonialism, through slavery, through othering – the root is actually othering – and that is something that artists can touch. That is what has to be healed, and when we heal that, what does the world on the other side of a just transition look like? I really don't want to believe that it it looks like exactly this, but with solar. The first language that colonisation sought to suppress, which was that of indigenous people, is where a lot of answers are held.anjali appadurai, conscient podcast, April 2, 2021, VancouverAnjali Appadurai is a climate justice advocate, communicator and consultant who works to strengthen climate change messaging and discourse in Canada by centering the stories of those on the frontlines of the climate crisis. She currently works at Sierra Club BC.Anjali contacted me while I was in Vancouver in March 2021 to help with her and Seth Klein, author of A Good War : Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency (who will be a guest on a future episode) to mobilize the arts and cultural sector as part of their Climate Emergency Unit. I was honoured to accept their offer.This episode was recorded at Trout Lake Park in Vancouver on April 2, 2021. Anjali kindly accepted to go on a ‘soundwalk' with me (see e22 westerkamp for more on soundwalking). Anjali and I exchanged on a wide range of issues that I do not know enough about, including: Who is the ‘we' and issues of privilegeDistribution of the remaining carbon budgetAtmospheric space as a human rightThe long history of human extinctionAs I did in e22 westerkamp, I integrated excerpts from e19 reality into this episode. I would like to thank Anjali for taking the time to speak with me, for sharing her deep knowledge about the climate emergency and her passion for the arts.For more information on Anjali's work, see https://sierraclub.bc.ca/anjali-appadurai/ *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024