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9 episodes with seth klein
6 episodes with seth klein
4 episodes with seth klein
2 episodes with seth klein
2 episodes with seth klein
2 episodes with seth klein
2 episodes with seth klein
2 episodes with seth klein
2 episodes with seth klein
Seth Klein heads a project that is part of David Suzuki's climate work. It will offer Canadian youth opportunities to work in the climate emergency as intensely as in World War II – a time of extraordinary efficiency. Can we make such a speed-up transition again? What is the main obstacle? We discuss. For the video, audio podcast, and comments: https://tosavetheworld.ca/episode-681-seth-klein-and-emergencies
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.
It's our third birthday! Thanks to the millions of you who've watched or listened to Real Talk ever since we launched, and those that have discovered this community more recently. Ryan and Johnny kick off this episode with a special shout out to Real Talkers just like you. 6:25 | Planet Earth's on pace for a three degree rise in temperature, with catastrophic consequences. Meantime, the carbon tax could be on its way out in Canada, and the Supreme Court struck down Ottawa's toxic plastics ban. It's not an easy time to be a climate activist. Seth Klein explains how young people could turn the tide, why the carbon tax was never the silver bullet, and why Canada needs more heat pumps. READ SETH'S BOOK: https://www.sethklein.ca/book READ HIS NATIONAL OBSERVER PIECE: https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023... CHECK OUT THE SURVEY RESULTS: https://static1.squarespace.com/stati... "APPLY" FOR THE YOUTH CLIMATE CORPS: https://www.goodgreenjobsforall.ca/ EMAIL THE SHOW: talk@ryanjespersen.com BECOME A REAL TALK PATRON: https://www.patreon.com/ryanjespersen WEBSITE: https://ryanjespersen.com/ FOLLOW US ON TIKTOK, TWITTER, & INSTAGRAM: @realtalkrj THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING OUR SPONSORS! https://ryanjespersen.com/sponsors The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Relay Communications Group Inc. or any affiliates.
Gernot Wagner is a climate economist at Columbia Business School. His research, writing, and teaching focus on climate risks and climate policy. Gernot writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate and has written four books, including Geoengineering: the Gamble and Climate Shock. Before joining Columbia and serving as faculty director of the Climate Knowledge Initiative, Gernot taught at NYU and Harvard. In this conversation I kept coming back to this hope that climate action could be, in some ways, uncomplicated. If the primary goal is to stop greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible in order to deal with this as a genuine emergency, it should be simple. But, within the existing system of global capitalism that we have, though, how is that going to happen? Can it happen? I've been trying to think about this by having conversations with people like Gernot, people like Kyla Tienhaara, Seth Klein, Mark Paul and others to try to get to the bottom of it. It's tough, but these interviews, which I'll release in the coming weeks, have been helpful. We're at a point where, according to economists like Robert Pollin, at least 1-2 per cent of global GDP will need to be spent pretty much immediately on investments in renewable infrastructure to radically reduce emissions. Global GDP is about $80 trillion. How does that amount of globally coordinated investment happen under capitalism? It's a huge shift in the nature of the whole economy. One of the reasons I wanted to return to Wagner's writing is that I've been helped a lot by his explanation of the social cost of carbon, and especially by the way he writes about considerations of equity and justice in determining the social cost of carbon. It radically increases the social costs, or damages created, by emissions if we factor in issues of equity. The number skyrockets, validating any and all investments in climate mitigation and adaptation. How could that sort of information become more central to decision-making and policy-making? We definitely get into the weeds here. I'm still processing the discussion we have about “green growth” vs. the “Green New Deal” vs. degrowth. I still can't say where I land on the question of whether decarbonization needs to happen in a textbook degrowth way. It's hard to balance expediency and strategy here, and yet, increasingly, the debate about economic transformation to fight climate change hinges on our receptivity to growth or degrowth. What I like is that there is room here for the debate. We need to rapidly phase-out fossil fuels. That much is certain. In fact, we need to fully ban fossil fuels. How that decision gets made and what form action takes—at what speed and with what consequences—is still an open question.
Harbinger Showcase is a weekly podcast featuring highlights from Canada's #1 coast-to-coast community of politically and socially progressive podcasts. On this week's episode we:unpack the 2020 book A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency with author and activist Seth Klein on PULLBACKtalk regularization and exploitation with Justice For Migrant Workers on LABOUR INTENSIVEask who the Bank of Canada's sledgehammer interest rates hurt the most on CANADA RE-IMAGINEDexplore the collision of the children's movie Bigfoot Family and Project Cauldron, a 1950's plot to use nuclear explosions to mine the tar sands on ALBERTA ADVANTAGEThe Harbinger Media Network includes more than 60 podcasts focusing on social, economic and environmental justice and featuring journalists, academics and activists on shows like Alberta Advantage, The Breach Show, Tech Won't Save Us, Press Progress Sources & more.Harbinger Showcase is syndicated for community and campus radio at CIUT 89.5FM in Toronto, CKUT 90.3FM in Montreal, CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg and at Vancouver Co-op Radio.Find out more, subscribe to the weekly newsletter and support our work at harbingermedianetwork.comSubscribe to the shows featured on this episode wherever you get your podcasts.
Harbinger Showcase is a weekly podcast featuring highlights from Canada's #1 coast-to-coast community of politically and socially progressive podcasts. On this week's episode we:unpack the 2020 book A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency with author and activist Seth Klein on PULLBACKtalk regularization and exploitation with Justice For Migrant Workers on LABOUR INTENSIVEask who the Bank of Canada's sledgehammer interest rates hurt the most on CANADA RE-IMAGINEDexplore the collision of the children's movie Bigfoot Family and Project Cauldron, a 1950's plot to use nuclear explosions to mine the tar sands on ALBERTA ADVANTAGEThe Harbinger Media Network includes more than 60 podcasts focusing on social, economic and environmental justice and featuring journalists, academics and activists on shows like Alberta Advantage, The Breach Show, Tech Won't Save Us, Press Progress Sources & more.Harbinger Showcase is syndicated for community and campus radio at CIUT 89.5FM in Toronto, CKUT 90.3FM in Montreal, CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg and at Vancouver Co-op Radio.Find out more, subscribe to the weekly newsletter and support our work at harbingermedianetwork.comSubscribe to the shows featured on this episode wherever you get your podcasts.
Kristen sits down with author Seth Klein to discuss his book, “A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency”. This book explores what it would actually look like for Canada to mobilize on a wartime level to tackle climate change, using Canada's efforts in the Second World War as proof that this isn't the first time we've come together in the face of a world altering threat. Get the book: https://www.sethklein.ca/book Harbinger Media Network: https://harbingermedianetwork.com/join
This year has been the worst wildfire season in recorded Canadian history, with the millions of Canadians waking up for the first time to the smell of smoke and hazy skies. In the last week, blazes have continued raging in Canada's coldest, northernmost regions, with all 20,000 residents of Yellowknife, the capital of Northwest Territories, being ordered to evacuate the city. Thousands more across the territories and northern British Columbia have followed suit. What can Canadians expect moving forward? And how much progress have we really made in the last few years? To get a sense of the urgency and what's at stake, we're re-airing an interview The CJN Daily ran with Seth Klein in November 2021. Klein is the head of the climate emergency unit of the David Suzuki Institute. Like his sister, Naomi Klein, he's also a published author, with his book, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, published Sept. 2020. Credits The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our intern is Ashok Lamichhane, and our theme music by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We're a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here.
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.
Guest: Seth Klein, founder of Climate Emergency Unit Fighting climate change is the existential crisis of our times. Why can't we seem to coordinate en masse the same way we have with other crises of massive scale? When Canada entered World War Two in 1939, the country radically transformed its economy and its very society in a matter of months. In fact at its peak, one in 11 Canadians was directly employed in military production—and a similar number was actively fighting. Seth Klein is a lifelong activist, the founder of the Climate Emergency Unit and the author of "A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency." He argues the same type of mass mobilization needs to take place in this country to combat climate change.
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.
It's 2022, and Canada is not on track to meet our greenhouse gas emissions targets. To do so, we'll need radical systemic change to how we live and work—and fast. How can we ever achieve this? Top policy analyst and author Seth Klein reveals we can do it now because did it before during the Second World War. In a conversation recorded in 2020, we speak with Seth Klein about how wartime thinking and community efforts can be repurposed for Canada's own Green New Deal.
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.
Seth Klein is the acclaimed author of
Youth climate corp. And so much more. I really enjoyed
Michael gets a history lesson from Seth Klein, author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, and learns how we can take inspiration from the Second World War to address the current climate crisis. They discuss numerous examples of how we mobilized at the individual, community and national levels during the war, and how we can support people in the current transition. They touch on parallels between the war and the pandemic. They also cover the Green New Deal, labour unions, the role of youth, and how you can get involved. A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency
Faced with the global environmental disaster that asserts itself a little more each day and that threatens peace in the world, we began asking ourselves some questions: What have we done with the peace obtained by the Allied Forces in Europe in 1944-1945? What are we going to do with it in the future? As...
Kev Mahserejian, Seth Klein, Sam Wirsching and Ian Swirka join Jeff Erickson to review the recent SCARF draft completed on March 13 (before the Fernando Tatis Jr. injury) and review a few of the copious news items of the week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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"
This week on rabble radio, we're bringing you a segment of our latest Off the Hill political panel which took place on Thursday March 10th. This month, the theme was “In the extreme.” It features special guests Seth Klein, Chuka Ejeckam and MP Leah Gazan. They deconstructed the recently released IPCC report, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the visible rise in right-wing populism. They joined regular hosts, Libby Davies and Robin Browne. If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. Or, if you have feedback for the show, get in touch anytime at editor@rabble.ca.
'The economic models and the way that policy is guided in Canada and around the world at the moment assumes that culture will not change. It assumes that we're self interested individuals, which science is now showing us that that is not the case. We're actually very collaborative and that are ancient cultures and traditional cultures around the world already knew this but we're assuming we're continuing to plan the economy under these old assumptions, that are just no longer useful and no longer actually accurate. What needs to happen now is a massive culture change and what's interesting in from the lessons world war II is that we know that this has been done in the past and very rapidly. While we sometimes fall into cynicism and think that things can't change, in the face of this particular issue, these lessons, I think are very important to learn from and I think can be applied to national cultural policy.'I first met Anthony in my work with the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency (SCALE) coordinating circle in April 2021. Since then, we have had many conversations about climate activism and art. Anthony is a Montreal-based climate emergency organizer and public affairs strategist. His work focuses on shifting the climate discourse in Canada from incrementalism to emergency-mode action. I had the honour of moderating the CPAMONational Cultural Policy and arts in Response to Climate Change panel with Anthony as one of the presenters on December 10, 2021 (along with Santee Smith, see episode 92 and Devon Hardy, see episode 94). Anthony shared his deep knowledge of cultural and climate policy and his passion for rapid and transformative change, notably lessons from Seth Klein's A Good War. I'm with you in that, Anthony! This Anthony's second conscient podcast episode. Our first conversation was in French, see https://www.conscient.ca/podcast/e56-garoufalis-auger-surmonter-les-injustices/ where we talked about sacrifice, injustices, strategies, activism, youth, art, culture, climate emergency and disaster. This is one of 6 episodes recorded during the Gathering Divergence Multi-Arts Festival & Conference Fall 2021 | Art in the Time of Healing: The Importance of IBPOC Arts in Planetary Renewalevent from December 8 to 10, 2021 in Toronto.The others are:episode 90, my conversation with dance artist, choreographer, director and embodiment facilitator Shannon Litzenberger and reading her State of Emergence: Why We Need Artists Right Now essayepisode 91, my conversation with Keith Barker, artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts, including a reading of his new 5 minute Climate Change Theatre Action play, Apology, My at the end of this episodeepisode 92, a presentation (including audience questions) by Santee Smith, artistic director of Kaha:wi Dance Theatre from the National Cultural Policy and arts in Response to Climate Change panelepisode 94, a presentation (including audience questions) by Devon Hardy from the National Cultural Policy and arts in Response to Climate Change panelepisode 95, my conversation with CPAMO Executive Director Charles Smith and artistic programmer Kevin Ormsby from a keynote address including excerpts from their conversation about the Living in the Skin I am In: Experiential Learnings, Approaches and Considerations Towards Anti-Black Racism in the Arts publicationSantee Smith (see episode 92), me (from my laptop and the room), Anthony and Devon Hardy (see episode 94) at CPAMO National Cultural Policy and arts in Response to Climate Change panel, December 10, 2021 *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
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.
How do we confront capitalism's ecological record? In this episode we get some answers from Dianne Saxe (Deputy Leader of the Green Party of Ontario), and Professor Matt Huber (Syracuse Univer“How do we confront capitalism's ecological record?” In today's episode, we tackle this question with help from Dianne Saxe, President of SaxeFacts, and Deputy Leader of the Green Party of Ontario and Matt Huber, Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University. From two unique perspectives -- that of an environmental lawyer and a Marxist Geographer -- we dig into the ways in which capitalism is implicated in climate change, and how capitalistic forces might be influenced for the betterment of people and planet.
The major international climate conference COP26 wrapped up this weekend. Canadians, now accustomed to seeing headlines about B.C.'s heat dome, wildfires in Northern Ontario and Alberta, melting Arctic ice and irregular farming seasons across the country, have much at stake in the conversation about climate change. The conference produced some worthwhile promises, but the question remains: Will they be enough? Will Canadians' actions matter on a global scale? And how can the country transition out of fossil fuels when those industries are still pivotal to our economy? To discuss these issues and more, we're joined by Seth Klein, an analyst, professor and the head of the climate emergency unit of the David Suzuki Foundation. Like his sister, Naomi Klein, he's also a published author, with his book, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, published Sept. 2020. What we talked about: Visit Seth Klein's webiste at sethklein.ca and find his book at ecwpress.com See the new menorah created by Ari Harel for Halifax's Shaar Shalom Synagogue on Facebook Credits The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Victoria Redden is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We're a member of The CJN Podcast Network; find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.
'Art is a practice of expanding consciousness, which gives us a tremendous opportunity to explore and to embody possibility and to engage with the earth as it continues to change and with each other.Rebecca Mwase, excerpt from e10 mwase – expanding consciousness (from an interview at Creative Climate Leadership USA, March, 2020)*e81 inspiration are excerpts from all my conversations up to today, November 10th, 2021. I chose short excerpts where the tone and emotion in the voice of each person inspires and uplifts me every time I listen to it and I hope they will inspire and uplift you too (because we need it). Thanks to all those recorded for this fragmented reading of our conversations.In order of appearance (bolded episodes are in French and have an ‘é')Note: I am aware that the time indication numbers below do not align up well but chose not to correct it as I enjoy the uneven flow...e10 mwase, Rebecca Mwase 00:00e29 loy, David Loy 00:21e03 tickell, Alison Tickell 00:35é37 lebeau, Anne-Catherine Lebeau 00:5612 liverman, Diana Liverman 01:1617 piro, Em Piro 01:37e50 newton, Teika Newton 02:00é32 tsou, Shuni Tsou 02:2613 freiband, Andrew Freiband 02:46e58 huddart, Stephen Huddart 03:03é27 prévost, Hélène Prévost 03:30e47 keeptwo, Suzanne Keeptwo 04:0008 johnston, Sholeh Johnston 04:25e33 toscano, Peterson Toscano 04:51é60 boutet, Dr. Danielle Boutet 05 :20e51 hiser, Dr. Krista Hiser 05:42e53 kalmanovitch, Dr. Tanya Kalmanovitch 06:01e21 dufresne, Dr. Todd Dufresne 06:22é55 trépanier, France Trépanier 06:42e24 weaving, jil p. weaving 07:00e25 shaw, Michael Shaw 07:38e39 engle Dr. Jayne Engle 08:01é56 garoufalis-auger, Anthony Garoufalis-Auger 08 :19e54 garrett, Ian Garrett 08:4606 lim, Milton Lim 09:48e22 westerkamp, Hildegard Westerkamp 09:25é57 roy, Annie Roy 09:50e73 marcuse,,Judith Marcuse 10:19e26 klein, Seth Klein 10:58e36 fanconi, Kendra Fanconi 11 :26é28 ung, Jimmy Ung 11:47e40 frasz Alexis Frasz 12:10e41 rae, Jen Rae 12:27e42 rosen, Mark Rosen 12:52é48 danis, Daniel Danis 13:17e43 haley, David Haley 13:57e44 bilodeau, Chantal Bilodeau 14:32e45 abbott, Jennifer Abbott 15:13é60 boutet, Dr. Danielle Boutet 16 :03e49 windatt, Clayton Windatt 16:33e50 newton, Teika Newton 16:53e51 hiser, Dr. Krista Hiser 17:3007 kasisi, Robert Kasisi 17:52e52 mahtani, Dr. Annie Mahtani 18 :23e53 kalmanovitch, Dr. Tanya Kalmanovitch 18:49e68 davies, Andrew Davies 19:20é34 ramade, Bénédicte Ramade 19:47 e61sokoloski, Robin Sokoloski 20:12e46 badham, Dr Marnie Badham 20:39e43 haley, David Haley 21:01é55 trépanier, France Trépanier 21:16e38 zenith, Shante' Sojourn Zenith 21:37e30 maggs, David Maggs 22:22e23 appadurai, Anjali Appadurai 22:56é48 danis, Daniel Danis 22:14e21 dufresne, Dr. Todd Dufresne 24 :57e35 salas, Carmen Salas 25:46e31 morrow, Charlie Morrow 26:27é57 roy, Annie Roy 26:53e59 pearl, Judi Pearl 27:29e71 green sessions debrief, Emma Stenning 27:49e78 droumeva, Milena Droumeva 29:1104 fel, Loic Fel 29:5405 carruthers, Beth Carruthers 30:15e77 klein, Seth Klein 30:45e15 chasansky, Matthew Chassansky 31:15é55 trépanier, France Trépanier 32:00e71 green sessions debrief, Sandy Crawley 32:22e11 dunlap, Eliana Dunlap 33;11e71 green sessions debrief, Liisa Repo-Martell 33:34e63 a case study (part 1), Clara Schryer 34:1109 macmahon, Ellen MacMahon 34:24e76 richards, Kim Richards 34:50e16 delaparra, Lauren De la Parra 35:28é37 lebeau, Anne-Catherine Lebeau 36:0714 kirn, Marda Kirn 36:30e63 a case study (part 1), Clara Schryer, Riel Schryer 37:38e71 green sessions debrief, Robyn Stevan 38:18e64 a case study (2), Clara Schyrer, Sabrina Mathews 38:50 *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
A look at the province's track record and what needs to change to lower GHG emissions, with Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner and Seth Klein, author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency.
'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
Along with today's headlines, today on The Pulse we talk to the People's Party of Canada candidate in East Vancouver, Karin Litzcke. We also talk to Seth Klein, author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, about the climate emergency and the federal election.
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.
10:25 | McGill researcher Safia Amiry shares her lived experience growing up in Afghanistan under Taliban rule (attending a secret school), her loved ones' plight from inside the country now, and how it all motivates her studies. 32:04 | NDP candidate for the federal riding of Edmonton Strathcona Heather McPherson addresses how the party hopes to translate the popularity of their leader, Jagmeet Singh, into votes. 49:32 | Dr. Verena Kuret and Dr. Eliana Castillo outline the dire health implications for pregnant people who contract COVID-19 and how effective vaccines are. New mother María Castrellón opens up about her search for information and medical guidance on how vaccination could impact her and her child. 1:24:19 | We review Real Talkers' thoughts on the Tokyo Olympics via our Question of the Week. Presented alongside our strategic partner Y Station. 1:42:08 | A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency author Seth Klein offers lessons from the Second World War that can now be applied to the climate crisis.
'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
Chapter 1 Big news today from the federal government, movement on the US Canada border restrictions Global BC reporter Richard Zussman joins us with a breakdown of the new Canada U.S. border announcement. Plus, your calls! Chapter 2 The latest on B.C. wildfires Joining us is Karli Derosiers - Fire Information Officer to give us the latest on BC Wildfires Chapter 3 Cloverdale Rodeo Human Rights Allegations Brenda Locke - Surrey City Councilor joins the show Chapter 4 Moms Stop the Harm Tracy Letts of Moms Stop the Harm joins us to discuss the importance of a safe drug supply Chapter 5 Climate Emergency Update The climate emergency is real so we are keeping the spotlight on it. In order to make real change the government needs to hit 4 markers. Are they hitting them? Seth Klein, Team Lead and Director of Strategy of the David Suzuki Institute's Climate Emergency Unit joins us to discuss. Chapter 6 Denialists Glossary People unwilling to accept the way we have treated first nations and indigenous people use certain phrases and terms that are harmful and offensive. Eric Chapman discusses with Daniel Heath Justice, Professor Critical indigenous studies UBC See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The climate emergency is real so we are keeping the spotlight on it. In order to make real change the government needs to hit 4 markers. Are they hitting them? Seth Klein, Team Lead and Director of Strategy of the David Suzuki Institute's Climate Emergency Unit joins us to discuss. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1 West End business owner considers selling business after three costly break-ins in one year Sonia Zebadua, Owner of Cardero Cafe in Vancouver's West End joins the show to share her experiences as a business owner. Plus, your calls! Chapter 2 What is pension maximization? Peter Cishecki,Registered Financial Planner and President of the Everything Financial Group joins the show Chapter 3 Should vaccinations be mandatory for all healthcare workers in BC? Isobel Mackenzie,BC Seniors' Advocate joins us to discuss Chapter 4 The climate emergency is here and it's killing British Columbians. Here's what needs to happen next. Seth Klein,Team Lead and Director of Strategy of the David Suzuki Institute's Climate Emergency Unit And author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency stops by to talk climate change Chapter 5 Premier Horgan is now more open to the idea of Vancouver hosting World Cup soccer Will Vancouver host World Cup soccer in 2026? Kirk LaPointe, Publisher and Editor of Business in Vancouver and Vice President of Editorial for Glacier Media discusses. Chapter 6 Progress on safe supply, but do new changes go far enough? Safe supply phases have started. But if 5 to 6 people are dying a day why are we phasing in anything? Why not right now? Eric Chapman See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Seth Klein,Team Lead and Director of Strategy of the David Suzuki Institute's Climate Emergency Unit And author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency stops by to talk climate change See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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.
In this season's first episode, RAIC Congress on Architecture Steering Committee member Louis Conway talks with Seth Klein about mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. To download a full transcript, click here. Seth Klein Author, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency (ECW Press, 2020) Seth Klein is a public policy researcher and writer based in Vancouver, BC. Between 1996 and 2018, Seth served 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. In 2020, Seth published “A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency.” In this book, Seth explores how we can align our politics and economy with what science says we must do to address the climate crisis. Louis Conway Architect AIBC, MRAIC, PMP Louis is an architect licensed with the Architectural Institute of British Columbia, a certified project management professional and a member of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. Between 2014 and 2019, Louis was a member of the Architectural Institute of British Columbia's Post-Disaster Response Advisory Group and supported the Post-Disaster Building Assessment training for architects and related external stakeholder engagement. Louis is also a member of the American Society of Adaptation Professionals and member of its Climate Migration and Managed Retreat Interest Group. This season is hosted by Mona Lemoine, Chair of RAIC Committee on Regenerative Environments Mona Lemoine Architect AIBC, MRAIC, LEED AP BD+C, Regenerative Practitioner, RELi AP Senior Sustainable Design Specialist, Perkins and Will Mona's raison d'être is to have a positive impact in the world. A community leader, she helped found the first Chapter of the Canada Green Building Council, an experience that formed the basis of her continued advocacy work in sustainability and the built environment. Currently, she chairs the RAIC Committee on Regenerative Environments and is a member of the RAIC Congress Steering Committee. In her advisory role at Perkins and Will, Mona enjoys the opportunity to be a resource on a variety of projects–helping to problem solve and inspire people to incorporate sustainability values in their work. Her unique balance of both big picture systems thinking and attention to detail is invaluable in leading and managing teams through the sustainability assessment process. A lifelong learner and adventurer, Mona has lived, studied, and worked abroad in several countries including Venezuela, Japan, and Chile. Being immersed in other cultures and languages has taught her to broaden her perspective and continues to motivate her both personally and professionally.
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
Author & economist Seth Klein joins host Charlie Demers for a conversation about what WWII & COVID can teach us about fighting climate change, his grandfather's relationship to trade unionism & Donald Duck & which surprise past Full of Chit-Chat guest he's secretly married to — THE ANSWER WILL SHOCK YOU!Find Seth's book 'The Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency' at https://www.sethklein.ca/bookGet early access to the show by stepping in the chit-chat and subscribing to Charlie's excellent Substack at https://charliedemers.substack.com/people/14775259-charlie-demers or find new episodes one week after release wherever you get your podcasts!
Author & economist Seth Klein joins host Charlie Demers for a conversation about what WWII & COVID can teach us about fighting climate change, his grandfather’s relationship to trade unionism & Donald Duck & which surprise past Full of Chit-Chat guest he’s secretly married to — THE ANSWER WILL SHOCK YOU! Find Seth's book 'The Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency' at https://www.sethklein.ca/book Get early access to the show by stepping in the chit-chat and subscribing to Charlie's excellent Substack at https://charliedemers.substack.com/people/14775259-charlie-demers or find new episodes one week after release wherever you get your podcasts!
On a new episode author & economist Seth Klein joins host Charlie Demers for a conversation about what WWII & COVID can teach us about fighting climate change, his grandfather’s relationship to trade unionism & Donald Duck & which surprise past Full of Chit-Chat guest he’s secretly married to — THE ANSWER WILL SHOCK YOU!Find Seth's book 'The Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency' at https://www.sethklein.ca/bookGet early access to the show by stepping in the chit-chat and subscribing to Charlie's excellent Substack at https://charliedemers.substack.com/people/14775259-charlie-demers or find new episodes one week after release wherever you get your podcasts!
On a new episode author & economist Seth Klein joins host Charlie Demers for a conversation about what WWII & COVID can teach us about fighting climate change, his grandfather's relationship to trade unionism & Donald Duck & which surprise past Full of Chit-Chat guest he's secretly married to — THE ANSWER WILL SHOCK YOU!Get Seth's book 'The Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency' at https://www.sethklein.ca/book
Seth Klein, author of the book A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. Klein compares mobilization for the climate crisis to that for World War II, and outlines a path for meaningful climate action.
Seth Klein, author of the book A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. Klein compares mobilization for the climate crisis to that for World War II, and outlines a path for meaningful climate action.
As the climate emergency advances, we need to push for a just transition for everyone. Workers in extractive industries, and the communities that depend on them, deserve solid plans to address the negative effects of the fossil fuel wind-down. Marc Lee and Seth Klein take a look at possible models in a recent post on the CCPA blog, policynote.ca. We talk with senior economist Marc Lee.
During the Second World War, Canada shifted to full employment, remaking its economy, retooling factories, and transforming the workforce to mobilize against an existential threat. What would it look like to mobilize against today’s existential threat: climate catastrophe? Seth Klein joins Team Advantage to discuss his new book, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, calling out today’s Neville Chamberlains of the climate emergency, and outlining how a rapid transition could create jobs, reduce inequality, and tackle our climate obligations.
During the Second World War, Canada shifted to full employment, remaking its economy, retooling factories, and transforming the workforce to mobilize against an existential threat. What would it look like to mobilize against today's existential threat: climate catastrophe? Seth Klein joins Team Advantage to discuss his new book, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, calling out today's Neville Chamberlains of the climate emergency, and outlining how a rapid transition could create jobs, reduce inequality, and tackle our climate obligations.
Katharine Hayhoe, Severn Cullis-Suzuki, and Sophia Mathur share their climate book picks for 2020 and we hear from authors Leah Stokes, Seth Klein and Jamie Bastedo.
Public policy researcher and writer Seth Klein discusses his new book, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, which looks at the example that the mobilization for World War II sets in terms of mobilizing society and resources for coping with an emergency
Markham debates climate activist and academic Seth Klein about his new book, "A GOOD WAR: MOBILIZING CANADA FOR THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY," which argues that governments should direct economic activity to lower greenhouse gas emissions just like Canada did to support its military commitment during World War II.
What role do ENGOs, or Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations, play in the Canadian ecopolitical sphere? In this episode, we ask this question of Catherine Abreu, Executive Director of Climate Action Network Canada, and Colleen Thorpe, Executive Director of Équiterre. Together they walk us through the roles that their respective organizations play in fighting for climate policy and shifting the cultural norms of Canadian citizens toward a greener and more just society.
Masks become mandatory on PEI. Halifax sees a dramatic increase in homelessness. Phone-in with the author of "A Good War: Mobilitizing Canada for the Climate Emergency."
A Good War: With Seth Klein. “A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency” With Seth Klein. All mainstream Canadian political parties say they accept what climate scientists are saying about the seriousness of climate emergency and the need to urgently cut GHG emissions. At the same time, however, they allow those emissions to continue, unabated, year after year. To discuss the growing gulf between what our leaders say and do about the climate emergency, as well as how citizens can mobilize to change all that, this episode of Planet Haliburton features a discussion with Seth Klein, author of the recently published book “A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency”. This link will take you to a resource list for this episode. This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm
In this episode we look at what we're calling “expansionism”, how the natural tendency of a species to expand into its niche, is unnaturally extended beyond those natural limits by humans. Pursuing this thoughtline brings us to a discussion of World War II as a historical precedent for our world in crisis today, particularly the theme of the war mobilization as precedent for addressing the current climate emergency. A few of the references made: Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, published in 1962. (http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx) Margaret Klein Salomon and the Climate Mobilization organization (https://www.theclimatemobilization.org/) For a Canadian version: Seth Klein, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency (published in September 2020, after we finished making this podcast but when we started releasing the episodes Project Drawdown (https://drawdown.org/) New episodes coming out every Thursday! We'd love to hear from you! Feel free to get in touch with us on instagram @afterthought_podcast, facebook @AfterthoughtPodcastCDK, or by emailing us at afterthoughtpodcast2019@gmail.com
It’s 2020, and Canada is not on track to meet our greenhouse gas emissions targets. To do so, we’ll need radical systemic change to how we live and work—and fast. How can we ever achieve this? Top policy analyst and author Seth Klein reveals we can do it now because did it before during the Second World War. We speak with Seth Klein about how wartime thinking and community efforts can be repurposed for Canada’s own Green New Deal.
It’s 2020, and Canada is not on track to meet our greenhouse gas emissions targets. To do so, we’ll need radical systemic change to how we live and work—and fast. How can we ever achieve this? Top policy analyst and author Seth Klein reveals we can do it now because did it before during the Second World War. We speak with Seth Klein about how wartime thinking and community efforts can be repurposed for Canada’s own Green New Deal.
Support this podcast During the Second World War, Canada shifted to full employment, remaking its economy, retooling factories, and transforming the workforce to mobilize against an existential threat. What would it look like to mobilize against today's existential threat: climate catastrophe? Seth Klein joins Team Advantage to discuss his new book, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, calling out today's Neville Chamberlains of the climate emergency, and outlining how a rapid transition could create jobs, reduce inequality, and tackle our climate obligations. Check the book out at sethklein.ca, and register for the Alberta book launch on October 5th here. A full transcript is available at albertaadvantagepod.com, courtesy of Opal Transcription Services.
Seth Klein joins us to talk about his new book The post Ep 206: A good war appeared first on PolitiCoast.
Seth Klein, adjunct professor at SFU Urban Studies, and former Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in BC, sits down with Below the Radar to discuss what the Canadian government can do to combat the climate emergency. Seth discusses the proposed environmental policies of the major political parties running in the upcoming federal elections. Additionally, he chats about his forthcoming book which examines political actions the Canadian government undertook in reaction to World War Two, and how we may learn from these actions in regards to addressing climate change. You can keep up to date with Seth’s writings on his blog here: https://sethklein.ca/blog/
Taylor talks with Seth Klein, a policy researcher currently working on a book examining the parallels between our mobilization to fight the Second World War and how we might mobilize the overcome the climate crisis. This is a conversation you don't want to miss. Further reading:Seth Klein's polling on the climate crisisSupport the show (http://north99.org/become-a-supporter)
Seth Klein joins us to talk about the scale it'll take to tackle the climate crisis. The post Ep 146: We need a climate mobilization with Seth Klein appeared first on PolitiCoast.
“There is a time coming, in our lives, when the tap of natural gas into our homes and into our city is going to be turned off. It’s not tomorrow — we have time to make adjustments.”As follow-up to his interview with Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle (Episode 19) — mover of a unanimously-approved motion to declare a climate emergency — Gord wanted to speak to one of the ‘generals’ working on a solution to coming disaster. Someone with the knowledge, experience, and character to not just define the nature of the challenge we face in the coming decades, but to take on the mantle of leadership.Whether Seth Klein is one of those generals is not yet clear, but he certainly seems to be writing the battle book.The now-former BC Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives —he actually founded the progressive think tank’s west coast chapter in 1996 — Klein has identified some compelling parallels between the effort made by the Canadian government and industry between 1939 and 1945 to mobilize behind the war effort, and what may be required to keep this ship we call Western civilization afloat today.With little doubt that drastic measures are needed, Klein believes the responses of countries like Canada during the Second World War are not just instructive, but likely instructive and maybe even necessary in this time of existential crisis.What were those responses? There were many. They were mandated, legislated. And no person, no institution, was immune.This conversation isn’t just a sneak preview of his upcoming book — it’s a conversation about a similar challenge we faced 80 years ago, how we faced it, and whether we can do it again today. Read more »
Seth Klein of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives speaks about the referendum underway in BC to decide if voters should move away from the "first past the post" electoral system.
Welcome back to another episode of Benched with Bubba. On BwB EP 128 Bubba will be joined by Seth Klein of Fantrax, the Fantasy Fix and Razzball. The guys will recap the wild week that was NFL Week 7, talk about all the injuries, key story lines and even look ahead to NFL Week 8 to help with your Fantasy Football lineups. Rundown- Amari Cooper to the Cowboys Marshawn Lynch to the IR New OC in Arizona Injuries from Week 7- Sony Michel, LeSean McCoy and others Jags QB situation Niners backfield Devante Parker Rishard Matthews to the Jets Top Waiver Wire targets for Week 8 If you love playing NFL DFS or even season long NFL go check out all the tools at TheQuantEdge.com and use BENCHED for $10 off your first month. Go check out one of the best new ways to play fantasy sports at Draft.com and use SDSPORTS at check out for entry into a free $3 tournament. They have MLB, PGA, NHL, NBA and of course NFL and currently NFL Best Ball. As always, thanks for listening to another episode of Benched with Bubba. We'd appreciate it if you could give us a rating and review on iTunes or wherever you listen to the show.
Welcome back to another episode of Benched with Bubba. On BwB EP 128 Bubba will be joined by Seth Klein of Fantrax, the Fantasy Fix and Razzball. The guys will recap the wild week that was NFL Week 7, talk about all the injuries, key story lines and even look ahead to NFL Week 8 to help with your Fantasy Football lineups.Rundown-Amari Cooper to the CowboysMarshawn Lynch to the IRNew OC in ArizonaInjuries from Week 7- Sony Michel, LeSean McCoy and othersJags QB situationNiners backfieldDevante ParkerRishard Matthews to the JetsTop Waiver Wire targets for Week 8If you love playing NFL DFS or even season long NFL go check out all the tools at TheQuantEdge.com and use BENCHED for $10 off your first month.Go check out one of the best new ways to play fantasy sports at Draft.com and use SDSPORTS at check out for entry into a free $3 tournament. They have MLB, PGA, NHL, NBA and of course NFL and currently NFL Best Ball.As always, thanks for listening to another episode of Benched with Bubba. We'd appreciate it if you could give us a rating and review on iTunes or wherever you listen to the show.
Welcome back to another episode of Benched with Bubba. On BwB EP 128 Bubba will be joined by Seth Klein of Fantrax, the Fantasy Fix and Razzball. The guys will recap the wild week that was NFL Week 7, talk about all the injuries, key story lines and even look ahead to NFL Week 8 to help with your Fantasy Football lineups. Rundown- Amari Cooper to the Cowboys Marshawn Lynch to the IR New OC in Arizona Injuries from Week 7- Sony Michel, LeSean McCoy and others Jags QB situation Niners backfield Devante Parker Rishard Matthews to the Jets Top Waiver Wire targets for Week 8 If you love playing NFL DFS or even season long NFL go check out all the tools at TheQuantEdge.com and use BENCHED for $10 off your first month. Go check out one of the best new ways to play fantasy sports at Draft.com and use SDSPORTS at check out for entry into a free $3 tournament. They have MLB, PGA, NHL, NBA and of course NFL and currently NFL Best Ball. As always, thanks for listening to another episode of Benched with Bubba. We'd appreciate it if you could give us a rating and review on iTunes or wherever you listen to the show.
Change is hard, says Seth Klein, and we’re always more comfortable with what we know. But, he argues, that’s no reason to stick with an electoral system that gives parties with 35% of the vote 100% of the power, or that forces us to vote against parties we don’t like instead of for parties we do. Seth Klein joins us for a second conversation about BC’s upcoming referendum on electoral reform.
Change is hard, says Seth Klein, and we’re always more comfortable with what we know. But, he argues, that’s no reason to stick with an electoral system that gives parties with 35% of the vote 100% of the power, or that forces us to vote against parties we don’t like instead of for parties we do. Seth Klein joins us for a second conversation about BC’s upcoming referendum on electoral reform.
Seth Klein thinks all three options on offer in BC’s upcoming electoral reform referendum are dramatically better than what we have now. In this interview, he explains the principal of proportional representation and talks about how each of the three proposed models would work. Seth Klein is director of the BC office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Seth Klein thinks all three options on offer in BC’s upcoming electoral reform referendum are dramatically better than what we have now. In this interview, he explains the principal of proportional representation and talks about how each of the three proposed models would work. Seth Klein is director of the BC office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Two weeks ago, 400 people gathered in Victoria at the Site C Accountability Summit. Several experts discussed the financial risks to BC Hydro if the project went ahead. Seth Klein is B.C director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He says that when the decision came down, he felt compelled to address the economic fallacies in the arguments put forward by the NDP cabinet.
Welcome to a special episode of The Fantasy Six Pack Hour. Tonight Joe Bond is going to be joined by Seth Klein, writer at The Fantasy Fix and Razzball. Tonight they will be preparing you for the 2016 Fantasy Basketball season. They go over some general strategy for both head to head leagues and roto style leagues. They also discuss some sleepers, busts, rookies, talk injured players and more. Make sure you listen to this before your upcoming drafts to dominate your Fantasy Basketball leagues.
In today's Locked On Fantasy Basketball Show, brought to you by Fantrax and Basketball Monster, I'm joined by Seth Klein and we discuss the Red Rock 30 Team League, and dynasty fantasy basketball in general. Intro music is a song by Sex Karate, called Gender Queer while The Side Bets close out the show with Haven't You Heard. CXLMBIA also contribute their song Don't Go to the mix, as does Joe Hero with Formula Rock Song #1. We talk about building for now as opposed to building for the future, answer questions regarding players like C.J. McCollum and Khris Middleton, and generally just chat about a burgeoning part of fantasy basketball, dynasty leagues. #NBA #fantasybasketball #basketball Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Joe Bond and co-host A.J. Applegarth bring their show over from the Fantasy Six Pack network and are excited to be here. In this week's episode they will bring on guest Seth Klein from Razzball to talk about some of the injuries and other hot topics from after the Week 3 of the NFL Preseason. They will get into some baseball talk as well as Seth jumped Joe in the FSWA roto standings a couple of weeks ago as there is quite the battle for first place now with last years overall FSWA champ Mark Kaplan. As always call in during the show to give your two cents on any topic we are discussing or to ask a question.
The crazy trade deadline has passed, and the guys are giving you their take on what happened, and the fantasy impact. Razzball's and Fantasy Pro's Seth Klein jumps on the podcast this week! Seth give his take on the Melo "Replacements," Trades, The Kings and The Rockets messy situations! We discuss week 18 waivers of the most added and most dropped, and our player debates, like Monta Ellis vs Isaiah Thomas and Goran Dragic vs Brandon Knight!Follow the guys on Twitter @IsItTheWelsh and @BogmanSports. Email in any questions to IsItTheWelsh@gmail.com and ScottBogman@gmail.comAlways on at InThisLeague.com
Radio FreeThinkers Episode 169 - Poisons Pastor EditionThis week we talk about the send the Queen up the river with questions about the press on the jubilee, Snake handling Pastor dies by snake bit like his father - a look at snake handling, Do dogs really feel guilt or are we projecting? andpart 3 of 3 of an interview with Seth Klein from the Canadian Center of Policy Alternatives - This week a talk about Inequality - Its harms to society.Check us out online at www.radiofreethinker.com and email us at info@radiofreethinker.com and follow us on twitter at @citrrft
Radio FreeThinkers Episode 168 - Jane the Ripper EditionThis week we talk about the phenomena of celebrates offering parts of the selves for other to eat, A study explains why the oceans have more water than they should, part 2 of 3 of an interview with Seth Klein from the Canadian Center of Policy Alternatives - This week a talk about Taxes - What the story? andA discussion about the Jack the Ripper and a new claim that Jack was actually Jane.Check us out online at www.radiofreethinker.com and email us at info@radiofreethinker.com and follow us on twitter at @citrrft
Radio FreeThinkers Episode 167 - Global Austerity EditionThis week we talk about the launch of Dragon Space craft, A study about how overselling vaccination can backfire, Harper's Budget cuts are making Canadian scientist and endangered species andpart 1 of 3 of an interview with Seth Klein from the Canadian Center of Policy Alternatives - This week a talk about Austerity- does it work?Check us out online at www.radiofreethinker.com and email us at info@radiofreethinker.com and follow us on twitter at @citrrft
SUMMARY Recovery from COVID-19 provides remarkable opportunities for transition to a just and green economy that would ultimately boost universal mental health. Policy professionals Trish Hennessy (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives) and Arden Henley (Green Technology Education Centre) talk about transformative concepts such as ‘doughnut economics', ‘well-being budget', ‘inclusive economy', and the ‘three-sided coin'. They also explore how lessons learned about mental health during the pandemic, can guide economic reform while informing solutions to other global challenges, such as systemic racism and climate change. TAKEAWAYS This podcast will help you understand: Role of policy in economic reform that supports social, environmental, and economic well-being Link between policy and mental health Role of all levels of government in the move toward a just and green economy that fosters mental health at all scales Alternative Federal Budget (Recovery Plan 2020) Rebuilding BC: A Portfolio of Possibilities Social solutions within a green economy; environmental solutions within a just economy Challenges such as systemic racism, poverty, and inequality in a market economy vs. solutions in a just and green economy Potential for positive change using emerging concepts such as ‘doughnut economics', ‘well-being budget', ‘inclusive economy', and the ‘three-sided coin' Economic reform and the World Health Organization Sustainable Development Goals How lessons learned about mental health during the pandemic can guide economic reform while informing solutions to other global challenges such as systemic racism and climate change Upstream approach to economic reform that supports universal mental health SPONSOR The Social Planning & Research Council of British Columbia (SPARC BC) is a leader in applied social research, social policy analysis, and community development approaches to social justice. Lorraine Copas and her great team support the council's 16,000 members, and work with communities to build a just and healthy society for all. THANK YOU for supporting the HEADS UP! Community Mental Health Summit and the HEADS UP! Community Mental Health Podcast. RESOURCES Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Think Upstream Seth Klein (The Good War) The Leap Well-Being Budget Rebuilding BC The Spiritual Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett A Roadmap to a Renaissance Amsterdam City Doughnut GUESTS Trish Hennessy Trish Hennessy is a senior communications strategist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) and director of Think Upstream, a project dedicated to policy solutions that foster a healthy society and community well-being. She is focused on the social determinants of health, sustainable development goals, income inequality, decent work, and an inclusive economy. Trish was the founding director of the CCPA Ontario, a progressive think tank that focuses on provincial and municipal social justice and economic issues. She co-founded the Ontario Living Wage Network. She was the founding director of the CCPA national office's growing gap project, which began in 2006. Trish was a former newspaper journalist, originally from Saskatchewan but now lives in Toronto. She has a B.A. Sociology from Queen's University, a B.S.W. from Carleton University, and an M.A. in Sociology from OISE/University of Toronto. Email: trish@policyalternatives.ca Website: www.thinkupstream.ca Phone: 613-563-1341 (323) Facebook: www.facebook.com/upstreamAction Twitter: www.twitter.com/UpstreamAction Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/trish-hennessy-25b9395/ Arden Henley Arden Henley is founding board chair of British Columbia's Green Technology Education Centre. He is a former Vice President of City University in Canada, and one of the founders of its Masters of Counselling program. He has a BA from McMaster, an MA from Duquesne in Pittsburgh, and a Doctorate in Education Leadership from SFU. Arden is also an Honorary Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Well known for his innovative leadership style and thought-provoking presentations, Arden consulted broadly with community and government agencies, and practiced family therapy and organizational development for more than 40 years. These experiences are outlined in his book, entitled Social Architecture: Notes & Essays. Website: www.gteccanada.ca Email: nwpses@gmail.com Phone: 604.317.4128 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rc-arden-henley-977752122/?originalSubdomain=ca HOST Jo de Vries is a community education and engagement specialist with 30 years of experience helping local governments in British Columbia connect with their citizens about important sustainability issues. In 2006, she established the Fresh Outlook Foundation (FOF) to “inspire community conversations for sustainable change.” FOF's highly acclaimed events include Building SustainABLE Communities conferences, Reel Change SustainAbility Film Fest, Eco-Blast Kids' Camps, CommUnity Innovation Lab, Breakfast of Champions, and Women 4 SustainAbility. FOF's newest ventures are the HEADS UP! Community Mental Health Summit and HEADS UP! Community Mental Health Podcast. Website: Fresh Outlook Foundation Phone: 250-300-8797 PLAY IT FORWARD The move toward a just and green recovery economy becomes possible as more people learn about its social, cultural, spiritual, environmental, and economic benefits. To that end, please share this podcast with anyone who has an interest or stake in the future of mental health for individuals, families, workplaces, or communities. FOLLOW US For more information about the Fresh Outlook Foundation (FOF) and our programs and events, visit our website, sign up for our newsletter, and like us on Facebook and Twitter. HELP US As a charity, FOF relies on support from grants, sponsors, and donors to continue its valuable work. If you benefited from the podcast, please help fund future episodes by making a one-time or monthly donation. Trish Hennessy, Arden Henley Interview Transcript You can download a pdf of the transcript here. The entire transcript is also found below: RICK 0:10 Welcome to the HEADS UP! Community Mental Health Podcast. Join our host Jo de Vries with the Fresh Outlook Foundation, as she combines science with storytelling to explore a variety of mental health issues with people from all walks of life. Stay tuned! JO 0:32 Hey, Jo here! Thanks for joining me with my two guests as we explore the emerging economics of mental health, prompted by COVID-19, and how we can mobilize a just and green recovery that enhances well-being for all Canadians. But first, a huge shout out to a major podcast sponsor, the Social Planning and Research Council of British Columbia. SPARC BC is a leader in applied social research, social policy analysis, and community development approaches to social justice, and works with communities of all sizes to build, a just and healthy society for all. Thank you for supporting the HEADS UP! Community Mental Health Podcast and the HEADS UP! Community Mental Health Summit. For more info about the summit, visit us at freshoutlookfoundation.org. Our guests today are both passionate big-picture thinkers with innovative insights and ideas about the need for economic reform as we adjust to our post-pandemic reality. Trish Hennessy is director of Think Upstream, an initiative of the Canadian Center for Policy alternatives. A former journalist, Trish earned a bachelor's degree in social work, and bachelor's and master's degrees in sociology. Her work focuses on the social determinants of health, sustainable development goals, decent work and income, equality, an inclusive economy, and well-being budgeting. Welcome, Trish, it's so great to have you here. TRISH 2:09 Great to be here. JO 2:10 Before we get into the discussion about the link between mental health and economy, can you tell us a little bit about the Canadian Centre for Policy alternatives? TRISH 2:22 Absolutely. We're an independent, nonpartisan think tank that has been advancing policy solutions to promote greater equality, social inclusion, as well as social and economic resilience and sustainability. I work out of the national office, which is based in Ottawa, and the national office is actually celebrating its 40th anniversary this year…we're one of the older think tanks. We also have offices in BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and Ontario… I founded the Ontario office in 2012. Those offices focus on provincial and municipal issues, whereas the national office tends to focus on national issues. Sometimes we go into sub-national as well. JO 3:06 So how much of the work you do relates to mental health? TRISH 3:09 I think mental health and physical health are deeply intertwined, and the pathways toward improved mental and physical health include access to adequate income, to decent work, to an inclusive economy, to an economy that leaves no one behind and that protects the health and well-being of both our people and our planet. So, all of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative's work intersects on that front... is kind of like the hip bone's connected to the leg bone. If you leave one of those things out, you have worsening mental and physical health outcomes. So, we look at those social determinants of physical and mental health. JO 3:50 When we spoke to prepare for this podcast, you said that policy is "behind everything that shapes our world." Now, I'm sure that, as a policy wonk, you can elaborate on that. First, what is policy? And why is it important for us moving forward toward better mental health? TRISH 4:11 Year in and year out, governments at every jurisdictional level... whether it's local, provincial, or federal... make decisions and policies that affect our lives, for good and for bad. [In 2020], for example, [we saw] the federal government make a series of rapid policy decisions in the face of COVID-19 to create income security programs to try to soften the blow for the millions of workers who lost their job or their working hours due to the necessary economic lockdown in the spring [of 2020]. The government quickly realized that its previous policy for unemployed workers... the unemployment insurance system... wasn't designed for a moment of mass unemployment like we experienced at that beginning of the global pandemic. And we're still experiencing a lot of unemployment when you compare it historically. So, the federal government created CERB, the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit, and it's like a form of income guarantee for those who couldn't work at the start of the economic pause, so that we could all shelter down and give public health officials a chance to implement policies to try to get ahead of the virus, and limit the spread, and make sure that our hospitals weren't surged to beyond capacity. And that is about as dramatic an example as you can get for how governments make policies that, in this case, save millions of people's lives in Canada. And it's so important because the number-one job of any government at any jurisdictional level is to protect public well-being. And governments don't always live up to that task, but governments who succeed use wise and strategic policies to get there. JO 5:53 What types of policies affect public health in general, and mental health in particular? TRISH 5:59 Public health is like this great invisible infrastructure of experts and health care experts, whose number-one job is prevention. They promote vaccines to prevent people from getting the chicken pox or the flu. They promote safe consumption sites to prevent even more deaths in the opioid crisis that's rippled across Canada. Because we are living in the age of a global pandemic, they promote policies to protect the public. Public health officials are usually rarely visible, but now they're hugely visible. We see them on the daily news advising us to physically distance, to wear masks when we can't physically distance, to wash your hands, to protect ourselves against COVID-19. But the meat and potatoes of their work in a pandemic still kind of remains invisible. They're tracking the epidemiology of the virus, they're contact tracing, they're following up with those who are infected with COVID-19… and a lot of that isn't in front of the public eye. And yet that invisible work is what saves lives and what guides government policies to either reopen the economy or, like what's happening in Toronto where I live, to return to a modified stage two. We can't eat indoors in restaurants, the bars are closing, the gyms are closing, all to avoid swamping our hospital system, because there's a disconcerting rise in COVID cases here and in other places in Ontario, as well. And so that's public health, quietly in the background, trying to keep the wheels on the bus. JO 7:35 What about the mental health meat in all of that? TRISH 7:38 In terms of mental health policies, I think we have a long way to go to get to that preventative phase of mental health issues. Most of the policies that are in place are there to help you after you've developed a mental health issue, and even then those policies are inadequate to the task... we treat the symptoms downstream. A lot of people don't have access to mental health services. Many people can't afford them. They can't afford to go to the private market, and the public sector has not created a robust plan here. I'm actually hoping that the pandemic is the push that our governments need to invest in a national mental health plan. It's something that the federal government has promised to do in its recent throne speech. It's a long time coming. And I think with COVID-19, we're going to see a rise in mental health issues and anxieties, depression, agoraphobia for people who are going to be afraid to go out after staying sheltered for so long. And so, we're still at the baby stages of a mental health system that is more upstream in nature and that prevents things that get to the root of mental health issues. JO 8:52 I know we don't have any details, or either a firm commitment for a national mental health plan, but what might that look like to you? TRISH 9:01 A national mental health plan for me would look like what a national dental plan should look like, too, because it's in the same boat. We don't have a holistic, universal public health system right now. You can get treated if you break a bone in your arm or your leg... you can walk right into a hospital and they'll fix you up. But you can't necessarily get treated if you've got something wrong with your teeth, or if you're in emotional distress. And so, it would be a coherent, coordinated plan, where just like I can walk into my family doctor to talk about an infection that I have, I would be able to walk into a mental health facility and immediately access counseling. But that's still addressing an [existing] mental health issue. A really upstream mental health national plan would look at those social determinants of health. There's just tons of research that shows that if people have adequate access to safe and clean and affordable housing, if they have food security, if parents have access to affordable, high-quality childcare... all of these are supports that take a lot of the pressure off of a household. And they can influence the amount of mental health issues that are out there. When we think about mental health, we tend to think about what you personally can do to work through a depression or through anxiety. But it's so interrelated with everything else, like how we live, and whether we're poor, whether we're scrounging to earn next month's rent and worried about getting evicted, which many people in the middle of this pandemic are worried about. So, thinking about health in all policies, not just a mental health plan, but every federal ministry, every provincial ministry, would look across all of their departments and ask what investments would actually fuel greater mental health? And it's a holistic approach. It's big. JO 11:03 Are there any countries actually doing this kind of massive policy change and implementation of great programs like what you're discussing? TRISH 11:14 I'm really inspired these days by New Zealand. The Prime Minister of New Zealand has basically said GDP growth isn't your measure of success, because if you don't have public well-being, then it's failure. And so, in New Zealand, they're investing in well-being budgeting, and that includes investing in mental health initiatives, investing in inclusion and empowerment of indigenous communities, investing in climate change interventions, because if you don't have a healthy climate, you can't even have a healthy economy. So, she's kind of flipping the conversation where I think, for far too long and certainly in Canada, we have politicians who look at the job growth [and say] we're doing great. But the questions I asked are: Is that job growth part-time, crappy wages, where you don't even earn a living wage? Is every job that we're creating a good job that has a living wage that is not precarious, where you can actually plan for a future where you might have benefits at work in case you get sick… if you need prescription drugs? Those sort of things. That is a worldview that is counter to just looking at GDP growth and job growth. It's not asking how big is the growth, what's the percentage? It's asking about who's impacted by that? And are we lifting everyone up? JO 12:44 For each of the past 25 years, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has released an Alternative Federal Budget. These what-if exercises outline what the federal government could do differently to ensure and integrate social, environmental, and economic well-being. This year's Alternative Federal Budget is called ‘A Recovery Plan' that closes the chapter on the old normal, because it says the status quo after COVID-19 is no longer an option. "This is our chance to bend the curve of public policy toward justice, well-being, solidarity, equity, resilience, and sustainability." The plan goes on to say that economic issues can't be disconnected from everything else, and promotes a health-in-all-policies approach, "because if this pandemic has taught us anything, it's that public health is the requirement for economic health." So, Trish, in keeping with these quotes, tell us about the key principles and recommendations outlined in your recovery plan. TRISH 13:56 As we were writing that recovery plan, it wasn't lost on us that it's the 25th anniversary of the Alternative Federal Budget that we've been putting out every year that the federal government could take up to reduce income inequality, to battle climate change, etc. So, our recovery plan, it's like a weighty document… it's 200 pages long. We work with civil society organizations from across Canada, they help inform this document. So, obviously, I can't tell you everything in it because it's quite a commitment. But the key principles are we're advancing income security, and that to me is the core role of public policy. It's to ensure that those who are getting left behind by an economy that has been growing, but the benefits of economic growth have been growing disproportionately to those who are at the highest end of the income ladder, while more and more people are getting left behind. We promote income security for the unemployed, for people who can't get into the labour market, and we promote ideas of income adequacy as well. And if you look provincially, anyone on social assistance is trapped in poverty. Social assistance is hugely inadequate, and we think that has to be addressed. We look for income security and income adequacy, but we also look at four supports for households and individuals. I was just saying earlier about the social determinants of health, affordable housing, food security, and affordable, universal public childcare. All of these are key to helping people not only survive, but to thrive, and no full economic recovery is possible without these things, and especially with childcare, since right now, in the middle of this pandemic, too many women are actually stepping out of the paid labor market because of the lack of childcare. We're seeking an explicit equity-seeking agenda to address anti-black, anti-Asian, and anti-Indigenous racism and discrimination. And we know that COVID-19 has disproportionately affected these communities in terms of work, their ability to safely quarantine, and we've seen a rise in anti-Asian racist incidents during COVID-19. And there are higher incidences of COVID-19 among black communities, especially being tracked in Toronto and Montreal. So, we're taking a racial and gender equity strategy. And last but not least, we're also promoting a caring economy and a public health agenda. This includes investments in long-term care. We've seen far too many vulnerable seniors who have been impacted by COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care facilities, as well as personal support workers who were not protected in the workplace from COVID-19. We're promoting investments in home care. We do think it's time for a universal pharmacare plan and the throne speech, once again, promises that there's one around the corner. And then the creation of a universal mental health care plan, as we've already discussed. We address climate change. We address trade issues, taxation, how we pay for it all. You name it, there's a chapter on it. JO 17:15 What's the URL if people want to get more information about the plan? TRISH 17:20 www.policyalternatives.ca. JO 17:23 For this plan to work, we'll need political and administrative buy-in from all levels of government, I assume. TRISH 17:31 Over 25 years, let me tell you, it's been a long uphill climb. We've had our victories, and particularly, it's kind of notable to me, particularly in moments of economic crisis, we've noticed governments are a little bit more ready to act on some of our recommendations. In the 2008-2009 global recession, we wrote an Alternative Federal Budget plan to get through the worst of that. Surprisingly, the Stephen Harper government implemented a number of our recommendations at that time, which kind of surprised us, but we were happy to see it happen. And then, again, now we're in the middle of a crisis, and we're seeing the federal government, now it's a Liberal government, and we're seeing them implement a number of the policies that we're advocating for, partly because what we're advocating for, it just makes sense. It's like we suddenly noticed public health, it's suddenly visible in the middle of a pandemic. Problems that need to be fixed, like employment insurance, suddenly become glaringly obvious in the middle of a pandemic, or a global economic crisis. The sad thing is, had more governments taken up these policy recommendations over the years, we would have been more prepared for all of this because it wasn't a surprise that employment insurance wasn't up to the task. We've known for more than a decade, that far too many unemployed workers didn't even qualify for employment insurance. And if they did qualify, it still isn't adequate. Because, remember, I was talking earlier about the importance of income adequacy. It's one thing to provide income benefits to Canadians, but if you're trapping them in poverty, you're actually just perpetuating cycles of poverty. And that's bad policy decision-making. So, long story short, we've had our moments. We do feel like there's greater receptivity to our just recovery plan because these are just obvious solutions. But I would just submit that they shouldn't just be obvious in the middle of a crisis or an emergency. If we'd had investments in these policies decades ago, we would be fighting a pandemic from upstream instead of downstream. JO 19:53 To talk more about the provinces' role in recovery and some options that are being explored in British Columbia, I welcome our next guest. Arden Hanley is Board Chair of the Green Technology Education Centre in BC, which has recently established the Council for the Green New Economy. With a Doctorate of Education, Arden is former vice-president of City University in Seattle. His recently published book, entitled Social Architecture: Notes and Essays, summarizes his 35 years experience as both a family therapist and organizational development consultant. Hello, Arden. And thanks for joining us. ARDEN 20:36 Hi there Joanne, and hi Trish. I'm delighted to have this opportunity to have this conversation with you both. JO 20:44 So, why don't you start by telling us what we need to know about the Green Technology Education Centre. ARDEN 20:50 GTech, as we like to call it, will celebrate its fourth year in the spring of 2021. It's a nonprofit and its mission is to inform, support, and activate communities in responding to the climate crisis. JO 21:09 You recently released a report called Rebuilding BC: A Portfolio of Possibilities. Can you summarize the principles and recommendations in that document, and how they mirror the model outlined in Kate Raworth's book, Doughnut Economics? ARDEN 21:29 Let me give you a bit of background first. At the time COVID struck, we were delivering a community-based program called the Neighborhood Environmental Education Project in conjunction with Vancouver's Association of Neighborhood Houses. And basically, the objective of the program was to deliver education at a community level. We had 14 different environmental organizations make presentations at the neighborhood houses. We also held town halls to listen to the community and where they were standing in relation to the climate crisis. Then along came COVID, and we pivoted at that point and formed the Council for a Green New Economy based on some of the thinking that Trish has already shared. It was very clear to us that when COVID was said and done, there was no way we can or should return to business as usual. What's the alternative? That was our question in terms of economic recovery. What a social justice and green environment and recovery looked like was the mission of the council. The council consisted of a core seven people of economists, environmentalists, lawyers, social workers, and we then surrounded ourselves with a circle of subject matter experts in areas ranging from building retrofits to corporate social responsibility. The report, as you know, is based on what we might call ‘doughnut economy' principles, and the doughnut economy suggests that in shaping the economy, we should consider not just how much money the society is making... what the GDP is... but we should also consider the social and mental health of the society, the education of the society. We should also consider its relationship to its environment or its ecology. So, if you picture the doughnut, then it has these three major layers, the 'social foundation', including mental health, education, and also social justice issues like income, equity, childcare, housing, and so forth. The inner layer is a social foundation. The next level is the relationship with the environment. If we destroy our environment, of course, our economy isn't going to function at all. And then finally, the outer layer is the economy. JO 24:16 So, Arden, what are the specific recommendations outlined in the report? ARDEN 24:23 First of all, the overall recommendation is to take the opportunity of reconstructing the BC economy, post-COVID, in terms of sustainable rather than extractive principles. And within that, then we make four key recommendations. First of all, to generate employment through the construction of new affordable housing, including modular construction for the homeless. And this would be done by an expanded and more effective nonprofit sector. We go on to say, number two, create jobs and reduce carbon emissions through programs that support large scale retrofitting of buildings. Interestingly, buildings are one of the major sources of carbon emissions up to 60% in cities. There's a tremendous carbon payoff from this, as well as great opportunities for employment. The third recommendation addresses our food supply by encouraging BC to secure its food supply by supporting farm employment and increasing land use. And finally, here, there's a tremendous convergence with mental health. As you know, we encourage the government to employ up to 30,000 young people as Recovery Rangers to help with BC's economic recovery. And in the report, we spell out a number of areas where youth employment could be particularly an asset, such as the restoration of environments such as wetlands, the further enhancement of walkability in cities... we identified several areas like that as employment opportunities for young people that would also result in a more green environment for us all. JO 26:26 We heard from Tricia about the federal government's role in policy change. Ideally, what is the province's role in achieving your recommendations? ARDEN 26:36 Well, as you know, the province has very many key domains, such as energy, mines and petroleum; municipal affairs; social development; and poverty reduction… all of those areas fall under the auspices of the provincial government. Provincial government does also have a lot to say about the environment and climate change strategy and has a ministry with that title. The provincial government is also responsible for forest lands and natural resources and rural development. So, all those domains, then there's tremendous steps forward that provincial governments can take to complement the broader strategy of the federal government. JO 27:23 I know that you released this report a number of months ago, and I'm just wondering where you're at with that. Are you having discussions with the provincial government? And if so, how are they unfolding? ARDEN 27:36 Jo, we've had three very productive conversations with government at the cabinet level. We've been very encouraged by their response and also by the inclusion of some of our recommendations in their first economic recovery strategy. But most importantly, we've opened channels for ongoing dialogue. The report has also been a springboard for some further definitive action on the GTech board's part, which we're very excited about. JO 28:09 I know that you've also had discussions with a number of different organizations throughout the province, what has come of those? ARDEN 28:19 In the construction of the report, we had a lot of great feedback from environmentally concerned organizations and environmental organizations. And we incorporated that in the report. But from our point of view, and it also enabled us to build on the relationships that we'd begun to establish through the Neighborhood Environmental Education Project, with a range of the many environmental organizations in BC. And through that, we also began to see a picture of not only tremendous industry and accomplishments, but also continued fragmentation, and a lack of consolidation of effort, which is really been a part of a new strategic plan that the board has been working on, in which GTech has a role in addressing this issue of fragmentation or, in more positive terms, consolidating our efforts. JO 29:20 You've mentioned numerous times that a prime focus of this is enriched employment opportunities, especially for younger people. Have you had any input from organizations like the BC Federation of Labor, for example? ARDEN 29:38 Yes, we have actually built a very positive relationship with the Fed, and we're engaged in ongoing discussions with them. Of course, they have tremendous sensitivities on behalf of their members about where employment takes place, and what government policy supports. I think what's very unique, and I think they would say that as well… that we have not taken a proselytizing stance. With the Fed, we've taken a stance that says let's find common ground, and they certainly do have environmental concerns. And they also have social justice concerns, which we share. JO 30:22 Looking again a little deeper into the employment aspect of this, I know Arden that you have been long involved in counseling and social development and those kinds of things. Why do you think these kinds of green tech opportunities will be embraced by younger potential employees? ARDEN 30:45 While there's no question that the next generations from Gen Z and on are already deeply concerned about the climate crisis. I recall vividly marching across the Cambie Street Bridge with nine- and ten-year-olds, along with parents, teachers, and people of all ages, carrying signs clearly very concerned and aware about environmental issues. There's no question that young people are aware of the climate crisis, its implications, and feel a tremendous urgency, understandably, about this issue being addressed. JO 31:27 And they're also looking to make a contribution to their communities, aren't they? ARDEN 31:32 Definitely. We have a great pilot project going right now, by the way, with Gen Z via two BC high schools, and we're doing an education project about electrified transportation, using an AI mediated application. It's so much fun, and they have so much concern, but also a really sophisticated understanding of these issues. JO 31:57 That's great. It sounds like you're doing amazing work. ARDEN 32:00 I hope that's the case... I certainly feel good about it. The other thing I wanted to mention to you is that Rebuilding BC has also inspired the GTech board of directors to take GTech in a much more definitively educational direction, with the ultimate goal of creating an educational institute in a much more formal way than it is now, including, eventually, degree granting. So, we're quite excited about that development. And I want to assure you, by the way, that as we began to design what this center will look like, that mental health, providing support through counseling and community development initiatives, in relation to mental health has a key role to play in our view. JO 32:48 Well, we'll have to have another discussion once that is all set and ready to go. ARDEN 32:53 For sure... be delighted to. JO 32:55 So, we talked about federal and provincial roles in the move toward a more sustainable economy that also supports mental health. What about the role of local governments in that transition? Arden, do you think local governments have any clout here? Or are they at the whim of senior government policies? ARDEN 33:18 Well, I think Trish was very right in saying that municipal governments, city governments, right now are really struggling. They've lost enormous tax revenue, and at the same time, have had to provide additional services. But Vancouver, for example, does have a plan. And they've put a great deal of energy and attention into it. So, I think cities can play a very important role. JO 33:43 Trish, any more thoughts on that? TRISH 33:46 I agree, they've got one hand tied behind their back, for sure, because they don't have the fiscal tools that provincial and federal government have. But also, I think sometimes local governments have more weight, and some of them think they do, because all of those downstream problems have an economy that's not sustainable in terms of income inequality and climate emergencies. Those present themselves as major problems at the doorsteps of our municipal governments and our health units. So, municipalities are on the front lines, sending word back to senior levels of government to hopefully inform policy and fiscal transfers from those governments. So, I think sometimes municipalities don't have the strength. But especially when they get together and make demands of senior levels of government, real change can happen. JO 34:39 We did a podcast about the role of local government in community mental health, and the big takeaway for me there was that it's not only important for local government to work with senior governments but also with people within their own communities. Groups like businesses, universities, colleges, schools at all levels, and particularly community groups, who not only have ideas about how things can be improved, but also they have the manpower and the passion to get these things on the ground. So, I think that's something else that's really worth noting. TRISH 35:23 Absolutely. Whether it's city council, or provincial or federal, governments cannot make policy in a vacuum. It has to be shaped by the lived experience of people on the ground. JO 35:34 Exactly. Both of your documents… Trish, your Alternative Federal Budget recovery plan… and Arden, your Rebuilding BC document, they both outline the need for a just and green economy. Let's dig a little deeper here, starting with a just economy. Trish, how would you define that? TRISH 36:00 I talked a little bit about that earlier. And so really, to me, the core of a just economy ensures that economic growth isn't the only measure of success, because then you're leaving a lot of suffering out of that frame. A just economy operates on key principles of income, security, greater equality on all fronts... that caring economy that I talked about earlier. And it also understands that a green economy has to be embedded in the just economy, because if we can't save our planet, if the next 40 years is more trying to deal with climate emergencies, then the people in the communities who will be hardest impacted by that by climate change and those climate emergencies, will be people on the lower end of the income spectrum. We see it with every kind of crisis, and we're seeing it with COVID-19. It impacts lower income communities more… it impacts racialized communities more. So, a just economy really is focused more on like that doughnut economy that Arden was talking about. JO 37:11 Arden… additional thoughts? ARDEN 37:13 Let me start with a story. I teach a course called the Psychology of Aging. And one of the exercises I ask students to do is imagine themselves as 72 years old, and looking back over their lives, to ask questions like: What were the most significant turning points in your life journey? And are some of those ones that you would decide differently? Looking back, are there others that you're absolutely delighted with? I have them do it in triads. So, if you can picture that situation, and then following that, the class's debriefing their experience of the exercise, by the way, this exercise, speaking of social justice, has the effect of getting younger people under the ages of barrier. That's one of the intentions. In any case, we're debriefing this exercise, and suddenly, one of the students in the class, it's a graduate class, she's probably around 28, and she suddenly started sobbing. It was so powerful. And she and I talked, and what she said was, "I can't be sure that I'll be even alive when I'm 72. I don't know whether I want to get married. I don't know whether I want to have children. The future of the planet, the environment, but also the social world is so uncertain." It really broke my heart. And there you begin to see that connection between the climate crisis and mental health. It's very evident. JO 38:54 Can you give us some examples as to how a just economy would support better mental health outcomes? Trish... TRISH 39:04 Let me try to loop it in with a just economy and a green economy, and how that could foster better mental health. And just thinking about Arden's exercise... I wish everybody would go through that thought exercise and really think about the future that faces them if we continue with the status quo. There's this term called 'eco-grief'. It describes the deep sense of angst and dread that many people feel, and especially young people, when they realize that our economic activities are compromising the health of our planet. And that time is really running out quickly. And it describes the despair that many people feel over the lack of concerted government efforts to treat climate change like the emergency that it is. Arden mentioned Seth Klein, earlier in his comments, and Seth Klein has a new book called 'A Good War', and it draws on the lessons from previous war time in Canada, where governments treated things like an emergency and made incredible policy advances, and how we need to treat climate change like that emergency. And that's why it's called 'A Good War'... it's definitely a book worth reading. I think that if you address climate change, like the emergency that it is, you would be addressing some of that eco-grief that's out there. And eco-grief isn't just when you think about your future and you wonder, "Am I going to have a future, because are we going to have a healthy planet?" But eco grief is already happening to people whose communities have been ravaged by wildfires, by flooding, by other community-related emergencies. And so, dealing a plan that anticipates more of this, and supports people through these climate emergencies, would also be part of addressing eco-grief. Human beings are deeply connected with our natural environment. We live in a built environment, but we have a deep connection with that natural environment. And if that natural environment isn't doing well, we aren't either… physically or mentally. JO 41:11 Before we move on to a rather complex question. Arden, I'd love for you to just very briefly explain what a green economy is. ARDEN 41:21 I think the major criteria of the green economy is its environmental sustainability. Are we relating to our environment in a way that will result in future generations having the same abundance that we've experienced? And clearly, our current economy does not meet that key criterion. If we continue to use fossil fuels at the level that we currently use them, we will fundamentally destroy environment of the planet. So that's, to me, the first criteria. And the second is how can we relate to the environment in a way that also supports our resilience as communities, families, and individuals. And this whole idea of connection is so important. When I asked Jody Wilson-Raybould, who represents our riding [federally], and is also a colleague, what was the most important thing that Indigenous people had to say about a green economy, she talked, as Trish did earlier, about connection. We need to foster, embrace, and celebrate our connection to the natural world. JO 42:36 So, ideally, we need policies and practices at all levels of government that foster a just economy, and that support a green economy as well. Now, let's talk specifics about how those can best intersect. In your two documents, there are areas of focus that overlap. And I'd like to explore those one at a time and their impacts on mental health. Let's start with climate change. How can what we know about green technology enable not only environmental outcomes, but social sustainability as well? ARDEN 43:17 Well, I think New Zealand, Norway, Finland, are showing us a lot about how to create a healthy society. Let's take for example, how business operates. In all of those countries, government is requiring that corporations… businesses… address environmental and social justice issues in their business planning and operations. So, that requirement is one way to bring the commercial sector of the economy on board with creating not only a more sustainable, but a more compassionate, supportive, and respectful society. JO 43:58 Trish, any comments on that integration regarding climate change? TRISH 44:03 I totally agree with Arden... I would just add one thing. There's this nascent but growing movement in Canada around inclusive economy initiatives. And here they're looking at what public anchor institutions can do in any community across Canada to foster a just economy that's inclusive, sustainable, and that is also a green economy. So, with public anchor institutions... your city council, your hospitals, your universities... these are examples of public institutions that make spending decisions every day, whether it's for procurement, they're putting out RFPs for work that has to get done. And so, with regard to procurement, they're saying, why not make your criteria for procurement social procurement criteria. Instead of just putting out an RFP, and the criteria is we're going to give the RFP to the lowest bidder... how are you the lowest bidder, well, you're paying your employees low wages. And some government policies and spending decisions are actually reinforcing the low-wage precarious economy. If you actually make an inclusive economy, an element and a goal out of your procurement policies would be to look at RFPs from companies in our community who show a commitment to green sustainable practices, who hire and/or offer training opportunities and apprentice opportunities for people from marginalized and historically disadvantaged communities. You think of all the money that gets spent from all these public anchor institutions, and we forget the social and the sustainability question within it. So, ideally, they would intersect by saying, we're not putting out RFPs, or making contracting-out decisions based on cheap. We're making those decisions based on inclusion and resilience and sustainability. And by the way, if public anchor institutions did this, this would be good for their local economies, because they would be less dependent on these external multinational corporations [that] are only interested in your community if you're a low tax jurisdiction, if they can actually get away with a low-paying workforce so that they can extract more profits that don't stay in the community. So, an inclusive economic approach, if you're building a bridge, you would have a community benefit agreement, so that the general contractor who's building the bridge would be hiring people from the community who are on the sidelines of the labour market. They want in, but they don't have access to those opportunities. So, there's a lot more power that our public anchor institutions have, I think that they could be exercising, that we have to change the frame from cheap and low bidder, to social and sustainable. JO 47:02 Trish talked in detail about inclusive economy, and both of your reports talked about equality. Are those the same thing? TRISH 47:12 They're interconnected, for sure. I co-founded the National Income Inequality Project in 2006. Actually, since then, we've been tracking the growth of income inequality in Canada, and the storyline is the same today as it was in 2006. As we've grown the economy, the benefits of that economic growth haven't been redistributed.... that more and more, if you're well off, you're even more better off. Corporations and CEOs, the CEO pay gap compared to the average income, keeps going through the roof. So, if you actually want to attack income inequality, and protect the middle class and the working class, and eliminate poverty, then you have to change how you do your economy. And you have to make sure that the economy isn't simply extractive. That economy has to have social goals that say, we want to be a Canada that leaves no one behind, and we're one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, we actually have the resources to do it. The pandemic is forcing us to spend some resources to do some of this stuff, but it can't stop there. We can't go back to an old model because it wasn't working in the first place. JO 48:32 Arden, any comments about inclusivity or equality? ARDEN 48:37 Absolutely. Let me channel first Bernie Sanders a little bit… and looking at the example of the United States… three billionaires... Bezos, Gates, and Buffet... command as much wealth as the lower 50% or 150 million people in the US. This is income disparity. Now, let me link it directly to mental health through a book that I found so informative and fascinating, The Spiritual Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. And what that book does, and their subsequent research does, is report on the social and mental health impact of income disparity. It turns out that there's a very direct relationship between income disparity and a whole range of societal wellness and mental health issues, ranging from infant mortality to longevity, including teenage pregnancies and delinquency. There's just a remarkable connection. And this research was enabled, of course, because over the last 50 years, the developing countries have kept very comprehensive statistics of the social dimensions or determinants of societies. So, let's talk about taxation and banks. If we want to have a healthier society, we need to adjust the tax system so that it redistributes income much more equitably. And we also need to provide sources of funding that recognize, explicitly, wellness and sustainability. We need instruments like social banks. JO 50:24 Both of your reports also included information about affordable housing. So, Trish, starting with you, what is the link between that and both a just and green economy? TRISH 50:38 Here, I'm just gonna give you an example. The City of Medicine Hat [Alberta] became the first city in Canada to eliminate chronic homelessness. And how did they do that? They gave people housing... they gave them access to housing. And once they had access to housing, they offered other income and community support to help the homeless integrate back into the community. This is a model of how you actually look at solutions that aren't just one dimensional. Yes, the homeless need housing, but they also benefit from wraparound services so that they can get back on their feet and integrate into the community again. Unfortunately, I think too many times when we think about affordable housing, we think about it in commodified private market-sector terms. We think about affordable housing as the housing market is too expensive. Say, can we do something to lower my mortgage rate? And, [with] that focus on the private sector… can I buy my own home and afford to?" [This] pushes a lot of people out of the window... the homeless number one, but also people who will never be able to afford to carry a mortgage, people who will always be in the rental market or rental market that is squeezing more people is increasingly unaffordable, and not regulated to protect renters and tenants. I think that you have to look at all of these things in an integrated way. And not just in that commodified private sector market. What can a government do to make it easier for you to buy a house or a second home... the well off? We have to think about who's missing from this frame? JO 52:28 Arden, what about the impact of education on a just and green economy? ARDEN 52:34 Let me just say one thing about housing if I can, Jo. One of the things we recommend is the support and further development of nonprofit housing providers, which can really make a substantial difference in the availability of housing to minorities and the economically disadvantaged. The other thing… I just want to highlight what Trish was saying about once you have people housed, then you can wrap services around them much more easily than if they're on the street or moving from place to place. Education's my bias, one of the fundamental predictors of sustainability and health in a society. And there's so much that we can do with education. Let's just take the example of assuring that we're educating girls and young women. The level of education of women in the society is one of the most vibrant predictors of the society's wellness and its economic development. JO 53:36 This last one is really near and dear to my heart as a communication specialist to all levels of government with regard to public outreach and engagement. What is the link between public engagement, a just economy, and a green economy? TRISH 53:53 In researching what some communities across North America and in the UK are doing to foster an inclusive economy, I was struck by what the City of Seattle has done. They've actually set up a table where all of the representatives from frontline service workers in those most marginalized and disadvantaged communities, they have a table to inform the city policies and budget decisions. In Canada, often there'll be consultations, and there might be a brief mayor's table that's created. And you might be able to come in and weigh in at that one time, and then you're gone. This table is a permanent table. The people who are actually seeing the devastation of public policies and an economy that leaves too many behind have a permanent place influencing the city's budget and policy decision-making. And those are frontline leaders who are deeply connected in their communities and they're bringing back the information, the stories. and the recommendations from their communities. I think that's a powerful model. JO 55:06 It's very progressive. Arden? ARDEN 55:09 I was just thinking of in terms of an inclusive economy. And I'm sure that an inclusive economy contributes to the mental health of the society and its members. It's about the availability of money. And this is another strength of public banking, which is very well developed in Europe, for example, public banking is much more inclined to make money available to disadvantage groups. JO 55:38 So, you're talking about public investment, then? ARDEN 55:41 Yes, absolutely. Public banks are generally owned by government. It's an instrument that government can use to generate a more just and more fair economy. TRISH 55:54 And imagine if we had that here, and that if you were very low income and needed cash quickly, that your option wasn't solely to go to payday lenders who are charging exorbitant, I would say criminal, amounts of interest that can just keep you stuck in poverty forever. Imagine if we actually delegitimize the payday lender sector and said, there's a role for government here. ARDEN 56:22 Thanks so much for getting there, Trisha. That's where I was going to go next. Yes, let's get rid of a loan outfit. TRISH 56:29 Exactly. JO 56:30 I know you both agree that social justice, resilience, and sustainability are three sides of the same coin. So, have we already covered that? Or are there other things that you'd like to add here? Arden? ARDEN 56:45 COVID made it very clear, I think Trish was saying that earlier. The people who are suffering most, let's even say dying, or frequently are the disadvantaged members of our society. So, you can begin to see there... the sides of the coin relate to one another. Or if you look at climate change... the communities and the countries in the world who are already suffering the impact of climate change, most dramatically, are the countries who are in poverty with disintegrating societies, and so forth. We need to approach these issues from all three sides of the coin, that is including social justice and resilience along with sustainability. JO 57:30 So, that triples the complexity then of the challenges and the opportunities? ARDEN 57:36 It also amplifies the benefits of making significant progress, and any side of the coin, because it's likely to influence the other sides in a positive way. TRISH 57:48 I think it acknowledges the complexity… it acknowledges that all of these things are interconnected, that the Minister of Health doesn't just look at doctors and nurses and hospitals. If the Minister of Health really wants to promote healthy societies, that Minister of Health is working with the Minister of Education is working with the Minister of Labour, to create decent work, to create educational opportunities, skills, training, lifelong skills, an economy that keeps changing and demands more and more of us. So, it's like what I said earlier about the leg bone being connected to the hip bone. Sometimes public policy acts as though they're not connected at all. But if you acknowledge that complexity, and how interconnected all of these things are, then you're actually not putting good money after bad money, you're actually investing in solutions that can lead to a healthier, more cohesive society. And also more inclusive economies that give people hope and make them feel like they have a chance in life. And all of that is deeply interconnected with the health and vibrancy of our democracies, because I've long said that democracies can't run on autopilot... it requires a deeply engaged citizenry. And you can't do that if you're just fighting to keep a roof over your head. If you're fighting to get some kind of food, any kind of food into your home, you can't feel like you're actually engaged. You've got this other full-time job and it's trying to stay alive and keep your family going. So, acknowledging those complexities would be a very upstream approach to government policymaking. JO 59:33 How do both your organization's recommendations for a just and green economy stack up against the World Health Organization's sustainable development goals? Arden? ARDEN 59:46 We know that Rebuilding BC is fundamentally aligned with the sustainability goals of the United Nations and was something that we took into consideration and were aware of. And the amazing thing is, so many of these documents, these reports, these policy recommendations, are aligned with one another. And my hope for the future is that we'll work more closely together and have more dialogue. TRISH 1:00:14 If we embraced well-being budgeting and inclusive economy initiatives, we would make far more progress on those Sustainable Development Goals than we're making today. As I said earlier, Canada is one of the wealthiest countries on the planet. The only thing preventing Canada from achieving those Sustainable Development Goals has been political will, at every jurisdictional level. And so, I'm hoping that if one good thing can happen from a pandemic, that will snap us out of the status quo approach, because the status quo hasn't been the option. Both of our documents that we're talking about today give us a pathway to achieving those goals. JO 1:00:53 Talking about what we've learned from the pandemic, what have you learned about each of the following? First of all, the potential for rapid policy change and financial support? Trish? TRISH 1:01:05 Everything is possible. Everything's on the table, and everything is possible. And like I said about Seth Klein, what he has to say... treat it like an emergency... and the solutions present themselves. ARDEN 1:01:16 Governments can pivot enormously quickly when they have to, and they can command more resources than they've allowed us to know. JO 1:01:27 How about the drawbacks of bipartisan politics and their impact on our ability to move toward better mental health? TRISH 1:01:37 I think we've seen less performative politics... performative, partisan jostling during the pandemic. I mean, there's still some of it, but there hasn't been a huge public appetite for that sort of thing. JO 1:01:48 Not in Canada, anyway. TRISH 1:01:50 That's right. Watching the US news can feel very defeating some days. So, there's been more cooperation than I think we're used to seeing in recent years. And I think that you're seeing how things can work when provinces and municipalities and the federal government work in common cause. And I just want to see more of it over the long haul. JO 1:02:10 What about the role of innovation? TRISH 1:02:13 We've seen huge innovation from the public service to create federal programs to support those workers and businesses that were sidelined at the start of the pandemic. There were public servants who were writing new policy overnight, and doing very innovative work under duress, often from their homes with children under foot at the beginning of the economic lockdown. It's not just in this moment that we see it. Economist Mariana Mazzucato, she's written about the history of the public sector, and how governments have historically led the way on innovations that later get picked up by the private sector. And so, governments and the public sector often get short shrift when it comes to appreciating the power that they have to create innovative new solutions to the problems that are before us. But I actually hope that this pandemic is fostering a renewed appreciation for the role and the responsibility that governments have not only to protect the public good, but to spur the innovations required to meet that goal, to protect and support the public good. ARDEN 1:03:23 On the ground level, my local coffee shop has been so innovative in continuing to connect with, reach out, and serve the local community. And also, I think the business sector of the economy has been incredibly innovative, and shifting a great deal of their transactions, meetings, and work online to lower the risk of transmission through face-to-face encounters. JO 1:03:52 This next one is really key to me in that the Fresh Outlook Foundation has really focused on increasing communication and collaboration. So, what have you learned about the importance of collaboration during the pandemic? That could be across geographies, governments, businesses, NGOs, academics, demographics, etc. We could go on. Trish, what's your takeaway there? TRISH 1:04:23 This is a big one. But I'll just focus on how we have seen public health experts and epidemiologists from around the world collaborating on learning in real time about this virus, sharing that information so that other countries can be better prepared to deal with outbreaks, working collaboratively to try to develop in real time vaccines that can sometimes take decades to create. And so, I'm seeing a level of cooperation for all around the public good that is not just national in scope. You're seeing it across Canada, but you're also seeing it globally as well. And that is very heartening to me. ARDEN 1:05:08 I think the level of collaboration, level of action, and hot networks has increased quite dramatically. And it's really heartening. And it's really a lot of fun. So, let's reach out, listen, connect, learn, and then take action together. JO 1:05:28 When we talk about these revelations for rapid policy change, financial support, the role of innovation, the importance of collaboration, how can we use these revelations to best inform response to other very big societal challenges such as loneliness and systemic racism, for example? TRISH 1:05:53 I'm going to go back to Seth Klein's findings from his book, The Good War. Treat it like an emergency. Treat loneliness and depression like it's an emergency, instead of putting people on six-month waiting lists that they may or may not ever be [able to] afford or to have access to help from. Treating homelessness like an emergency. Before this pandemic, we just really became complacent, and I'm really hoping that this pandemic jolts us out of that. ARDEN 1:06:24 I think we need to work together on the fundamentals. And to me, the fundamentals are building communities and supporting families. That's the cornerstone of our society. JO 1:06:36 Given the tenure of existing free-market economic policies and practices, how can we make the break to a more just and green economy? TRISH 1:06:49 We might be reaching the tipping point with this global pandemic. It broke down supply chains. It's illustrated the power of governments to act. It's reduced many private-sector actors to businesses begging for government help, and we can't unsee that. That is something that's happening, and it's affecting how we view who acts and where the leadership needs to come from. ARDEN 1:07:12 To go back to Trish's point, I think the fundamental flaw is prioritizing material gain over the public good. And I think that we need to prioritize the public good, and all of our thinking, and especially our thinking about economies. And yes, COVID has helped us to make that transition. The great majority of people are very aware of the imperative to take care of one another during this period, to wear masks to keep appropriate distance, to limit our social contact, at the same time finding new ways to be connected with one another. JO 1:07:54 Exactly. And I hear over and over again amongst my family and friends and professional networks that people are really thinking about what really matters. And I think that's just a hugely important shift. Let's say that we do hop on that path to a more just and green economy. How long would it take before we start seeing positive impacts of that? TRISH 1:08:22 I think almost immediately… you put the inputs in, and the outputs will start presenting themselves almost immediately. It will take as long as required, but not a second more, and change can happen swiftly. ARDEN 1:08:35 I live near a very busy street called King Edward. It's an east-west thoroughfare in Vancouver, not quite as dramatic as the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto, but a very busy street. For two weeks, during the height of the pandemic, King Edward went quiet. There were occasional vehicles rather than herds of vehicles. And those vehicles were driving very slowly. There w
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