Whenever someone in my neighborhood cuts down a tree, my child cries. There are no words in the social-emotional-learning lexicon of emotions she learned in pre-school for that unique emotion of grieving the death of a tree. On the contrary, in Western colonial-capitalist culture, we are discouraged from feeling that grief. It is naive, and emotional maturity means getting over that kind of trivial thing.
Yet, in many cultures, especially indigenous cultures, the death of a tree or animal or entire landscape feels akin to the death of a family member– nature is kin, after all– and can cause existential mourning or threat to identity, and there are words and rituals for how to metabolize it.
Why should we lean into ecological grief, rather than shun, fix, or repress it? What does “grief literacy” look like, and why might our ecological crisis require us to gain those skills? What does the inability to lean into grief mean for the climate crisis, and how might we collectively leverage grief for political change?
These are the kinds of questions I explore in this episode with Dr. Ashlee Cunsolo, an expert on ecological grief, especially in the frontline Inuit communities she studies in the Arctic.
Show notes:
- Cunsolo’s book, Mourning Nature
- Cunsolo’s film, Lament for the Land
- Glen Albrecht and Solastalgia, and his book Earth Emotions
- Ashlee’s website to learn more about all her work, ashleecunsolo.ca
- Ashlee’s podcast, Second Nature: Living With Ecological Grief(Apple Podcasts)
- Judith Butler’s book, Precarious Life, and her work on grievability
- Deborah McGregor on grieving as moral and spiritual responsibility
- Francis Weller on the sacred work of grief
- Wade Davis and the loss of languages as the loss of worlds
- Grief resources and lexicon, from the Climate Mental Health Network
- Caroline Hickman et. al’s seminal research on youth climate anxiety around the world
- Sarah Ray’s essay on the weaponization of youth climate anxiety by the Department of Commerce to defund climate research
Machine transcript:
Ray: Welcome to Climate Magic, where we talk about the relationship between climate change and our hearts and minds. I interview experts, activists, and random people as we dive deep into the emotional life of climate politics. I'm Sarah Jacquet Ray, a professor at Cal Poly Humboldt and fellow climate despairing human. How do our brains, nervous systems, and the culture we live in shape our ability to confront climate change? How can we unlock the emotional and mental capacities that these difficult times demand of us? How can we leverage our skills, passions, and care for the earth, our very own climate? Magic for collective change? Join me as we explore these questions on climate magic.Cunsolo: Some of the grief comes from the the tension, like the the ickiness that we feel when we know we're participating in something that is also causing harm.
Ray: On the show today, I speak with Dr. Ashlee Cunsolo, who's my first guest calling in from the Atlantic Time Zone in eastern Canada.
Dr. Cunsololo is the vice provost of the Labrador campus and the Dean of the School of Arctic and Subarctic Studies at the Labrador campus of Memorial University, and she's a climate change and health researcher. Ashlee is a community engaged social science and health geographer working at the intersection of place, culture, health and the environment. Her interest is really in the areas of climatic, social, environmental and cultural determinants of indigenous health, intercultural learning and dialogue, environmental ethics, and the social justice implications of social, environmental and health inequality.
She is a leading voice nationally and internationally on climate change and mental health, ecological grief, and the intangible losses and damages that arise from climate change. She's been recognized nationally and internationally for her community based research and science outreach, and is a regular media contributor on climate change, mental health, and ecological grief.
In this episode, Ashlee and I talk about how ecological grief and ecological losses became a topic of study for her and how her climate magic is figuring out ways to harness people's ecological emotions for policy change.
We discuss how frontline communities such as the Inuit, where she researches, are calling attention to the mental health issues of climate change. She talks a little bit about how different cultures perceive climate grief differently, and the importance of an approach where we are drawn toward grief as a feeling of connection and love and belonging, rather than repulsed from it, as in much Western culture. And I have to confess myself as well. Grief here is an invitation to aliveness and connection to nature and to each other, rather than something to be feared or suppressed or cured.
How language shapes our environmental awareness is another big topic of our conversation that I got really excited about. She describes how indigenous languages are better equipped to help us notice the changes in nature, and therefore obviously why language revitalization is an essential aspect of ecological preservation. This then builds a case in our conversation for the fact that we need a much better lexicon for emotions that reflect the human relationship with the earth.
She describes also her research work with a quite famous philosopher in Australia, Glenn Albrecht, who's famous for coining the term solastalgia and has a couple other books I’ll connect in our show notes about comparing the ecological emotions that are happening in the Arctic versus Australia, and what that tells us.
We talk a little bit about what I found kind of disturbing– a vicious cycle of people becoming distanced from nature, which then makes it hard for them to even perceive ecological losses or even feel the grief, which then also diminishes their tools to prevent it. And her argument here is that we should really lean into ecological grief as a strategy. She even calls it a strategy, a political strategy, to help prevent ecological loss.
We talk about the importance of studying ecological grief and climate emotions, not just in terms of mental health, but their effectiveness for changing policy around climate and around resources for mental health. We also really get into, at the very end, the work that she's doing to empirically study mental health impacts of climate change at a population level, so that she can leverage that kind of empirical work to support people better.
So are you ready for this deep dive into ecological grief with doctor Ashlee Cunsolo? Let's go.
Ray: So Ashley Cunsololo, in your seminal 2018 research on ecological grief, you write the following:
“Recognizing ecological grief as a legitimate response to ecological loss is an important first step for humanizing climate change and its related impacts. How to grieve ecological loss as well, particularly when there are ambiguous, cumulative and ongoing, is a question without answer. Ecological grief is not about submitting to despair, and neither does it justify switching off from the many environmental problems that confront humanity. Instead, we find great hope in the responses ecological grief is likely to invoke. Just as grief over the loss of a loved person puts into perspective what matters in our lives, collective experiences of ecological grief may coalesce into a strengthened sense of love and commitment to the places, ecosystems and species that inspire, nurture and sustain us. There is much grief work to be done and much of this will be hard. However, being open to the pain of ecological loss may be what is needed to prevent such losses from occurring in the first place.”
I open with that quote because it really captures that first moment where your research came to the forefront of people's consciousness, that this article and this work that you did has made its rounds and kind of went viral– hit a nerve. I'm curious for just starting us off, could you tell me a little bit about your own journey to studying the emotional side of climate change? How did you come to this conclusion that we would do well to face ecological grief as a way to actually protect the things that we would grieve?Cunsolo: Yeah. I mean, it was such a long journey that led to that 2018 article, and really wasn't something that I did in isolation at all. Like it was really emerging from work I was doing up north. I had started working in northern Labrador and on the the northeast part of Canada, with Intimate Communities back in 2008, 2009.And through that research, it was all around climate change and its impacts on health and well-being, including physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. But what we really heard from people, and what community members were telling us and what elders and leaders and knowledge holders were sharing, was that actually the mental health impacts were incredibly difficult, and that already grief was happening.So this is really interesting. I mean, 2008, like we're almost 20 years to that point. And at that point, people weren't really talking about this publicly. Now, people all over the world for thousands of years understand what it means to have a deep connection to the natural world, to grieve for it, to feel pain, to feel loss.But in the sort of academic literature, in the public, talks around climate change, mental health, ecological grief, loss– it wasn't coming up. It was all sort of the technocratic approach. It was, you know, loss of property, but not this kind of human, human pain and suffering. So in this research work that I was doing and people were talking about this loss and this pain, but also as a strength, like, there is this point of connection because what you grieve is also what you love.And so people would always talk about the pain of the loss after they've had spent significant time telling about the love, the love of land, the love of culture and the love of animals and plants and the other beings, the love of sea ice, the all of it was love. And then it was. And this is why it hurts. And this is why we're so connected. And this is where the pain comes from. So that was kind of the through line where I really started to think about grief as a much broader structure and strategy to, to to really confront climate change and the climate crisis. And I think it was also this kind of freeing moment for me because, in my own personal life, I had been very attuned to environmental losses, had felt a lot of grief on my own around environmental things.But, you know, you always kind of feel this sense of shame around it, at least cited, like I was embarrassed or, you know, you grow up, you're too sensitive. Oh, that's so silly. Like, you know, all those other side of things that are said to us or we tell ourselves was all around like, I shouldn't be so sensitive. I shouldn't be so attuned. I shouldn't be so sad. Like, what's wrong with me? It's just the environment.
And so that was kind of this, the structure being raised in and then entering into another cultural context where it was actually very clear that people should be sad and that the environment was family, was kin, was another part of you, was your beating heart.And anything that changed would automatically. And of course, it would become a very normal part of your life to feel this, this loss. This is really from the work where I was able to kind of look at my personal experiences, look at what was happening in other places and then think, okay, maybe this is actually a framework.And then it really solidified when I met Glenn Albrecht and Neville Ellis from Australia. Glenn, all of our wonderfully long standing philosopher and thinker in this area. Neville at the time was this PhD student, and we started talking about the context in which we were working, which are radically different. You know, we had drought prone Australia, and then we had northern Labrador like cultural context, and everything was as different as it could be.And yet people's responses were very, very, very similar. So we started having this conversation among our research groups around what are the key points if we were to look at grief as an actual structure of analysis and experience and, clarity and also of resistance. So before that article with Neville, I had another one that was part of my PhD that published, separately on Mourning Nature and the work of the work of mourning as an actual fundamental work as a climate crisis.And so it kind of all built from there. But it was really, like a collective journey of people sharing their private feelings of isolated loss and bringing it forward into this collective discussion and this collective consciousness of, hey, maybe there's something more or two to grief. And then looking at grief literature as a, as a whole and going, wait, this can actually extend into the climate crisis.Like there's something so critical here, that we need to think about when we're talking about climate change is not removed. It's not separate. It's not absent from pain or loss or suffering or humanity.
Ray: When you describe there about the shame you felt, feeling grief for feeling sadness about the environment when you were young and this kind of bringing emotions like grief into this collective consciousness to reduce that shame of it. You're not alone feeling, this is really, you say that thinking about grief as a strategy is a way to use a strategy to confront the climate crisis, and I'm wondering if part of that has something to do with the fact that a culture that tells you not to have feelings about the environment is doing the work of separating humans from the environment, and that the places that you're describing Australia, the Inuit experience in the Arctic, that where those relationships as human relationships to the land are so much more tight and have been for millennia, but also the the basic needs of the community are so tied to the land. There isn't that kind of insulation, like I'll just pick up an extra whatever at Safeway on my way home, right? There's not that same impact when there's something terrible happening to the land. I personally, in my conditioning, can really separate myself from that and not feel those impacts. Is there something to be said there for those emotions being far more like a canary in the coal mine, people who are really connected to the land are going to be feeling these emotions more intensely. And how can that help us find our way through if we're not that close to the land?Cunsolo: Yeah, it's interesting, right? Because I think there's definitely the proximal kind of piece that keeps you connected. And I think what kind of overrides that in many ways is, you know, I again, going back to that idea that for thousands of years people have been so deeply connected to the land that when things change, you feel that pain, it's like losing a loved one.What is fascinating, though, is, you know, back in 2008, 2009, I would have said that. Yes, that the more close you are, the more grief you're going to feel. And it is a different type of grief. And it is grief based on exactly as you described, any change in the environment, no matter how subtle, has impacts and ripple effects on mental and emotional and spiritual wellbeing.But what we're seeing now moving through is, yes, there's people who have sounded the alarm for many, many years and in fact many generations. But now there's all these different types of ways to grieve the environment. And so having that, that first person immediate connection is now not the only way that people are articulating it. But I do think that the lessons to be learned, the pieces to understand is actually in the places where people are so connected.The canary in the coal mine is a really interesting one because, so, so it's a set sort of a little bit of context. One of the elders, and community leaders that we were working with in the community, we were down south in Canada in a conference in Ottawa, and Inuit in Labrador have been at the frontlines for for many, many years, for decades.Actually, Labrador is one of the fastest warming places anywhere in the world. Things have been changing very quickly. And someone said to her in the audience, oh, so anyway, they're like canaries in the coal mine. They're the early warnings of the climate crisis. And she just sobbed and she said, well, I would prefer if we didn't think about it that way, because canaries are expendable in this example and we're not expendable.That what we are actually is, is not about the early warnings of like, this is where the kind of death point is. But the early warnings of this is where you can actually connect, and that that grief in that sense, if you look at it as a strategy, if you look at it as, as a point of, of a line is actually a form of resistance.And then this, this really ties into Judith Butler's work in Precarious Life too, where she talks about this. We create capacity that if we grieve, it's actually a powerful social movement. And so that's what this woman, Elder Charlotte, was saying, was that we're not a canary in a coal mine. We are not expendable. We are actually the voices of a hurting planet.Like we're where the line where people can actually learn to come to us, not to run away. Because you know what? The canary, the canary passes out, everybody backs off. Whereas in this case, like people are saying, and we should be moving towards it. So it's, it's an interesting way of thinking about it. And that really changed for me in those moments of like the running to grief versus the running away from grief and how different cultural contexts teach us to run towards grief or run away from grief or things like grief is a horrible thing, versus it actually shows us how deeply connected we are.And that's a gift and a sign of resistance.
Ray: I love that, that, that was going to be another one of my questions was going to be something along the lines of when you were talking to Glenn Albrecht about Australia and kind of comparing notes. So two different, completely different ecosystems in different hemispheres, different issues around climate change, but similar emotions. You said, and I was going to ask you about this kind of cultural lesson we can learn here. My question is about we often hear about emotions around climate change, too. We hear about emotions in terms of pathology or through the lens of the field of psychology and practitioners and the questions for these folks are often things like, you know, what is it? How do we manage it? What are the treatments, that kind of thing. But you're a health geographer and social scientist, scholar, you know, thinking about these cross-cultural experiences from your perspective, what maybe else is going on? What's a new way of thinking about, climate emotions or eco-grief? How would you diagnose eco-grief from a cultural context? Or maybe the question I'm trying to get to is something like, how do climate emotions help us understand politics or culture better?Cunsolo: Yeah. And the move to pathologizing is something that people want to do so much, like what's wrong with you and how can we fix it? Which again is really interesting because from, from, you know, very like, a modern western white civilization that's kind of the response all the time is like, what's the problem? How do we fix it? We don't like to feel this way. It's icky. Like, either suppress it or make it go away. And so when you think about grief in this kind of context, and again, this is all from the research that I was doing and, and from lessons that people were sharing with me over the years.Why would we want to move away from grief like that? Grief is how we know we are connected to the land and, you know, interestingly, Deborah MacGregor, who's a wonderful, Anishinaabe scholar in Canada, she does work in this area, too. She's just a brilliant thinker, and an environmental justice more broadly, talks about sort of the moral and spiritual responsibility to grieve.That this grief is actually a sacred compact, that we have these relationships, that are important to acknowledge. They are the relationships with other beings, with the land and that it is a responsibility to grieve. And so these kind of different perspectives that we're learning from indigenous peoples and other cultural contexts becomes so important as a teaching point where, you know, I, I think for me personally, growing up in particular types of culture running from grief, not wanting that, not learning grief literacy, not understanding the importance of it, you know, just knowing it was very sad and very hard.That doesn't teach you the skills to think about grief in a different way. So what I think a lot of the lessons coming out of ecological grief from other places like Australia or other indigenous contexts around the world, small island states in the South Pacific. The Arctic is other cultural context saying, actually, hold on, grief is super important.It's an incredible mechanism to show what we love, what we value, who we are. And it's this important life skill, like, like it's actually a skill. And if we're thinking about climate change and we're trying to develop all of these skills to deal with it, grief and actually living in grief might be one of those really important skills.And we don't think about that, which is really interesting. But now I like I see a change. I see people wanting to talk about it more. There's more focus on on providing supports for people who are doing the work or in activists, spheres and advocacy spheres climate anxiety, eco anxiety, all of that is like there's a lot around it now.There's different support groups. There's things set up to give people the skills, actually move through it, and not the isolated. But there's still this sort of differential cultural value of, which way do we lean in grief? Do we want to go towards it because we celebrate and it teaches us something and it's a moral responsibility. Or, one of the people that I worked with once, up north said it's the very least we can do.Cunsolo: And I thought, wow, that's so interesting, because to say that our grief, our outpouring of the the pain of the planet, of the loss is the very least we can do, and that that was actually somehow a form of empowerment when we're facing this, this sort of devastating change in the planet, that that grief is the least we can do.So things like that, that helped shape us. But also tell us the political and ethical contexts in which different cultures are, are connecting with the environment. Grief, actually, it tells us a lot about, who we who we who we grieve and why we grieve and how we grieve tells us a lot about what sort of ethical and moral and political context.Ray: Yeah, that's. Also another Butler grieveability. Right. The idea, yes. Cunsolo: Grief that somebody is are grieving and are not. And why. And that type of context. And that's like making that jump from Butler from human grieve and nine grieve over bodies to environmental grieve a little and not in group bodies. Was was a lot of like a lot of the impetus of this work to write was like, why are we able to grieve like beloved pets?Ray: And that's an acceptable grieve of a body. But then if we move into something else, it's not. Yeah, it's an interesting. I mean, I am even thinking about how my 11 year old just cries every time anyone in the neighborhood takes down a tree and I don't know what to do. And I think to myself, I would like you just to move on. The just don't even think about it. So let's just just move on.Yeah. I was like, I was like crying in trees. And then, you know, speaking about moving towards versus away, my cultural training tells me to move away from my kid in this state, and then my learning or my unlearning or my grief. Literacy. If you will call it that. I love that word, tells me to really lean into and try to foster this and heard it so that she does Alana's message that that's not craveable, and that this is not a, well, thing to lean into. So, thank you for the reminder that that's something that's a good practice.Yeah. Well, and it's interesting because I always think, like, as as children's, the the lines are blurrier, right? They're not. You don't realize the differentiation. A life is a life. And you see something that you love as a tree and you feel it's getting hurt. And then but then the society around you tells you it's just the tree, you know, like you get that.And so as part of my own journey has been like trying to remember what it was like to be little me when I didn't see those. Right. Well, kind of and the and the, infantilizing or the, the dismissing of those emotions as childish and that being a mature adult and earning all the rights of adulthood mean not having feelings for nature is very much part of the kind of coming age story of being in the Western capitalist society, right? Don't have the messiness of those emotions are messy and they drag you down, you know, so.Ray: Exactly who has time for them? Like we're laughing, but of course, it's. Yeah. I mean, so the way I was steeped in to, you were talking about sort of more than human body is. And when we're talking about ecosystems and in your research, you talked about Inuit, subsistence. You know, when you are connected to the land, these types of things are personal. The beating heart. I'm also thinking about how might this kind of grief, literacy, shape other things that we might need to let go of? So could we grieve better, letting go of systems that are harmful? Can we grieve better our complicity in destructive systems? Is there other way, other things that we should be thinking about grieving, that are there we want to welcome. We want to welcome letting go of them because they may not be good for the planet.Cunsolo: Yeah, yeah. It's so it's an interesting way of thinking about it around like removing barriers to create more space for grief. And I think when you, when you sort of frame it like that, this idea too, that some of the grief comes from the, the tension, like the, the ickiness that we feel when we know we're participating in something that is also causing harm, and we know we're doing stuff which then causes like a negative on the other end, and then we grieve, and then we feel gross about it, and then we feel complicit, stuck in this moment. It's like, ‘okay, I'm grieving’. And simultaneously I got on a plane, you know, like this. It's like it's these conditions that we live in. Don't make that. Don't make it easy to grieve sometimes soon, because then it's it also forces you to kind of deal with the structures and the complicity. Or like, you know, you get in your vehicle, and you're driving and then you're feeling bad about the planet.So like, there's all these kind of layers. But I think it's an interesting idea to look at what what is it that we can remove? Like, Francis Weller does some really interesting grief rituals. There's there's other, in Canada, there's a great organization called Refugio Retreats where you actually kind of go in to do these very intentional grief rituals.That is about letting go, clearing space, clearing paths, allowing the grief to flow out. But in order to flow out, you actually have to kind of clear the bits away, right? Like you have to open that space so the grief can come out. And I wonder if that is like, yes, structurally and systematically. Absolutely. But then there's also this that the stories we tell ourselves, like the, like the, the internal infrastructure that we have to clear away to and the internal systems, the things that we have internalized from, you know, the global capitalist society and from all of these things that were being told all the time.Ray: It's like the internal clearing and the external clearing have to happen, like simultaneously and always like that. Work will never be done. Just like grief, like the grief for the planet will never be done. Like we're now in this kind of, like endless cycle of of grief. Yeah. And I have to say, it's it's it's irresistible to me to not want to go there, you know? So. Yeah, I see what you mean about the there's some.Cunsolo: Yeah, the, the internal work and the external work simultaneously. Yeah. Like one of my, you know, maladaptive coping strategies, if we look at it a particular way, is I like to think about it, and I like to write about it, and I like to talk about it because then you don't feel it right? Like you're, you're. And I like to conceptualize and theorize and you know, and that's, that's something like I have to peel that away so that, like, I can actually get to the work of the emotions themselves.Right? So even those internal structures or the internal narratives that we tell ourselves all the time about, don't be silly, this is ridiculous. Why are you so like, you know, sensitive? Yeah. You know, those sorts of things, right?
Ray: Yeah. Thank you for that. I was going to ask you a question about other emotions, too, in Western culture and also especially the English language, we don't have a lot of words for emotions that reflect, human relationship with the more than human world at all. So we have, like, anger and joy or or, you know, frustration or ennui, even more granular words for emotions. But none of these actually, you know, if we think about our kindergartners social emotional learning phases, you know, that we get hope, like, oh, you're going to have social emotional learning with your kindergartner. Here we go. None of those words have anything to do with the Earth, you know? So I'm curious, you know, why don't we have more granular emotions or even any emotion words at all in the English language that have to do with our relationship to the earth? And what are some things that you're seeing change about that you talked about your relationship with Glenn Albrecht. He's got a beautiful book called Earth Emotions, and he he's got a whole dictionary of words, solar astrologer being kind of the famous one. But why do we need this vocabulary?Cunsolo: Yeah, I mean, Glenn's work is is it's so important because, often, unless you're sort of a language scholar, people aren't thinking about the ways in which their language shapes everything. So the fact that the English language doesn't have words that show these, like relational connections or, has environmentally based words related to pain, loss, joy, all of that.Cunsolo: Like they're so separate, like we're really a box kind of language that has a really celebrated through structures of language, the separation of humans from the, the natural world. And then when you are steeped in that and you grow up in that and that is your language structure, that then frames how your brain thinks, it frames how you create these hierarchies of connections in the world.It frames the moral, ethical, political approaches. And so all of that is language based, right? So when you confront, and learn about and experience other languages, like a lot of indigenous languages, it's a very different structural context. Words mean very different things. Words like can be whole sentences and one word where you're just describing something in relationship to its its location in the environment.So the relationship between things and then when you start to think about that and you just try to imagine how your world would be different if our language was different. And that's I think the work that Glenn is trying to do is trying to get back to these words and phrases that we could have in the English language that would actually show this diverse contexts and relationship, and to study what other languages do in the world, and again, particularly indigenous languages, to have a more relational approach through words that connects you to the environment, connects, place all of those things.Ray: Right. But the the English language is all about separation, and it's all about these kind of like almost rigid boundaries of like, you know, this versus that versus this. And nothing is in context to each other. And that seems like it's framing generations of humans to kind of it makes it hard to language what's, what's actually happening.
I think about, you as a child or my kid with the trees in the neighborhood. I imagine what would happen if we asked children instead of in social emotional learning, giving them these words for emotions instead of doing, not asking them to describe their emotions that they go about, you know, do kind of their own archive. Yeah. How cool would that be?Yeah, yeah, but it could work. You know? I mean, they have the special word for how they feel when they first see their animal, when they walk in the door, or they have this special word for that feeling of satisfaction when they go hide in the tree away from their parents, making them do chores, you know, to be like, I'm just thinking of like, all of the ways that my if I could have gotten into the emotional vocabulary of my child when she was, you know, 8 or 9 when she was first talking about these things with me. How could that be?
Ray Like somehow getting them to try to figure out, like, how to articulate back kind of what these relational things. I love that. Thank you for that. So is still just sort of Glen Wahlberg's famous one is remind me the I'm feel like it's a mourning or loss. …Cunsolo: Homesickness while still at home. So that that loss of that connection because what's changing around you like your home is changing so much around you, the landscapes, ecosystems that it doesn't feel like home anymore. So you have this homesickness, kind of building from nostalgia, right? Like this wistfulness for what was before. It's at this time. Yeah.
Ray: So what I love about having words for something, it has that effect of saying you what you're feeling is quote unquote normal. It's a reasonable response to go to the quote that we opened up. This is a reasonable response to what's happened to you. We have words for that because it's so reasonable and you're not alone. And also, this recognition that the more than human world matters enough to have feelings about. I mean, I know it sounds so obvious. Yeah, but. Yeah.Ray: But if you don't have language for it's not as obvious, right? Because it's not built into the lexicon. And how important our language is for actually creating our world, creating our, our, our physical and emotional world. Cunsolo: Yeah, I think it was was that WadeDavis, who wrote years and years ago that for every loss of language like because he was studying indigenous languages, was you were losing worlds and universes because every language that disappeared took with it its own unique, way of understanding the world and connecting. And that's, you know, kind of ending up for dominant languages only was just ending up with limited worldviews.
Ray: Yes, I, I am familiar with that work too, and it resonates with my my short time living for years in Alaska to where the calling it language for things captured this human history. I mean, the language carried the human history with that land. And, you can't just slap, you know, Mendenhall name on a glacier, right? It's so crazy. Cunsolo: And then people are like, we have other words for the translator for the last 10,000 years. Okay, translate.
Ray: And and the idea that, you know, sometimes I think about, you know, environmental studies as my field and I'm talking with students who are Brown studies students, and I try to say things like, you know, try to connect really disparate ideas together and make an environmental argument for it. And when we think about things like this is a good example of how interdisciplinarity and different kinds of knowledge has come together, because language revitalization is such an essential part of environmental, you know, environmental health. And yet it's not necessarily a a student raised in a Western school wouldn't necessarily automatically connect those things. That really takes us teasing apart about how language produces our worldview. And that therefore that then helps us either see or not see what we're even doing to the to the more than human world. So, or care about it, to, to make a grievous argument there I was. So. Yeah. Thank you. So I wanted to take a little bit turn. You've been mentioning your research with Inuit folks in the Arctic, and and that that's really where you're, you're kind of becoming kind of politicized is about grief as a resistance strategy for climate change. Happen with your direct research there. Can you talk a little bit about why mental health and studying the emotional side of climate change is so important for understanding frontline experiences of global warming? What's going on there? And is there something about those experiences for someone like me who gets my hamburger meat from styrofoam and plastic at the grocery store, you know, and who can be insulated, like I was mentioning earlier, is there something about that experience that, would help me understand why it is that the more than human world, it has a direct effect on mental health?Cunsolo: Yeah. I mean, I think anyone who's living in frontline areas. So the Arctic is, is one of those key ones, really. When when you're at your livelihood, your culture, your identity, everything to do with how you situate yourself in the world, your, your family relationships, your history, your language, all of that. What you eat, how you eat, when you eat, is all connected to the natural world.That's really sort of what places like the Arctic in places that I was working with in Labrador. Like, everything is about the land. And so the, the whole structure of your entire life being seasonally impacted, and weather impacted. So, you know, here where I'm living in Nova Scotia, if you have a bad weather day, you get an umbrella or you, you know, adjust your clothing, but you continue on like you get in your car and you go to the grocery store and you do all those things and nothing, shifts.And that's like, it might be annoying, but it doesn't change, where/when you are in these places where everything is weather based. So everything depends on did the sea ice form, is it safe to travel? What are the weather conditions looking like for the next days? Where are the animals? How did the plants grow? Can you harvest berries to the fish?Show up like all of that? Everything every day is like what is happening on the land? And how does the land impact me and how do I impact the land? And so that type of cultural context and framing that once you have that, then any change, any alteration, any shift impacts the whole human in all different ways. So again, what was really interesting when we were we talked to over 100 people and that that kind of first cycle and in one community of 300 people.And so when I started the community and, and everybody talked about mental health and mental health related things, that there was all of these like anger, sadness, grief, loss. So a whole bunch of emotions. But then there were also more serious concerns around, like ongoing anxiety and potential for depression and the central for other sort of negative coping strategies, people feeling like they were losing their sense of identity, that they were worried about the next, the future generations, that they were worried that their culture as a whole was shifting and would be no longer identifiable.So it it was it was spanning this whole sweep of, like, identity, existential, connections to the world, your own human emotions, a huge amount of worry for friends and family, for for parents and grandparents thinking about the younger generations being worried they won't have anything left of of culture. And then the younger generation, seeing how sad their parents and grandparents were because things were shifting.And so these kind of like intergenerational losses worries the future. Anxiety was so huge. I can't count the number of people that said over the years, like, if this is how it is already and this is what's changed already, and we know it's going to be way worse, like, how are we going to even cope with that?So this kind of idea of like, like anticipatory, mental health, grief, loss, anxiety, and just being really worried about, the, the effects of a changing climate on a whole culture. So, in 2014, we released a documentary called lament for the land. And near the end, one of the people who was a lead on the project, Tony, he says, you know, in Utah, people of the sea ice.And if there's no more sea ice, how do we refuel of the sea ice? And that, to me, was sort of the fundamental existential question of that film was like, okay, like now we are actually talking about, the potential that there will be no more sea ice in this region and that that that is a fundamental shift to who, who people are to their rights to be people of the sea ice.So they're like thousands and thousands of years of being people of the sea ice. And now suddenly factors beyond their control is taking that away. So if we don't look at those pieces, and again, this is people who are at the front lines, there's, there's tons of people who have connections to specific landscapes, who have places that they love, who are watching the the change and the destruction.If we don't start dealing with that at a policy level, at a response level, if we continue to focus only on the scientific, like the mitigation, the adaptation, if we're only focusing on the technocratic solutions, we're actually losing the ability to support people through a very difficult time. But more importantly, I think we're losing the life worlds.And the insights that can come from those life worlds. Like if we ignore it and we ignore the mental health responses, we ignore the anger, the sadness, the grief, the loss. We ignore the language like we're missing out on possible ways forward. And we're missing out on potential mitigation and adaptation strategies. We're missing out on these, these pieces.But it also means that people are hurting. And when people are hurting and if they go isolated and they become demoralized, they feel helpless. They feel hopeless. That is not conducive for people. Then to be out making change and positively contributing. So we have to kind of like, you know, there's all this well, we have to do this as a, you know, to, to save humanity in quotations.I mean, for not if everyone is too distraught to do anything. Right. So you have to kind of include it. And we also have to think about like if we're creating policies like, can we take a mental health lens to it, like we have health sustaining policies? What about mental health sustaining policies?
Ray: What what you just described made me think of the sort of tipping points, vicious cycle stuff that often is a metaphor in climate discourse where where the very same thing that's causing all of this, the very thing is causing the land to not be the land that they're used to, is, you know, exacerbated by their the harms that are happening to them. So if we, if they're increasing, we diminished, if their knowledge about the land is diminished, if their culture is diminished, if their language no longer captures a reality. Those those resources, as you describe them, for fending off climate change are loss as well. So it creates this, this feedback loop of, you know, the causes themselves are exacerbated by the symptoms. Of climate change. So I hadn't thought of it that way. And you just described that and I and I'm, I'm struck by you know, the argument is not this is happening to some far off people that nobody cares about. This is actually a, you know, a symptom of what everyone is going to experience at some point. And it's only surely because of all of the insulation I have from the land that I've built up in ways that have really caused climate change.Cunsolo: Yeah, yeah. And it's you know, I think it's interesting too, because if you have, if you look at people not so much in the recent years because a lot of people are talking about climate grief and ecological grief. But earlier, if you look at the people that were starting to talk about it, to share it, to put it out in stories, it's also the people who have been most politically marginalized, by states, by countries, by the sort of like capitalist regimes that are out there.So it is people, the indigenous peoples whose lands, you know, people want to extract and develop. And so there's this really interesting connection between, who is talking about grief versus how they are received by the state and how they are continually marginalized. And that's a really important thing for us to to look at, too, because eventually it will be for everybody.Cunsolo: And so there's this kind of weird, self perpetuate waiting need of the state to continue to silence people and continue to silence the emotions and continue to marginalize because you don't want a whole, you know, country or countries stepping up in this because that that is a social movement in ways that people don't want. So there's there's this there's there's kind of motivation to also marginalize those voices. Ray: Yeah. And, and emotions as a form of resistance, as you've been saying this whole time. Yeah. So thinking about where, where the field of research around climate emotions is going, you know, your film Lamenting the Land was 2014, 2018, your article came out Ecological Grief. You've been talking about ecological grief in, in kind of updating it as time keeps moving and research keeps showing. Where do you see the field of research around climate change and emotions going? What are some directions you'd like to see explored? Where are some directions that are, you know, you think it's maybe for in this particular moment we're living in, then we might want to be thinking about it. You just hit on something, right? Like there's a social movement. It is a form of powerful resistance to to grieve politically and collectively, to recognize mental health as a central part of our climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. But I'm curious if there's anything else that you would also say. Oh, this is an interesting thread that people are really talking about over here.CunsoloYeah. You know, so interesting. The research is really, picked up, but also kind of shifted in recent years to really focus on, like, what are the strategies to deal with the mental health? How do we keep healthy? How do we keep. Well, like, what are the you know, and there's great research coming out the saying about what are how do we deal with this? What are the coping strategies, what types of groups need to be created, is there specific counseling? And all of that is really, really important. That I feel like there's still this space that we've kind of lost, which is around the resistant space and, and how grief and mourning are actually labors and responsibilities and work. And I feel like that was being discussed for a while.CunsoloAnd then it's sort of gotten subsumed by the, the fixing, culture, which is fine, and we need it. And I'm very supportive of it. And I am also part of research in that area, where I am very much interested in what are the things that will help us cope? What are the things that increase our grief literature?Cunsolo: Absolutely. We need that. But I am, more wary that we're now getting away from. But in the mechanisms of grief itself, like what does grief teach us? Why is it important? What do we learn from the labors and works of mourning? How can we collectively arrange ourselves around those things? You know, what do others like? What does Judith Butler's work teach us? What are we seeing in other places where mourning and grief have been utilized successfully and powerfully to actually make social change and that sort of disappearing? And we're going to the how do we fix it? How do we make it feel better? How do we how do we support it, which we need? And I think we need the other pieces, the other things that I do think are really interesting that are missing is we don't have a lot of population based research around like the the actual statistical prevalence that we're seeing, across countries. So myself and Charlie Harper and our research team, have been looking at this in Canada.Cunsolo:So we did the first population level study. So it was a randomized household survey of every household in Canada was eligible to participate, to do a survey, to try to get a sense of what was actually happening, in a randomized population level piece, because what we kept hearing from our government counterparts was, you know, all this qualitative data is great, but if we need to create a policy, we have no idea, is this really a thing? So then there's other really important survey work, like Caroline Hickman and her team in the UK with the 10,000 people from ten countries, that's a super important study. That tells you a lot. But then what people will say is, well, you know, people self-selected because they felt sad. So like, what does the general population feel? So I think we need more research on that.Not because I don't think population level grief is happening, but because it's the unfortunate reality of we have to prove all the time that those things do exist, that it is not enough for people to just, like, hear the stories and see the things that sometimes they want the numbers. So that's that's why we did it. I mean, it's, like I'm super interested in the research. The results are all starting to come out now. And there's some really interesting things about what's happening in a population level. So basically, if you, the person 13 and over who answered the phone and it was your closest birthday, so it could have been anyone that was sort of answering and doing these surveys. And there was there was a high level of sadness, anxiety, higher than we, we probably thought there there would be.Cunsolo: And we need those numbers too. So we need this type of quantitative population health data to actually show, like we're tracking all of these other things. And we have statistical understanding of, of other forms of mental health and physical health. But we're not actually tracking this. And maybe it is something that's worthwhile tracking right now. So that's type of work I think is important and kind of lobbying government with that. Ray: Yeah, I love that too. And then, of course, you and I were just mentioned before we started recording, but this idea that that could then be leveraged as an argument to, to cut off climate research is starting to make me feel sick to my stomach. So I'm like, yeah, do that research and then point out, as Hickman did in her essay, I mean, the article you mentioned just now about Hickman and the 10,000 young people. 2021 Lancet research, which was the biggest of his kind, to talk about climate anxiety and emotions in young people across the world. That was what was implicitly cited as the reason to cut off climate research by the Department of Commerce in earlier in April this year. So I have this sort of, okay, it's not enough just to say there's a lot of feelings out there. We have to also say that the feelings are caused by the lack of political will around fixing this, which is what her was is what that study does actually say. They they attribute it to more or less.Cunsolo: Yeah. They have all sections, a whole section. So yeah. And that and the lack of government. Response is the reason it's not climate change per se. It's the lack of government response to climate change. So, so to read that research closely and to make sure that that's what gets leveraged for political action, is one of those sort of, things I'm on right now. But actually, I'm like reading about that one anyway. That that's really the end of my questions for you. I just really love talking to you. I could talk to you all day long because we geek out on this stuff. And I love that you're I do.Cunsolo: It's amazing. A scholar of this and a feeler of this. And the combination is unusual for, you know, for me to be able to have a chance to talk to someone who's saying, I feel it. And, and that I have empathy for other people saying it, and we're going to go and research that. And what you said about talking, writing and researching about it being your own coping strategy, you call me out because.Ray: I'm really, really good at that. I was like, oh, I'm feeling sad. Listen to the radio show about…Cunsolo: Yeah, where do you think Second Nature podcast came from It is like, I feel sad about this. I'm just going to try to do that. And I feel like thinking. About it, that. Let's end on that. How can people find out more about your work on this, including your new podcast?Cunsolo: Yeah, yeah. So I have ashleycunsolo.ca. I have a website there that has not so much the after day research is I'm not great on, on on websites, but you can certainly find me on social media. And I have a new podcast that's just come out where, second nature, like, living with ecological grief.And it's, it's, like podcasts, series of interviews with people from all over the world, talking about those people who I really look up to, including yourself. That was a wonderful conversation. You're a great guest. And I'm excited for for that, people to hear that episode. And I think for me, it was a way of trying to of feeling so isolated in my own sort of ecological grief and wanting to talk to the people that have really inspired me over my life, both professionally and academically, and then also personally, like the people that I knew were. We're going to be able to talk about this in a very different way, that it wasn't just going to be this theoretical, scholarly work, but we could actually we could dig in. So that's, yeah, that's what led to things. And then, lament for the land is available for you on YouTube. And then Mourning Nature, which is a book I put out with, my coeditor, Karen Landman, a number of years ago, is is also available there.So, yeah, lots of different places to have these conversations and also, discover my own maladaptive going strategies. And this is why I think it writes so much about this area. I like to think of it as a noble thing. Yeah.CunsoloYes, yes, that's what I tell myself on a good day. Like, yeah, this is for a noble reasons. Not because I don't want to feel it like so that I am hiding. No, it's not any kind of association whatsoever.Ray: Yeah. Let's think about it. I like there's a beautiful expression. I write to write things, and that feels good to me. I mean, I'm we're not writing right now, but, writing often feels that way for me, too. I think that's it. Yeah. We we have these different strategies. And I do think that, similar to what you've described about bringing these words out into the open, that one of the purposes of me thinking of talking to you for this radio show, you know, when I was talking to somebody earlier about why, what good will it and to talk to anybody about these things. And it's I really think we're in a moment where we just need to know people are thinking and we're not alone thinking about these things. So.Ray: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And having the conversations like we're having now or people can actually kind of feel, oh, okay, like I feel this lots of people are just words for it. It's yeah, there's words for those emotions for people are studying it. It's a worthy of study, but it's also worthy of feeling and getting supports for. And it's not just something my 11 year old feels when the tree comes down. Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much, Ashley. I really appreciate it.Cunsolo: No, it's my pleasure. It's always great to speak to you and I, I just some huge fan of your work. So really excited that you're on this endeavor now. Thank you. You've just heard my powerful conversation with Doctor Ashley Cunsolollo, who's groundbreaking research and film on eco grief and the Arctic can be found in our show notes on CSE. You talk next time on Climate magic. Listen in as I dive deep into the neuroscience of climate changes, effects on our brains. With Clayton Paige Aldern.Aldern: It's about all the manners in which, environmental change bears on brain chemistry, decision making, behavioral health, all the way through to ecological, disease vectors and, language. Clayton is a journalist and data scientist and recovering neuroscientist at grist magazine. He's the author of an incredible book, The Weight of Nature How Climate Is Changing Our Brains. I'm Doctor Satyajit Ray, and this is climate magic.Announcer:Produced at Cal Poly Humboldt.
