Future Ecologies presents: The Right to Feel (Part 1 — Climate Feelings)

objective observer that can then deliver us the truth. And, you know, that idea is complicated... especially in journalism, but increasingly in science, right? The idea that it actually matters who is doing the observing, and what questions they're asking, right? In terms of what results we're

gonna get, and what the truth is going to look like. In science as in journalism, we now acknowledge that the observer is actually affecting whatever they're observing — they're having an impact on the thing that they are trying to understand. What this piece is asking is what kind of impact is what we're observing, having on us... as scientist or as journalists, and in the case of a lot of these students, both.

UBC's Centre for Climate Justice. My name is Judee Burr, and I’m a graduate student in the Department of Geography, and I took your class called “Ecological Affect” in the fall of 2022. In that class, you brought us graduate students together to think through – and more importantly, feel through –

our experiences of climate change. We talked and wrote about the emotionality of grappling with the changes we are living through here on unceded Musqueum territory in the Pacific Northwest and the changes we are witnessing in other geographies around the world. The writings we did in your class became the impetus for making this audio story. Can you start by telling me more about designing the class and the experience of teaching it?

climate crisis. What we know is that these researchers who are studying extinction who are studying habitat loss and glacier loss, live in the same world that we all live in — which is a world that is very much on fire. So that work is necessarily deeply emotional. But the academy — the academic world in which they're being trained — often doesn't have much room to recognize those kinds of have emotional impacts.

And I remember really being struck by this in 2021, when there was a devastating heatwave in In British Columbia, and just seeing these reports that were quoting young scientists, many of them still students — and what they were doing was cataloging mass human and non-human death because of this so-called heat dome. And, you know, what became clear is that the scientists were essentially working as undertakers for many

different kinds of life being lost to the climate crisis. And that was something that I had witnessed before in my reporting. I had seen young scientists doing desperately sad work cataloging extinction in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, in the midst of a mass die-off, or in the Gulf of Mexico on research vessels in the midst of the BP oil disaster. Scientific research requires a kind of distancing and compartmentalizing when you're doing the work. But it

really had me wondering: what happens to those feelings? You know, these young researchers are not robots, and many of them went into this work because they have a deep love of the natural world. So I had been thinking for a long time that we need more spaces or containers to explore the affective side of difficult climate research. And that's what this class was really designed to be one of those spaces where we could

engage with those feelings. And I want to be clear, we talked about this in the very first class, Judee, that often when we think about climate emotions, people immediately go to grief, anxiety, rage — and we do all of that in the course. But we also look at love and solace, and, you know, the positive emotions that come out when we work in the natural world. So I think it's important for all of our mental health not to pretend that we are detached — to acknowledge that we all have

skin in the game. I think it makes us better researchers. I don't think it compromises us. I think it makes us better colleagues and generally better human beings. And that is going to help improve our chances of building the kind of countervailing forces that are required to have thriving futures. So that's what it was all about for me.

fire-prone geographies. And then in 2021 and 2022, I made a podcast about the history of living with fire in the Okanagan Valley in the southern interior of BC. And so then this past summer of 2023, I was watching the news from Vancouver as the McDougall Creek fire swept into West Bank First Nation, West Kelowna, Kelowna, and Lake Country in the Okanagan. It sent more than 10,000 people evacuating and destroyed homes.

It was devastating to witness. And I think that's the one that hit me particularly hard last summer because I knew people there, I was texting them, I'd been studying fire there. But it was just one of the many fires in what was, we now know, the most destructive fire season ever recorded in Canada. The evacuations from Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories were

happening at the same time. And this was all just weeks after the hurricane-fueled wildfire in Lahaina, Hawaii killed at least 100 people, making it the deadliest wildfire in a century in the US. And so just thinking about all of this in the context of last summer's fire season, and how it felt — it just felt

terrible. And in thinking with our class, I'm trying to just sit with how bad that feels as a way of staying in the present moment, and grappling more fully with what's happening and thinking that those feelings can kind of keep me engaged and keep me motivated to dream up a different world.

saying it in class, "BC breaks your heart." Because we're so close to it, but what draws us there — and I include myself in it, I'm a late comer to British Columbia, my parents moved here when I was in university and I just fell in love with it and decided to move here too — the mountains, the ocean, you know that these incredibly rich Indigenous cultures. But we are witnessing the collapse of the salmon stocks, you know, this keystone species that so much depends upon. So, you know, what

you're describing is — you should feel it. It's healthy to feel that. That's why you do what you do. And we have to stay in touch with it. This past the summer that you're describing, I think, is the summer when a lot of people started paying attention to Canadian wildfires, because, of course, the smoke rolled in south of the border and even reached New York City.

That was Ontario wildfire smoke, but suddenly it was international news, because that's what happens when the Brooklyn Bridge is coated in Canadian wildfire smoke, or choked in it. Yeah, you know, I wrote a piece in 2017, it's the first time I really tried to grapple with what it feels like to live in this very flammable, increasingly flammable landscape. You know, every summer that it seems like the

fires get worse. In 2017, I wrote a piece called... the original title was "Summer of Smoke", then I think it was changed to "Season of Smoke." And I wrote this line that I've thought about often, which is, "it begins to strike you how precarious it all is, this business of not being on fire." And what I was trying to capture there is this feeling of flammability, you know, you can smell it in the air, and you

really start to feel like it could happen anytime. I hate to even articulate this, but I sometimes feel like all of our homes are just on loan from the flames.

Something else that struck me in our class and in curating this audio story is the way that we foregrounded climate justice, how climate change exacerbates inequality and injustice, and needs to be understood in connection to structures of capitalist and colonial power that have created it. The way we paid attention to power in this class also encouraged us to pay close attention to each of our positions in relation to these structures. That's something you cultivated quite intentionally

in our work. Is that right?

and hierarchy that already divide and scar our world. But at the same time — and this is I think, what has kept me in this struggle, because that's all very depressing — is that the flip side of that is I really deeply believe that meeting the enormous challenges of the climate crisis means an opportunity to heal some of those wounds. In fact, I think it's the only way that we can rise to the systemic crisis that

we're in — the overlapping and systemic crises. So we designed a syllabus that is filled with great writing from many positionalities. Black and Indigenous poets and scholars like Leanne Simpson and Ross Gay, essayists like Kyo Maclear and Julian Aguon. And I am a very firm believer that nothing inspires good writing like good reading, and good writers. So my favorite part of the course really was witnessing how these beautiful writers helped so many of you access new and different

registers for your own voices. I think it was a safe place to experiment with voice and the results were incredible.

class to record excerpts of the writing and reflections. These pieces take us through many kinds of emotions: from grief and fear of climate change, and its uneven impacts to loving observance of the beauty and complexity of the places and planet we share. These authors all have something to say about what it feels like to build a life here and now as climate

change is happening. This first episode is "Climate Feelings," which gathers writings and reflections on climate change in this present moment, including some examples of students thinking about alternative names for the so-called Anthropocene. We called those the "Age of" pieces as alternatives to the Age of the Anthropocene. The second episode is called Eulogies. This is a gathering of fictional pieces that we wrote

as part of a final assignment. And in that assignment, you asked us to eulogize something that could be lost to the climate crisis, and then write a fictional forward-looking account of how that loss was avoided or mitigated. And this was an exercise in thinking about what we love and could lose, and then, strategically, how to imagine opportunities to

build a different future together. Naomi, is there anything else that you'd like to share with our listeners as they go on this audio journey with us?

conspiracy theories. And we all learned so much from each other. Academics often complain about grading. You'll often hear professors talk about grading as like the worst time in the semester. I had the absolute opposite experience with this seminar. I loved getting these essays, particularly the longer ones that you just just described where different futures were imagined. And I often had this feeling while I was reading them, that I cannot keep this to myself, that would

be much too selfish. And these are too remarkable. More than once I wept — particularly while reading these imagined futures. And I always hope to find a way to share the work world more widely. So I'm so grateful to you, Judee, that you have woven together this these podcast episodes, where our listeners are going to hear some highlights from our class.

themselves. Always looking well put together, even at night. My afternoon breaks were walking in between them with my coffee and back to my house. The pier and the two trees were broken in the same storm this winter. For my birthday this year, the pier was filled with logs and the concrete slabs of the walkway that had been ripped out. Each section of the wooden railing held memories and

rituals, none of which were there anymore. I went through the broken pieces of wood, but I couldn’t tell apart which piece held what memory and which piece I was supposed to do my hello/goodbye ritual with. I sat on top of the backrest of my usual bench and got comfy with the concrete leaning on ki. I drank my tea, breathed in, and accepted the wind. The wind accepted me too, which I was grateful for. Regardless, it

felt like my birthday at the pier. It’s nice to be there with friends when things are different and its difficult — even if you don’t know what to do in that moment. In that way, it’s just nice to know our relationship is real, and after a couple of laughs and sips of tea, the broken concrete and logs are just where we are right now. When I first saw the two fallen willows, and stood still by them with my coffee, an elderly lady came and stood close by. We

stood there silently. She walked closer and looked at me. She told me in small sentences that this is as sad as it feels, like she knew I needed validation. I didn’t say anything, I smiled. She stood for a little while more, then left. The next day, Jericho was flooded. The pond with the beavers and ducks had taken over the whole park. It looked magical. I walked with my coffee to see what was happening from all angles. Near when I was about to leave, I was taking a picture of a tree that looked

different that day, surrounded by water. When I put my phone down, an elderly lady was standing next to me, wearing a bright yellow poncho and holding a rainbow umbrella. She confirmed how beautiful it is. She then stood there and looked at the landscape with me. She told me she’s been coming to Jericho for 20 years and has never seen it like this. She said it’s beautiful and the ducks seem to love it, but these changes will destabilize this habitat. This is climate change,

she said, smiling, while looking down. She was sad but she was there with her park. She then, in her yellow rainboots, walked into the water that had overtaken the walkways.

been doing that for thousands and thousands of years. And you sit there and you feel connected to that”. Bonogofsky then draws a relation between “That connection to this place and the love that people have for it”. As extractive industries tear through the region, Bonogofsky is convinced that it "...is not the hatred of the coal companies or anger, but love that will save that place."

My rootedness to place passes through my canoe. For as long as I can remember, the perfect canoe stroke has been described to me as one that connects with the water. Often when we do something or hear something repeatedly, we can lose sense of its meaning. I think this is why the significance of this language here only dawns on me now. Why is it that we describe a canoe stroke this way? For the amateur canoeist, the intention of the stroke is often seen as an attempt to pull water

backwards, as a way of propelling the boat forwards. In order to perfect the canoe stroke, a reorientation is required. The intention of the stroke is not to propel water backwards; rather, the goal is to root the blade of the paddle as firmly as possible to the water, and then to pull yourself, bringing the boat with you, towards that anchored point, eventually gliding beyond it. In order to achieve this, the paddler has to create the strongest possible connection

between boat, body, arms, hands, paddle, and water. Establishing this connection has a particular feeling and sound that practiced paddlers seek out. For auditory reference, a coach once In a given year, I aim to paddle around 4,500km. At a comfortable instructed me to listeen for and to recreate a "puck" sound, as I pace, traveling one kilometer takes about 200 strokes. This paddled down the lake.

adds up to 900,000 strokes per year. I see that as 900,000 opportunities per year to connect with the water. Sometimes, on a calm day with good visibility, I can achieve a unique sensation that I cherish immensely. After thousands of consecutive strokes, when a practice becomes quite meditative, and the movement mostly subconscious, it can begin to feel as though my paddle’s point of anchor is

larger than one particular spot in the water. As I fall on the blade of my paddle, and draw myself towards it, it is as though I am being supported by the body of water in its totality. I have paddled and trained everywhere from pristine lakes, to brackish lagoons, to industrial canals, and even the Harlem River in New York City. I promise, this described sensation remains the same on all of these bodies of water. They are all kin, and they are all equally deserving of love.

would get too hot to work. A lifetime of making time for what he loves and believes in has made him strong, joyful and silly – even at 96, even as my grandmother’s death has uprooted him to the North of the country, and even as rising temperatures scorch his now mostly abandoned land. In Ash Sanders’ “Under the Weather,” Chris Foster beautifully proposes “ignore-ance” as a word for “returning from a state of

consciousness to a willed state of not knowing.” I would like a word for the reverse too — a word for the moment you can no longer ignore the emotional weight of climate change, when you first reach that state of consciousness. The moment the veil is lifted and you let yourself feel it all. Reve-loss?

Covid lifted that veil for me. In the early stages of the pandemic, it felt like we might collectively be reminded that humans are part of a complex web of reciprocal relationships, and be forced to reckon with the weight of that responsibility. When the global consequences of Covid quickly aligned themselves according to the usual class, racial, and gender divides, my mental health plummeted. Being isolated didn't help, and worrying about my friends and family did not help either.

Ultimately, however, it was the realization that, this too, would be insufficient for us to “rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves” - as Arundhati Roy beautifully describes it - that dulled that burgeoning sense of hope. I don’t think it is a coincidence that those who experience deteriorating mental health as a result of climate change are ignored, belittled or patronized; that the words to

describe these experiences do not really exist. Depression, anxiety, rage, fear, grief – they are more than justified responses to what is happening. They are acts of resistance in a culture that is trying to tell us we are selfish, uncaring and, ultimately, alone.

Back to my grandfather. He is a man of few words and would never proselytize for his belief that connection to the land, reciprocity, getting your hands dirty literally and figuratively are a balm for the aches that most of us are going through right now. As an illiterate immigrant who built a life for his family in what was, at the time, an especially under-served part of Western Europe, his life speaks to those Randian virtues

of “Reason, Purpose, and Self-Esteem.” And yet, he is a passionate proponent of a government that fulfills its social contract with its people, for a society that is built around abundance, that incentivizes love and care. My grandfather is preparing for death. He has asked us to plant a fig tree in our much colder garden in Belgium. This small transplant will have to get used to a new climate, but should it survive, it will ensure that his values find root somewhere long after he dies.

I want a word for the radical healing that comes from living a life aligned with your values, as much as much as feasible in a broken system; from planting small seeds that might not change everything all at once (what will?), but that might help tip the scales ever so slightly in favor of a world different from the one our neoliberal Gods have designed for us. Avant-gardening?

have a lot to say. Another moment of seasonal disorientation. It feels common now, these days superimposed from another season. Today, I celebrate the chance to work in February outdoors, to sit in my thoughts without the cloistering of walls and distraction of internet tabs. Outside, with the world; it’s my favorite way to be. But still, this day feels misplaced in the season; a voice tells me I should feel concern.

call it geographic disorientation. The return to screens, city grids, and zoom meetings contrast sharply with my last month at home in Alaska playing in snow, shoveling overburdened roofs, caring for boats and a dad with a replaced knee, feeling deeply connected to the place that is my home.

But it’s more than that. This sense of disorientation grows as I read of powerful climate emotions and datasets of loss, while learning through a screen that seems to reinforce the disconnection from the earth that I’ve come here to question. And it makes me wonder if the ways in which we teach and learn, work, and interact with the world mediated through a

screen are reinforced by this great divide. The divide that allows us to emotionally detach and stand by as our only home and out very existence hangs in a balance that is rapidly deteriorating. So here I sit. Outside in a day that feels unreasonably warm, to write while being a part of a world that includes but is so much bigger than human. The readings this week felt familiar

and personal. I appreciated the words of Genevieve Guenther, to write from a place that is both tangible and local, and build outwards from there. I found the letters from the scientists who spoke from their own experiences of climate change from a place of emotional vulnerability and through story to be the most moving. For some time, I have been trying to share in this way. I am practicing now, and it is comforting to hear the words

of others doing the same. Ariaan Purich’s letter gave me pause, she spoke of terror for the world her children would inherit but also the world of today. It makes me reflect on a thought I’ve had before: will our own homes need to be the ones that are burning or flooding before we are shaken awake? I hope not. I’m having a moment, buoyed by this outdoor writing. I imagine classrooms and congresses, gatherings of world leaders,

held outdoors. Observing the songbirds and lichen, making carbon emission commitments beneath rolling heat waves, lining up for water deliveries when aquifers run dry, hauling sandbags in relentless rain, learning how to find and pick fiddleheads in the spring. I imagine this from a place of both love and rage. I appreciate the practical advice of Genevieve Guenther, “fight the people in power,” not the

“disembodied force” of climate change. I think of the words my advisor, Michele Koppes, shared with me — that we must bring our whole selves to this work. It is heartening and energizing to hear from others, like Rachel Carson, Kim Cobb, and Joelle Gergis, who recognize the power of emotion to move people to action.

Valley. We would bike pack, where we packed up our belongings and embarked on two and three night self-propelled adventures around this beautiful place that we get to call home. Worries related to ecological breakdown are easier to manage when it's just you, a friend, a tent, and some bear spray

against the elements. On this particular day, we decided to go out and explore somewhere a little closer to home in order to enjoy the uncharacteristically mild autumn weather we were having before the foreshadowed rain closed in. This was planned to be an overall mood boosting, head clearing, adrenaline-rushing end to a week of working indoors. When I woke up that morning, I felt a strange sense of heaviness in the air and a density that I had not noticed

before. As we ventured closer to Coquitlam we noticed that the air was smelling smoky with a strange haze over the water. The mountains were getting harder to see. It was a wildfire of a nondescript human cause, a fire which would eventually halt our cycling plans for the day and require over 20 firefighters to tend to a blaze, which at times was out of control. Where I'm from, we do have wildfires, but it's nothing to the extent of what we get here in BC, and certainly not in October, which

is meant to be a wet and saturated month. The air was hot and heavy and began to close in. With the visibility lowering and in an attempt to protect our lungs, we got the skytrain back to Vancouver where the smoke had not yet arrived. In the readings for this class, we had heard of stories of people from communities which were affected by forest fires, and specifically the ways in which individuals are learning to cope with the heaviness. We explored and discussed how

climate change is affecting our mental health. The ability to stay cool and calm is being decreased. And individuals everywhere are becoming more overwhelmed with the impending reality that we all face. The ability to calmly choose to take the train back to breathable air quality and remove oneself from the situation is not the case for those who have experienced

devastating forest fires in their regions. It is therefore difficult to reconcile with the concept of climate anxiety, since this is not just something which is happening in the mind. It is tangible, here for us to feel, mentally and physically.

headphones are in. I am trying to block my sensitive nervous system from being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stimulus on the bus – all those smells, all those tiny beautiful moments and interactions between strangers, all those days and hopes and worries playing on peoples faces. I am reminded of a vignette Sally Weintrobe uses in her book "Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis" to introduce systems of care. In the scene, tension rises between a disabled

man and a young father on the bus, on a bus just like this. I wonder what it would look like to create a system of care that supported people like me, people who are extremely sensitive, to ride the bus or adequately deal with climate change? Although later I would learn that sensitivity can result from trauma, then I understood my sensitivity as a kind of mental health death sentence, or as the pre-curser to the psychiatric maladies which haunt me. For as long as I can remember the

distinction between myself and others has felt quite thin. In a world plagued by inequalities, extraction, and abuse, by the cruelty of capitalism and the permutations of trauma, disconnection, dissociation and un-meaning, being hyper-aware is a difficult state to maintain without dipping into periods of personal suffering, fugue states of overwhelm. The Grantham Report and Weintrobe’s book ask, when it

comes to climate change is that suffering not rational? But from my seat, as someone with what the report calls “pre-existing mental illnesses”, I wounder if my sensitivity-induced experience has ever been un-rational? It’s not a gripe or criticism, but a statement of appreciation for a discourse broaching collectivity. Systems of care designed to support the sensitive, ill, or disabled will be better equipped support us all. It is a well-known design phenomena called the curb-cut

effect. And so, it is no wonder that the Institute’s number one recommendation may be boiled down to take action on climate change itself in order to deal with the emerging climate-related mental health crisis. I cry as we jostle through Railtown and along Powell. I

feel strangely seen by the legalistic call to action. I have often felt gas-lit by those better able to direct their attention and modulate their emotional intensity, for my concerns over climate change, for my worries about how systems

fail people, and how trauma is folded through generations. This is the first time I have encountered a narrative that describes my experience as a rational reaction to a world gone awry, rather then a personal or biological deficiency, and it feels good and true to be understood as an organism who lives in relation with the world.

The driver turns a blind eye to woman who smells of oranges and gets on the bus through the back doors, while a man in a thin coat shouts his thanks and thumps the window next to me.

for COP26, which was a few weeks away. His talk was full of "new speak" and “bank speak”, promoting the idea that innovation, growth, investments and global shifts will solve the problem of GHG emissions. He ended his presentation on the hope that young people gave him, referring to Fridays for the Future and other youth activist groups, mostly from the global North. At that moment, I couldn’t understand how he connected innovation, investment, and youth as the

solutions to the climate crisis. In what world does bank speak AND rebellion against bank speak make sense? One of the first questions came from a student, wondering if and how capitalism was responsible and how his models accounted for radical systems change. He brushed the answer off, replying that we didn’t have time to change the system. I raised my

hand. I asked something along the lines of “how dare you use young climate activists as a solution for the future in your slides alongside mainstream capitalist ideas of investment and innovation? As young people, our politics are the opposite of what you’ve just presented!” At least, that’s what I was trying to express. His reply was a short lecture on Amartya Sen’s definition of justice, not answering my question at all.

After his talk, I walked up to him to ask if he would accept a meeting at COP26 with youth climate activists so they could express their climate politics and understandings of climate justice. He refused, stating that he was too busy at COP meeting with world leaders. This was supposed to be a climate champion, heralded by mainstream environmentalists and the UK government for his work

on climate economics. The climate crisis doesn’t come from one single source, GHG emissions; it’s the symptom of larger problems like capitalism and colonialism. We can't just put a price on carbon and expect the market to solve it. I think back on this moment, and I’m realizing I should have grieved. Grieved for the system that I wish we could have. Grieved for the change Stern is refusing. Grieved for loss. Loss of words, loss of understanding, loss of solidarity. Our loss.

if you are the only homo sapiens sapiens. It means you breathe with the community that holds you. The Age of Sanctuary is beyond time — always already happening, always a possibility. Exists independent of you, exists within you, if you know where to look — never the same way twice. Eluding time, to catch it is to be profoundly present. Sanctuary does not ask for hope when quieting a frantic heart, does not ask you to

pretend to be okay. Sanctuary is where you can lick your wounds, and gather strength for the task at hand. This summer I visited Toronto for the first time for The North American Association for Critical Animal Studies First Biennial Meeting On Extinction. Three extraordinary days of preaching to the choir, three attendees under thirty and queer. A recipe for instant-friendship, and a crush

or two. On Saturday morning before my flight, I invited them to Allen Gardens Conservatory, a 10-minute walk from the Holiday Inn Express Toronto Downtown. Let’s look at all these exotic plants that need constant watering and pruning and probably heating had it not been mid-August. I was skeptical but ultimately a tourist, and I had smoked a joint outside waiting

for my friends while listening to the cicadas. So at least I was enjoying it, but also resisting the urge to tell my new comrades that despite the greenhouse’s illusion of outdoor-ness, inside voices would be more appropriate. I walked ahead to passively look for some peace and quiet, turned the corner to find a small koi pond, all green with dots and slashes of red, beneath a stone statue of a nude maiden holding a pitcher mid-pour, gazing at her duck friend, the duck gazing

back. The koi looked small, compared to those I usually see outdoors. But these koi, these were babies. Some actual babies. Feeling magic, I was consumed by the pond for a moment with a white woman a generation or two older than me. Then a Black man a generation or two older than me wearing an Allen Gardens t-shirt, dirty jeans, and work boots came over and started talking to the fish, himself, the woman, me, nobody, all of

the above. He said that in the 17 years of working there, taking care of this pond, this was the first time there had been baby koi. He told them how happy he was to see them, how proud he was of them, how much he loved them. He was so taken by these koi — radiating so much awe, that my friends who caught up finally shut up. Then he told them he’d be back soon and went on his day. My friends were more attuned after that.

Maggie O’Donnell: Hi, I'm Maggie O'Donnell. I'm a master's student in geography, and I study urban environmental politics. This is part of my essay "Age of Tehom." "When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the

darkness.” (Genesis 1: 1-4, NRSV) Since the second century, Christian theologians have used the first verses of the Book of Genesis to advance the doctrine of creation ex nihilo or “creation from nothing.” On this basis, the beginning begins with God, ascribing order and form where there was chaos and creating light where it was

formerly dark. The supremacy of order and lightness was reinforced in subsequent centuries, at the expense of the deep, translated from the Hebrew tehom, and those identified with the feminine, dark, or mystical Other.

When I considered how I could intervene productively in the ongoing conversations about the Anthropocene, I turned to the relationship Western society has with tehom, as both a possible origin point for chronicling our current unfolding ecological crisis, and also as a place to look to now for a potential

source of a new beginning. By embracing the tehomic waters of the primordial moment, along with the ways those who embody its depths continue to resist erasure, we might start to imagine a collective path toward a different future. The relegation of tehom to the edges of the creation story — God creates and there’s no looking back — sparked a pattern of violent oppression and marginalization repeated

throughout Western Europe’s pursuit to control the globe. As Whitney Bauman cogently argues in his chapter “Creatio ex Nihilo, and the Erasure of Presence,” the doctrine of creation ex nihilo directly informed the colonial legal concept of terra nullius by allowing European colonizers to justify their suppression and annihilation of indigenous peoples as part of a larger ordained missions to spread order and eradicate chaos.

These histories all feed, and, as a result, sustain what theologian Catherine Keller refers to as Western Christianity’s “dominology.” Keller elaborated on this dominology stating, “Appropriation and annihilation comprise the twin idols of dominology, the engines by which the denigrated chaos (its peoples, its species) gets

reduced either to raw stuff for use, or simply to nothing.” From the exploitation of migrant farm workers expected to toil in extreme heat to the proliferation of sacrifice zones in racialized communities along Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” these engines of dominology continue into the present, fueling

cultural destruction and ecological collapse. For those with dark, mysterious, disordered, feminine, or otherwise tehomic qualities, these devices of dominology compound into a constant, crushing weight. This is not to say that those who have been consigned to the depths, including various tehomic human and more-than-human kin, are powerless in resisting the

hegemonic structures of oppression. In fact, the hard-fought successes won by Indigenous peoples fighting for land repatriation and young people engaged in intersectional climate justice protests demanding government accountability illustrate best the fissures in settler colonial dominology. Our collective relationship to tehom will determine how we face

the future. We can turn to the space colonizers, lab meat moguls, and carbon credit financiers to sweep down and blow their winds of technocratic climate solutions over the face of our unfolding polycrisis. Or we could dive into the tehom. Swim in the depths. Lose track of where our limbs, swirling and kicking, end and where the waters begin. We could begin the story of a new age with one that is very old, one that humbly invites you to consider finding threads of even earlier

cosmologies within its layers and shadows. An origin story that welcomes an infinity of origin stories.

project. Now make sure to listen to the second and final episode in this series — "Eulogies" Thanks for listening.