🌱Fieldnotes in Environmental Communication
What is Ecocentrism and can it save us? + Hawks and humans + snowboarders as climate communicators + Global science communication + more!
“Mallard, the head under water” (1900 - 1930) by Ohara Koson(1877-1945). Original from The Rijksmuseum. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
Hi everyone, welcome back to Wild Ones, a bi-weekly digest by me, Gavin Lamb, about news, ideas, research, and tips in environmental communication. If you’re new, welcome! You can read more about why I started Wild Ones here. Sign up here to get these digests in your inbox:
📚 What I’m reading
H is for Hawk by Helen MaCdonald (2014).
I’ve just started reading this but already I can see why it received so much praise when it came out. In this nature-writing-as-memoir, Macdonald chronicles her effort to cope with the loss of her father by reigniting her childhood fascination with hawks, and her journey training a hawk and becoming a falconer.
Her story of becoming a falconer is compelling, but what really draws me in is the unique way she writes about human-animal relationships; in this case, her challenging relationship with training a Goshawk.
For example, Macdonald writes about how her perception of the natural world is transformed through training a Goshawk named Mabel:
“Of all the lessons I’ve learned in my months with Mabel this is the greatest of all: that there is a world of things out there – rocks and trees and stones and grass and all the things that crawl and run and fly. They are all things in themselves, but we make them sensible to us by giving them meanings that shore up our own views of the world. In my time with Mabel I’ve learned how you feel more human once you have known, even in your imagination, what it is like to be not. And I have learned, too, the danger that comes in mistaking the wildness we give a thing for the wildness that animates it. Goshawks are things of death and blood and gore, but they are not excuses for atrocities. Their inhumanity is to be treasured because what they do has nothing to do with us at all.”
If this book sounds of interest, you might also check out Helen Macdonald’s newest book, Vesper Flights:
And here’s a great interview with Helen Macdonald about the book:
🎧 What I’m listening to
A Snowboarder's Quest to Get Out the Vote on the Outside Magazine Podcast.
I’ve lived in Hawai‘i for the past 20 years, but I grew up in Oregon, and making weekend treks from the coast to the mountains (Mt. Hood and Mt. Bachelor) to go snowboarding was a big part of my childhood and adolescence, so this story struck a chord with me.
In this episode, professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones describes how, back in the late 2000s, noticing how places he had loved to snowboard were losing snow, he started asking what the multi-billion-dollar snow sports industry he participated in was doing to help address climate change.
After some digging, he discovered not much, in fact, nothing. So he started up an organization, Protect Our Winters. It’s a pretty impressive alliance of businesses, athletes, scientists, artists, creatives, and local activists all involved in the snow sports industry. Here’s a short description:
“For many years, Jeremy Jones had a simple job: he was the king of freeride snowboarding, traveling the planet to carve lines down jagged peaks for action films. But then he began to notice changes in the mountains he was visiting: less snow, shrinking glaciers, and other signs that matched what scientists were saying about the growing menace of climate change. After struggling for a way to respond, he founded an organization to do something about it, ….Now, in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, Jones and Protect our Winters are hoping to unleash the political might of what they call the Outdoor State, the 50 million Americans united by a shared passion for our natural playgrounds, energizing them to vote on behalf of the climate.”
👀 What I’m watching
Purple Mountains by Teton Gravity Research feat. Jeremy Jones.
This is a new film to accompany the podcast that chronicles Jeremy’s journey from athlete to climate activist. I found it fascinating as a new angle to understand the politicizing of climate change discourse in the U.S., and the forms of environmental dialogue being used to bridge eco-political divides:
“In the new film Purple Mountains, Jeremy seeks common ground in the heart of America's purple states, having honest discussions with individuals who don't see eye to eye with him.”
I’m also watching ‘What is Ecocentrism and can it save us? from the University of New South Wales At Home Conversation Series.
This is a great discussion with environmental communicators about the role of ecocentrism – and related ideas like anthropocentrism, ecocultural identity, and environmental paradigm shifts – in environmental communication:
🔍 Eco-Communication Tool I’m exploring
Communicating Science: A Global Perspective (2020) edited by: Toss Gascoigne, Bernard Schiele, Joan Leach, Michelle Riedlinger, Bruce V. Lewenstein, Luisa Massarani, & Peter Broks.
You can download a pdf of this nearly 1,000 page tome for free, and it looks like it will be a great resource for those interested in how people are communicating science in different cultural contexts around the world. here a description:
“This is the first volume to map investment around the globe in science centres, university courses and research, publications and conferences as well as tell the national stories of science communication. How did it all begin? How has development varied from one country to another? What motivated governments, institutions and people to see science communication as an answer to questions of the social place of science? Communicating Science describes the pathways followed by 39 different countries. All continents and many cultures are represented. For some countries, this is the first time that their science communication story has been told.”
💬 Quote I’m pondering
“To use the world well, to be able to stop wasting it and our time in it, we need to relearn our being in it.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, quoted in Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake.