🌿Wild Ones #73: Environmental Communication Digest
An Immense World: Animal Sensescapes + 'All That Breathes' Documentary + Linguistics and Sustainability + Storytalk + More!
Hi everyone, welcome back to Wild Ones, a (trying-to-be) 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
“The only true voyage…would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes…to see the hundred universes that each of them sees.”
– Marcel Proust, quoted in the introduction to An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, by Ed Yong.
In her essay, Ecocide and the Extinction of Animal Minds, environmental philosopher Eileen Crist writes about the terrible irony that our growing awareness about the immense richness of how animals experience their environment coincides with our growing awareness about how fast we are rendering these nonhuman experiences extinct. As Crist writes, “…just as we are beginning to recognize that we share the Earth with beings of extraordinary physical and mental complexity, we are losing that shared world.”
The first book in my 2023 reading challenge to read a book a week – which at this point is turning out to be more like half-a-book a week – was science journalist Ed Yong’s An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. Yong’s new book is probably one of the most complete records to date of our understanding about how the world is experienced from other species’ point of view. But An Immense World also reveals that the more we learn about other species’ multi-sensorial worlds, the more we come to grips with the extent to which human activity is disrupting, polluting and extinguishing these worlds.
The main argument in Crist’s essay is that the historical tendency to dismiss questions about how animals think and feel – as unscientific or worse, anthropomorphic – has also played an important role in legitimating human exploitation of animals and their environments. As Crist writes:
“…it is far from incidental that "the question of animal mind" has been a marginalized idea, proscribed area of inquiry, and belittled plane of experience. The suppression of animal mind has been the sine qua non of objectifying animals and paving the modern highway to their resourcification” (p. 56).
But Yong’s book brings "the question of animal mind" front and center, and in doing so, opens up new ways to think about conservation, not just as an effort to save ‘biodiversity’, but sensory diversity. For example, in the last chapter of the book, Save the quiet, preserve the dark: Threatened sensescapes, Yong writes that sensory pollution is a low hanging fruit for conservationists. Especially when it comes to the noise and light pollution that gnaws away at silence and darkness as the medium animals have long depended on as a communicative canvas. “We have to save the quiet and preserve the dark," he argues. The challenge, though, is that we have become so used to a bright and noisy modern world, not to mention accustomed to this mode of existence’s damaging consequences that we’re now unable to imagine the world otherwise: “…remember that more than 80 percent of people live under light-polluted skies, and that two-thirds of Europeans are immersed in noise equivalent to constant rainfall.”
Yong ends the book with a call to re-attune ourselves to the animal sensescapes which evade human awareness but which are critical to conservation efforts. What are these nonhuman sensescapes like? What is it like to be a spider, a turtle or a bat? Below are just a few highlights I gathered from Yong’s book that give a peek into these alternate universes, as well as the incredible span of research on "the question of animal mind" that Yong threads into An Immense World:
Smell: “We need to stop asking “How good is an animal’s sense of smell?” Better questions would be “How important is smell to that animal?” and “What does it use its sense of smell for?”
Taste: “…while smell can be put to complex uses – navigating the open oceans, finding prey, and coordinating herds or colonies – taste is almost always used to make binary decisions about food. Yes or no? Good or bad? Consume or spit?”
Light: “…jumping spiders are born with their lifetime’s supply of light-detecting cells, which get bigger and more sensitive with age. “Thing would get brighter and brighter,” [Nate] Morehouse tells me. For a jumping spider, getting older “is like watching the sun rising.”
Vision: “We use the phrase “bird’s-eye-view” to mean any vista seen from on high. But a bird’s view is not just an elevated version of a human one. “The human visual world is in front and humans move into it,” [Graham] Martin once wrote. But “the avian world is around and birds move through it.”
Color: “Sensing can feel passive, as if eyes and other sense organs were intake valves through which animals absorb and receive the stimuli around them. But over time, the simple act of seeing recolors the world. Guided by evolution, eyes are living paintbrushes. Flowers, frogs, fish, feathers, and fruit all show that sight affects what is seen, and that much of what we find beautiful in nature has been shaped by the vision of our fellow animals. Beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder. It arises because of that eye.”
Echolocation: “Echolocation differs from the senses we have met so far, because it involves putting energy into the environment. Eyes scan, noses sniff, whiskers whisk, and fingers press, but these sense organs are always picking up stimuli that already exist in the wider world. By contrast, an echolocating bat creates the stimulus that it later detects…A bat says, ‘Marco,’ and its surroundings can’t help but say, ‘Polo.’ The bat speaks, and a silent world shouts back."
Here’s a wonderful little video from Big Think where Ed Yong discusses An Immense World. He opens the journey through the lens of a guiding concept in his book: Umwelt: The world as it is experienced through a particular species’ unique sensory capacities:
For more on the environmental keyword Umwelt, check out this Wild Ones from way back in 2021 where I explore the concept in a bit more depth:
🎧 What I’m listening to
One of the problems with waiting so long to put out a new edition of Wild Ones is that stuff I want to share builds up way too much and it becomes a bit of a mess on here, but oh well! Here were some of the podcasts I enjoyed over the past month, I’m realizing I’m starting to cycle through the same (although fascinating!) podcast channels, so if there is a podcast I’m missing out on that you recommend please don’t hesitate to share in the comments:)
Creatures That Don’t Conform, by Lucy Jones, in the Emergence Magazine Podcast:
“In this essay, author Lucy Jones brims with awe upon discovering slime molds in the woods near her home. As she is increasingly drawn down to the forest floor and into their world of nonconformity, she explores what might happen if, rather than trying to decipher such creatures, we instead bask in the wonder of their obscurity. Lucy is a journalist and author living in England, whose books include Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild.”
The Cold Never Bothered Native Hawaiians Anyway: A Conversation with Hi’ilei Julia Hobart. On Edge Effects Podcast.
On writing an ambitious and terrifyingly realistic novel about climate change: A conversation with author Stephen Markley about his new book, "The Deluge." In Volts podcast by David Roberts.
7 States, 1 River and an Agonizing Choice. By the Daily, NYTimes: “In the United States, 40 million people in seven states depend on water provided by the Colorado River. After 20 years of drought, the situation is dire and the river is at risk of becoming a “deadpool,” a condition in which there is not enough water to pass through the dams. The states were supposed to come up with a deal to cut their usage by Tuesday. Now, the federal government may have to step in and make a difficult decision.”
👀What I’m watching
"All That Breathes": Film Follows Brothers in Delhi Who Have Saved 25,000 Birds from Air Pollution. An interview with filmmaker Shaunak Sen on Democracy Now!. Watch the trailer here:
Also!: The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational was held in January this year after a 7 year wait as wave heights must consistently reach 20-feet for the contest to run.
🔍 Tools & Resources I’m exploring
Connected papers: “Connected Papers is a unique, visual tool to help researchers and applied scientists find and explore papers relevant to their field of work.”
Climate Town: “Videos to educate and entertain — but mostly to get more people comfortable talking about climate change without feeling embarrassed or uninformed about it.”
📰 News
Some articles/podcasts I’ve found helpful that explain how emergency (mis)communication unfolded after the Norfolk Southern Train Derailment and resulting environmental disaster earlier this month in East Palestine, Ohio, USA:
An Emergency Management Perspective on the Norfolk Southern Ohio Train Derailment. By Dr. Samantha Montano, in Disasterology.
Environmental Toxicology (POISONS + TRAIN DERAILMENT) with Dr. Kimberly K. Garrett. On Ologies podcast with Alie Ward.
‘This is absurd’: Train cars that derailed in Ohio were labeled non-hazardous. By John McCracken in Grist (Feb 15, 2023).
In other news:
When scientists tagged a curious seal, he led them to signs of a potential climate disaster: This is a story about a curious seal, a wayward robot and a gigantic climate change disaster that may be waiting to happen. By Chris Mooney and Simon Ducroquet in the Washington Post, Jan 21, 2023.
📣Events & Opportunities
Sustainable linguistics: theories and methods 24-25 August 2023 NOS-HS Workshop, University of Helsinki, Finland (register by March 15):
Planet Now! Conversations in Environmental Studies | Performance Activism (video recording January 31, 2023):
“The Center for Environmental Studies at Rice University hosted a conversation on performance and arts activism on January 31, 2023, with leading interdisciplinary artists and scholars who engage with environmental and climate justice through arts practice and education. The discussion was part of the center's Planet Now! Conversations in Environmental Studies series…Discussants included Beth Osnes, associate professor of Theatre and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder; Kathy Randels, founder and artistic director of ArtSpot Productions; and Una Chaudhuri, dean for the Humanities at New York University.
📚 Research
Intersectionality & Climate Justice: A call for synergy in climate change scholarship. By Michael Mikulewicz, Martina Angela Caretta, Farhana Sultana, Neil J. W. Crawford. In Environmental Politics.
Storytalk and complex constructions of nonhuman agency : An interview-based investigation. By Heidi Toivonen and Marco Caracciolo. In Narrative Inquiry. From the introduction:
“One of the leading advocates of empirical ecocriticism recognizes that environmental ‘awareness and anxiety do not exist in isolation but are situated within webs of social relationships and popular opinions about appropriate responses to environmental concerns’ (Schneider-Mayerson, 2018, p.493). Put otherwise, the impact of literary texts is fundamentally shaped by their social context, through practices such as collective discussion in schools or reading groups. In this study, we look at how people discuss environmentally oriented microfiction in the dynamic communicative context of an interview. Our goal is to examine how readers’ imagination of human-nonhuman relations is informed not only by reading a story, but by discussing the reading experience with an interviewer.”
The Communication of Value Judgements and its Effects on Climate Scientists’ Perceived Trustworthiness. By Viktoria Cologna, Christoph Baumberger, Reto Knutti, Naomi Oreskes & Anne Berthold in Environmental Communication,(December 2022).
Vinyl Chloride: A Case Study of Data Suppression and Misrepresentation (a bit older piece from 2005, but important in light of the recent disastrous Ohio train derailment, shared recently by environmental journalist Rebecca Altman on Twitter):
“When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its 2000 update of the toxicological effects of vinyl chloride (VC), it was concerned with two issues: the classification of VC as a carcinogen and the numerical estimate of its potency. In this commentary we describe how the U.S. EPA review of VC toxicology, which was drafted with substantial input from the chemical industry, weakened safeguards on both points…We suggest that this assessment reflects discredited scientific practices and recommend that the U.S. EPA reverse its trend toward ever-increasing collaborations with the regulated industries when generating scientific reviews and risk assessments.”
💡 Ideas
The miracle of the commons: Far from being profoundly destructive, we humans have deep capacities for sharing resources with generosity and foresight. By Michelle Nijhuis in Aeon:
“In December 1968, the ecologist and biologist Garrett Hardin had an essay published in the journal Science called ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’. His proposition was simple and unsparing: humans, when left to their own devices, compete with one another for resources until the resources run out. ‘Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest,’ he wrote. ‘Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.’ Hardin’s argument made intuitive sense, and provided a temptingly simple explanation for catastrophes of all kinds – traffic jams, dirty public toilets, species extinction. His essay, widely read and accepted, would become one of the most-cited scientific papers of all time.”
Why we need new words for life in the Anthropocene: The Bureau of Linguistical Reality is assembling a new lexicon for people's experience of climate change and environmental upheaval. By Richard Fisher in BBC Future.
AI in the Wild: Sustainability in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. By Peter Dauvergne, MIT Press: “Is there a way to harness the power of AI for environmental and social good? Dauvergne argues for precaution and humility as guiding principles in the deployment of AI.”
The Last Great Wilderness Helped Earn a Grassroots Victory for Indigenous Rights and Environmental Justice. By Finis Dunaway in Zocalo Public Square:
🗃️ From the Archive
💬 Quotes I’m thinking about
“Neoclassical economists cannot deal with the reality of the ecological crisis because nature, despite being the basis and context of all production, is literally *external* to their model of the economy. It’s like trying to sail a ship with no knowledge of the sea.”
"Naïve cynicism concerns me because it flattens out the past and the future, and because it reduces the motivation to participate in public life, public discourse, and even intelligent conversation that distinguishes shades of gray, ambiguities and ambivalences, uncertainties, unknowns, and opportunities. Instead, we conduct our conversations like wars, and the heavy artillery of grim confidence is the weapon many reach for."
– Rebecca Solnit, in The Habits of Highly Cynical People.
“The refusal to be complicit can be a kind of resistance to dominant paradigms, but it’s also an opportunity to be creative and joyful and say, I can’t topple Monsanto, but I can plant an organic garden; I can’t counter fill-in-the-blank of environmental destruction, but I can create native landscaping that helps pollinators in the face of neonicotinoid pesticides. So much of what we think about in environmentalism is finger-wagging and gloom-and-doom, but when you look at a lot of those examples where people are taking things into their hands, they’re joyful. That’s healing not only for land but for our culture as well — it feels good.”
– Robin Wall Kimmerer. In: You Don’t Have to Be Complicit in Our Culture of Destruction, an interview with Robin Wall Kimmerer in New York Times Magazine with David Marchese.
Thanks so much as always for your interest in my work, and if you found this digest useful, please consider sharing with others who might find it interesting too😊 I'd also love to hear from you. Leave a comment to let me know what you think about this digest, what areas of environmental communication you’re involved in/most interest you, or anything you’d like to see more of in Wild Ones:)