Becoming Resilient in the Face of Accelerating Climate Disruption

[Music] yeah right now the danish government is supporting uh carrying forward a large monitoring program of greenland ice that is complementary to the existing danish system so now we have like um just a more comprehensive system for monitoring the greenland ice sheet i feel like i'm you know just keep telling kind of the same story about the ice it's yes it's not the thing i think people got the memo and and that's why you know as a as a former university educator for nine years um i was teaching environmental science and that's a broad spectrum coverage of a really long list of environmental issues and you know climate is just one of many we've got like biodiversity loss we've got contaminants both in the air and water we have population dynamics etc and as i'm you know just a chapter ahead of the students always you know just learning this material myself over this nine years and repetitively giving intro to environmental science i got that knowledge and and the challenge of course was to give that knowledge to these like 17 to 20 year olds and after doing that a few times i came back with the impression that these young people needed to form their environmental consciousness much earlier they had already formed i think an identity that was very much in non-sustainable lifestyle patterns over consumption and and lacking a real connection and recognition of the important interactions uh between nature and humans and you know nature that surrounds and so yeah i became convinced that primary education is really where kids need to develop environmental consciousness so wildlife i've continued with a professional career on ice monitoring and melt i i i'm constantly reflecting back on the issues of of environmental science and and and as a physical geographer i was also exposed to human geography and social science and what i learned from that is a lot about like political ecology and political economy and what is it about our economic system that we can really pinpoint actually a lot of our environmental issues stem from uh really it goes back to francis bacon uh 1650s who set this directive that humans would use science to dominate nature and that's what humans did and uh to at the humans you know amassed a lot of kind of wealth but externalize that the with the economic system that prevails you know in the last industry it's about ignoring these so-called externalities and these that means pollution it means actually true costs uh to to us and to to nature but they're they're just not in the economic bottom line our economics is fundamentally flood because it doesn't internalize the true damage that a non-sustainable economic system is doing and and so with that and and with um as i reflect back on that i i and i've been doing a lot of meditation to try to keep my sanity during the corona crisis and it and that meditation has finally delivered me to to something which i call reframing the human spirit that we need to fundamentally shift our perspectives as as beings as thinking beings if if there's any prospect for humanity to tackle what we now observe is an ecological uh and climate catastrophe a sixth mass extinction this is really happening a disaster in slow motion uh therefore i i want to emphasize that value of of giving kids the an environmental perspective while they still have a chance and we must reframe our spirit and there's so much prosperity that comes from doing that and we can make the world a better place uh for people and nature that surrounds uh by treating nature with with with respect to um giving back to nature not just taking uh so so that that philosophy i've i've managed to come out of the fog of of the trump era now that he's out of the white house and and that's why that's what i came out with but the last four years have been really difficult for me because we obviously were losing a lot of ground and now it's beyond the 11th hour you know it's time to rethink who we are i think it's really helpful to try to be conscious um and maybe that sounds simple it's something that comes with meditation which is really just a practice of of breathing of focusing on on the present being present hearing what's happening you know just simple things and what that does is it takes us away from all of the invading thoughts from the past and future so com being conscious or awake to reality you know so what is really going on out there we are seduced by uh television programs uh you know to escape reality and and while that that's comfortable um there's there's a beauty in the true reality a beauty and nature that i think we've we've separated too much from uh so uh i i've heard about people meditating in the past and i i never really did it that much and um and so i was really surprised once i started doing that and i i felt that it was necessary because i felt my health was i used to cycle back and forth to work and that went away and and then just the kind of the mental health uh challenge of the repetitive uh thing that we've been in because of chronic crisis that finally gave me the inspiration to try meditation so i strongly recommend it and learning about what it is there's different uh flavors of it some are really intense and some are really just about relaxing and de-stressing so uh yeah um physical health is a key to mental health um and i so i think if we can better ourselves we can try to project that outwards and trying to get other people involved with um uh being conscious uh being awake of what is really happening out there i've started with basic uh which is like breathing exercises and so you you count a number uh going as you inhale maybe you pause and count hold it a little bit then you count on on the way out but i i've really been impressed uh by uh how it's helped me frame some of my thoughts and then then i start thinking spiritually and not not there's no mysticism to it there's no supernatural it's just about recognizing what our spirit is and uh i think it's our spirits are grounded in nature and we've kind of lost that connection because we're surrounded by technology and so just having taken a break to think about our relationship with environment in the context of climate and ecological collapse that's happening now that's kind of the overarching issue that i've i'm confronted with in my work and and in my concern for for the future so yeah um i feel like my head's clear i i should mention that yoga is a really important part of my practice as well my sister is an instructor and she's been teaching me a lot so this practice that i do has been very helpful for my physical self and and that's all i was thinking about for the first um years that i've been doing in earnest since 2016. um and then i realized well at the end of typical yoga practices are is a shtavasana where that's a moment where it is a meditation but also for the rest of the practice it's a meditation in motion and it's the mind-body uh balance that you get from that type of practice that is also a great way to clear our minds i think the the scientific mind is very much in line with a yoga practice because i think it's fundamentally quite simply about exercise about fitness of course when you bring in the the mind body work and the meditation to the meditative aspects of a physical practice then you start to touch on a spiritual world and again not a supernatural world a very real [Music] and as you said uh yoga meditation or yoga in particular is is a gateway into a spiritual world a spiritual way of thinking that is i think maybe a portal to reality unlike mystic religions which have um supernatural uh storylines in them the the spirituality that i'm talking about it's about recognizing our surroundings as they really are it's about awareness it's about being conscious and awake to reality uh that is a spiritual movement that we should embrace because that is how we reframe the human spirit to recognize a very reality based way that you know we're on this planet that's orbiting this star and this planet has serious issues with chemical contamination of the atmosphere co2 too much of a good thing you know a little bit of greenhouse effect is good but we have increased this blanket of of heat trapping gas by 50 it's overheating the climate system and that is just the beginning of the story a little bit too focused i think on on the carbon crisis uh elevated carbon the atmosphere because we have biodiversity collapse um you know insects pollinators you know we're losing ponies we're the the big fish in the oceans are mostly gone so we're so far down um the this path of loss uh we need to as really recognize what we're truly losing uh and and begin to reverse that um if we don't it's gonna be so much worse in the future uh for most of us i think a real problem is that the ruling class this kind of one percent is is really driving this thing in the wrong direction it's very comfortable for them to protect the status quo that has made them wealthy but the majority of humans and then all of the countless other parts of nature that surrounds us is being completely hammered and so we have to reverse that and i think the way that it's going to work for for people is to you know completely shift their perspective uh to reframe their their spirit the one percents protecting the status quo because in i think reality they they'll be fine um it's a very cynical um yet rational uh take that they have and and i i think they also make the assumption that um humanity can't help itself and and and uh so i'm i'm afraid of that type of thinking because of it it's selfish and cynical nature but it would lead to the destruction of of um life as we know it on this planet very selfish perspective but i'm that's that's um i call them the ruling class um [Music] i think we need uh scientists educators communicators uh artists to enter leadership positions i i don't i wouldn't necessarily recommend the political system as is but but the the political system that we have especially in the us is it's full of business people and lawyers and and i think real states states people should you know be humanists and and feminists and and scientists these are the the leaders that i think um have uh a much better perspective on sustaining life on earth men i think they've been raised too much in a in a macho culture i think we can there's so many examples of how machismo has has created so many problems in our world i i'm personally really grateful to see more women in leadership positions and those those nations those municipalities that are led by women tend to be less uh conflict based uh so i've become an aspiring feminist um because i'm i'm convinced that if more women were running the show we would have a a more a better world i wish i knew how or the tactics of of building that movement i i like what you're saying with civil society i mean everyone needs to play a role in being better for each other and nature that surrounds so i think it means we need a ruling class that is geared toward genuine sustainability of of nature and to improve human life through establishing a two-way relationship with nature where we're not just taking from nature [Music] you

Channel: TreeTV / N2K Need to Know

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Id: XJottSN3v_w

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021