Tracing the Roots of the Climate Crisis

Social systems shape the lives we live and the people we become. So, any meaningful examination of the climate crisis is going to have to consider how certain systems produce certain outcomes for people and the land.   So in Chapter 1, we tackle systems.

In Chapter 2, we explore a pretty unnerving question: Is the climate crisis, and the ecological crisis more broadly, the predictable outcome of a certain economic order? 

In this chapter, we explore the ways that cultural ideas, such as our categories of division, function to maintain and justify various systems of domination and exploitation - from white supremacy to extractive capitalism. 

In this chapter, we reflect on our dreams.  As a society, what kinds of dreams have we inherited?  What are their consequences? And what kinds of dreams do we need, in order to survive the future, and heal?

Season two coming soon! Over the next several weeks, I’ll be sharing interviews with academic and community leaders. We’ll be trying to get our heads around the shape of the problems we face, and we'll be exploring some possible directions toward better futures. 

David Osborn is a long time participant in the direct action climate movement as well as a faculty member in University Studies at Portland State University. We discuss ways that non-native and settler people (like David and I) might begin to challenge the worldviews and ways of being that they have inherited.  If settler colonialism and capitalism have shaped the ways non-native and settler people see the world, and their places within it, how can they begin to challenge that worldview and develop other ways of being - forming different and more intentional relationships with each other and with the rest of the living world?  In other words, if the climate crisis is a cultural problem at the deepest level, how do members of the settler culture begin to do the work of profound cultural transformation?

Ron Reed and Kari Marie Norgaard discuss the deep social and ecological violence and transformations imposed on Karuk land and people within the last century and a half of colonialism.  We also explore the deep anti-colonial work of healing land and people. 

Ron Reed is a Karuk Tribal Member. He’s a cultural biologist for the Karuk Tribe, a traditional dipnet fisherman, co-founder of the Karuk - UC Berkeley Collaborative and leader within Karuk Climate Change Projects.  His work centers on efforts to restore traditional ecological and social practices as a way to fix the world. 

Dr Kari Marie Norgaard is the non-native author of Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People: Colonialism, Nature and Social Action. She’s a Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon. Her previous publications include the excellent 2011 book Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions and Everyday Life.