Heavy Weather: Balancing Joy and Despair

Climate One

News, News Commentary, Science, Earth Sciences, Social Sciences

4.7 • 583 Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2019

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Can we still find happiness in our daily lives without ignoring the dark reality of climate chaos? Author and meditation teacher Mark Coleman recalls experiencing just that juxtaposition of joy and sadness working on an article on a ridgetop north of San Francisco during the wildfires of late 2018. “It was just such a poignant moment of going into nature for refuge and solace and at the same time being reminded of the fires and the climate crisis,” Coleman says, noting the irony that he the article he’d been asked to write was about meditation and nature. Love and grief are at the center of Coleman’s practice for coping with climate anxiety. “We love this planet, we love this Earth, we love all of the abundance and the beauty and the diversity and complexity,” he explains, “[and] because we love, we feel the pain we feel the grief. The grief is a natural, healthy immune system response to a problem.” Mica Estrada, a professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California San Francisco, agrees that feeling grief is a valuable coping mechanism – even if it hasn’t always been encouraged. “I think for a long time that [grief] was seen as a weakness and I think we’re finally hitting an age where grief is seen as a strength,” she says. “I think we have lived in a time when the dominant culture says don’t feel too much. And I do feel like we’re finally growing up and saying listen, real strength is being able to feel what we’re feeling.” Guests: Mark Coleman, Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher; Author, Awake in the Wild: Mindfulness in Nature as a Path of Self-Discovery Mica Estrada, Associate Professor, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF This program was recorded at the Commonwealth Club of California on September 5, 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Can we still find happiness in our daily lives without ignoring the dark reality of climate chaos?
0:14.0	Climate One Conversations feature oil companies and environmentalists, Republicans and Democrats,
0:20.0	the exciting and the scary aspects of the climate challenge.
0:23.6	I'm Greg Dalton.
0:24.6	The weather out there is getting ugly.
0:27.6	The most powerful storm to ever hit the Bahamas crawled its way through the islands, at times coming to a complete standstill.
0:34.6	Record break in temperatures are causing problems across much of Europe and it's set to get even hotter.
0:40.3	It's been another relentless day for firefighters and the emergency is far from over.
0:45.3	Living in such a disrupted climate can make us anxious and sad.
0:49.3	Yeah, I think we're finally growing up as a society to the point that we can grieve.
0:55.6	Mika Estrada is Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences
0:59.9	at the University of California, San Francisco.
1:03.4	She holds a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Harvard and does research on social influence,
1:09.1	identity, values, and well-being. Grief can be a natural,
1:13.3	healthy immune system response to a problem like climate disruption. Why are we grieving? Why do we
1:18.6	care? We care because we love. Mark Coleman is a mindfulness and meditation teacher,
1:23.9	and author of Awaken the Wild, Mindfulness and Nature as a Path to Self-Discovery.
1:30.0	His latest book is From Suffering to Peace, the True Promise of Mindfulness.
1:35.1	I began our conversation about climate anxiety by asking Mark about an experience he had on a ridgetop north of San Francisco during the wildfires of late 2018.
1:46.1	The irony was I'd just been asked to write an article on meditation in nature, and I thought,
1:51.1	well, the best place to write it is to go in nature. So I took my laptop at the top of a hill on the ridge
1:54.8	in Marin County, which is north of San Francisco. And there's this howling Pacific wind coming in, which is very normal, cooled, foggy breeze, and it was very invigorating. I was riding away. And then suddenly I started to look around in the valleys, and it started to fill up with smoke. And I thought, that's weird. I'm getting these fresh Pacific wind, but the smoke coming in, and suddenly the whole Bay Area is full of smoke.
	...

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