If Faith Moves Mountains, Can It Also Move Climate Action? with Dekila Chungyalpa

Getting Better with Jonathan Van Ness

Sony Music

Comedy, Society & Culture, Education, Self-improvement

4.9 • 21.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2022

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2015, Senator Jim Inhofe brought a snowball to Congress to “prove” that climate change wasn’t real. Only God, he claimed, could change the climate. He was wrong on two fronts: one, climate change is real. And two, faith and climate science are *not* incompatible. This week, Dekila Chungyalpa joins Jonathan to discuss her work collaborating with faith leaders on climate efforts, how she confronts climate change disinterest and skepticism, and why she’s bringing the sacred back into science. Dekila Chungyalpa is the founder and director of the Loka Initiative, a capacity building and outreach platform at the University of Wisconsin – Madison for faith leaders and culture keepers of Indigenous traditions who work on environmental and climate issues. She received the prestigious Yale McCluskey Award in 2014 for her work and moved to the Yale School of Environmental Studies as an associate research scientist, where she researched, lectured and designed the prototype for what is now the Loka Initiative. Dekila is originally from the Himalayan state of Sikkim in India and is of Bhutia origin. You can keep up with Dekila by visiting her Facebook and by following her on Twitter and Instagram @dchungyalpa. For more information about the Loka Initiative, visit their Facebook page or follow them on Twitter @LokaInitiative and on Instagram @loka.initiative. Struggling with eco-anxiety? Read Dekila’s five tips on how to alleviate eco-anxiety or visit SoundCloud, Tricycle Magazine, or the Healthy Minds app for contemplative practices to address eco-anxiety and climate distress. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN to join the conversation. Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook. Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com. Love listening to Getting Curious? Now, you can also watch Getting Curious—on Netflix! Head to netflix.com/gettingcurious to dive in. Our executive producer is Erica Getto. Our associate producer is Zahra Crim. Our editor is Andrew Carson. Our socials are run and curated by Middle Seat Digital. Our theme music is “Freak” by QUIÑ; for more, head to TheQuinCat.com. Getting Curious merch is available on PodSwag.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to Getting Curious, I'm Jonathan Van Ness, and every week I get to sit down for a
0:05.1	gorgeous conversation with a brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious.
0:10.6	On today's episode, I'm joined by DeKila Chengyalpa, where I ask her,
0:14.8	if faith can move mountains, can it also fix climate change?
0:20.5	Welcome to Getting Curious, this is Jonathan Van Ness. We have such an interesting episode,
0:24.5	and I feel like all of our episodes are interesting, but this one's especially interesting,
0:28.8	because it's super intersectional, it's like bringing like all these worlds together.
0:32.7	So welcome to the show DeKila Chengyalpa, who is the founder and director of the Locate initiative
0:38.0	at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She works with faith leaders and religious institutions
0:43.4	to support environmental protections, sustainable development, and global health.
0:48.0	She is also from Sikum, which, y'all, if you remember, are gorgeous episodes about the Eastern
0:53.4	Himalayan Borderlands and Dr. Mona Chetri. How do we say that? Like, because it's like Sikum sister?
0:59.6	I'd love that Sikum sister, yes. Please call me that.
1:03.6	Oh my god, well, it's not my business. You and Dr. Mona are like Sikum, like Sikum,
1:06.9	you know what I mean? We are.
1:09.6	So here's our question, which I think is a really fascinating question. It's one I really never
1:15.2	asked myself before I was introduced to your work. How can we restore faith in our environment?
1:19.6	And your work is really in working with like faith leaders from all sorts of different faiths,
1:24.9	like not just Christianity, like you work with all sorts of people. And not to generalize, you know,
1:30.1	because within any group of people, you're going to have people who are going to fall all over
1:34.3	a spectrum on like any given issue. But you would think that more evangelical Christians who tend
1:42.9	to be conservative would be more into like helping the earth or something. Because in 2015,
	...

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