Season 2, Episode 3: Coping on Campus with Sarah Jaquette Ray

Climate Change and Happiness

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Season 2, Episode 3: Coping on Campus with Sarah Jaquette Ray

As a follow up to their conversation with young climate and emotions researcher Isabel Coppola, Thomas and Panu spoke with Environmental Studies Professor Sarah Jaquette Ray, well-known for her writings on climate anxiety and social justice perspectives within the climate and environmental movements. Panu and Sarah collaborated on the Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators Project. Sarah reflected on her own climate emotions journey and what she sees as her sacred role as a teacher and university professor, and the intensity of people reaching out to her about climate change. She noted her experience 7-10 years ago of being enlightened about issues of complicity and despair about climate change among students, and her effort to “go back to the drawing board and reinvent myself as a professor to meet the moment that students were asking for.” This included questioning the impulse among students that “burnout is actually the badge of how much I care” and breaking down traditional barriers in the academy between academic content and emotional support and self care provided by the counseling center. Panu was reminded of a concept he has been using in Finnish, “arkipäivän tilastoimaton hyvyys”, translated as “unaccounted everyday goodness” and referencing California writer Mike Davis, the speakers played with the concepts of “unmobilized love” and “immobilized love.” Sarah looked ahead to the Conference she is helping to organize in April 2023 at University California Riverside Environment, Justice, and the Politics of Emotion: A Virtual and In-Person Symposium along with our previous podcast guest Jade Sasser and other climate and emotions experts. Thomas noted the recent death of scholar Phillip Cushman whose works like the paper “Why the Self is Empty” and book Constructing the Self, Constructing America are influential in critical psychology and ecopsychology. Join us for an enlightening dialog among leading climate thinkers.

Links

• Sarah Jaquette Ray

• A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety

• Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators Project

• Van Sistine (2022, Sept 12) Campuses are offering therapy for anxiety over climate change – Washington Post.

• April 27-28, 2023: Environment, Justice, and the Politics of Emotion: A Virtual and In-Person Symposium

• Mike Davis, California’s ‘prophet of doom’, on activism in a dying world: ‘Despair is useless’

• Phillip Cushman: Why the Self is Empty and Constructing the Self, Constructing America

• Panu’s article about Eco-anxiety and environmental education, which includes tips for various kinds of educational settings

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

[music: “CC&H theme music”]

Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, an international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change. Your feelings, what the crisis means to you, and how to cope and thrive. And now, your hosts, Thomas Doherty and Panu Pihkala.

Thomas Doherty: Well, hello. I'm Thomas Doherty.

Panu Pihkala: And I am Panu Pihkala.

Thomas Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. Our podcast, the the show for people around the globe who are feeling and thinking deeply about climate change, global warming, and all these aspects of this great situation in our world right now. And today, we're lucky to have a special guest.

Sarah Jaquette Ray: Hi, I'm Sarah Jaquette Ray. I'm a professor at Cal Poly Humboldt.

Doherty: And both Panu and I have followed Sarah's work. And Panu has worked with Sarah. And this episode follows nicely along with our conversation recently with Isabel Coppola, a young researcher who's been studying climate anxiety. So we're going to talk about a number of things today. Both in university. And in our own lives. And in the world. Panu do you want to get us started?

Pihkala: Yes, warmly welcome all and a special welcome to you Sarah. Very good to have you here. We've been collaborating with the existential toolkit for climate justice educators project. We've already had Ellen Kelsey visiting the podcast previously, who is another powerful figure in that network together with Sarah. And of course, in my studies of climate emotions and anxiety, I've often come across Sarah's work. But to get us running, how does it feel right now, Sarah? What's the situation around life and climate change where you are now?

Jaquette Ray: Thanks for asking. And thanks for having me on this podcast. I'm so excited to meet you, Thomas and see you again Panu in this way. And how it feels right now is that there's a lot of intensity. I feel the intensity. I feel the intensity from the people who are reaching out about this. I feel the intensity from the people who are working on it, like you both. And certainly the intensity around evidence of climate disruption and distress all around the world. So I'm thinking about, you know, Mississippi, Pakistan. I'm thinking about the heat waves, even right here closer to home here. And the smoke and the fires in the Northwest.

I am personally in quite a refuge from all of that here behind “the redwood curtain” in McKinleyville, California, where it's foggy and chilly, and the air is very clear. So I feel very lucky for the moment anyway. But yes. Feeling it in all my networks and feeling it amongst students then. And the news I'm paying attention to as well as I follow these other stories.

Pihkala: Thank you, Sarah, for sharing all that. [I] really appreciate it. For the listeners who haven't followed Sarah's work, she's been one who advocates for different constructive methods for people to be able to stay with these various feelings. And often the contradictions. For example, finding oneself in a relatively safe space and being able to experience joy and happiness, for example. And at the same time, knowing what's happening around the corner, and so on. So I know Sarah that you've been a longtime engaged with this. But what I don't know exactly myself either, is that, how did you get started with your climate emotions journey? Would you like to share something about that?

Jaquette Ray: Yeah, this is a good question because it's interesting enough, I have a background in religious studies. And I studied a lot of Eastern philosophy. And I was super into Zen Buddhism and Taoism and stuff. And something happened to me at the end of college where I somehow thought that if I really wanted to make a difference in the world and be of service to matters of social justice… I was also very involved in reproductive justice issues during college and even in high school …. And I just thought if I wanted to do that work, it wasn't going to be through religion and spirituality. And so I kind of gave that up and went down this path. And ended up in environmental studies as my lens through which to work on these matters in the world. And I had sort of given up my spiritual interests entirely.

And I always felt like what I loved about teaching at the college level was the almost-bordering-on-therapeutic relationship with students. And sort of being the midwife of this transition moment. That in most Western cultures, we don't have big rituals and ceremonies to mark for young people. And it felt really bordering on sacred for me to be a college professor. For, you know, watching students undergo this massive transition. And it's always been a big existential moment. But something happened and, you know, about seven or eight years ago, where the existential moment seemed worse than before. You know, when you challenge your cherished beliefs. And you become enlightened about your complicity in various forms of injustice. Or your ideas about what nature is become unraveled. These things are sort of exciting for students even as they're challenging.

But the despair aspect of realizing that they're living in a world that is uninhabitable for many, many people. And will become uninhabitable for them. And is likely to be uninhabitable for many of their children or future ancestors. This existential reality of the scale and immediacy of this happening was becoming part of our classroom lives. And I realized that in order for this generation to be as empowered and motivated, engaged to take on these challenges of the world, that they were going to need something other than what I had been trained to give them. And it was more like what I was learning in college for my BA in religious studies than what I had learned in my PhD and my masters for environment.

So I sort of had to kind of go back to the drawing board and reinvent myself as a professor to meet the moment that students were asking for. And this is where I, at the time, wouldn't have said climate was my frame, but I knew there was something existential that I needed to learn all the skills. I had to study all the psychologists. I had to study all the social movement leaders of all the movements. And I had to maybe also learn something about it. Go back to my thinking about spirituality and thinking about other sources of energy for this generation.

Pihkala: Thank you. Thanks for sharing all that. This brings an interesting similarity between our paths, also because I also for a long time worked with religion and spirituality. And then also moved towards interdisciplinary environmental stuff. Much for the very same reasons that you mentioned. And this also touches on our discussions with Thomas a couple of episodes back about Bill Plotkin work. And transitions and rituals. But before I go further onto that, how about you, Thomas? What does this bring into your mind?

Doherty: Yeah, this is a great dialogue. And I'm thinking of my own teaching experiences, teaching graduate school and undergrad. Again, when I was coming out, as someone who had worked in wilderness therapy and wanted to learn how to do eco-therapy, or wilderness, or outdoor counseling. There were no programs at the time. In the 90’s. Official programs, so ended up creating some of those programs.

So I mean, Sarah, I found your Field Guide book very validating because it really reminded me of a lot of things that I had invented on my own as well. With teaching. You know, kind of just even with undergrads, simple rules, like for every hour you spend dealing with all this heavy existential stuff, you need to spend an hour outside doing something healthy for yourself. You know, these kinds of basic things. And, of course, teaching mostly therapists in the Ecopsychology program that I founded, we were automatically doing all the therapy stuff from the very get go. But very different than … I've met over the years professors. You know, especially 10, 20 years ago, who were trying to teach students about climate change. And then they'd get a nickname like “Dr. Doom.” You know, by their students. Or something like that, because they would just totally… And meeting people that tried to study eco-topics and got so turned off, they just left that major. And so I really appreciate it. I think we've come a long way. I think, just generally, we've come a long way on how to teach young people how to work in these areas. And we have to relearn it every day. Because it's still so hard.

Jaquette Ray: Yeah, I think we're at a real inflection point with young people. I think when I first started noticing this in young people, they really would not have thought of self care. And that hour in nature you just mentioned. And taking the time to rest. That would have all been just a privilege that we don't have time for. And that the urgency of the problem and combined with the kind of guilt around their privilege. And I'm talking about diversity of students here, not just “white privilege” students. You know, I'm at Cal State. So, relatively speaking, you know, compared to college students, this is not a privileged group. But as Americans period, they're privileged, right? They're American college students. So recognizing their global position.

You know, this notion of “I should burn out.” The burnout is actually the badge of how much I care. The burnout is actually the sign I'm doing enough work. If I'm not burnt out, then I'm not working hard enough to solve these problems. And so there was a sense at the time that. I had a real uphill battle to climb to get them to come around to realizing that the burnout was not going to save the planet. And now young people are complete - I feel. I've just heard of young people. The majority of the climate movement is completely aware that this is a marathon, not a sprint. And that they're going to have to take care of themselves to keep engaged for their lives. So I think there's a real shift happening.

Pihkala: That's very promising to hear. And I've been noticing similar things. Especially with new climate movements. Integrating this thing. And it's been a bit more tricky for traditional environmental organizations. Where the working culture very often has been such that you sort of keep your sadness hidden. And try to keep a positive and optimistic outlook. And well, I know, Sarah, that you've been doing critical research on the history of American environmentalism also. That's one direction we could go here. But I'd still like us to keep for a moment with the students. So, what kinds of things have you seen recently, among students? Other than this increasing awareness of the need also for self care and taking breaks? What's your observations about what's happening?

Jaquette Ray: You know, a lot of things, but the one I'd like to pull on the thread of right now is something I've been chewing on for some time, which is whether or not, you know, they have incredible impatience to be in the college classroom. And we saw this with Greta Thunberg and climate strikes. That there was a sense of “why should I sit in this classroom to learn something for a future that is not even guaranteed?” And they were told, you know, instead of protesting, go back to school. Get the degree, so you have some power, so you can do something. And the youth response to that was, there is not going to be. You know, the systems, [where] you think I'm going to get a job are not going to exist anymore. We have to reinvent those systems now. And I think that suspicion of existing institutions was really amplified in COVID, as well. The sort of crumbling apart and the instability of structures that we took for granted, in my generation, is a real opportunity for young people. And I think that there's enthusiasm and excitement and trepidation around what's possible. Are we midwifing a new future? Are we living at the precipice of the great turning? You know, I have students who are really involved in abolition or other forms of social justice. You know, future envisioning, you know? And they want something new and different. They love the thought that we're living in a womb and not a tomb. And so the doom narrative of, or the Doom moment of environmental studies seems to be on its way out. I'd like to think it is. And we're having this kind of radical imagination. “Let's build the world we want,” kind of a moment with young people.

However, they're also, therefore, completely suspicious when you do things like career counseling. So there's so much pressure because institutions of higher education are neoliberalized. We are part of capitalism. There's so much pressure to get jobs after college, right? And of course, our students, many of them are first generation college students. They feel a lot of pressure from their families that if they're going to take the sacrifice to go to college, they darn well better get jobs afterwards. So the pressures coming from all directions to channel the knowledge into marketable skill sets. The neoliberal imperative to vocationalize these critiques. There's an internal paradox there. There's a tension there. We're critiquing the systems that are all falling apart. And we're celebrating what we're going to build next. But then you're also telling me I have to build a resume for the old structure, right? And I have to market myself for this capitalist system that's failing everybody. So I think that's a very interesting debate that institutions of higher education are very slow to be thinking about. And I really wish they would be thinking about it much more richly. I wonder what happens in these career planning, you know, conferences where people are going to the them career planning for what? Young people know. They're already on this, you know. They're like, a killer resume for what kind of economy, you know? For the great transition, you know?

Doherty: No, this is great. We were talking earlier, even just this morning, how we’re involved in different networks. And the Climate Psychology Alliance has various listservs and conversation forums here in the US. And there was a very spirited and passionate, you know, exchange about the role of the university. We have links in our show, and, you know, there was a nice article that came out in the Washington Post the other day about University Counseling Centers getting involved in helping support students with anxiety about climate and other issues. Similar to the work Sarah has been doing in her class. But, you know, it's not surprising, of course, that that's going to show up in the counseling center. But then people are also critiquing the whole idea of a university. And maybe we should just have students learn regenerative techniques for living in a new world versus, you know… essentially scrap the university as a vestige of modernity. But, of course, it's not that simple.

And so again, that's, I think, with this work for me, it's always… You always have to keep stepping back another step and looking at the bigger picture. And the bigger picture. And realizing it's not that simple. And it's not that simple. I think that's one of the hardest things for young people to grok is that it just is not that simple. Part of that whole neoliberal system is offering consumers simple solutions to their life problems, right. And so we do get indoctrinated into this simplicity. I think Bill McKibben talks about that. And other people talk about that. It's just not that simple. You know, these are complicated things that take time. So I don't have anything specific to go from there, but just to name that kind of thing.

Jaquette Ray: Well, just to pull that thread a little bit, too. Because I sometimes think that young people feel like older generations are telling them, you can't have what you want, you know. And I think that part of that is about the kind of developmental stage of where. You know, there's sort of these five stages of development or whatever. Both of you are experts on this more than I am. But this notion that only at a certain point, do you start to really grasp nuance and paradox and gray areas. And I think “this is not that simple” speaks to this sort of deeper climate wisdom, that, you know, we're going to have a lot of both, and here. We're going to have to participate in the current economy as we work to dismantle it. Right? So there's a lot of both-and. That I think, young people, it's not about their naivety so much as it is about their, you know, desire for what [philosopher] Alexis Shotwell calls “purity politics.” You know, the sort of ideological purity, of just signing up for one thing and having everything be clearly in line with that mission. Whereas they're gonna have a lot of hypocrisy and inconsistency in their lives. And that's just the messiness of climate work. All this work. So I think it's hard for them to accept that.

Pihkala: Yeah. I think that's very well said, both of you. And I recently came across this concept called “messy hope”. And having done lots of analysis on different concepts or assessments of hope that was new and fascinating. And I totally agree with the messiness. And the need for embracing ambivalence and uncertainty. And of course, these are very difficult things. And then we see the counter movement, like you, Sarah, hinted at. People want more binary thinking. And movements, which could support that also. So that's something that I'm actually worried about for the years to come. That is, how are we gonna deal with the rise of authoritarianism and the appeal of just going with the group. I'm often thinking of Erich Fromm, the old 20th century scholar and his work “Escape from Freedom,” [that explored social conditions that facilitated the rise of Nazism] for example.

Jaquette Ray: Yeah.

Pihkala: Any thoughts on that, Sarah? I know that you've been discussing relevant topics.

Jaquette Ray: Definitely. Yeah, definitely. I think one of the things in my first book, The Ecological Other, I talked about is the emotion of disgust in the environmental movement. And how disgust activated by people who already have inclinations that are xenophobic or nativist can really leverage environmental reasons to just reinforce white supremacy. And [philosopher] Betsy Harman calls that a kind of “green hate.” This is something that I spent the first chunk of my career thinking about. The ways of the environmental movement. Environmental ideas and emotions, can actually cause greater social injustice. Trying to tease those things apart.

And when I moved to thinking about climate anxiety, I thought I was kind of jumping track entirely and doing something totally different. But I've seen over the few years that I've been researching it, all of the ways that there's some parallels there. And the ways that emotion, environmental emotion in particular… But big emotions leverage these kinds of fascist tendencies. And can, and we see it in lots of places, underwrite some, some serious violence, right? So we see this in the El Paso shootings. We saw this in Buffalo. With the great replacement theory. And we saw this in Christchurch, of course. This notion of the inconvenient truth being with all these immigrants is somehow a problem in the larger climate story. And so the climate anxiety being, you know, leveraged for social injustice. For mass violence. Is something I have great concern about.

And so, you know, while we're thinking about coping strategies. Or how to transform it into climate action. And all these other wonderful things. Or how to live a good life, despite any of it. I also want us to just make sure we're always paying attention to how it's underwriting some of this more nefarious stuff. Including eco-fascism. This desire for purity. This desire for binary thinking. For ideological clarity that comes with just saying, you know, wipe all the people off the planet who are causing these problems in the first place.

Doherty: And that, you know, I just want to give a shout out to the whole concept of environmental studies as a discipline. And then just, listeners, I mean, some of the listeners, you know, will know about this because they've studied this. Or they've had an environmental studies course. But a lot of people aren't aware. One of the benefits of the university is these kinds of dialogues, you know. Environmental Studies is [a] great, very diverse area. Even different kinds of environmental studies programs, as you know Sarah, are quite different in their focus and things like that. But it allows us to talk about these really deep, much more nuanced discussions than you get in the media. And things like that.

When I was in graduate school at Antioch New England. In my clinical psychology doctorate, I moonlighted in the environmental studies program for a while. That's because it was where all my tribe was, and, you know, with [instructors like] Mitch Thomashow and Cindy Thomashow. A lot of these interesting folks. And it's funny. When I trained therapists, they asked me, how did you get to do all this kind of stuff? And I often tell them, oh, it didn't come out of psychology, you know. The stuff I do didn't come out of clinical psychology. I had to go find it in other areas, like in environmental studies, you know. Where people were talking about their environmental identity and ecological identity and all this sort of stuff. So I just want to give a shout out to environmental studies, folks.

Jaquette Ray: And I want to give a shout out to the therapists and the clinical psychologists too. Because, you know, I think there's a potential real tension between these worlds. As you sort are hinting out, Thomas. And yet there's so much rich stuff happening at the ecotone between them that is really exciting. The conversations I'm having with CPA. Conversations I get to have with people like Renee Lertzman and other folks who are trying to be in this space in between is fantastic. And I want to put a plug in if that's okay, for a conference that Blanche Verlie out of Australia, who's written Learning to Live Through the Anthropocene, recently, a book she's just published. And Jade Sasser, who's at UC Riverside [interviewed in our podcast in Season 1, Episode 8] is putting together a conference that's exactly trying to build out that connection on climate justice and the politics of emotion in April at UC Riverside. And so if there's any interest in people wanting to come and participate. Or, you know, visit. It will be in person, which I know makes it a challenge.

But the conversation that's happening around climate and emotions in the world of psychology is really rich and exciting. But Jade and Blanche, and I really want to make sure also that there's a scholarly intervention around the politics of emotion. Which is sort of what you're hinting at there, Thomas. About how environmental studies kind of gave you that lens to think about. These are political artifacts, emotions, you know. And they're actually driving … they're creating politics, too. So.

Doherty: Yeah, we'll definitely put a link in our show notes to that conference. And it is right up our alley in the climate change and happiness area. We've got a little more time. I know we want to cycle back to what it means to be happy. Because that's another thing to interrogate as you talk about, Sarah, in your book, interrogating happiness. Which simply, of course listeners … it doesn't mean “putting happiness in a chair and shining a bright light on it, and slapping it around” interrogate. It means let's look deeply at different sides of this. And let's look from one side. And let's look from the other. And let's really go outside of our existing, you know, mental models, right? That's what it means to interrogate something. But, you know, what do you think Panu? I know you spend a lot of your time interrogating happiness, Panu. So what are you thinking here?

Pihkala: Yeah. And you know, happiness is a very strong figure. It can take quite a lot of interrogation. And it may seem that it's breaking up but still this person perseveres. Especially if we are talking about happiness in the deeper sense as we are trying to do in this podcast. Not exactly, just like the old philosopher Aristotle did. But of course linked with that. You know, deeper values and meaning in life. And, Sarah, we haven't actually, I think ever spoken directly about happiness. How do you see that concept? What's your thoughts on that?

Jaquette Ray: Yes, thank you. I love this topic. And I'm so delighted to be on this podcast, because it has that word in it. So I'm really glad we're going to talk about it. Yeah. Well, there's the sort of usual critique of it that you can imagine. And I put it in the book, too. Which is that the myth of happiness is actually the root of a lot of unhappiness. That we seek happiness in these sort of immediate gratification ways, because capitalism defines it that way for us. And so we actually find that those things are not making us happy. They're making us quite unhappy. And that toxic positivity means that we put all people's, you know, so-called negative or uncomfortable emotions like despair, anxiety, depression, anger, into the privacy of the therapy room. You know, you cope with that yourself. And I was told by my dean, when I first started telling him about all of my students' emotional responses to this stuff. You know, I thought to myself, we need to really reinvent the institution here. And he said, send them to CAPS (the counseling center). You have 15 minutes to spend with them. For anything else besides academics, they need to go to counseling and psychology services.

And this really clear divide between what happens in the classroom, what happens in the therapy room. These things in the classroom are content. They're political. They're public. And whether they need mental health help, is something that they can call their mom about, or go to therapy about or whatever. And that division, I think, is really part of what does us a disservice. That sort of toxic positivity culture. And then there's the other side of the coin. And also. Or the both and about all this is that, you know, despair, anger, anxiety, fear. While they are very motivating, they can actually push people into new transformative places of action. They, for the long term, do not actually generate the kind of energy and resilience that we're all going to need to engage in this work.

And so the real sense of what might be called emotional intelligence, or climate wisdom, I prefer to think of it as. Around the utility of long term spending time with those cortisol and emotions and hormones flushing through our bodies. And in an amygdala hijack situation outside of our window of tolerance. I'm using all of your psychology's ideas now, right? It doesn't actually serve the climate, right? It doesn't serve us and it doesn't serve the climate. So I do actually like thinking about the role of other things, right? That the negativity bias in our brains and in culture, is not actually the reality we live in, right? That's not actually really our reality. That is, you know, a negative frame of reality.

And so I'm always asking what else is true? What is it that we love that we have fear about getting lost? What is it that we love that we have anxiety that's threatened, let's focus on feeding what we want to grow. And those positive dopamine hits and emotions. And, you know, the seeds that those plant create a feedback loop that keeps us coming back for more. And so there is a real role for happiness and for pleasure and desire. And many people will say the climate problem has generated some of the happiest times of their lives. Because they plugged into the community, because they found a sense of purpose. So, you know, we think about the real role that these positive or more pleasant emotions necessarily have in the movement. Are there to be cultivated for sure.

Doherty: Yeah.

Pihkala: Yeah, thanks, Sarah. That connects with a lot of topics we've touched upon with various guests along the way. And I couldn't agree more personally. And all this sense of meaningfulness and connection that people have been finding. But also something that I've actually never put into English. I've been using it in Finnish called “arkipäivän tilastoimaton hyvyys”. Which means uncounted everyday goodness.

Jaquette Ray: I love that.

Pihkala: Now this is a sort of an on the fly translation, but there's so much of that happening in the world which never gets charted in any axes of the more capitalist [chart].

Jaquette Ray: Yes, I was just reading a bio, an interview with Mike Davis, whois of course, the famous Los Angeles and California critic who I love too. And he says there's so much “unmobilized love” out there. And it's similar to unaccounted for goodness. You know, what happens if we mobilize all this love that we feel instead of thinking about all the things that we fear, you know? I mean, those are all legitimate. We all have to have all those emotions, but they do stymie some of our best potential.

Doherty: Yeah. I’m taking some notes and I was going to write “unmobilized love” and my spellcheck said “did you mean ‘immobilized love’?” So we have “immobilized love” and “mobilized love.” So that's great. That’s what’s nice about these dialogues. Feelings are wild. That’s part of environmental emotional intelligence. Feelings just come up as we’re doing things. So happiness is wild too. It will pop up like a weed sometimes unaccounted for.

Jaquette Ray: I love that too.

Doherty: Thank you. We’re going to wrap up here. As we’re talking I just want to add another note for our links. Phillip Cushman died recently. The scholar, Phillip Cushman. And people might know about him. He had a book Constructing the Self, Constructing America, which is about this myth of happiness. So he’s one of these thinkers that’s been talked about recently in my circles that helped people to understand this whole idea of the “empty self.” And this kind of, you know, corporate capitalist kind of self. That sense of emptiness. Things like that. Critical psychology. So, I just want to put a note about that. Another thing for people to be thinking about.

Well where are you all going for the rest of your days or evenings as we wrap up? Sarah, what’s the rest of your day look like? You’re just starting over there.

Jaquette Ray: Yeah. I have two book talks to give.

Doherty: Oh, wow.

Jaquette Ray: Back to back. Which I’m really excited about. There’s been a couple weeks there of nothing. Kind of ready to go and do that. And I have a discussion and I’m really excited. With the founder of One Earth Sangha. Christin Barker. She and I have a chat later today. And this means that I can’t coach my kid’s soccer practice this evening. I have to have an assistant cover me. So I’m a little bummed about that. But, yeah I have mostly a day full of climate emotion work which is what I wanted to have my life look like when I took a leave of absence from my job at Cal Poly. It’s delightful even though I know it’s the topic many people think of as grim. But it gives me great - to go to that point - it gives me a great sense of satisfaction to be able to spend so much of my energy thinking about it today.

Pihkala: Very glad to hear, Sarah. And it’s evening in Helsinki and autumn is coming so it’s actually getting dark now, also. I just heard the door which means that our oldest son came back home from choir practice. And the younger one has been home because he has had a slight cold. And according to the rules now even if you have some slight flu, you have to stay home. So he’s been with me. I’ve been doing research on grief theory and ecological issues and sometimes throwing Finnish baseball with him. It’s been my day. But I’ve been very glad about this conversation, Sarah and Thomas. And we’ll be posting links also to the Existential Toolkit stuff that you can access online. And there’s a book coming out … co edited by Sarah and we’ll put the link too to Sarah’s website also, there’s different things there. But thanks a lot for coming, from my part.

Jaquette Ray: Well, it’s been a pleasure.

Doherty: Thanks again Sarah. It was so nice to meet you – mostly – in person here. And make a connection with you. I look forward to more. And maybe trying to find my way down to Riverside in the spring because I’m sort of nearby there for that meeting. And I got my daughter off to school. I’m going to be doing climate psychology things today too. So there are some of us out there that’s what we do. And there’s a lot of people around the world. A lot of the listeners do good work all day in different ways in life. So I want to honor all of that. And you all take care of yourselves. And I look forward to seeing you further down the path.

Pihkala: Take care.