Climate Action Figures
A safe place for youth to share steps they are taking to mitigate climate change.
Climate Action Figures
Season 3, Episode 6: Emma
In this episode of Climate Action Figures, host John Whidden introduces Emma, a representative from Re.Climate, an organization dedicated to climate change communications and research based at Carleton University in Ottawa. The discussion covers innovative recycling tips, effective communication strategies on climate change, and the importance of incorporating indigenous perspectives into climate action strategies. Emma shares her insights on a key project, Climate Ready Prairies, focused on helping communities adapt to extreme weather. She also delves into her PhD research on people's emotional connections with urban trees and their importance beyond environmental benefits. Emma emphasizes the role of human relationships in climate action and shares personal stories that inspire hope and community engagement.
00:00 Welcome to Climate Action Figures
00:27 QuickFix: Mike's Recycling Story
00:52 Meet Emma from Re.Climate
01:47 Re.Climate's Mission and Projects
03:15 Climate Ready Prairies and Indigenous Collaboration
06:00 Tips for Talking About Climate Change
13:25 Emma's PhD Research on Trees
20:15 Emma's Personal Climate Actions
21:24 Closing Thoughts and Hope for the Future
https://climatewest.ca/ Building Prairie Resilience: helping communities to prepare for a changed and changing climate.
https://www.sandralamouche.com/
climateactionfigures@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/climateactionfigures
https://www.instagram.com/climateactionfigures/
https://www.youtube.com/@ClimateActionFigures
Hi, I'm Emma, and you're tuned in to Climate Action Figures.
John:Hello and welcome to the latest and perhaps the greatest edition of Climate Action Figures. My name is John Whidden, and this week on the show you get to meet Emma. But first, this week's QuickFix and we can always use more QuickFixes so send yours in. This time, Mike from beautiful British Columbia said: my mom is the original recycler. When I was a kid, we would get milk in plastic bags. She would wash them out after the milk was gone and use them to store food. They made excellent freezer bags and other stuff. They built things to last in the seventies! Well, thank you so much for the dm vote for reusing, Mike, and welcome Emma!
Emma:Hi. are you?
John:I'm fine, thanks. What do you think about Mike's QuickFix?
Emma:I really like that because, uh, I also reuse bread bags and stuff like that. I use them as compost bags. when I'm cooking food, bring out one of those bags and put all my, scraps in there, and then I'll actually put it in the freezer, uh, until it's compost day.
John:Ah, very good idea. I keep the compost not composting until it goes into the compost.
Emma:Yeah, just to avoid pests and stuff in my compost bag. Uh, compost bin.
John:Perfect. Now, Jess LeBlanc was a guest of ours last season, uh, with N:OW, and she recommended I talk with someone at Re.Climate and so I got connected with you through Jess. Thanks Jess for that. And, uh, you work with this cool organization called Re.Climate. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about that?
Emma:Yeah, so, Re.Climate is Canada's center for research and training about climate change communications. So we offer different trainings as well as conduct research on basically how to talk about climate change, which I love because it's often more complicated than some people think, and then at the same time, sometimes less complicated than some people think. So it's a really cool space and it's so vital, uh, because I think many people these days are saying climate change is no longer a technological issue, it's a social problem, and we need to keep having conversations.
John:Very interesting. I we will come back to that for sure. because talking with people about climate change is such an important aspect of, of communication, is, is it connected with government or is it in a not-for-profit or a non-profit? How does that go?
Emma:So it's an organization actually based at Carlton University in Ottawa. So we're sort of housed at the university, which is pretty great because it means we have access to a lot of, uh, research. Uh, we get to work with, uh, several academics and professionals who work on this stuff. But also there's tons of opportunity for interdisciplinary work, which, uh, I personally really love.'cause again, these are problems that are complex, uh, and, uh, can really use multiple different expertise for sure.
John:Now, the first five episodes of this season of Climate Action Figures involved, Blackfoot Wisdom, and I understand that one of your projects at Re.Climate has some cool First Nations connections. Is that right?
Emma:Yeah, so a project that I'm actually leading right now is, uh, called Climate Ready Prairies, and it's a training series to work with communicators in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Basically talking to'em about how do we have conversations around adaptation, which, you know, is a broad word. Uh, I would say a better way of putting it is how do we talk about keeping our community safe? So anything from emergency preparedness to longer-term solutions around infrastructure or around changing behavior, all that kind of stuff can, can fall into that category of making communities safer with increased extreme weather due to climate change. But as part of that training which will also eventually lead to a guide, uh, we have been first of all, we collaborate with a group or an organization called Climate West, which sort of provides, um, climate data to the three western provinces or the three prairie provinces I guess. We are also working with Indigenous consultants, Sev Gen who are helping us make sure that we are consulting First Nations, Metis, and Inuit, in a good way. Getting valuable information and also making sure that we are providing them valuable information. And we've also been working with hoop dancer extraordinaire and educator Sandra Lamouche in our trainings. You should absolutely look her up. She's amazing. She's a champion hoop dancer and she has been providing really, really valuable, uh, insights on how some of these conversations and some of these techniques like storytelling how First Nations think about that specifically from her perspective; Cree, uh, thought on this, but yeah, it's been such a gift to work with all these folks and learn from them, and I think something that is obviously without question necessary, because as we also know, indigenous folks are often the ones who are most, impacted by climate change. I'm sure some folks talked to you about that in the, earlier episodes. So, um, not only is it critical that their voices are heard and, and their voices are critical parts of any of these plans around adaptation, but also they know what's up in
John:Yeah. Right. And, and for example, this past summer, so many stories of First Nations, uh, people being moved off of their home territory because of wildfires and smoke.
Emma:Yeah, exactly. Um, I was actually in Saskatoon, uh, the last week of, or second last week of June to do one of these trainings. And yeah, right in the heart of this crazy wildfire season we're having, um, in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, which are two places that haven't necessarily experienced it to such degree wildfires were on our minds. Uh, and thinking about how to have conversations that are trauma informed, that also respect First Nations and Inuit autonomy and agency that center their perspectives around this is really, really important.
John:So Emma, part of your job is talking to people about how to talk to people about climate change, friends, family, whoever it may be. What are your, uh, your big, uh. Um, suggestions to us about that.
Emma:Yeah, we get asked a lot about tips and I completely understand the desire. Some of the tips I'm going to share might not feel satisfying, but I think they are in the end the ones that are necessary. I think the first one is we can't pick our family. Obviously we can pick our friends, but you know, you don't necessarily have control over who you're having these conversations with. So the first thing I always think of is keeping the door open. You might have family or friends who are less interested in climate change, less interested in climate action or mitigation, all this kind of stuff. But I would invite people to like, not to hide that part of themselves if there's something interesting or that you're doing or you're curious or scared about. not to hide those things from those people. not only are the majority of Canadians concerned about extreme weather, for example and sort of questioning solutions, which means they don't have a solid opinion on them. But also, uh, we have found at ReClimate we did this great segmentation of audiences across the country and we looked at who people trust on climate change. And it is the first one in every single segment is family and friends. So you wanna keep that door open. Because there may come a day where your family member or your friend comes to you and says, oh, I don't know. Like I, I went to Jasper when I was a kid and I'm really feeling feelings about it. Or it's such a shame. What, like, you know, I've been hearing news reports, but like, what are you hearing? What do you think?
John:You may be the most important person for the, that, that friend or that family member to understand.
Emma:Absolutely.
John:do you think, you mentioned some people are afraid to, uh, share their true feelings about climate change. What do you think causes that?
Emma:I think there's a perception gap that we, we tend to think we're alone. There's lots of reasons for that. First among them though is the sort of pervasive sense that if no one is else is talking about it, if our leaders aren't talking about it, then that implies the rest of the public doesn't care about it, and that's fundamentally untrue. There are also lots of reasons we don't need to get into it, but lots of reasons our leaders might not be talking about it. Um, there are lots of reasons why media might not be talking about it, but, and those are, I think, for lots of people indicators of what's important right now and what's important to most people. The reality is that climate change is a slow moving not always linear process. So you know, the media will talk about a wildfire when there's a wildfire. They're probably not gonna talk in January about preparations people need to be doing. to prepare for wildfires or droughts or, or what have you. Leaders are going to, I think have the capacity and should quite frankly be talking about this more often. But election cycles political interests, lobbying interests make that really challenging sometimes so we, we tend to think that, the rest of our social world doesn't care about climate change as much as we do. And then I think the other part is just a, a much simpler, uh, maybe psychological factor, which is people don't like conflict and we tend to assume that these, conversations will inevitably be conflictual. Uh, and they don't have to be right. We tend to assume that folks who maybe vote a certain way or have certain values, that means automatically that they don't share your values around climate. But you know. I think anyone, for example, who is, cares about community, who are, uh, family oriented, who maybe have like values that are associated with traditions or holding onto that stuff, those people are impacted by climate change's radical changing of the land, of what you can do on it, and the implications for family for where you live, right? There may come a time where there are some places people can't live. And you could be any political stripe, you could have any kind of feelings about that or ideologies that's still gonna really impact your life. And you know, they're probably gonna want to talk about it; probably don't feel like they can.
John:Right, it's a great reminder not to pigeonhole people, and change comes to us so slowly as humans, we're kind of hardwired to change slowly.
Emma:Yeah.
John:so everybody will take time to process the, the ideas that you might share. Now, let's get back to your list of how to talk to friends and family. Uh, what other ideas would you give us about that?
Emma:I would come not with facts necessarily, so come with facts, but also come with feelings. So people tend to, especially now in our media environment, there's so much misinformation and disinformation spreading around. If the family member you're talking to is like very Facebook oriented, for example, or does a lot of time on the internet, any fact that you put out there as like an argument may end up being refuted by them because they have these, well, this person says that, or, well, what about this report? Or what about this Reddit user, you know, whatever. And so then that becomes like a conflictual argument. So, I think it's more valuable to start in a place of how this is affecting you, how this is affecting your friends. So example: where I live in Ottawa, in early June we had wildfire smoke all over the city, so a place to start: how are you, how are you doing? Whatever. Oh yeah, I'm okay, but like, I couldn't go for a walk today because of the wildfire smoke, and it's making me feel really squirrely and I'm finding that frustrating. Another tip is that you do not have to start with climate change, even if advisably you could end with climate change. So we talk about, uh, how impacts are really good ways to start a conversation with folks. That doesn't necessarily mean that in the, over the course of that conversation you ever have to bring up climate change. Maybe after several conversations, climate change comes up. People want to understand why this is happening. They do want answers. That's part of the reason why, conspiracy theories are so prevalent and also people grab onto them or misinformation because they wanna know what's happening and also to deal with it. So yeah, speaking from personal experience not necessarily coming with sort of like a, an agenda. And I guess maybe the last thing I'll say it takes time. So one of the biggest factors around having your information heard is trust. And now the benefit of course is that friends and family trust you already, in general, but they might not see you as a trusted expert in spaces of climate conversations. Maintaining trust with that person by just, again, keeping that door open, having additional conversations, but maybe also saying, yeah, like, I feel this way, but I have this electrician friend and he's electrified his entire house and he lives in, you know, the country and he is obsessed with his solar panels and his heat pumps. People like hearing from experts that they trust. but that tends to be people who are on the ground and in the field. Firefighters, another really good example. Field biologists who are like on the ground looking at things happening. Those people who can say, I have like in person, I have seen this with my eyes. I have experienced this, and and I've been doing this for a certain amount of time.
John:We can trust the people with the experience.
Emma:That's right.
John:Well, thank you very much for sharing those tips with us that I'm sure will be very useful for people going forward with their conversations about the climate. Now we need to definitely get to your PhD before we wrap up our time here today, because you did this fascinating PhD research on people's relationships with trees in Ottawa specifically, I think, is that right?
Emma:Yeah, that's right.
John:Tell us more about that.
Emma:I did my PhD's research with activists who were seeking to protect three different treed spaces, uh, in the city, protect or steward, I should say. And I got really interested in this because I became quite fascinated with the, with the narrative that I think we've all seen sort of starting in 2019, about the power of trees to protect us from climate change. There was this like very infamous research article, that was talking about the, the billions of trees that we needed to plant in order to mitigate climate change. And everyone got really excited. The federal government has a, had, I dunno if they're still gonna be doing it, had a 2 billion trees policy. This was a big thing. Trees were gonna be like our saviors. And so in these three spaces where suddenly people were interested in protecting trees or, wanted to make sure they didn't get cut down; I wanted to understand the reasons people were interested in this as opposed to just policy makers. Right. And, and also frankly, like whether this is like fair to ask of trees, whether it's fair to ask them to be our climate saviors. And so found a couple of really interesting things, but I'll say maybe the first one is that, people. Who were protecting or trying to save these trees would use the arguments of climate change frequently in their justifications for saving these trees. So, you know, they, these trees sequester carbon, they cool down this neighborhood. They are helping flood prevention, all this kind of stuff. I think things that those who are sort of in the know around environmental stuff or climate action sort of recognize as familiar. But that wasn't actually the reason, that wasn't the sole motivation, even the primary motivation for protecting these trees. In the end, what people actually wanted to, the reason people actually wanted to protect these trees was because they had a emotional relationship with them. So either these trees were in their neighborhoods and they spent time in that forested area or treed area. Maybe they were sort of markers that sort of made their neighborhood familiar. Or they were in their backyard and so they had that sort of everyday relationship with the trees. Or when they heard that they were at risk of being cut down, they started learning about the trees and the history of them. Those were the motivations that really compelled people to say, like, protest every day in front of a treed area, or go out every week and look at the health and, uh, variety of tree canopy in their neighborhood. I was really touched by that and really I think it was a great example of what happens when you get curious about these spaces or about these, these beings that we live with is that you sort of start to dive into all the other species that are also love these trees and spend time with them. So people would get interested in flowers, would get interested in the birds around them would ask questions about the species would learn about native versus non-native. All of this came from, oh, like why are we getting rid of these trees? And also like, oh, I spend all of my time with these trees and then wanting to learn more about them. And I actually think that that is, should be just as if not more important for saving trees or protecting them or planting more in urban areas than their climate capabilities. the reason I say that, especially in urban spaces is because urban areas are not very kind to trees. So it's a lot to ask a tree that is dealing with, air pollution from cars that is dealing with concrete, that is dealing with higher stress levels due to heat and soil poor soil, I should say. It's a lot to ask them to. Then also protect us from carbon dioxide or protect us from heat themselves or protect us from flooding. And unfortunately, they're not capable necessarily of doing all the things that we hope and expect them to do in those scenarios. So I actually increasingly think that when, say a city puts out a policy saying, okay, we're gonna cut down all these mature trees, but we're gonna plant a bunch more and that'll balance it out. Like I think that does a disservice both to the trees themselves and also to the public that understand trees as being, uh, more than just this number or this like infrastructure that will mitigate climate change, but actually have meaning and relationships with people.
John:It's interesting the way you speak about trees. I can't help but wonder if you have thought about the ents in Lord of the Rings. Tolkien drew these trees into his story as, as so much more than just a thing that we breathe from. They, they were actual living beings with characteristics. Have you thought much about that?
Emma:Actually, it's really challenging in a weird way to, to think about trees as living beings, but not as like, related or similar to humans. When I was doing my research, I read about how the Anishinabe Algonquin folks have often thought about different trees in the area. And one I really identified with was the description of the white pine, which has five needles and is sort of very, has a sort of flowy look. And it was described as a sort of like. Dancing or flowing lady of the forest. And I, these are the types of identifiers that I think for make slightly more sense to me. Another person that I talked to describing why this tree mattered to her, why she was glad that what, what her relationship with what it was. She said, I'm just really happy that it's there. I like to know that it's right here. In some ways it almost feels like stars in a sense that like I will never, you know, stars are these things that we learn so much about and we have such a history with as humans that provide, you know, all of these services, navigation, whatever, mythology, we don't necessarily think of them as alive. So they, they have this kind of relationship with us that is that in, where we only know a tiny portion of them, but they offer us so much. I don't know if that makes a lot of sense. Maybe
John:It does once again. Once again, we humans think we're so smart and we know everything and science has, uh, locked everything down for us, but there is so much more to know and so many other ways of knowing it, which is why it's, it's wonderful to hear you bring in the First Nations ways of, of experiencing that white pine, because I think we have a lot to learn still from our First Nations brothers and sisters about these things. Well, thanks for ma helping us to think about trees in a different way today. Have you, uh, landed on one specific climate action that you would like to share with us
Emma:Yes. So I have a big garden and uh, when we got it about two years ago when we bought this house with this backyard, it was a wild thing and we have since spent a lot of time trying to grow vegetables so that we could both share them with our neighbors, but also have, learn how to do that for ourselves. It's always a good idea. I couldn't say that I would be able to feed myself on this garden, but you know, like everything, these things take time. But the other thing that we've done is, uh, our garden or our front yard, a butts onto a sidewalk. And what we did last year was we actually sort of cut a strip of turf and we put wild flowers right in the front along the sidewalk. And not only is this lovely for the bees and native pollinators who seem to really like it, but it brings a lot of joy to our neighbors who are walking down the street. There's a daycare near our house and it's so delightful working from home to watch these, three and four year olds walking by the flowers and looking at them and getting curious about them. I mean, That makes me so happy, um, to make other people happy with these beautiful flowers.
John:What gives you hope, Emma?
Emma:Oh, lots of things actually. People will give me a lot of hope. I am very lucky to work with many incredible people and volunteer with amazing people and, and talk to amazing people. And they, they inspire me so I know that it comes to climate change, we often talk about the technological solutions, but I, I really do think that it's gonna be people Indigenous People, young people, people who care. When we're all together, it's really satisfying and it's exciting.
John:Everybody has their part to play, right?
Emma:That's it.
John:Thanks so much for joining us today, Emma.
Emma:Thanks so much for having me.
John:And thank you, dear listener or viewer. If you know of a young person doing cool things like Emma, let us know and we may just feature them on a future edition of Climate Action Figures. We will be back next week, same time, same place to hear from another climate action figure. Until then.
Emma:Go action figures so close.
John:So close. Until then,
Emma:Go figures!