(Re)growing a Living Culture
Bi-Co Environmental Studies Speaker Series

Bravery and Resilience on a Warming Planet: Sarah Jaquette Ray
Monday, November 18, 2024
4:30-6pm
VCAM Screening Room

Facing a future of compounding climate change disasters, many young people are organizing for action on climate change. Yet, it can be hard to deal with the feelings of powerlessness and despair that can accompany the hard work of social movements, especially when the adults in the room– parents, climate experts, and politicians– don’t seem to be doing enough to protect the planet for future generations. We have the technological tools to address the climate crisis, but what are the emotional resources young people will need to put those tools into action, combat burnout, and even find purpose in building a world they desire? What will it take for all of us to bring our best selves to the long haul of climate justice work, in the face of so much degradation and suffering? Drawing on her book, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet, Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray will talk about the role of emotions in the youth climate movement. Ray will outline strategies for engaging anxiety, grief, despair, and also joy, desire, and pleasure in service of cultivating a more just and regenerative world.

Suggested Reading: Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet (2020), and The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators: How to Teach in a Burning World (2024), both books are available through UC Press: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/the-existential-toolkit-for-climate-justice-educators/paper

Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray works at the intersection of climate, emotions, and justice. She is a professor and chair of environmental studies at California Polytechnic, Humboldt. An environmental humanist with a BA in Religious Studies, an MA in American Studies, and a PhD in Environmental Sciences, Studies and Policy, Dr. Ray draws on an eclectic range of disciplines and epistemologies in service of climate justice. Her first book, The Ecological Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture (Arizona, 2013), explores the logic and affects of social control in environmental thought. Her second book, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet (California, 2020), is an existential toolkit for the climate generation. She has published on emotions and the climate movement in the LA Times, Scientific American, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, Edge Effects, KCET, Zocalo Public Square, and One Earth Sangha. Her latest book is The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators: How to Teach in a Burning World, an easy-to-use field guide for teaching climate injustice and building resilience in an age of crisis. Ray is also a certified mindfulness facilitator through the UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center.

Organized by the Bi-Co Environmental Studies Program

Contact: Dylan Gauthier dgauthier [at] haverford.edu

Sponsored by the Bi-Co Department of Environmental Studies, the Distinguished Visitors Program, The Uncertainty Academy, and the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities