Why Climate of Joy?

Why Climate of Joy: reclaiming joy and healing in the climate emergency?

Scientists have been warning us about the climate destabilizing effect of fossil fuel pollution for decades. Recently they have been raising the alarm even higher and telling us that we don’t have decades to tackle the issue of the pollution that our activities are causing. To stop the runaway destabilization of the climate we have less than a decade. That’s pretty important to me as a mother, and possibly a grandmother someday. I’m also someone who has spent most of her life trying to improve the health and well being of others, first as a registered nurse and now as an intuitive healer. My intuitive energy work is focused on loosening the spiritual and energetic knots, including collective knots, of which climate change is a symptom.

Addressing climate change is one of my passions, and has been for 15 years.

I have been blogging and writing about climate change since 2009 when I stopped being what I call a “climate change avoider”. I was hired to spend six months researching and writing about climate change and other environmental issues for a school division’s website. It was then I realized that even though climate change was such a huge problem and I as an individual was dwarfed by it, I needed to do what little bit I could about it. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

The Climate of Joy podcast is the accumulation of my 15 years of journeying through being a climate-concerned mother and lobbyist for change and now spiritual and energetic healer.

I think a really important conversation to have these days is whether it’s even possible or realistic to experience inner peace and joy during a time of climate emergency.

It’s not looking really good out there right now, say the  scientists who have been studying this issue, and who have been raising the alarm for decades. They are getting more and more alarmed at the lack of action on the issue of the pollution that we’re putting into the atmosphere that is destabilizing the climate.

The experts are telling us that we are within a decade of tipping into total global climate chaos, if we don’t rein in our pollution. Not only our common atmosphere but our oceans are absorbing our carbon dioxide pollution and becoming increasingly acidic and inhospitable to life.

Experts tell us the sixth mass extinction ever on this planet is underway because of the harmful impacts of human activities.

But wait, isn’t this is supposed to be about joy and healing?

As Doctor Phil McGraw says, “you can’t solve a problem that you don’t acknowledge” (said with a Texas drawl, of course).

One of my focuses these days is to talk about the fact that we are in the midst of a climate emergency and we can’t pretend that we’re not. Once we’ve accepted that fact, what can we do about it?

Is there room for joy and healing part in the midst of multiple global crises? Beyond the Climate Emergency, there is the fact that our economic system is so out of whack that the 85 richest people on the planet own the same kind of wealth that of half of the world’s population, 3.5 billion people! Crazy. Another example of this gross economic imbalance is that there is a child who dies of starvation on this planet every 10 seconds.

Obviously there is something really wrong with not only our environmental situation but our social and economic situation as well. I know that that’s not news to you. You wouldn’t be reading this if that was news to you.

At the same time that there are these extremes going on at the planetary level, we have new science that’s telling us that this physical world that we can see and experience with our five senses isn’t all there is. 

When I look out my window, I see a beautiful nectarine tree outside my window. Beyond that I see my neighbour’s house. But  if I had a microscope that was strong enough to zoom past the molecular level of that tree, a different world would emerge. If we each had a microscope that could zoom in past the cellular level, past the molecular level in past even the atomic level and down to where there’s neutrons and protons and even into further down, what science is telling us is there is just pure energy.

In some ways, this physical world is a mirage. Which of course is what the wisest voices across millennia have told us.

Currently, we have a planetary climate crisis. We also have very reliable science telling us that this a material reality that seems so solid is not solid at all. In fact, it tells us that all of us and the world around us are moving energy and light.

Both these things are true. My reason for launching this blog and my new podcast is to talk about things that I don’t think are talked about enough. First, that there’s a climate emergency going on,  and the fact that this revolutionary understanding of ourselves and the world around us should be blowing our minds. That fundamentally we are energy. We are light. What?!! What does that even mean?

This blog, which highlights episodes from the Climate of Joy podcast, is a chance to explore those two topics, and more.

And I’m really glad that you popped by. 

Before I sign off, I wanted to touch briefly on the idea of cruel optimism. This term wasn’t coined by Johann Hari, the author of “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again”, but he refers to it in his book. (Which, if you have not read it, I would highly recommend it. I think it’s really an important book, even in the context of climate change).

Hari highlights examples of cruel optimism, which focuses on individual responsibility. At its worst, cruel optimism has a self-help-focused worldview that offers an overly optimistic and simple solution to complex problems. Sometimes self-help is about training people to adjust to an unacceptable and morally unjust social system.

I feel I should address the idea of cruel optimism, because here I am, privileged in the comparison to many people on this planet, talking about joy and healing at a time of great inequality and climate upheaval. I’m a white woman who doesn’t need to worry about the roof over my head.  I live in Canada, a relatively prosperous and stable nation.

Is the fact that I’m talking about finding a path to joy and healing in the Climate Emergency hypocritical or, indeed, “cruel optimism”? 

It’s an important question. And I don’t know the whole answer.

I do know that my journey as a climate-concerned mother and lobbyist for change has been a painful one at times, because of the lack of collective action on this issue. I find it difficult to understand why we’re choosing to endanger the future of our children and our children’s children and this beautiful planet of ours merely because it’s hard to change the way we run our economic system.

But that is the situation that it is. My own journey through the climate emergency has been one of a spiritual and consciousness shift as well as environmental awareness.

I posted a quote below by Dr Gus Speth, professor of law at the Vermont Law School and former Dean of the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. This quote encapsulates why I feel called to do another podcast after co-hosting Eaarth Feels podcast for several years. I want to have a space to talk about the Climate Emergency and consciousness, and consciousness-shifting.

Dr Speth stated:

I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science, we could address those problems, but I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy and to deal with those, we need a spiritual and cultural transformation.

These are conversations that I want to have on this blog, and on the Climate of Joy podcast. And I want it to be a two way conversation, so I’d really like to hear from you! Leave a comment below, or email at christine@climateofjoy.com, or visit the Climate of Joy Facebook page.

My hope is that the conversations that we have contribute to a spiritual and cultural transformation that results in a beautiful, thriving and joyous future for all of us. 

Now before you go, here’s some Good Climate News:

– It’s important to celebrate climate victories! In the first week of September the Biden Administration announced they are cancelling seven Trump-era oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Woo-hoo! As well, the administration is prohibiting fossil fuel development in 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska (NPR-A). Double woo-hoo!

*Remember, subscribe to the Climate of Joy podcast wherever you get your favourite podcasts!*