Climate Curious’s mission has always been to bring new people into the climate and environmental conversation – especially people who don’t consider themselves part of this conversation. Even our team didn’t see themselves as part of the environment space for a long time either! That’s why we wanted Climate Curious to be an inclusive space for anyone to learn about the environment and get involved. Today’s blog centres on new ways you may connect to the climate space and conversation.
We are thrilled to welcome back previous TEDxLondon speaker and new author, Joycelyn Longdon. Joycelyn has recently published her first book, Natural Connection: What indigenous wisdom & marginalised people teach us about environmental action. The book’s six themes, rage, imagination, innovation, theory, healing and care, offer nuanced, new ways to think about the natural world and what your role in the environmental movement may be. In her podcast episode, How to ignite your Natural Connection, Joycelyn told us the reasoning behind how she wrote the book:
“I felt intimately that the way I show up in environmentalism is not based on what I do, but more so on who I am.”
“I think the reason why so many people feel isolated or excluded from environmental action is because there’s this feeling that you have to be a certain person and you have to do certain things.”
Joycelyn’s perspective is also deeply informed by her work and research at the intersection of racial and climate justice. She said realising that Black and Brown people are already strongly affected by the climate crisis was transformative:
“I think learning about how racial justice and climate justice are completely intertwined. That’s what stuck it for me… I thought, environmentalism is not for Black people…. But then learning about how climate action and the climate crisis impact Black people so hugely – that was my in.”
Joycelyn’s insights in the book are informed from this justice-led and anti-racist perspective. If her attitude resonates with you, then we are thrilled to share four insights from Joycelyn on alternative ways you can (re)connect with nature, climate and environmental action.
Rage and its sister joy
Our collective anger about the climate crisis is often undermined. Protestors being angry and shouting slogans, or hotly debating climate change at the dinner table, is treated negatively by society at large. Anger is something to be managed and ideally overcome – lest it become violent or dangerous. Yet, in the book Joycelyn wants to complicate this understanding of rage: she sees rage as a tool, one that can direct action.
“[I try] to get us to reimagine what anger and rage is […] I think I describe it as a fire that can equally burn and enlighten. It’s a tool that we can use. It’s a welling of emotion that communicates our feeling.”
Rage is also personal. Joycelyn says her experience as a Black woman has shaped how she deals with this emotion and why she thinks of rage differently now. She believes acknowledging your rage is significant and can help you channel your energy.
“Being a Black woman… does shape the experience I’ve had in life […] Sometimes, for survival reasons, you do not show your rage. You always have to check yourself, push it down… I think writing the chapter was actually also a process for me to acknowledge that there’s a lot that I’m angry about and that I’m valid.”
For Joycelyn, learning to love rage and being curious about how you move through your rage allowed her to access new spaces – and new feelings. She says the flip side of her anger was realising ‘joy is the sister of rage’ – and with joy and rage combined you can have more options to direct your energy into something powerful and productive.
“They go together… our joy and our rage are sisters. And we should use it, such as ,am I being as joyful as I am angry? […] And how am I revolting against the systems that wanna keep me angry?”
Watch Joycelyn’s and Ben’s discuss her book on this live recording of the her episode. Climate Curious episodes and videos can now be found on YouTube – like and subscribe!
Wakanda and technology
For a lot of people the latest tech developments and new innovations are very exciting, but for others it’s complex, confusing or simply boring. If you fall into the latter category then Joycelyn offers another perspective.
“[I was] thinking and reimagining what technology is away from this Western, modern, output that can only be created from big tech or with loads of money or… is always AI.”
“When I looked at the etymologies or like the root of the word technology, where it comes from, it comes from the Latin for art and craft […] That got to the core for me of what technology should be.”
Reimagining technology as a creative process and one that isn’t strictly inspired by Silicon Valley or big price tags led Joycelyn to look at stories from sci-fi, afrofuturism and even Wakanda, from Marvel. Stories like this show us alternative ways of considering technology – focused on the collective good and in harmony with the planet.
“The way that I talk about Wakanda acting as kind of like a blueprint for how we can think about or reimagine what technology is… this idea that the Wakandans didn’t use technology to defeat other people. Or to oppress other people. They used it for collective good.”
“When we see Wakanda, it is not a depleted, extracted place. There are animals, there are wildlife. There are mountains. There are clean rivers. There is this abundance in the community“
“And I think that for me what I was trying to pull out of the Wakanda story is this trifecta of technology, nature and ancestral wisdom.”
Hope at the end of the world
“One thing I talk about in the Imagination chapter is about our ancestors and … [how] they have seen the end of the world before…. And yet they still sung. They still danced. They still made art. They made us.”
Hopelessness and eco-anxiety in the face of climate collapse is increasing – we all know these feelings of doom and gloom when we look at the headlines. Yet, Joycelyn offers a new vision for hope – one rooted in history and wisdom. As she notes, Indigenous populations from across the world, and at many different times in the past, have faced the ‘end of the world’ as they knew it.
“It’s [about] how we show up at the end of the world, at the end of this world… And there is a next world. And it depends on us, what that next world looks like. It could look worse than now… And it could look so much better than now.”
Seeing the end of the world as not a singular event and instead multiple moments, which have been faced and overcome by those before us, Joycelyn argues, is a deeply hopeful outlook. In the breadth of past human experience, individuals and communities have overcome and striven to build a better world – and we can do the same.
“But for me, that’s deeply hopeful. Because that’s what our ancestors have done in their small areas, in their own ways, in their own locations, with their own skillsets. They have striven to make their world a piece of this world better… and that’s hopeful for me.”
Natural connection is not about trees
So how can we feel connected with the natural world when it’s not available to us? Or when you hate the outdoors? Or when you live in a city for example? Joycelyn points out natural connection is not about hugging trees or living in the countryside – it’s about perspective.
“I like to hug a tree. [But] that’s not what natural connection is about… I grew up in a city, right? But I still developed that natural connection myself, and I say that a natural connection is developed wherever we are. Because it’s not an external thing.”
“Natural connection is an internal thing. It’s how we view the world. It’s actually putting on a new set of glasses… and looking at the world in a different way. It is acknowledging that everything in this room, its nature.”
Joycelyn is keen to remind us that everything around us is part of nature. For instance when we break items into their component parts, they are made from the soil, plants and earth. Or when we drink a glass of water, that water has come from a stream, a lake or a river. Joycelyn’s perspective opens up who and how we connect with the natural world. She asks, when we feel connected to nature all around us, what further possibilities and actions may open up to us?
These insights are just small tasters into the wisdom of indigenous and marginalised people and what they tell us about connecting with the natural world and protecting it. We highly recommend Joycelyn’s book Natural Connection: What indigenous wisdom & marginalised people teach us about environmental action and listening to Joycelyn’s Climate Curious episode, How to ignite your Natural Connection. Make sure to check out her TEDxLondon talk, Can AI help us conserve nature fairly? and also her recommended reading list if you’d like to learn more about indigenous wisdom.
Until next time – stay curious!
