In the Weeds

Susannah Sayler and Ed Morris have been working at the intersection of art and climate activism for the last fifteen years. They are co-founders of the Canary Project, started in 2006 and inspired by a series of articles that Elizabeth Kolbert published in The New Yorker that eventually became her book Field Notes from a Catastrophe.

Adapting Kolbert’s investigative strategy, Ed and Susannah initially set out to photograph places around the world being impacted by climate change - in order to call out a warning, as the name Canary Project suggests. (Though the photographs themselves or the installations that ensued were subsequently renamed History of the Future.)

Since then, Susannah and Ed have worked on numerous projects, from Green Patriot Posters to the more recent Toolshed, and helped coordinate works of fellow artists tackling climate change. They also both teach in the Dept. of Film and Media Arts at Syracuse University.

As a former student of the arts (more the literary kind than the visual kind, but who’s quibbling), I was curious about the ability of art to engage in climate activism. What can the artist achieve that the scientist and the journalist cannot, I wondered? And, conversely, what are art’s limitations?

To see the photos and other images we discuss, go to in-the-weeds.net

To check out Susannah and Ed’s latests project go to https://tool-shed.org

In time for the winter solstice, we revisit our episode on the history of Christmas trees with historian Judith Flanders, author of Christmas: A Biography (2017) as well as numerous books on the Victorian period, including The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Reveled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime and The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London.

Flanders helps us to parse history from myth, as we discuss the origins of Christmas and the practice of bringing evergreen trees into our homes to decorate them for the holidays.

Guitar rendition of “O Tannenbaum” by Dave Larzelere.

In time for the winter solstice, we revisit our episode on the history of Christmas trees with historian Judith Flanders, author of Christmas: A Biography (2017) as well as numerous books on the Victorian period, including The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Reveled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime and The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London.

Flanders helps us to parse history from myth, as we discuss the origins of Christmas and the practice of bringing evergreen trees into our homes to decorate them for the holidays.

Guitar rendition of “O Tannenbaum” by Dave Larzelere.

In our continuing series on climate change, I talk to Meg Lowman who knows more about trees than most people on this planet. She invented canopy ecology - the practice of studying trees in the treetops - and has worked across 46 countries and 7 continents, designing hot air balloons and walkways and other ways to explore and study this diverse biosphere.

We discuss her recent book, The Arbonaut: A Life Discovering the Eighth Continent in the Trees Above Us. This riveting memoir takes us from her small-town roots in New England to her work in Australia, where she first climbed trees to study leaves and also, along the way, married an Australian sheep rancher and had her two sons, to her exploration of forests in California, India, Malaysia, Ethiopia and beyond.

Lowman’s prognosis for the future of our forests is grim but her message is clear: “It's not good enough to plant trees. We have to save the big trees!” One way we can do that is by supporting treefoundation.org, which is working to build ten canopy walkways in the ten most endangered forests of the world - an innovation which not only allows visitors to experience the dynamic life and biodiversity of the canopy but also brings economic and social benefits to the people living near these forests, thus helping the local communities and helping to save their forests.

For more see https://in-the-weeds.net

In our continuing series on climate change, I talk to Meg Lowman who knows more about trees than most people on this planet. She invented canopy ecology - the practice of studying trees in the treetops - and has worked across 46 countries and 7 continents, designing hot air balloons and walkways and other ways to explore and study this diverse biosphere.

We discuss her recent book, The Arbonaut: A Life Discovering the Eighth Continent in the Trees Above Us. This riveting memoir takes us from her small-town roots in New England to her work in Australia, where she first climbed trees to study leaves and also, along the way, married an Australian sheep rancher and had her two sons, to her exploration of forests in California, India, Malaysia, Ethiopia and beyond.

Lowman’s prognosis for the future of our forests is grim but her message is clear: “It's not good enough to plant trees. We have to save the big trees!” One way we can do that is by supporting treefoundation.org, which is working to build ten canopy walkways in the ten most endangered forests of the world - an innovation which not only allows visitors to experience the dynamic life and biodiversity of the canopy but also brings economic and social benefits to the people living near these forests, thus helping the local communities and helping to save their forests.

For more see https://in-the-weeds.net

To find out what we know about how a warming planet will affect the forests in my home state of New York, I visit Black Rock Forest, a research station in the Hudson Highlands, and talk to Andy Reinmann, Assistant Professor in the Environmental Sciences Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center of the Graduate Center, CUNY and in the Department of Geography and Environmental Science at Hunter College.

We talk Phenocams, melting snow packs in New England, which tree species are likely to survive a warmer climate and how trees can help mitigate the impact of erratic weather in cities and suburbs. And glory in the beauty of a New York autumn!

in-the-weeds.net

to check out the Phenocam network via The University of New Hampshire: https://phenocam.sr.unh.edu/webcam/

Black Rock Forest website: https://www.blackrockforest.org

To find out what we know about how a warming planet will affect the forests in my home state of New York, I visit Black Rock Forest, a research station in the Hudson Highlands, and talk to Andy Reinmann, Assistant Professor in the Environmental Sciences Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center of the Graduate Center, CUNY and in the Department of Geography and Environmental Science at Hunter College.

We talk Phenocams, melting snow packs in New England, which tree species are likely to survive a warmer climate and how trees can help mitigate the impact of erratic weather in cities and suburbs. And glory in the beauty of a New York autumn!

in-the-weeds.net

to check out the Phenocam network via The University of New Hampshire: https://phenocam.sr.unh.edu/webcam/

Black Rock Forest website: https://www.blackrockforest.org

In the second installment of our series on climate change, I talk to environmental journalist and science curator for TED Talks David Biello about his book, The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth's Newest Age. Biello argues that, culturally, we’re still prey to the false notion that there’s a divide between the human and the natural, when, in fact, we humans are dependent on the natural world for our survival and are, furthermore, affecting every corner of the world, no matter how remote. We explore this notion of the Anthropocene - the geologic term meant to define an era in which humans are having such a dramatic effect on the earth that we will leave our mark in the geologic record. Biello argues we need to take ownership of our oversized role and become better, more deliberate and thoughtful stewards of our home. Along the way, he also has lots of interesting stories to tell, from the effort to bring back the wooly mammoth to the use of garbage to generate energy in Rizhao, China.

In the second installment of our series on climate change, I talk to environmental journalist and science curator for TED Talks David Biello about his book, The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth's Newest Age. Biello argues that, culturally, we’re still prey to the false notion that there’s a divide between the human and the natural, when, in fact, we humans are dependent on the natural world for our survival and are, furthermore, affecting every corner of the world, no matter how remote. We explore this notion of the Anthropocene - the geologic term meant to define an era in which humans are having such a dramatic effect on the earth that we will leave our mark in the geologic record. Biello argues we need to take ownership of our oversized role and become better, more deliberate and thoughtful stewards of our home. Along the way, he also has lots of interesting stories to tell, from the effort to bring back the wooly mammoth to the use of garbage to generate energy in Rizhao, China.

In his new book, Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World, Daniel Sherrell reflects on his career as a climate activist and tries to process the emotional fallout, for himself and his generation - Millennials -, of growing up in the age of climate change. Written as a letter to his imagined future child, the book is a kind of Dantean descent into the pit of emotions - from frustration, grief, rage and despair to hope - that all of us who are engaged with what is happening to our planet must grapple with.

This episode inaugurates our new season on climate change and seems like a good point of departure: coming to terms with how we feel about what Dan Sherrell, referencing philosopher Timothy Morton, calls a hyperobject: a problem too big, spatially and temporally, for us to really wrap our heads around.

in-the-weeds.net

To lobby Congress to include meaningful climate legislation in the Build-Back-Better bill, I encourage you to check out the Sunrise Movement - sunrisemovement.org