Season 4, Episode 17: Eco-Friends Part II: Thomas and Panu Meet in Person!
image credit | Toa Heftiba
Season 4, Episode 17: Eco-Friends Part II: Thomas and Panu Meet in Person!
Here’s to in-person connections! Most people don't know that up until just a few weeks ago Thomas and Panu had never met in person. They had connected over long distance and constructed their podcast dialogue over the last few years solely through electronic means. So, it is very special to us that this episode was recorded over Thomas's living room table in Portland Oregon while Panu was visiting during his tour of the United States. So, join us as the pair discuss their podcast relationship, current events, and what Panu has been seeing and learning during his visit to Charlottesville, Virginia and across Northern California, and his hikes in the redwoods. This episode goes well with our recent theme of eco-friends, and we hope it encourages you to re-connect — in person — with someone you care about and who also shares your care for people and planet.
Transcript
[music: “CC&H theme music”]
Introduction voice: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness (CC&H), an international podcast that explores the personal side of climate change. Your feelings, what the crisis means to you, and how to cope and thrive. And now, your hosts, Thomas Doherty and Panu Pihkala.
Thomas Doherty: Well hello, I’m Thomas Doherty.
Panu Pihkala: And I am Panu Pihkala.
Doherty: Welcome to Climate Change and Happiness, this is our podcast. It’s a show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about the personal side of climate change, particularly their emotional responses and how they think about these issues and how it affects them in their daily life. And we have a special episode today. I was going to say I have
a special guest and that's technically true because I'm actually sitting here in person with Panu. A lot of people don't realize that we had never met in person until just two days ago. We've only known each other through a distance. Panu happens to be here in Portland and we're recording on-site in Portland, Oregon. So, we have a loose theme about connections, coping, and friendships. Panu's been traveling in the US and Panu, how are things going? How's your
Panu's trip to America been going so far?
Pihkala: Thanks for asking, Thomas, and a great pleasure to be here in Portland live. I also want to credit our audio person, Mark, who is sitting close to us and who usually also operates online and takes care of sound quality. Thanks for that Mark. It’s been a while since I was in the states. I try to be mindful of the environmental emissions of travel and then with Covid-19. People have been surprised to hear that we’ve been doing this podcast for more than three and a half years and we’ve never met in person. So, that’s of course the great benefits of modern technology, that it’s possible to do this. But, on the other hand, it’s great to be here and meet live. What brought me to the states was a conference at Stanford that was about applying humanities research into societal and public spheres. Its official name is a bit technical: Applied Collaboratory for Religion and Ecology Scholarship. So, there was an emphasis on people who studied the relationship between religion and environment and that’s something we’ve touched upon in previous episodes of the podcast. But while I’m here, there have also been other talks and meetings. One in Charlottesville, Virginia that was about working with eco-anxiety between academia and society and then meetings in San Francisco with people in the climate psychology field and meeting various folks here in Portland. So, it's been a very interesting road trip done in quite curious times considering the political situation in states and other places.
Doherty: So, you've been to the United States before and what are some of the things that you appreciate about the US. Or what are some things that you really enjoyed on this visit that are the best parts of this country?
Pihkala: People sometimes ask me that in Finland. What is it like to be in America? My longest period here was in 2011, almost half a year, when I was doing my PhD and that was mostly in Chicago but then also visiting other places. My only previous time on the West Coast was then in 2011. Since then, I’ve been to other places and there’s great wonderful people I’ve met on all of these journeys to the states. And of course, the landscapes and scenery are fabulous. It’s sometimes a challenge when you are living next to natural wonders at how much you are able to retain, an ability to appreciate how special those are. Well luckily many people do and there’s certainly lots of very special things around. Near the West Coast, during this trip, I had the pleasure of driving from Monterey to Oregon over many days. So, I saw the coastline and the mountains, and the Redwoods and those are really really special and reminded me of my early readings of folks like John Muir who loved the Redwoods. This was my first time seeing the Blue Ridge Mountains and they have some similarities with mountains in Scandinavia, there’s some ancient bedrock. But anyways, both people and the scenery. There’s lots of special things around here.
Doherty: Yeah, it can be really stressful if you get into the news and think about armed conflicts around the world and intolerance and economic issues and political problems. So, it's nice to remember that for a lot of us, we still like to visit people and travel, and there's nothing like going to a new place you've never seen before like the Redwood Forest in the US. You know, defies words, you have to see it to understand it. And how nice it is to be in other places like in Virginia, in Charlottesville, right? You were at the university there with Thomas Jefferson's architecture and things like that.
Pihkala: Yeah, it was a very interesting place. The University of Virginia, Charlottesville has this lawn and Jefferson designed the buildings around it and the students live right next to the lawn. So, during an ordinary evening, there's somebody playing the guitar and people doing sports. I joined a couple of guys doing frisbee. And that’s also something on one hand very ordinary but on the other hand so very important in times like this. These human connections and shared things to do and relaxation. I sometimes go distancing in the process muddle of eco-anxiety… Also, other classical things like hospitality along the road. I've certainly been benefiting a lot from that and I'm very grateful for that and luckily that human warmth we still have in the world even though the times are so tumultuous.
Doherty: Yeah, warmth. So, we recently recorded an episode with Gregory Hill who's a local environmental scientist here in town and is also a really old dear friend of mine. We have this idea of eco-friends, which I talk about in my upcoming book. It’s this idea of recognizing the friends that we have that inspire us in terms of nature and in the natural world and share our beliefs, share our values, share our connections, and share our outdoor activities. So, listeners, you can think about eco-friends that you have, people that you admire, or you know or that you do things together. I think it's really hard to do environmental work or to be environmentally minded without having some eco-friends. Or put another way, and you can tell me what you think about this Panu, but if you're trying to have an environmental identity or trying to do climate change work or any kind of sustainability work and you don't have any eco-friends, people to share that with, then I think it becomes really lonely and difficult.
Pihkala: Yeah, I totally agree and even though I have personally for a long time appreciated community and when I studied my university studies, I lived in a community for many years. But still, as times get harder, one really learns to appreciate community and as you said Thomas, as a theme that has come up in many episodes. For example, Laura Schmidt, the founder of Good Grief network and in her book, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate, she is summarizing community, community, community is something which is so needed. And that's something relevant in all corners of the world. It’s a very global thing even though, there's different kinds of privileges or injustices that people have to face when they try to build and upkeep those communities.
Doherty: Yeah, and we had a physical gathering here yesterday, actually at my home, where we gathered Panu and we had at least two guests that we've had in the podcast in the past, Mark, our production person, and other family members and friends and other really interesting people that were doing environmental work and sustainability work and many people had not met each other in person. And standing around the bonfire, it was really a good analog of connecting and people telling their stories. There were some students there that were younger, there were people that were more experienced and established. So, I think that's just such a key thing.
Pihkala: I’m very grateful to you for organizing that and having a bonfire. It’s a nice ancient element which brings people together and a similar dynamic was seen in San Francisco where people active in the Climate Psychology Alliance North America and other things like the work that reconnects networks. Folks came to talk with me and I gave a short presentation. Many said that they had never actually met each other live before. They live in the greater San Francisco Bay Area which is of course big, there’s been Covid-19, and everyone’s busy. So, I've been happy of this side effect of me being here and sort of helping gather people around that fact that some strange Finnish person is in town.
Doherty: Your visit is so rare that it draws people out to come and see you. There's a theme about maintaining connections, whether you do it over a distance, like Panu and I for almost four years have collaborated, worked together, created a podcast, and I've only just now met in
person just in the last couple of days. So, it's possible to collaborate with someone in another part of the world and really do meaningful work and know them quite well. And then you can also, if lucky, do it in person. So it's both. I have a question for you Panu and you might follow up but one part of travel, particularly going away from your country, is you get to come back home. So, I'm curious if you're already formulating some thoughts about what you want to bring home from your journey, you know, the hero's journey coming back to your community. So that's a question I had that leads to talking about your work. What do you have on your mind here?
Pihkala: That's a good question. And when I've done travel, that has been an important part of my history, but I've done it less now during the last 10 years for many reasons and with the family, we’ve done shorter range travel and trips. In my solitary travels, I’ve kept journals and have written stuff and two of them I actually typed into electronic formats of my younger days, and it's been really fun to sometimes return to that.
Doherty: Oh, that’s nice.
Pihkala: And now, there’s so much happening that it’s been a return to some of that mentality which I thought would be mostly gone so it’s been lovely to return to that and sometimes admiring the beauty around you and getting immersed in that. Of course, there’s also been challenging tasks of talking about things like climate anxiety and emotion research in times like this. So, I haven't just been having a light, fun time, but there's been many things around. Now, I've kept a shortish journal with both drawings and text, so that's been a fun experiment.
Doherty: So you're keeping a journal now?
Pihkala: Yeah, much shorter, but then I draw some small pictures and write something. So that's been fun and something I try to bring home. That kind of energy of having been blessed with some lovely things around the journey. Another thing which I’m bringing is the encounters with American people who are stupefied by what’s happening in politics. I’ve met a lot of people who are very passionate about environmental work and climate work and now a lot of other things are getting attention and sometimes there’s pushback in some political spheres against environmental and climate work. So, resonating with that difficulty and those challenges while also being inspired by the determination of many of these people who keep on working on these matters. I see a very practical strategy of keeping together and holding that community strong so that one is able to do that in troubled times.
Doherty: Yeah, that's a good theme for our talk today, keeping community strong. I want to make a note about that. Because yeah, I think the paradox with this work is, as I often tell people, it's worse than you think and it's better. So, whenever you get into any environmental or any kind of social issue, you often find it's worse than you think. There are more problems, it’s more complicated, there's more corruption, there's more suffering than you realized. But then it's better also in the sense that there are people doing things. The paradox of my work recently is that even though I'm working on tough climate issues, I do positive stuff all day, like meeting with people like you and the people that were at this gathering that I just spoke about. I had a chance to meet with Emma Marris this morning who is a very accomplished nature writer and we were chatting and so, there's a lot of gifted people doing things and that's why I always come back to be careful of getting too lost in the news because when you're immersed in the news, you get a sense that the world is really going to heck and burning up and you don't realize all the positive stuff that's going on. But yeah, maintaining community I think is more important than ever, whether it's protecting universities here in the US. We've got a lot of negative energy coming out of the government that's really so counter to the Thomas Jefferson idea of creating a university and worshiping knowledge and truth and things like that. We have people that are really actively going against truth and free thinking and democracy and free speech. Creating community is not a soft thing. Creating community is a form of strength. So keeping community strong is also a way to be strong in the face of threats to health and democracy. So, more than ever, I think we need to get together and meet with people. So listeners, you can think about that. Can you make a point to really connect with people mindfully? That you respect and support each other and not fall into fear. It’s always nice to complain and vent with people that we know and share our frustrations and be heard. So, there's nothing wrong with that to a certain extent, but if the only thing you're doing is complaining and venting or cycling around in fear, that's not healthy either.
Pihkala: Yeah, I strongly resonate with that. And we have an episode coming out where we're discussing with Bob Doppelt who is one of the leaders in community resilience work amidst climate change. Both he and, for example, Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone have these exercises where people are asked to map things which affect them. Macy and Johnstone use this boat image, you know, what are some of the things that are weighing your boat down at the moment and what are some of the things that are lifting it up or carrying it forward. This can be done also explicitly in relation to social relations and community or relations with the modern human world. That’s something for you listeners, if you feel like it. It's sometimes useful to write these things down and think about how to find more balance and resources. And I guess, Thomas, that this comes pretty close to many methods that you use in your daily work.
Doherty: Yeah. You know, I want to think that the idea that we've talked about in the podcast is the idea of your environmental identity and your sense of your own identity in relation to nature and the natural world and climate change. And there's like a timeline of your identity from your birth to the present and all these experiences that you have that make you who you are. Then we have a whole extending the timeline idea, right? So, from today, we have tomorrow, the next day and however long we're going to live. And then, of course, our influence extends beyond our life. We influence things that exist after us. It's really how do we want to extend our timeline? How do we want to show up for the rest of our life? There's always fear of death underlying almost all the stuff that's going on here and so how do we realize that we are here for a limited amount of time, and we need to do the best we can and realize that the things we believe in and are working on are much greater than we are and longer than we are, right?
Pihkala: Yeah, there's a nice existentialist dimension emerging in you, Thomas.
Doherty: Yes, it is. This came up recently about just getting comfortable talking about death as part of life. You don't have to dwell on it or make it the only thing, but if we don't name it, I feel like it's infiltrating. Certainly, people are fearful. Some people are fearful in the U .S. right now of the federal government. And it can be a fear of violence, a fear of violence of being deported, being targeted in some way. A very violent, intimidating style of political leadership has emerged in the United States and it does thrive on fear and bullying.
Pihkala: Yeah, this could lead into rather deep stuff and some of this we have touched upon in some previous episodes and just to name some dynamics, there's this very interesting research called Terror Management Theory and I think that's very relevant to the times in which we are living and sometimes when people are reminded of deep and challenging things like mortality or losing power, they may react by trying to upkeep things as they have used to be even though that sometimes may be impossible and lead to unethical issues. Of course, there are many ways that one can try to run away from mortality and finitude. As you said Thomas, the time perspective really convinced me about Robert Clifton’s ideas that people are looking for signs in which they can see continuation of life even amidst mortalities and communities is definitely one of these ways for some people. It's the biological offspring in the community and in the natural world those things which one continues. So just naming that there's some links to really profound things here and that's an ancient wisdom but if you’re engaged enough with mortality, that can really help you appreciate being alive and living. So, I think it's a pathway towards more joy than sorrow actually, even though it may seem counterintuitive at first.
Doherty: Yeah, because I think that the psychology around Terror Management Theory is that when you are reminded of death unconsciously, you tend to have these protective behaviors where you get really rigid about the status quo, but that's different than actually embracing your limited life and enjoying your life as it is. When you're open about it, it doesn't lead to
those unhealthy things as much. This is really great. So nice to be able to talk to Panu here in my living room, live. We're keeping our connection going, so listeners I want you to really think about your connections and your community and can you find someone to connect with soon like Panu and I are doing today? It doesn't have to be someone from another country, it could be someone from down the block. Do you have any inspirations or kinds of things you're looking forward to getting back to when you get home? I know you want to see your family and your children, but what else are you looking forward to when you get back to Finland?
Pihkala: Well yeah, two weeks is already a long time away from the family so I’m very happy to see them again and in the US, cherry trees are blossoming. In Finland, that will be in May so now I get the chance to experience early spring sort of a second time, but there might be some snow and ice when I get back home. Also in Finland, with colleagues and friends, we’re thinking about what kinds of social community and action would be needed in times like this. Taking it more seriously on how troubled times are and thinking if there would be more structures needed, like more gatherings and new kinds of being and doing. It's really a sort of diamond process of thinking about that series. But also, of course, I miss the sauna a lot. So, I'm really looking forward to getting back.
Doherty: Back to the family, back to the sauna. Well, Panu, it's really nice chatting with you. I will look forward to seeing you next time we record. Well, some of the next times we record we’ll be back online, but it's really nice to see you in person.
Pihkala: Likewise
Doherty: Panu, have a good rest of your trip and listeners and everyone, be well.
Pihkala: Be well.
[music: “CC&H theme music”]
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