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Podcast, Social Justice, Environmental Justice

Episode 152: Vancouver Podcast Festival: Podcasting Climate Change

January 04, 2022
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The climatic events of 2021 (heat, fires, floods, storms) have brought home the reality of climate change like never before — and the urgency for media to address this crisis couldn’t feel greater.

But how do we talk about the climate emergency in ways that move us away from despair and disaster coverage? How can podcasts shift the conversation in ways the mainstream media cannot or refuses to do? How do we talk about climate justice, Indigenous sovereignty, and de-colonizing media?

For this special release, tune into the live event recording from Podcasting Climate Change, a session at the 2021 Vancouver Podcast Festival. This recording features a panel discussion curated and moderated by Below the Radar host Am Johal. He is joined by Chief Patrick Michell, Julia Kidder, Eugene Kung and Grace Nosek.

This Vancouver Podcast Festival event was presented in partnership with the Vancouver Public Library.

About Our Guests

Julia Kidder (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, communications specialist and researcher based in Vancouver (on unceded Coast Salish Territories.)

Currently she is a PhD student at UBC’s School of Community & Regional Planning (SCARP) with the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) Living With Water project, where she is exploring how complex climate governance networks incorporate Indigenous Laws on the South Coast of BC. She is also the Special Projects Lead with Montreal-based arts company; Lo Fi Dance Theory - and a Climate Communications Specialist with West Coast Environmental Law.

Eugene Kung (he/him/his) is a staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL), working on Tar Sands, Pipelines and Tankers, as well as with RELAW. 

He is committed to human rights, social justice and environmental justice and has been working to stop the Kinder Morgan TransMountain expansion project.

Eugene was born and raised in Burnaby BC, holds a BA from UBC (2001) and JD from Dalhousie (2006) and was called to the BC Bar in 2008. Prior to joining WCEL, Eugene was a staff lawyer with the BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre (BCPIAC) where he had a social justice law practice in the areas of Constitutional, Human Rights, Administrative, Anti-Poverty and Regulatory law. He has represented low and fixed-income ratepayers before the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC); low-income tenants of slumlords; Treeplanters and Temporary Foreign Workers before the BC Human Rights Tribunal; and families of deceased farmworkers at a coroner’s inquest.

In 2010, Eugene worked with the Legal Resources Centre in Durban, South Africa on Constitutional law cases involving access to housing, water, education and a healthy environment.

Chief Patrick Michell of the Kanaka Bar Indian Band has lived in BC’s Fraser Canyon all his life and has worked with his community to establish foundational stability in air, water, food, and shelter with supporting resilient systems like storage, energy, communications, and transportation; for the environment and economy of today and more importantly — tomorrow.

Chief Patrick was recently honored with a Clean50 Lifetime Achievement Award and Kanaka’s Community Resilience Plan (2021) was also recognized as the Clean50 2022 Top project.

Site specific climate change impacts have been observed for some time at Kanaka and in response – the community completely changed its planning, investment, and implementation processes to ensure stability and resilience in core physiological areas to ensure that Kanaka’s future generations will have the same as – if not more, opportunity than we do today. On June 30, 2021, a fire completely devastated over 90% of the nearby Village of Lytton, directly and indirectly impacted surrounding Indian reserve lands and the regional districts fee simple residents. Chief Patrick and his community are engaged and are assisting the Lytton people in short term recovery and medium- and long-term rebuild.

Grace Nosek is the Founder and Student Director of the UBC Climate Hub, a unique entity combining significant financial and administrative support from the university, with a governance structure that allows student staff and volunteers to shape priorities for the Hub — and collaborate with stakeholders from across the university and beyond.

Grace has published several academic articles on law and narrative; is the author of a hopeful young adult climate fantasy series, the Ava of the Gaia trilogy; and is the host of a climate storytelling podcast, Planet Potluck. She’s given dozens of talks on climate narratives and storytelling, and writes and speaks about the topic whenever she can. She is also the Executive Producer of Climate Comeback, a short film harnessing the power of sports to bring people together around tangible climate action. 

Grace is currently pursuing her PhD in law at the University of British Columbia, studying how to use law to protect climate change science from manufactured doubt. She is fascinated by the intersection of law and story, and focuses her research on how law can tell better stories in the pursuit of environmental and social justice. She holds a B.A. from Rice University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and an LL.M from the University of British Columbia. Grace’s research has been supported by a Fulbright Canada fellowship, a Harvard Knox Memorial Traveling Fellowship, and a British Columbia Law Foundation fellowship, among others. 

CITE THIS EPISODE

CHICAGO STYLE

Johal, Am. “Vancouver Podcast Festival: Podcasting Climate Change.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, January 4, 2021. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/152-podcasting-climate-change.html.

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