Amazing news on super-short notice!

In this time of unstable economies and growing climate impacts, I’m facilitating a workshop this coming weekend called “Resilient People: Building strength in a time of economic and climate change.”

“Resilient People: Building strength in a time of economic and climate change” is a workshop for our time. Facilitated by Resilient People co-founder Sanjay Khanna, the workshop provides a rare opportunity for participants to speak to their doubts and fears about economic uncertainty and ask questions about how climate change is going to affect their daily lives. The workshop helps people problem solve in a setting that makes it easier to get over emotional barriers that prevent individuals and communities from taking real action.

When & Where

When: Sept 10 to 12, 2010

• Sept. 10 – 7 to 9 pm
• Sept. 11 & 12 – 9 am to 4 pm

Where: Capilano University, North Vancouver, BC

Please join Sanjay and fellow Lower Mainlanders in expanding your ability to face big challenges in a practical way.

To find out more about Sanjay, read his bio at The Huffington Post.

What You’ll Learn

As a Resilient People workshop participant, you’ll gain valuable insights into:

1. Being your own futurist and recognizing patterns

2. Discussing climate change so people can participate from their own PoV

3. Preparing yourself emotionally for things getting worse

4. Connecting with others around community readiness

5. Communicating to children about a more uncertain world

6. Indigenous perspectives shared with Sanjay that may be of practical benefit to non-Indigenous people

Other Benefits

In addition, you will:

1. Meet like-minded people

2. Learn your tangible/intangible assets (friends, family, your character strengths, level of trust)

3. Determine what you need to learn amid economic / climate shifts

4. Discover what to teach others, consider whom you could mentor, think about whom you might need help from

5. Reflect on how stories, the music, the arts, etc. can help you become more resilient in a community context

Registration

The fee to attend this inspiring and galvanizing workshop is $250 plus HST. Payment by Visa, Mastercard, or personal cheque/check accepted.

Remember, if you need to get it together on this stuff, now’s a great time to start.

For more information or to register:

Email sk@resilientpeople.org or call (778) 840-6250.

As soon as your registration is confirmed, you’ll be sent pertinent workshop details via email.

Balkan Beatbox is #1 with the song “Look Them Act.” Angelique Kidjo is at #5 with “Move On Up.” Brazilian legend Caetano Veloso at #17 with “A base de Guantanamo.” Bebel Gilberto sits at #25 with “Segrado (Secret).”

Last year, just prior to the UN Climate Conference (COP 15) in Copenhagen, I enjoyed the immense privilege of collaborating with four-time Juno Award*-winning world musician Alpha Yaya Diallo on the lyrics for a song about climate change-induced drought in Africa.

In describing the kind of lyrics he was looking for, Alpha, who grew up in Guinea, told me the town in which he grew up had a river running through it and mango groves close by its banks. As teenagers, he and his friends swam in the river alongside the crocodiles; there was enough water for the fields and for people. Today, he said, the river is dry. You can walk right across its cracked surface; mango groves no longer exist.

Here are the English lyrics to “The Climate Is the Heart” (Alpha contributed the lyrics in Fula, one of the four languages he knows), Track 4 on his 2010 CD release Immé (Rise Up):

The Climate Is the Heart

The only climate is the heart / Your love can calm the inner storm / The only climate is the heart / Wake up the kindness in your bones

The cracked earth will break you down / First drought and then the floods / And you won’t know where to turn / Lips parched, skin burned

Turn to me, my friend / Turn to me, my love / Don’t blame the sky / Don’t blame the Gods

Turn to me, my friends /  Turn to me, my love / Don’t blame the sky / Don’t blame the Gods

It is greed and fear / It is war and lust

The only climate is the heart / Your love can calm the inner storm

The only climate is the heart / Wake up the kindness in your bones

It was exciting to work with Alpha on the song, and I hope his album is widely appreciated. Special thanks go to Jesse Zubot, 2009 Canadian Jazz Violinist of the Year, Juno Award winner, and independent music producer, who plays a Celtic-inspired groove on the “Climate Is the Heart” track. I hope this song–and its climate change counterpart “Immé” (Track 1)–are considered for documentary or feature film soundtracks so that word about climate change spreads globally through the power of Alpha’s music.

* The Juno Award is Canada’s highest music accolade.

Climate change could lead to mass psychosis

“We know this from research into mass panic,” said Professor of Social Medicine, Per Fugelli

Published 30.01.10 11:21 | Last updated 30.01.10 12:52

Mass psychosis: Professor of Social Medicine, Per Fugelli, said the looming climate catastrophe could create fear and mass psychosis. Photo: Junge, Heiko (SCANPIX)

Dried-up lakes, social unrest, storms and bad weather, rising crime, extreme mass exodus, rising sea levels, submerged ports, destroyed harvests, extreme poverty, water and food shortages, growing unemployment, economic crisis and epidemics.

This describes what some climate scientists are saying will be the future if findings presented to the United Nations are not addressed.

In addition, these consequences in turn affect the global population’s mental health, says a report.

A collection of independent organizations have written the draft of a gloomy report, where they encourage a range of institutions to deal with future health problems associated with climate change.

The final report will be sent to administrative bodies in the UN, EU and USA.

“Climate change is likely to affect the mental health and psychological well-being on several levels. This will lead to new challenges, as well as lead to a mental health burden and suffering of the communities affected. UN agencies, independent organizations, governments, donors, academic institutions and civil society must begin to work together to reduce the growing threat to global health,” reads the report NGO Working Group on the Impact of Climate Change on Mental Health and Psychosocial Well-Being: Guidelines for Action.

“It’s very understandable that researchers wish to shed light on this phenomenon. It is clear that the looming climate catastrophe has all the ingredients for creating fear and mass psychosis. We know this from research into panic,” said Professor of Social Medicine at the Department of General Practice and Community Medicine, Per Fugelli, to Nettavisen.

Post-apocalyptic character

“These are phenomena that seem so huge in the risk dimension that they make you feel you do not have any impact on the outcome. And these are the phenomena that have the ability to create fear because they could spin out of control for governments and scientists,” says Fugelli.

“You get the impression that now the very existence and the foundation of life is at stake. This seems in a way apocalyptic and the signs in themselves deserve attention,” he adds.

Climate journalist Sanjay Khanna has followed the climate issue for both Nature and the Huffington Post. He thinks the world population is not mentally prepared for it and, if anything, is in a state of suspended disbelief.

“In a disaster movie there’s always one person at the end of the film who must save the day. One hopes that this individual will stay calm under pressure, but most people are not going to be there,” says Khanna to Nettavisen.

“The problem lies in the gap between what politicians have said, and what people will eventually experience. The two versions will be contradictory, and it is inside this gap that fear and panic will grow,” says Khanna, who is engaged in a project that deals with climate change and mental health.

Khanna said the health, social and education sectors at the global level need to assist in helping people to prepare for mental health problems and psychological impacts caused by climate change.

“The character of this will be clearer after the climate summit in Copenhagen. I have met many young people who cried after Copenhagen. People understand that the experience of climate change will be very difficult, and in some cases, people are feeling isolated, and some will choose not to talk about the negative thoughts they have about the future,” says Khanna.

Well-founded concern

Fugelli has also experienced a change in people’s mentality after the failure of the climate summit in Copenhagen.

“You shouldn’t panic or be anxious, but awake, responsible people have a well-founded concern,” he said, adding that there is an increasing fear of what of the planet will be left to the children and grandchildren.

Khanna says climate impacts will also frame the individual’s identity. He believes this is because the world as we know it will change significantly.

“What will happen when goods disappear from store shelves because a storm has prevented goods from reaching their destination? What will happen when we no longer have access to goods that much of our identity in this consumer society is built on, goods we can no longer obtain?” says Khanna.

“The climate is also about the ground, the air one breathes and the sunny days parents enjoy with their children. The more we tell ourselves that climate catastrophe is not going to happen, the more we move our mentality away from addressing what will actually happen. And it is in this gap there will be panic and anxiety,” he argues.

The battle is not lost

Fugelli, however, strongly disagrees, and believes sorrow must not be taken for granted.

“They seem to believe that the battle is lost and that we are already there. They don’t think about the fact that history has shown that humanity has faced a number of dramatic and threatening challenges, and we have mastered them and we are very adaptable. And I think we can this time too. But only when we have politicians that give us confidence, courage and hope,” he says.

“It is very dangerous to spread the perception that the battle is lost,” he adds.

Fugelli calls for a strategy from politicians that are concrete and courageous, and that can help create hope in people. This he believes can avert a panic feeling in humans.

“The second is what the media and what individuals can do, which is not a small thing. It is clear that politicians’ actions are a result of what you and I and the other 6.7 billion individuals are able to create the requirements and pressures. If everyone manages to build public opinion pressures that are strong, we will not experience a Copenhagen again,” he says.

Fugelli also underlines the need that each person takes responsibility, even when it comes to the small climate of everyday life.

“Thought must be a concern, and thought-B must be that we are facing a danger. What shall we do, and how do we do it? I think it was (Mahatma) Gandhi, who said: ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ It is very wise,” said Fugelli.

###

Follow Nettavisen reporter Thomas Paust on Twitter @tpaust or email him at thomas.paust@nettavisen.no

Anuradha Vittachi, the show’s accomplished presenter and new media pioneer, was part of a broad-based civil society partnership that took on the superhuman task of live-streaming interviews around the clock from within the Bella Centre, helping a global audience of up to half a million viewers per day make sense of a conference that was described as a “last chance” to protect humanity from the ravages of climate change.

Vittachi has interviewed many accomplished humanitarians, government officials, parliamentarians, and civil society luminaries — President Gorbachev, HH Dalai Lama, and Mother Teresa, among others — since she and husband Peter Armstrong, a broadcasting legend in his own right, founded OneClimate.net as a news source and dissemination outlet for global civil society.

Anuradha interviewed me about Resilient People and Climate Change, the soon-to-be-launched non-governmental organization I’m behind the founding of, and why psychological and sociocultural impacts of climate change are so crucial to address on a global scale.

Without further ado, here’s the three-part interview (19 minutes total):

I find it hard to believe that the last time I posted to the Realistic Sanctuary blog was May 2009.

Here’s why. I started writing exclusively on HuffPost between June and December 2009 as well as traveling to conferences like the Tallberg Forum and the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen, pursuing journalism as a way to understand what economic and climate crises mean for human beings the world over.

Even still, trusted friends and readers have said I need to keep this blog — and the RS “brand” — alive, even with HuffPost.

So, in that spirit, here’s a roundup of articles I wrote last year with a promise to be more diligent in updating the Realistic Sanctuary blog.

Nature

Conveying the Campaign Message: The arts and advertising can galvanise public and political will in tackling global warming. But shared concern for human health is a better motivator than polar bears, finds Sanjay Khanna. – Oct. 22, 2009

(Note: This was the “most tweeted article” in Nature’s special “Destination Copenhagen” issue, perhaps indicating a widespread interest in finding more meaningful ways to communicate the climate issue to the public.)

HuffPost

Copenhagen Meltdown – Dec. 17, 2009

Politicians Can Count on Popular Despair After Copenhagen – Dec. 15, 2009

Are You Resilient? If So, Encourage Psychological and Social Resilience Wherever You Can – Oct. 15, 2009

New Dr. Strangeloves and the Prospect of Geo-Engineered “Adaptation” – Sept. 8, 2009

From Climate Science to Climate Justice: Climate Change a Symptom of Man’s Inhumanity to Man – Jul. 11, 2009

The Tyee

Copenhagen Meltdown – Dec. 17, 2009

Politicians Can Count on Popular Despair After Copenhagen – Dec. 14, 2009

Hope you’re able to sample even some of the articles here, and to enjoy them.

More to come and soon!

Dubbed “The New Yorker Summit: The Next 100 Days,” the U.S. policy-centric event assembled leading intellectuals to discuss the state of the Obama administration, the economy, the environment, geopolitics, health care, climate change, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the challenge of Pakistan, you name it.

Speakers included Malcolm Gladwell, Naomi Klein, Esther Duflo, Jeffrey Sachs, Nicolas Nassim Taleb, Mary Anne Hitt, David Kilcullen, and Seymour Hersh.

"In times of trouble like today, pessimists die quickly."

Enjoy my attempt to unpack, and kindly let me know what you think!

And regarding that excellent blog-which I feel absolutely delighted to write for, by the way-I'll now be posting there quite regularly and also here.

At the moment, though, I'm juggling furiously. So, if you appreciate the writing that pops up on this blog from time to time, I do value your patience and promise to work out a more tenable (and regular) blogging schedule during the next couple of months.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was awarded a scholarship (the Ranjit Azad Singh Memorial Scholarship) and a fellowship (the Basant and Harnam Kaur Singh Fellowship) in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC.

These scholarships, which were endowed by members of the Indo-Canadian (Punjabi) community, made it possible for me to explore issues of identity and culture in the writing of personal narrative (creative non-fiction). After graduating with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing, I turned to corporate freelance writing (along with technology journalism) to make ends meet, primarily in the United States and Europe, which over time led to writing about environmental, technological and social trends for major companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Nokia and Yamaha Motor Corporation, USA. And, in the midst of it all, I made the acquaintance of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who taught me about making a closer spiritual connection with the land as a way to work out my own crises of cultural identity (I'd experienced quite a bit of racism growing up) and reconnect with my Punjabi and Sindhi roots.

So, since I didn't have a chance to do so yesterday, my thanks once again to the donors of scholarship funds to the UBC Creative Writing program. I benefited greatly from working with some of Canada's top authors; and the ability to write well is coming in especially handy as I synthesize trends (and my personal experiences) to understand the large questions of our time, questions revolving around the economy and the environment – and our individual abilities to develop the inner strength we'll need to face the tumult of the coming years and decades.

Finally, thanks to Chai Time for the opportunity to be on their excellent program!