My former student went to see the Subhumans in Phoenix late last fall. I鈥檝e loved this punk rock band since I was twelve-years-old. Their dark point of view satisfied me. Their song 鈥淭he Cradle to the Grave鈥� does not have the poppy love song of U2鈥檚 version which ends, 鈥淎ll the promises we break / From the cradle to the grave / When all I want is you.鈥�
Instead, Subhumans' 16-minute song ends, 鈥淵ou'll conform to every social law and be the system's slave / From birth to school to work to death, from the cradle to the grave.鈥�
This song suits me in my more cynical moods but they also have a song that counters this one whose final lines go, 鈥淲hen 鈥榮ink or swim鈥� is the choice you get / You cannot swim forever / You need support to keep you alive / Us fish must swim together!鈥�
But because my student was able to go, I felt at least a part of me attended the show. I鈥檓 part fish, at least.
I go a little crazy when I spend too much time alone, working on my own thing. This past year, I鈥檝e been lucky to be Writer-in-Residence for the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society. Mainly, this means I have the opportunity to read and hear what the cutting-edge researchers in the environmental sciences are working on鈥攑ermafrost and food webs and soil nutrients for example.
The most collaborative project I had the chance to write about was about how coast redwoods regenerate after fires. In a bit of serendipity, my husband, Erik Sather, made a short film called 鈥淩edwood Survival'' in which ecoscience researchers, Andrew Richardson, Drew Peltier, Mariah Carbone, Melissa Enright and George Koch discuss their paper in 鈥淣ature: Plants鈥� about the CZU Lightning Complex fire scar in Big Basin State Park in California which burned over two-thousand acres of thousand-year-old trees. These ancient trees became ghost woods, charred and full of ash. But this research showed that even dead-looking redwoods can sprout anew from deep, cellulose carbon stores. These now limbless posts sported a fuzzy carpet of green sprouts. The researchers shielded new growth from the sun, inhibiting photosynthesis, to confirm that the trees were using old carbon, not new, to spur that growth. Measuring radiocarbon using a MICADAS (mini carbon dating system), the NAU scientists showed that the trees convert carbon dioxide that coast redwoods had absorbed centuries before. These sprouts, looking as ambitious as asparagus in spring, inched up the remains of the redwood trunks, marking their way toward the sky, which one day, will be filled in with green again.
The project coincided nicely with a class I worked with last semester, a Humanities class called The Climate Project. My colleagues Gioia Woods and Peter Friederici enrolled over 60 students, undergrad, grad and honors into the course and opened the class to the community as well. It has been a good but emotionally rough course. Even I, who read and write about environmental problems and the climate crisis daily, learned a lot of new grim news. Faculty from across campus volunteered to lecture on their discipline鈥檚 relationship to climate change. Dr. Darrell Kaufman from School of Earth & Sustainability presented 鈥淭he Science of Climate Change鈥� explained that the atmosphere is heating more quickly than we thought. Glaciers are receding. Oceans are acidifying. The one ironic bright spot? The climate would be even warmer except that smog in the lower atmosphere reduces the sun鈥檚 effects. Thanks to one kind of pollution, we鈥檙e (slightly) protected from another.
These weeks of learning have been hard to take, notably because there are so many ways, through so many disciplines, that report on how climate change devastates humans and coral and animals and trees. Nothing remains untouched by human-generated environmental change. The semester took a turn, though, when we started talking about art activism. Professor Neal Galloway presented mind-blowing art projects, like Mel Chin鈥檚, 鈥淩evival Field鈥� which combines art and science. He planted an area so polluted by sewage and garbage that no one could build there or visit. The plants pull heavy metals like lead, cadmium and manganese from the ground. Dr. Kara Attep tuned us into how music like Joni Mitchell鈥檚 鈥淧aved Paradise鈥� and Marvin Gaye鈥檚 "Mercy, Mercy Me,鈥� a sorrowful requiem to a planet in disarray and on the verge of environmental destruction, formed some of our current politically active music like the environmentally conscious work of Ed Kabotie.
I was talking with one of the MFA students who is simultaneously working toward her Environmental Narrative certificate. We both wondered whether it would take a disaster of untold proportion to get people to see how big and immediate climate breakdown would be. She said that COVID forced big changes and allowed us to rethink what individualism and community meant. Another MFA student wondered if there was a chance that in solving climate change, perhaps other social ills could also be solved since solving climate change would require a huge shift in how we think and live. Peter Friederici, whose book 鈥淏eyond Climate Breakdown鈥� served as the premise for the course, writes, 鈥淒ealing with climate breakdown is ultimately going to be a story either of unfathomable human decline or鈥攊f we are to be good ancestors鈥攁 movement into some not-yet-imagined future featuring more than just sustainable relations among people and between humans and the more-than-human world. One way or the other, it is going to be the ultimate story of humanity. No wonder so many have been trying to write it. Yet no one can. No one, that is. What happens will consist of myriad stories rather than of a narrative plotted in advance.鈥�
When I think about the sprouts using hundred-year-old carbon to spur new growth, it鈥檚 not necessarily hope or resilience that buoys me but instead, what inspires me is the surprise. No one knew that coast redwoods could do this. But the truly wild part is the way the information was shared鈥攆rom writing a press release with the researchers to submitting Erik鈥檚 film to festivals, to talking about this with people across campus, this exciting story connected and collected us. Working together, we became schools of fish. I wonder what other ways we can see or listen or share stories that surprise us into the paradigm shift so we can see our way beyond our regular stories and turn them to something new. Maybe even learn to swim together.