The multifaceted stories of our glaciers and the people who live alongside of them (interview with glaciologist dr. M. Jackson)
Dr. M. Jackson (@mlejackson) is a geographer, glaciologist, and National Geographic Society Explorer. She was also a TED Fellow and is the author of the nonfiction books, The Secret Lives of Glaciers, and While Glaciers Slept: Being Human in a Time of Climate Change.
In this podcast episode, M. sheds light on the dangers in oversimplifying the story of glaciers; what the perception of sentience in our glaciers held by various Nordic Indigenous communities can teach us about mending our relationship with nature; and more.
To start, get a glimpse below into the conversation between M and Green Dreamer Podcast's host, Kamea Chayne.
“When people have some perception of aliveness in the ice, it changes how they care for it, it changes what future they want for it, and it changes responsibility.”
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This is a conversation on Green Dreamer with Kamea Chayne, a podcast and multimedia journal illuminating our paths towards ecological balance, intersectional sustainability, and true abundance and wellness for all. This preview has been edited for clarity. Subscribe to Green Dreamer Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or any podcast app to stay informed and updated on our latest episodes.
On making the climate change conversation more inclusive:
“If we want to be having a meaningful, inclusive, and diverse conversation about how we experience and respond to climatic changes, we have to open it up to people who have a different view.
[Those views] might not just be ‘climatic changes are bad’—that's the value, full stop. [This view] might be accurate to that person, but we need to look at the whole picture. We need people with all different viewpoints to say, ‘This is what I’m experiencing, these are the values I bring to it, and this is how I want us to move forward.’
That's a real conversation that's going to have us come together and create change.”
On how we can activate people to care more about our glaciers:
"We see a lot of headlines that say glaciers are melting and that glaciers are going away and it's almost like we don't care.
Right now, on the trajectory that we're creating, our ice is melting at unprecedented rates. There's a high likelihood in the future, we'll be living in a world without ice. That's not a future that I want to see.
So, how we do care about our ice, how do we take care of it, and how do we fight for it? I'm interested in those conversations.
And I find that when people have some perception of sentience, some perception of aliveness in the ice, it changes how they care for it, what future they want for it, and it changes responsibility—and that's where it gets interesting.”
On what we can learn through the lens of our glaciers:
“I think a glacier would teach us about the plasticity of time. They would teach us that how what we think about time (that some moments are so slow and some moments are so fast in our own lifetimes) is the same for a glacier—some things that should be slow are actually very fast.
If we can think about that and think about time just a little bit differently, I think we might start redefining what's happening today.”
Final words of wisdom:
"Find what you love, advocate for it, and keep going. Don't give up yet.”
