Solarpunk Presents

What is petroturfing? What is an energy imaginary? If, as Thomas King says, we are all stories, how can we make sense of which stories are leading us to an understanding of things as they are, rather than misrepresenting reality or persuading us to take a biased view? And what can we do when we learn to critically interpret the world around us? What are some concrete actions we can take as regular folks if we decide that we want to push back against this narrative of “ethical oil” and intervene in the reactionary oil culture war?

Dr Jordan Kinder has spent the last decade of his life thinking about these questions, specifically in the context of the Canadian oil industry and Alberta. The result? His new book Petroturfing: Refining Canadian Oil, which covers these topics and more, forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press in spring 2024. Join Ariel and Jordan to learn about the many competing narratives about (and even by!) Canadian oil and gas—including but not limited to being labelled dirty oil, ethical oil, one of the world’s leading polluters, an underdog industry under attack, a Canadian success story, the ball and chain around Canada’s neck as it tries to avert climate catastrophe, and the list goes on...

References:

• Just Powers
• Petrocultures Research Group
• Solarities
• Energy Humanities
• Kinder, Jordan “Mystifying Oil Today” for Heliotrope
• Kinder, Jordan “Tailings, Unconventional: Sedimented Horizons for More Equitable Energy Futures” for Against Catastrophe

Socials:

Connect with Jordan at jbkinder.github.io

Connect with Solarpunk Presents Podcast on Twitter, Mastodon, or at solarpunkpresents.com.

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In this episode, Ariel discusses the topic of ecocriticism with Dr Jenny Kerber, Associate Professor of English at Wilfrid Laurier University.

What is ecocriticism? Why is it important, especially for environmental activists and solarpunks, as a narrative reframing device? Solarpunks work very closely with speculation and imagination and as architects of the narratives by which we live our lives, it helps to have tools like ecocriticism at our disposal.

Join Ariel and Dr. Kerber to think through terms like “wilderness” and “nature” and “the Anthropocene”. How do we hold on to hope, despite critical engagement with the dark side of our environmental narratives?

References:

● A bit more about the WLU Land Acknowledgement

● Dr Kerber’s profile at Wilfrid Laurier U

● “The Trouble with Wilderness” by William Cronon

● Elizabeth May

● Kerber, Jenny. "Tracing One Warm Line: Climate Stories and Silences in Northwest Passage Tourism." Journal of Canadian Studies 55.4 (July 2022): 271-303.

● Timothy Clark, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment

● Kate Soper, What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human

● David Huebert's Chemical Valley

● Lord Byron's "Darkness"

● Don McKay, Vis à Vis: Field Notes on Poetry and Wilderness

● Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

● Nicole Seymour, Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age

● Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland, Almanac for the Anthropocene: A Compendium of Solarpunk Futures

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Today’s episode is all about animal ethics—or do we mean critical animal studies? Ariel discusses this linguistic nuance and the difference between them (and much, much more!) with Dr Chloë Taylor, professor of women and gender studies at the University of Alberta. Dr Taylor has been involved in a five-year-long project researching the “Intersections of Animality” and is a trained philosopher who works in gender studies, and sees a lot of intersections between the way that we think about and treat animals and the way that we think about and treat minoritized subjects. Come join us for a thought-provoking and highly educational discussion!

Links

• Dr Chloë Taylor’s profile at University of Alberta
• Peter Singer and Tom Regan
• North American Association for Critical Animal Studies
• Where Disability Rights and Animal Rights Meet: A Conversation with Sunaura Taylor
• Making Kin: An Interview with Donna Haraway
• Auroch de-extinction and rewilding

Connect with Solarpunk Presents Podcast on Twitter, Mastodon, or at our blog.

Connect with Ariel at her blog, on Twitter at @arielletje, and on Mastodon.

Connect with Christina at her blog, on Twitter, and on Mastodon

Support the show on Patreon or make a one-time donation via PayPal.

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If you meet a Japanese American, depending on their age, it’s a pretty good bet that they, their parents, and/or their grandparents (or great-grandparents) were imprisoned by the US government in so-called internment camps for several years during World War II. Most families lost everything they had built up: farms, homes, businesses, jobs, possessions, and whatever wealth they had accrued.

If you meet a Japanese American, it’s also a pretty good bet, they probably won’t spontaneously start talking about what they or their family went through, how they feel about it, and how they or their family recovered from the ordeal. I (Christina) wanted to rectify that by sitting down with my old friend Chie Furuya, whose parents (as tiny children), grandparents, and other family members were “sent to camp”, to ask her about it. The answers and stories she had for me were both fascinating and unexpectedly heartening. Her people are a resilient, cheerful people and I feel like there are life lessons for all of us here, in terms of withstanding and recovering from severe injustice (and coming out on top).

Ariel’s addition to this episode description is to point out that Japanese internment occurred in Canada in the early 20th century as well. We (by which she means Canada, or perhaps so-called Canada, as she likes to call it) aren't some bastion of anti-racism and tolerant plurality (if we ever were). Here are a few links for further edification if you are interested or want to know more about the Canadian side of the story:

-"Where is Japantown?" a Secret Life of Canada podcast that describes this history in detail: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/203-the-secret-life-of-canada/episode/15776151-s3-where-is-japantown

-Obasan by Joy Kogawa is an incredibly famous work of Canadian Literature - or at least, it was, back in the day, as it came out in 1981. But IYKYK. It describes the fallout of the Japanese internment camps through the eyes of a young girl growing up in Alberta and it galvanized the nisei community to stand up to the Canadian government and demand accountability and reparations for the atrocities of the internment camps. Link here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9723.Obasan

-Here is a link to the Japanese-Canadian centre in Toronto, the only Japanese cultural centre that I know of in central/eastern Canada: https://jccc.on.ca/ and the Nikkei Museum in BC: https://centre.nikkeiplace.org/

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In this week’s episode, Ariel quizzes guest Dr Tiffany Millacci about emotional literacy. What is this relatively new phrase? How can being emotionally literate help us to navigate difficult conversations, awkward interactions, or even generally just having relationships in the first place? Isn’t all this talk of emotions just a different way for the self-help industry to get us to buy stuff?

Join us for a fascinating conversation about a complex topic - we barely skim the surface! But never fear, Dr Millacci has your back; listen in for some good places to start learning more.

Links:

• Dr Millacci's author profile on positivepsychology.com
• Emotional literacy in the context of applying it to relationships
• Emotional literacy vs emotional maturity

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