00:04:34.580It's 10 billion years of universe emergence even before the Earth, and its dynamics are in sight, and it's 1 billion years before the first cell and 2 billion years before the multicellular life.
00:04:48.600So we're talking about deep time here.
00:04:51.500We're talking about an unfolding universe of immense proportions that really our grandparents didn't even have a sense of.
00:04:58.920Of course, Native peoples and many religions have a sense of deep time.
00:05:04.180There's no question. But this is a sense of a new story that's giving us our birth, our inheritance, our long lineage.
00:05:16.020And that really does change a great deal. So that's something of the anthropic idea.
00:05:23.000But then you mentioned anthropocentric. This isn't an anthropocentric worldview.
00:05:28.180worldview. It's not to say that we are the crowning completion of creation and so on. We are
00:05:35.220self-reflexive creatures. We are symbolic-making creatures, but we are inhabiting a profoundly
00:05:42.340sentient world, which is why your website and your work mean so much to many, many people.
00:05:49.340Deep ecology understood this a long time ago. So the word that we like to use is we are
00:05:56.600anthropocosmic beings. We are re-inheriting our cosmic, our cosmological side that is deeply
00:06:05.860related to our ecological side. If we're talking about the Redwoods and their majesty and the
00:06:11.480project that you're working on with the Redwoods, it would be impossible to understand them fully
00:06:17.320except in deep time. These are 2,000-year-old creatures, some of them living sentient life
00:06:23.120forms. So everything you're doing is pointing us towards the embeddedness of life forms in the
00:06:31.640unfolding of universe and earth systems. So that changes our sensibilities, and it gives us a new
00:06:39.720kind of energy to appreciate, have reverence for, conserve, work with, reforest ecosystems,
00:06:46.120and so on. So that's the difference. Now, your other question, I would say,
00:06:53.340we have to put an anthropocosmic worldview in relationship to the Anthropocene, right? This
00:07:01.700age of human imprint that you've pointed to. But it's very clear. And again, unless we understand
00:07:09.700history, we can't fully appreciate the present. And so if in 100 years' time, last century,
00:07:16.440we went from 2 billion to 6 billion people, that's the beginning of the Anthropocene,
00:07:21.200the human presence. If we have technologies and chainsaws and bulldozers that are going to take
00:07:28.000down ancient growth forests in the flat, we have a new moment in time. So our technologies have
00:07:34.220changed everything our population has changed everything capitalist systems of course have
00:07:40.180radically changed things so you put all these a's together um and the anthropocene and anthropocosmic
00:07:49.220worldview have got to be in a deep conversation for the transition moment that we're uh now
00:07:56.600inhabiting so it was a long answer to your very very important set of questions so thank you for
00:08:02.680that I'm grateful that you are calling it this transition period because I do feel that type of
00:08:12.200movement in what we're going through it's in some ways it feels stagnant because I don't feel like
00:08:18.740we're moving quickly enough through this very destructive moment but I also appreciate you
00:08:25.940bringing up deep time because it it puts things in perspective in a way that our our human scale
00:08:31.280lifetimes just can't even touch. And I'm thinking about the ways in which scientific thought and
00:08:39.160stories about the creation of the universe are potentially in conflict or at odds with religious
00:08:45.880teachings and, you know, origin stories. Yet at the same time, I think religion and science
00:08:51.260are more compatible than many might think. You know, for example, the father of the Big Bang
00:08:56.360theory, I think George Lamontra was actually a Catholic priest. So could you say more and
00:09:02.860potentially give an example about how your work reconciles these seemingly oppositional forces?
00:09:10.980And how is the combination of scientific discovery and faith essential for weaving a new story of the
00:09:16.740universe and our place on earth? Wonderful, wonderful set of questions. And, you know,
00:09:23.240the rise of science in the 17th century, it was clear that many scientists were in awe at the
00:09:29.700complexity of the universe that they were discovering and so on. So, and many scientists
00:09:35.260still are inspired by awe and wonder and curiosity, you know, from the cell to the galaxies,
00:09:43.420these are just astonishing systems of which we still only have a glimpse. So I think that
00:09:49.720compatibility is fundamental from the very beginning, that one of the greatest origins
00:09:55.620of religion is what's called the numinous, the sense of that which is awesome and fearful and
00:10:01.820attractive and somewhat frightening and so on. But that notion we are drawn forward into spaces
00:10:09.400of great mystery. And religious traditions help us to rest in the mystery. Scientific traditions
00:10:17.120are pushing towards discovery, discovery, discovery. But as I say, that origin in awe
00:10:23.720is very compatible. And George Lemaitre, yes, was a priest. And another example of someone putting
00:10:32.300this together is Teilhard de Chardin, who's a great inspiration for our work. He's a Jesuit
00:10:38.060paleontologist, was involved in the discovery of Peking Man. He lived from 1881 to 1955,
00:10:44.480when we did the 50th anniversary of his death at conferences in New York, including one at the UN,
00:10:52.100a thousand people came to the UN to celebrate him. Why? Because he had this extraordinary vision
00:10:59.820of an understanding, one of the first to put together the story of the universe,
00:11:05.700but telling it in a scientific way, but also spiritually, that the self-organizing dynamics
00:11:12.840that matter has its own interiority, its own sense of the functioning and directing,
00:11:21.280if you will, principles of why does an acorn become an oak and so on. So he had spirit and
00:11:27.120matter evolving over time to greater complexity and greater consciousness. This was an inspiration
00:11:33.600for Thomas Berry, who said, well, we have to tell this as a story. And you've pointed to
00:11:39.380all peoples, all cultures have had stories. Why are we here? Where did we come from?
00:11:44.020Where are we going? So this particular story that's dawning in human consciousness,
00:11:50.180it'll be told in many, many ways, but it's something that has the possibility. It's one
00:11:55.520offering into many stories and different cultural expressions, but hopefully that is in dialogue
00:12:02.760with those other cultural and religious expressions, but it's a story that gives us
00:12:07.980the potential to say deep time, deep lineage, connectivity, relationality, kinship, all the
00:12:18.240words that are used certainly by indigenous peoples, but also ecologists, relationality,
00:12:24.120That even more profound inhabiting of that space of connectivity will help ground our ecological and social work going forward.0.96
00:12:38.380People are going to burn out. It's already happening.
00:12:40.800The sense of despair, disempowerment, dis-ease is absolutely enormous.
00:12:46.280But we just showed this film, Journey of the Universe, at Vassar College two days ago.
00:12:51.220the head of the environmental studies department said he came out of a depression feeling such
00:12:58.680despair about the state of our world when he saw this film. And several students had that same
00:13:05.460sensibility. And students have been in my office here at Yale, weeping by saying we have felt
00:13:12.880disempowered in despair and journey brought us back into conversation with what we can do,
00:13:18.520what we can contribute so that's our hope it's an offering into extremely complex times
00:13:24.400thank you for that offering and around the scientific discovery and and the power of science
00:13:34.760these days especially i feel really torn i feel a little frustrated with the vast amounts of data
00:13:44.320collection that i feel like every scientist i speak to just wants more and more data and i i'm
00:13:50.540wondering well for what you know how much more do we have to collect in order to see that what we're
00:13:56.500doing is destructive and honestly ecocidal um you know i see scientific discovery and it privileges
00:14:03.100technology in certain forms of knowledge production and logic while religion and faith seem to center
00:14:09.640alternative modes of knowing and believing through cosmology, storytelling, song, and ritual. So I'm
00:14:17.660wondering how are both of these important tools in the context of the environmental crisis? And then
00:14:24.380a deeper question in that is, how can we account for the complex, lasting historical legacy of
00:14:32.800Western supremacy and domination rooted in so-called scientific reasoning over other
00:14:39.860cultural faith-based eco and indigenous narratives of belonging?0.97
00:15:26.980So that is absolutely the case. Here in all of our colleges and universities, that is a very dominant sense of a way of knowing. But some of that is breaking down. And I think it's because, in part, the science of climate change has not communicated, as we know.
00:15:46.380And it's not only because of fake news and not only because of the Koch brothers and think tanks that have been deniers for so long.
00:15:55.280It's also because science has tried to communicate as the priesthood of knowledge.
00:16:01.240And that has not gone over well with a wide population.
00:16:05.360So there are many reasons, and certainly the deniers and these think tanks and Koch brothers and so on and the oil companies are way out front in terms of the problems we're facing.
00:16:19.100But let me just emphasize, we must recognize there are multiple ways of knowing, Indigenous ways of knowing. We understand traditional environmental knowledge is something that needs to be honored, reintegrated, reunderstood, rebirthed, encouraged, and so on.
00:16:41.380But one of the things that I think is a counterpoint to the singular way of knowing in science is what is happening with Robin Kimmerer's work, for example, braiding sweetgrass and many others in the space of both in academia, environmental knowledge from traditional peoples is beginning to be reappreciated.
00:17:02.980And scholars, indigenous scholars are coming forward.
00:17:06.400We just had Kyle White here yesterday at Yale from Michigan State University, a Potawatomi scholar and historian.
00:17:15.860Absolutely excellent, especially along the lines of what you were pointing to.
00:17:21.220So the singular way of knowing, along with colonization, along with capitalism,
00:17:26.440that broke forth from the European continent and created a presence around the world in colonial
00:17:34.560societies for 500 years and is still a major presence. All of a sudden, we are getting
00:17:42.560voices to oppose that, certainly in the anti-globalization movements we had it and
00:17:49.020voices like Vandana Shiva and so on about food and agriculture. So we have many, many voices,
00:17:55.460many of whom are on your podcast. But what's particularly striking, I think, I give you two
00:18:02.360examples of indigenous peoples, if we take Standing Rock and Water is Life, all of that sensibility
00:18:12.920in rituals that were, much of that was driven by young people and ritual and prayer and song
00:18:21.780at the very heart of this, that electrified people all across the North American continent,
00:18:27.080the largest gathering of indigenous peoples in modern history and so on. And the opposition
00:18:31.960that they are still getting is unbelievable. So there's a lot of heroic activity there and
00:18:39.540around the world with indigenous peoples protecting forests and so on. So the two examples I wanted to
00:18:45.440give that are counterintuitive. I was just at a conference at Georgetown University, sponsored
00:18:51.760by the Vatican, by the Jesuits, by NGOs, and so on. The theme was the Vatican is going to have
00:18:59.760a conference in October on the Amazon. The Pope has twice apologized publicly for the treatment
00:19:08.000and forced conversion and cultural and human genocide of indigenous peoples. That was in0.90
00:19:14.960Bolivia and Peru. And now in Latin America, there's a new formation of an alliance of the
00:19:24.320Catholic Church and other Christian churches with indigenous peoples on protection of the
00:19:29.040rainforest. And that's what's going to be brought to the Vatican in October. It's an unprecedented
00:19:34.740alliance. There were 12 cardinals there from the global south and so on who are in full support of
00:19:40.460this, there were indigenous peoples there, and so on. So it was high-level, intense, and a, I think,
00:19:47.880historic breakthrough. The other breakthrough along these lines is the Interfaith Rainforest
00:19:52.480Initiative, which began with the United Nations Development Program, the Norwegian Government,
00:19:58.480Norwegian Rainforest Foundation and NGO, and groups like the Forum on Religion and Ecology,
00:20:03.900which again had the same purpose. This is in the summer of 2017, saying indigenous peoples
00:20:11.640need to be in the foreground of protection of rainforests. And the Norwegian government for
00:20:17.38012 years gave $4 billion to rainforest protection. They said, we can't do this without indigenous0.99
00:20:23.560peoples. So these new alliances of NGOs, of UN, of church forces and indigenous peoples,
00:20:31.280creating new synergies and coalitions I think are enormously hopeful in this
00:20:37.160space of multiple ways of knowing we need good ecological science there's no
00:20:41.900question we need traditional environmental knowledge and we need the
00:20:45.980voices in synergy of spiritually grounded and scientifically literate
00:20:52.540folks for the preservation of these great ecosystems
00:23:21.940transparent and saying I've noticed a lot of pessimism that I have felt even when I I partially
00:23:29.380get excited to hear about these examples and then that other side of me questions you know how much
00:23:36.160is this just presentation who is the money going to where you know four billion dollars is it
00:23:42.620international contractors that are getting the money how is the money getting to the people on
00:23:46.240the ground what's actually being protected how are carbon offsets being you know my mind goes into
00:23:51.360this uh rat wheel of questioning and i i there's also this other part of me that says ayana nothing's
00:23:59.240going to be perfect there will be these pushes towards growth in a and not capitalistic growth
00:24:05.560but growth in terms of what the vatican is doing with indigenous peoples there will be things to
00:24:10.500work out it's so complex it's it's not an easy thing to just come together around a round table
00:24:16.040in a closed door room and somehow come up with a perfect solution another thing that i wanted to
00:24:21.940mention from your response that i feel really i resonate with a lot is this feeling that science
00:24:30.080and honestly the judicial system is this uh it's so separate from the common people or from the
00:24:37.440everyday people the language of science the language of law you have to go to a lawyer you
00:24:43.220have to go to a scientist just like you had to go to a priest when the sermons were in latin and the
00:24:48.820common folk couldn't even understand what the bible was even saying so it's it's it's interesting
00:24:53.740to see history repeat in this way of um it's not meant for the everyday person to fully understand
00:25:00.160and how disconnecting that is and then to see how robin wall kimmerer is bringing these points of
00:25:06.100connection to light so that people can feel like they belong and it goes back to this belonging
00:25:11.000They belong in this world. They deserve to understand how things work. And so those were just a few of my thoughts as you were talking. But I did also, you mentioned the Forum on Religion and Ecology. And I know that 20 years ago, both you and John founded the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale as an initiative to, quote, explore the relationship between the world's religious and spiritual traditions and the environmental challenges we face, end quote.
00:25:39.660And with approximately 85% of the world's population affiliating with some sort of religion, it's undeniable that the church and other religious organizations are instrumental and powerful forces.
00:25:55.380And I'm curious, what led you to focus on the world's body of religious traditions in relationship to environmental challenge? And do you see the greatness of religious presence as an opportunity for a strategic change?
00:26:13.980And if so, what are the limitations of integrating faith voices into dialogue around environmental crisis at the governmental or national level when it comes to those nation states that have complex or even violent relationships with religious groups?
00:26:31.340Yeah, well, again, you've got a series of questions, each of one more important than the next.
00:26:37.680And so let me say from the very beginning, it's our understanding and shared by many people, including yourself, that there are problems with religion that we recognize historically and at present.
00:26:51.800And there's no question that this is not a simple answer, a golden solution or something like that.
00:27:00.980And I think we've got to navigate this space that you've just said, the inadequacies of institutions, the corruption of humans everywhere.
00:27:13.500And so we expect more often from religions, but they're just as human as any other institution.
00:27:18.960With the sense of recognizing those problems and promise, this work began when, in certain ways, because I'm a student of the Asian traditions.
00:27:31.760I went to Japan in 73, 74, when Nixon was elected the second time, and we knew that the invasion of Cambodia had happened, Watergate was happening, and I was working for McGovern.
00:27:44.060And when he was elected under very tenuous circumstances, I said, I'm leaving the country until he's out of office.
00:27:52.140And I went to Japan, taught at a terrific woman's university.
00:27:57.320I did Zen meditation, studied the traditions of Asia and came back and did my Ph.D. at Columbia.
00:28:05.400But first I met Thomas Berry and did my master's with him.
00:28:09.600But my sensibility was, as many Asian scholars would say as well, when China and India began to modernize, we could see that as a billion plus people in East Asia and a billion plus people in South Asia would industrialize, modernize, want the fruits of modernity, we were going to have some serious environmental and social problems to say nothing of the massive pollution in those parts of the world.
00:28:38.840and many other parts of the world. So it was our sense, John Grimm, my husband, is a specialist in
00:28:44.900indigenous peoples, Native Americans in particular, were adopted into a crow family in Montana,
00:28:51.680involved with the crow peoples and some of their rituals. But so between the sense of we needed to
00:29:00.220bring the values, the worldviews, understandings of nature, ritual practices, and environmental
00:29:06.380ethics from the world's cultures and religions. We couldn't leave them off the table so that it
00:29:12.780was our notion science was necessary, but not sufficient. And that was true of policy, of law,
00:29:19.720of economics, even technological solutions and so on. All of these are necessary. So we don't
00:29:25.620want to take technology out of the mix. We need alternative technologies. We need biomimicry,
00:29:30.320as Janine Benyus and your own work is saying. But we need especially the ethical and moral force
00:29:39.220of the world's religions, if 85% of the world's people still affiliate in some way. And it was
00:29:46.340my feeling as a person of the 60s who went to college in Washington, D.C., and when I saw
00:29:52.500the religious communities getting on board for civil rights, for the anti-Vietnam War movement
00:30:00.500and so on, I could see things changed. Because I grew up in a society that said segregation,
00:30:06.620separate but equal, that's okay. But when it was said with moral force, that's not okay,
00:30:13.000then things changed. And I feel we're at a similar moment. We have this separation from nature,
00:30:18.980mentality the gift and the problem of modernity is individualism human rights and so on but also
00:30:27.700a lack of a sense of community of where we belong so that that's what inspired our um our work
00:30:35.180these conferences that we did at harvard and the 10 volumes that came out of it and then
00:30:40.600gus i'll just conclude here gus beth who was is one of the great environmentalists founder of nrdc
00:30:47.680and World Resources Institute, headed up the UN Development Program.
00:30:50.760He said, we have done the work that we can do in the legal and science fields.
00:30:59.540And that's why he brought us to Yale from where we're working on these issues at Harvard.
00:31:05.440And it's been a very good place for the Forum on Religion and Ecology.
00:31:11.600I do want to step a little bit deeper into the academic institutions
00:31:16.400And I'd like to recognize the function of higher education as a gatekeeper, that these institutions were built for certain groups and those features still remain in place today. So how do you ensure that a multiplicity of voices are included in the production of knowledge around these subjects?
00:32:04.960in the line of Lauren Isley, who wrote absolutely magnificent work, one of them called The Immense
00:32:11.120Journey, of this deep time and what it does to light up our minds, our memories, and inspire our
00:32:17.640action. But the other part of Journey is these conversations where I interviewed 10 scientists
00:32:24.980telling their part of the unfolding universe from galaxies to the emergence of cells and human life.
00:32:33.360But in the other 10, I'm interviewing a range of environmentalists, many of them in the Bay Area, a number of them quite well known. Eco-cities, Richard Register. Eco-economics, Richard Norgard. But I'm also interviewing people like Carl Anthony, one of the great African-American leaders of issues of race, of history, of ecology, and our way forward.
00:32:59.520And he said, this story is one that gave him a sense of belonging.
00:33:05.000The Journey film has been shown by the former governor of New Jersey in prisons in New Jersey.
00:33:10.300And I asked him what was the response.
00:33:12.200And he said, in one of the women's prisons, there was total silence at the end of the showing.
00:33:17.020And one woman said, now I know where I belong, just to your point.
00:33:22.920And I also interviewed two indigenous peoples in these Journey interviews.
00:33:28.620who are also saying, this is compatible with our knowledge, our knowledge of the stars,
00:33:34.500our knowledge of how we walk on the land. And so they're seeing this as compatible.
00:33:39.500Brian Swim, our narrator, of course, and my co-writer in Journey, he himself comes from
00:33:44.880indigenous peoples. His father is Salish from British Columbia. And he doesn't make a major
00:33:51.860thing about this. But you can see his understanding of traditional environmental
00:33:57.240knowledge, along with scientific training that he has. He has a PhD in the emergence of the early
00:34:03.400universe, but he took 10 years studying the science to tell that story, first with Thomas
00:34:09.040Berry, universe story, and then with the film and book. So the other project that we have,
00:34:15.860the world's religions and ecology, of course, we're trying to be inclusive, listening to many
00:34:23.500Voices, all the conferences at Harvard had the various sects of the tradition, like Judaism,
00:34:31.940Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Christianity, Catholic, Roman Catholic, Protestant,
00:34:39.860Orthodox, and Evangelical. So inclusivity of Voices was absolutely at the heart of those
00:34:48.500conferences, and more and more, that's what we're reaching out to. Now, I think your point about
00:34:57.760academia is, especially places like Yale, very elitist, but they too are changing, not necessarily
00:35:06.160fast enough. So I think we have to acknowledge the elitism, the breaking down of that, the opening up
00:35:15.440of new spaces and voices, it's going to take time because we have not told our history.
00:35:22.940Howard Zinn's story of the people's story, that's a telling of our true history. But we haven't told
00:35:30.560the genocide nearly of Native peoples, the African-American slavery, and so on and so forth.
00:35:37.760And all these issues of immigration and multiple voices are because we haven't told our full story.
00:35:43.820So that's part of what we're trying to do within academia and outside of academia.
00:35:50.100I could not agree more around not telling the history.
00:35:55.100And it's very interesting to see how we create industry and we create solutions based off