Join Us For A Shared Act of Climate Witnessing

Coming together in community to attend to the struggle against the fossil fuel megaprojects blighting the U.S. Gulf Coast.

To register for free, please click here.

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“There was no evidence that they understand what being human is — the community that we need as fellow humans. I’d like to think that we were able to touch their hearts a little bit, speak to them human to human, and that there might be some consequence of the meetings that we had with them.” — Oliveria Montès Lazcano, coordinator of the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples in the central Mexican state of Puebla, shortly after a meeting in London with bank executives financing fossil projects in her home region.

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Resonant World #24

One of things I love about my job as an editor at DeSmog, a nonprofit climate news service, is the culture of collaboration, experimentation and creativity.

On May 22, we’re teaming up for the first time with the Pocket Project, a nonprofit dedicated to healing individual, ancestral and collective trauma.

Kosha Joubert (Resonant World #4), the Pocket Project’s chief executive, and one of the most vibrant and open-hearted facilitators I’ve ever been lucky enough to encounter, will host a virtual 90-minute event focused on the struggles to prevent more fossil fuel megaprojects gobbling up the U.S. Gulf Coast — a front line in the global climate fight that DeSmog has been covering for years.

Anne Rolfes, executive director of the Louisana Bucket Brigade, a nonprofit which has spent two decades fighting to protect the state from the oil, gas and petrochemical industries, will be sharing her experiences working with communities in the path of these projects. And I’ll be speaking about my impressions from writing about these fights for DeSmog and the Guardian — just part of our wider coverage of the Gulf Coast, anchored by our dogged New Orleans-based correspondent Sara Sneath, and photographer Julie Dermansky.

Though I’ve never visited the region, I have been struck by the connection between my home city of London and the destruction of the Gulf Coast. In November, I wrote about a delegation of indigenous leaders — including Oliveria Montès Lazcano from Puebla in Mexico, and Christopher Basaldú, a member of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas — who travelled to London, Paris and Zurich to attempt to persuade global banks to stop financing pipelines and gas export terminals on their ancestral lands.

“I had to give a fracking 101 lesson to this bank official. It’s appalling their level of ignorance. They really do not know how potentially permanently destructive fracking is to groundwater,” Basaldú told me. “It’s incomprehensible to me that these wealthy, privileged, European people can be so wilfully ignorant and draw such tremendous salaries.”

Helping to organise this event — which we’re calling Climate Crisis: Voices of Protection — seemed like at least a tiny step towards giving the struggles on the Gulf Coast the attention they deserve.

You can find more details and register for free by clicking here.

Global Social Witnessing

I should emphasize: This won’t be an ordinary panel discussion.

Kosha is an expert in a process known as Global Social Witnessing — where people come together in community to deeply attend to a crisis situation they might ordinarily only connect with in passing via the news, if at all. (To watch a video of Thomas Hübl, co-founder of the Pocket Project, introducing the process, click here).

Think of it as the ultimate antidote to news overload.

Instead of paying partial attention to the hundreds of distressing news items clamouring for our attention via our screens, leaving us in a state of perpetual low-grade anxiety, we take 90 minutes to intentionally come together and explore what it feels like to let the reality of a situation sink deeper into our minds, hearts and bodies.

This might sound daunting.

Very few of us can withstand the sheer deluge of bad news we’re exposed to these days without going at least a little numb.

There’s no shame in that: Going numb is an intelligent response activated by our nervous system to prevent stress overloading our body.

But if we stay too numb, for too long, then we sacrifice some of our ability to respond.

Tracking Our Triggers

Global Social Witnessing works on the principle that difficult situations are easier to face together — and that we grow wiser, stronger and more capable of taking appropriate action once we’ve supported each other to digest the grief, fear or anger we might otherwise stuff down because it feels like too much to bear.

There’s nothing voyeuristic or vicarious about Global Social Witnessing: The practice supports participants to track the thoughts, emotions and physical sensations the suffering or injustice we’re hearing about triggers in us.

We may explore questions such as:

• Can we stay with what’s coming up for us?

• When we go deeper in this way, how does our perspective shift?

• What actions might we feel inspired to take?

• How does it feel to be undertaking this exploration in a supportive group?

For those whose lives are directly impacted by the events, being witnessed in this way has its own special power.

Towards The Quantum Newsroom

I participated in a Global Social Witnessing virtual event held at the outbreak of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — which featured Ukrainians and Russians. There was an intimacy in directly encountering the speakers’ raw emotions that could never have been conveyed by even the best quality journalism. I think such events — unmediated by the architecture of the legacy news media — hold far greater promise for fostering a global awareness of our innate interdependence than anything we see in the news.

Of course, it’s easy to question whether any of this makes any practical difference, or whether the 90 minutes could be better devoted to the seemingly more urgent tasks of organising more overtly political or humanitarian action.

I believe the opposite is true: In the world we’re moving into, Global Social Witnessing can play a vital role in unlocking more inspired forms of action by helping us access insights or perspectives that we might never contact alone.

In the quantum newsrooms (Resonant World #8) of the future — anchored in the recognition that observer and observed are always ultimately one system — Global Social Witnessing could be as much a part of the service as in-depth investigations or breaking news.

I very much hope to see you at Climate Crisis: Voices of Protection on May 22.

And please do visit DeSmog, check out our coverage of the Gulf Coast and other issues (some recent stories below), and sign up for our free weekly newsletter). Thank you!

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Some Of Our Gulf Coast Coverage:

For story, click here.

For story, click here.

For story, click here.

For story, click here.

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I write Resonant World in my spare time from my editing role at DeSmog. Support from readers is a huge boost — and that includes reading, sharing, commenting or messaging me in response to my posts. Any variety of coffee gratefully accepted. Thank you.