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The Nest is a podcast by UVic’s independent newspaper, the Martlet. The Martlet’s team of student journalists covers issues that matter to our UVic and greater Victoria community. The Nest talks with UVic and Greater Victoria community members about what they're doing, why they're doing it, and how you can get involved. You can read the latest edition of Martlet’s publication on martlet.ca or find it on X, TikTok, and LinkedIn, such as @theMartlet. If you're interested in getting involved? Email edit@martlet.ca to learn more about volunteer writing, editing, and design positions.
*Birds chirping, music*
Rae Dawson: Thanks for tuning into The Nest, a podcast by the Martlet, the University of Victoria's independent newspaper. Settle in as we listen to Editor-in-Chief Sydney Lobe talk with UVic and greater Victoria community members about what they're doing, why they're doing it, and how you can get involved. The Nest is produced in the studios of 101.9 FM CFUV radio, on the unceded lands of the Lekwungen peoples and the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples, whose relationship with the land continues to this day.
*Birds chirping, music*
Sydney Lobe: So, my name is Sydney Lobe and I'm the Editor-in-Chief of the Martlet, UVic’s independent newspaper and this is The Nest, the Martlet’s podcast. In honour of the Martlet’s annual climate issue, our guest today is Sean Holman.
Sean is an award winning documentarian and investigative journalist. He was the founding editor of the B.C. based investigative political news service Public Eye. They've taught journalism at Mount Royal University; they are now the Wayne Crookes professor of Environmental and Climate Journalism here at the University of Victoria, and they are the founding director of the Climate Disaster Project, an international teaching newsroom that works with people affected by climate change to share and investigate their stories. I was fortunate enough to take Sean's courses at UVic during my undergrad, and to have worked a little bit with the Climate Disaster Project, and those experiences gave me the most hope in the future of journalism that I've experienced as a young journalist. So needless to say, I'm very excited to have Sean on the podcast today. Welcome to The Nest, Sean Holman!
Sean Holman: Thank you very much, Sydney. It's a real pleasure to be here with you.
Sydney Lobe: We're so happy to have you here. So I want to talk, of course, about the work that the Climate Disaster Project does, but first I want to talk about what led you to it, because the first hand accounts of climate disaster survivors that the Climate Disaster Project creates might seem unorthodox to people who grew up reading more traditional news or journalism, and you yourself were a career journalist, so I'm curious why this different approach? What brought you here?
Sean Holman: Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I moved to Calgary to teach journalism around- I think it was 2011, 2012 or thereabouts. And what was interesting, I was looking back through my Facebook posts, and even when I first arrived in Calgary, I was surprised at the lack of media coverage of the weather. And not necessarily Climate connected weather, but just the weather in general and the impact that it would have on Calgarians. I remember the first summer that I was in Calgary, it was just scorching temperatures, and I was astounded at the lack of news media coverage of that extreme weather and the impact that it was having on people, right?
And then we sort of fast forward to 2017. 2017 was a record breaking fire season in British Columbia. And as a result of that record breaking fire season, you had wildfire smoke billowing across the Rockies and flooding the streets of Calgary, and we were under a health advisory for over 100 days as a result of that smoke. I knew at that particular point in time that there was a connection between climate change and the increasing frequency and intensity of these fires, and yet it surprised me that the news media wasn't covering that connection and wasn't covering the lived experience of people who were having to suffer through that smoke. So I wrote an open letter a couple years later about this particular problem and about the problem of climate change in general, and how the news media is failing to cover it with the urgency it demands. And when this position came up at UVic, I proposed the idea of: how could journalism be of service to people who are impacted by climate change? And that's how the Climate Disaster Project came about. It was a project meant to be of service to the survivors of climate disaster, yeah.
Sydney Lobe: And so when we're thinking about what the Climate Disaster Project is, a significant part of the work you do includes the testimonies of people who have had lived experience with climate disasters. I was hoping you could talk a little bit for people that don't know about what an “as told to” testimony is and what that looks like.
Sean Holman: Absolutely. So what our students do is they co-create oral histories with climate disaster survivors, not just about their disaster experiences, but also who they are as people, the places that they live, the help that they received during the disaster, that they gave during the disaster, that they would have wanted to receive, that they would have wanted to give, what they think can be done about these kinds of disasters in the future, and what they think can be done about climate change. And then our students take those transcripts, and they co-create shorter testimonies based on what the survivor has said, only using their own words, and that's trauma informed, because then we are not putting in the survivor's mouth our own words. We're simply using their words and their lived experience of how they experience climate change.
Sydney Lobe: And thinking about the service that you mentioned- being of service to people who have experienced climate disasters, how are these testimonies of service to people who experience climate disasters? Where does that fit in that proposal you gave to UVic?
Sean Holman: It absolutely does. There's a number of ways in which these testimonies and this process is of service. Now, first off, we're not therapists, but what we do understand is that the retelling of a story in a good way, can be an act of recovery for people who have survived climate change. And so we provide an opportunity for survivors to share their whole story, not just what happened during the disaster, but who they are, what happened after, what they think can be done about what they experienced, how their experience can be transformative in helping others. So that's one way it's of service. By sharing that experience with the world, by being able to provide survivors with an opportunity to share their story in a good way. But then we also look at what the survivors we've worked with have to say about solutions and problems, and then we investigate those and launch investigative coverage based around climate disaster experience. It's based around lived experiences. So it's a true bottom-up newsroom that can be of service to climate disaster communities.
Sydney Lobe: And something I'm hearing you say that I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about, is sharing your story in a good way. Especially like I said, as a career journalist, you worked writing more traditional news and investigations, and this format is different, and I'm curious what that means in a broader context, to have people's stories be shared in traditional media outlets in this “good” way?
Sean Holman: It means giving the people that we work with control. It means ensuring that we treat the truth not as something that needs to be stolen, but something that's a gift. Something that the person that we're working with is just as interested in as we are, just as interested in the truth. And we know that the survivors that we work with are, they are highly interested in the truth, and they are highly interested in the truth of their experience and sharing that truth. So we try and treat them as partners in this work that we're doing, this work together in community, and that's where we diverge from a lot of traditional journalism. And you know, there are reasons why the news media has the positions it has, and there are reasons why the news media would act differently, especially when we're holding people who are powerful to account, but when we're working with people who have experienced trauma, I think we need different rules around how we work in those communities. And the Climate Disaster Project is about establishing what those rules, what that guidance looks like, and trying to act on it.
Sydney Lobe: So thinking about the kinds of people that you're talking to, where do you find people to interview, to speak to, what kinds of disasters are they living through? How do you- this is also something you were just talking about before we began recording this episode- how do you define a climate disaster, and who can share their story and who does?
Sean Holman: Absolutely, I mean, we give students who work on this project a lot of flexibility on who they interview. And among those they interview are one another, because that's an important part of our practice, that all the students who go through this process, who are working with survivors, have also gone through this process with one another. So they're not actually taking someone through a process they themselves have not been subjected to. But when it comes to survivors, we find that the process is somewhat contagious, in that a lot of times students have someone in their life that they would like to work with to have the same experience that they had, and that's actually very advantageous to us in the project because what we know is that a lot of Canadians, especially in this era that we are living in, are reluctant to talk to the media, are reluctant to speak out. And so what that means is this is opening up entirely new vistas, right? Of people who wouldn't normally talk to the media, but are talking to us in a different kind of way. And that's really important, because what you also see in disaster coverage across the country is fewer and fewer voices being included in that coverage, and most of the voices that are included in that coverage are increasingly government officials. We're not hearing as much from on the ground survivors, and of course, we also are- we'll talk to people who have been previously interviewed by the media, but perhaps have had a poor experience with that. We’ve also talked to people who have posted on social media about their experiences. And we work with communities that want to share their stories and are interested in sharing their stories. So it's a whole collage of various different ways of finding survivors to work with.
Sydney Lobe: I'm also curious, kind of on the flip side of things from the experience of a reader, and I know you've probably heard a lot of feedback about the work that you've very widely published. And I mean, I know from personal experience reading, the experience of reading a testimony is very emotional, and what is it like? What does it mean for a reader to get that close to the stories people are telling?
Sean Holman: It’s interesting, because one of the theories that I've long had is that we can imagine how climate change is affecting distant others more than we can imagine how it is affecting people who are closer to us and communities that are closer to us. We can more easily imagine how it is affecting people far away or in other times or in other places, or animals and plants, then we can imagine how it is affecting our friends, family members and loved ones. And what's interesting is we did a survey, an audience survey, as part of a play that we put on in September that wove together a number of various different lived experiences of climate change. And what we found was that was the case before the performance- that people could imagine how climate change was affecting others, distant others, better than they could imagine how it was affecting them or people close to them. And then after the play that changed. After the play that changed. And that's the power of these testimonies, right? Is that it allows us to connect more closely with people who have experienced these kinds of disasters, and understand how we may be connected to them and understand their experience better, so that we can build not a lifeboat for ourselves, but a lifeboat together for all of us.
Sydney Lobe: I'm curious, do you attribute any of that change from before watching the play and hearing those testimonies to after, and being able to recognize or imagine the experiences of people close to them living through climate disaster- do you attribute any of that to maybe people learning what a climate disaster might be, or the fact that maybe they didn't realize that they themselves had lived through a climate disaster?
Sean Holman: Yeah, I think that's true. That's very true. And I think it's also how we have a tendency to dismiss our own experiences. We often, I think, talk a lot these days about privilege, right? I have privilege, so therefore I'm not as affected by this thing, right? And that's an important consideration. Of course, we want to understand how power dynamics may mean we're more insulated than others from the effects of something. But I think we can go too far, and I think we are going too far, because when it goes to the point of us dismissing our own experiences and not seeing the common cause that we can form with people who are more affected and perhaps have less privilege, then we're losing an opportunity to build community around experience, then we're losing an opportunity.
We are all climate disaster survivors in one way, shape or form or another, and we may be less affected than other people are, but that doesn't mean our experience was any less significant to us, and we see this all the time in the disaster communities that we affect, that we work with, people who sometimes experience horrendous losses, feel that they're not that affected because someone was more affected than they were. So I think we need to really hold space for the idea that privilege does influence how impacted we are, but at the same time, let in more empathy, more understanding for how despite that insulation, we may still be affected.
Sydney Lobe: I'm also curious in your experience interviewing and overseeing the interviews of so many people across-
Sean Holman: 300, more than 300 survivors.
Sydney Lobe: Wow. Yeah, I'm really curious how you navigate, or how your team navigates people who have experienced climate disasters or these extreme weather events who don't necessarily feel comfortable chalking them up to climate change?
Sean Holman: That’s okay. It's their experience. It's not ours. The fact of the matter is that most people think the climate is changing. Most people think the climate is changing. The disagreement that we have is whether or not that is as a result of human activity. That's the disagreement we have. And I think rather than focus on that disagreement, maybe it would also be good to also focus on the things that we agree on, because if we can talk more about the things that we agree on, then we can find maybe future agreement on more divisive issues, because then we'll be able to better see one another's perspectives. And that's not a sneaky way of me saying, hey, look, if we work with people who reject climate science, maybe they'll come around to the idea of climate science eventually. That's not me saying that. If they want to believe that, that's something we're not going to stand in the way of.
But what I do know is that even for people who are climate science rejectionists, they are profoundly disturbed about these experiences that they have had. They want to make those experiences better. They want to help other people, and they also often know that we are not treating Mother Nature well, right? And that is far more agreement than we think actually exists on this issue. And I think that's something that in our hyper partisan world, we need to do more of- to call people into our community, be open to having them call us into their community and work together. Because what I also know is there are so many people in this world who are experiencing a lot of fear, a lot of pain and a lot of loneliness, and rather than ignore that or say that those people don't deserve to have that addressed, we need to rush in to help. We need to rush in to help, because it is only by rushing in to help that we form a more just and equitable society. More just in- a path to a more just and equitable society cannot be through the excommunication of people from that society.
Sydney Lobe: Right, to meet people at those points of agreement.
Sean Holman: At those points of agreement, even when we disagree with them. That's the hardest thing to do, and it's treated as a betrayal these days of value. But does that actually get us anywhere? I would rather be virtuous than signal virtue myself.
Sydney Lobe: Yeah, one of the hardest things to do, but it sounds like for you one of the most important as well.
Sean Holman: I think it's really important, I think it's important for all of us. What I also know is that I don't think anyone, regardless of where they're at in the political spectrum today, I don't think anyone's happy with where we're at right now. I think there's very few people who actually are. And if a whole bunch of people are unhappy, let's try to change that unhappiness together.
Sydney Lobe: I also, I want to talk a little bit- pivot a little bit to talking about the project, the Climate Disaster Project as a whole. I know you've already had so much success with the project. Your investigations have won awards, you've partnered with massive news outlets around the world, huge congratulations!
Sean Holman: Doesn’t feel like success yet but we’re on our way, maybe.
Sydney Lobe: Well, isn't that the perfect segue to my question, which is, how do you define success for the project?
Sean Holman: The awards and recognition are, of course, important, and they're important because it provides validity to the approach that we're undertaking, but it's only a means to an end. It's only valuable in so far as, are we actually making the change that we want to see in society, and do survivors feel that we are making the change that they want to see in society? Because that's the other important thing- what do the survivors that we work with think and what do they want us to do? There are a lot of organizations in the world that claim to represent the interests of various different marginalized peoples, but in the structure and the work that they do, do they actually give power and control to those groups? Do they actually listen to those groups? And I'm not saying that the Climate Disaster Project does that perfectly, either. We are a work in progress and we are constantly trying to listen better to the survivors that we work with, to the survivors who partner with us. And so I think, for me, success in the project would be, do the survivors that we work with feel that we are helping realize the change that they want to see in the world, is that what we're accomplishing? Is that what we're accomplishing? And we don't know yet, we hope, but you know, if we're going to make the kind of major change we hope to make with our survivors and on behalf of our survivors, that is a multi-generational project. That is a project that perhaps goes far beyond the lifespan, or hopefully it includes lifespan of the Climate Disaster Project, and that it changes how, not just a few people think, right, but how many people think about this moment that we're living in, what climate change means and what climate change means for all of us.
Sydney Lobe: And beyond your work with the Climate Disaster Project as the founding director, now that you're immersed in this work and have been since, when was the Climate Disaster Project-
Sean Holman: 2021, classroom operations began in 2022.
Sydney Lobe: Okay, so in the last three years since you've been immersed in this project, what meaning has this work taken on for you personally?
Sean Holman: It’s interesting. I mean, personally, I spent 10 years as an investigative journalist working to hold power to account for wrongdoing. Why did I do that? I did that because I had been bullied as a child. That's why I did that. I did that because I wanted to ensure that people who are in power had a check on that power. We are all, to a certain extent, in our work- especially folk who are sort of mission driven- I think, are informed by the pain and hurt we experienced growing up. I think I am getting to another point in my life where I've been able to let go of some of that hurt and some of that pain. I'm now doing different work. The work I'm doing is to help ensure that survivors have an opportunity to reconnect with community and feel empowered in their experiences, and be empowered in their experiences. And that feels, I can feel it in myself, right? That feels closer to who I am. And of course, ten years down the road, you may re-interview me, and I may have another interpretation of that, that that's simply another layer of personal pain that I was working out through this work. That's probably true, but we are all, to a certain extent, turning the poisons that we've experienced in life into the water of our lives.
Sydney Lobe: A very self aware answer, but it makes sense that doing work that empowers others empowers you in turn.
Sean Holman: Of course, we can never get away fully from our self interest.
Sydney Lobe: Well, this is all very profound.
Sean Holman: Hard to get- hard to escape, right? It's hard to escape ourselves. We can perhaps never fully do it. It is hard to escape ourselves.
Sydney Lobe: I'm curious about scale. The Climate Disaster Project is based at the University of Victoria, but it's an international teaching newsroom. You have various partners around the world, and I'm curious what you see in terms of scaling the project up or replicating the process of the work that you're doing?
Sean Holman: I think it's quite possible, and we're certainly pursuing funding to do that work. It is somewhat of a challenge, because this does not look like conventional journalism. It doesn't look like conventional environmental journalism. It doesn't, certainly it doesn't look like conventional environmental activism, although we are not activists. It is about thinking about climate change in a human facing way that's very different. So we hope that we are at the turning of the tide. We hope that our approach increasingly resonates not just with survivor communities, which it seems to, but also with funding communities, because that is unfortunately what these projects are reliant on, right? Can you get the funding to continue on? So we're hopeful.
Sydney Lobe: Talking about the turning of the tide, what would need to change in wider society in order for the tide to fully turn?
Sean Holman: Oh, so many things.
Sydney Lobe: It’s a loaded question.
Sean Holman: I mean, I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier. We just need to live in a more empathetic society, and we need to foster a more empathetic society. Every year that goes on in my life, the more I am convinced that so much of who we are as a people is informed by love, love or lack of it. Love or lack of it. We need to create a more loving society.
Sydney Lobe: How?
Sean Holman: By having the conversations that we're having right now, Sydney. I mean, that's all we can do. We are attachment creatures, right? We want to know and be known. We want other people to know us, and we want to know other people. We don't want to feel alone. We want to feel supported. And when we don't want those things, oftentimes it's because we fail to get those things and so we search for other solutions.
Sydney Lobe: I wonder- I mean, so often those solutions are so alluring, so tempting, so satisfying, too. And what way is there around that?
Sean Holman: It is the hardest thing, isn't it? It is, it is the hardest thing, not giving into othering other people, not giving into loneliness, not giving into pain, not giving into hate. It's the hardest thing, not giving in to anger. It is the hardest thing.
Sydney Lobe: Doing sometimes what feels like the unnatural thing, and meeting people at those points of agreement.
Sean Holman: That’s right, that's exactly right, that's exactly right. And hoping that they're willing to also be brave too, and recognizing that even if they aren't, that that was okay.
Sydney Lobe: When oftentimes what feels natural or is manufactured to feel natural is the opposite.
Sean Holman: That’s right, yeah, that's right, the tribalism of society, right? Let us keep with people that we know. Let us, let us only talk, let us only be, let us only be in community with people that we know.
Sydney Lobe: But love, like you mentioned earlier, as the solution is so much more vast than that.
Sean Holman: It is, because that's what we really want, right? So few of us ever actually want to do harm, and so few of us ever actually want to do evil. We don't do that. That's not what we do. We always manufacture a reason why we did something, we always manufacture the fact that it was the good thing to do, that it was the right thing to do.
Sydney Lobe: Before we wrap up, I want to talk about the future people's involvement with the Climate Disaster Project. The Climate Disaster Project's involvement with people, for people who have heard this chat and are interested in getting involved with the work you're doing. Maybe they want to read a testimony, maybe they want to share their story. How can they?
Sean Holman: We have a lovely website at climatedisasterproject.com that showcases testimonies that our students and the survivors that we work with have co-created together. People can also reach us through that website if they want to share their stories, and of course, we also offer Climate Disaster Project courses at the University of Victoria and a whole bunch of other universities across Canada. That's what we do. So there's a lot of opportunities for our engagement, and we love peering people who want to get involved.
Sydney Lobe: Thank you, Sean, thank you for coming on The Nest and for speaking about the work you're doing. You're just the loveliest person, you've been the best guest. I have such a deep admiration for you, and I'm so grateful that you spent your afternoon with us. So thank you.
Sean Holman: Thank you so much, Sydney. And I for you.
Sydney Lobe: Thank you.
Thank you for listening to The Nest. This episode, we had the honour of sitting down with Sean Holman, founding director of the Climate Disaster Project. We talked about their work with climate disaster survivors, the future of journalism and the healing power of empathy in an increasingly divided society. This episode was produced alongside the Martlet’s annual climate issue, which will be released in print and online on November 21. Our climate issue feature is in collaboration with the Climate Disaster Project on the front cover and center fold of our print issue, or in the Features tab on our website. You can read the testimonies of four UVic student’s climate disaster experiences and a special thanks to our producers at CFUV 101.9 FM.
*Birds chirping, music*
Rae Dawson: Thanks for tuning into The Nest, a podcast by UVic’s independent newspaper, the Martlet. You can read the latest edition of the Martlet’s publication on martlet.ca or find us on X, Tiktok and LinkedIn as @theMartlet. Interested in getting involved? Email edit@martlet.ca to learn more about volunteer writer, editor and design positions.