Bowling Alone... On Twitter? Civil Society as a Climate Change Solution
Show Notes:
1. The New Yorker, “The Last Time That Democracy Almost Died” Jan 27 2020
Link: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/03/the-last-time-democracy-almost-died
2. Lethbridge College, Alberta, Wind Turbine Technician program
Link: https://lethbridgecollege.ca/programs/wind-turbine-technician
3. Bowling alone: an influential text documenting the decline of civil society in North America
Link: http://bowlingalone.com/
4. TED Talk “The lies our culture tells us about what matters - and a better way to live”
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB4MS1hsWXU&ab_channel=TED
5. United Nations resources on civil society
Link: https://www.un.org/en/sections/resources-different-audiences/civil-society/index.html
6. Website with details of France’s citizen’s assembly on climate policy
Link: https://www.conventioncitoyennepourleclimat.fr/en/
Transcript:
Leslie Anne 0:13
I, at times, probably get more concerned about democratic decline around the world than is really, healthy or necessary. But as a political science graduate, and a law student and a law student who at times studied, quite literally politics and democracy and the law, it's really, really scary to see democracy declining in countries that have been held to be the gold standard of democracy for so long. And so it's kind of reassuring actually, to hear that there was a time in our, in our past where we did have to save democracy before and that we can do it.
Kiran 0:50
Welcome to a balancing act. We're Kiran Waterhouse and Leslie Anne St. Amour two law grads and friends. We know that climate change is here, and that we have to solve it. So every second Friday, we talk about how we can get there while improving our lives, communities along the way. All opinions are our own. Today, we talk about civil society. One of the reasons that it's difficult to fully grasp the question, who started the climate crisis slides action to heart is that it's difficult to fully grasp the problem. So today, we're here to demystify an aspect to that that's usually missed. Why does it seem so hard to translate individual desires to take political action into actual action? What's missing right now from our conversations is civil society, we'll talk through the problem, and all of the things we can do about it. Plus, this week on climate allies, we talked about retraining employees, formerly from the oil and gas industry into the renewable energy industry in Alberta. So we're talking about some big and complicated concepts. And I was trying to think of the best place to start. And I think maybe it's the the diagnosis of what I see is one of the problems right now, which is that we keep on trying to quantify the climate crisis in like specific ways and describe the problem. And I think our description to the problem until was fully accurately done encompasses many dimensions, which makes it hard to understand how to solve. So I mean, a lot of the angles that I would say, I frequently see are, that climate is a corruption story, by corporations hiding their actions. And then I equally see climate as agreed an overconsumption problem that intersects directly with the issues caused by globalization. And then I also see the idea that both the citizenry isn't engaged enough in politics, on climate, but also that our leaders aren't leaders on climate like they should. And then I think I also see, you know, the disconnect from nature, like we're so disconnected from the natural world, or even dead stuff, like humans are just like this, we just have these natural short term thinking instincts, you know, we eat the marshmallow right away. And there was never any reason to solve this. So I feel like all of these have a grain of truth to them. I want to hone in on one of these viewpoints say, which is specifically the lack of political action. And what it says about us, because I think the narrative and I might be wrong goes something like this, that you as an individual here, we have X amount of time to make x progress on climate change. And like we could dispute that narrative as level let's, you know, look at the sake of it, let's say that's what's happened. But we still have time, we can still act. And I don't know about other people. But when I hear those things, I know that I want to act. And I know that my community even wants to act and that people, you know, eight out of 10 Canadians or whatever they want to act, but I don't believe that our desire for action is actually going to translate into success in national or in provincial policy. So there's this idea, this political action problem, and we ask, what is the solution to it? One solution that's been positive is protest. And I agree that that's definitely an avenue that we should be pursuing. But I don't think that it fully describes what we need in order to get from me to us. And so this is where I want to introduce this political concept of civil society. Because I think understanding how the medium level associations that we all form in our communities, for example, the intramural sports teams, the unions, the town hall associations, the clubs, the bowling leagues, if you will, the bowling leagues. How are are actually part of our democratic process. We don't talk about them like they are. But they're actually the structures and communities that we need to be focusing on enhancing in order to get from that feeling. And those actions of me wanting to see certain political change and actually seeing that change reflected in legislation and regulation. So civil society is this thing that is that midlayer. And it makes up one of the institutions of democracy. So democracy. So when we talk about democracy, in an analytical political science, right, of course, one of the cornerstones of participation, it's voting, voting as a form of participation in the political process. But a robust democracy isn't only about voting, it's about a few things. It's about the success of changes between leadership, it's about the ability of the citizens to sense and to express legitimate opposition. And then it's also about the ability to have forms of participation in the political process in addition to voting. So this could be a letter writing campaign to your MP, if you've got a response, or it could be going to a town hall meeting with the MP, or you know, another representative, and having debates or discussions about policy that's going to affect your community. It could be about being a participant in a union and the union negotiating with, you know, the union negotiating with the employer on your behalf about, hey, things a little affected. And, you know, I think something really important to point out is, like you were saying earlier, how some people just immediately jump to protesting as one of the only ways to influence political action protest itself as an example of the types of actions and institutions you're talking about right now. And I think this is a really useful moment to kind of situate protesting in this larger context of civil society and civil institutions. protesting is a way of engaging with your government and a way of engaging with your community. It's one of many ways, I think, yeah, and I think that's important to point out that it's not that it that it's, it's not that it's not important, it has a time and a place. But I think it's really important for us to always remember that it's only one tool in the toolbox, so to speak.
And civil society, these things aren't ancillary benefits, they are essential to the health of democracy, an article that I really found so powerful, it's a New Yorker article, and we'll link it in the show notes about the last time that democracy almost died. And it describes how they revived it. And the revival of democracy hinged upon the re participation, there being big eration of the civil society of all of these groups and organizations and linkages in a community that gave people a chance to have a greater voice and greater participation in politics that affected them. That it wasn't that when they went to the ballot box, that their votes were, you know, that they were able to choose from a menu of policies offered by the political parties thought they had a greater hand in shaping those policies actively throughout the term as well. And throughout the campaign. So this article is incredibly inspiring. And in particular, one quotation resonated with me, which is that this was the 1930s. And this is, you know, leading up to World War Two, and there was great unrest in the United States. This is the United States and European focus, and there was also great unrest in Europe. And in Europe, a lot of countries, a lot of countries became fascist, and they became authoritarian. And they're very concerned about that happening in the United States as well. And it has this quotation by this man named Jimmy Stewart, he says, great principles don't get lost once they come to light. It wasn't too late. It's still not too late. And I think there's so much concern right now about the degradation of democratic forms and lots of different places around the world. People are saying democratic institutions are on the decline. And it's happened before. And I think, in this article that describes how, in 1939, they turned it around, and it was through active debate. It was through ordinary citizens like me and Leslie Anne and everybody else in our community, not just lawyers going and being able to talk about policies openly with great two cents, with much argument and very little consensus in the revival of that participation by communities within communities in the democratic process was what reinvigorated democracy at the time in the United States. And that results stands in contrast to other places where that didn't happen.
Leslie Anne 10:08
I at times probably get more concerned about democratic decline around the world that is really healthy or necessary. But as a political science graduate, and a law student, and a law student who at times studied, quite literally politics, and democracy and the law, it's really, really scary to see democracy declining in countries that have been held to be the gold standard of democracy for so long. And so it's kind of reassuring actually, to hear that there was a time in our, in our past where we did have to save democracy before and that we can do it. And that being said, there always are examples of other democracies that are doing surprisingly well. One of my favorites recently has been the study of Colombia's new constitution and their democratic protections they've included, but it is really exciting to see that, you know, democracy is almost human, and that it can get sick, it can be ill, it can be at death's door, but we can still save it. I think I've been watching too much Grey's Anatomy that I just made that reference.
Kiran 11:12
I want to draw on a few concepts from that, that are really interesting. And one of them is that like, history never ends, you know. And we forget that because we've set so many targets and deadlines for the climate crisis. But we just are going to keep enrolling. But you know, the tape is going to keep enrolling beyond and beyond. And we will continue to cope and to deal and to flourish beyond you know, these timeline records. But it really shows the cyclical nature of like these cycles, that things can get sick, and then we can kill them. And then in the future, they may once again come under attack and to keep them going. One of the things about democracy is you can never get complacent. You have to as soon as you stop actively fighting for it through participation in the political process, it's already in risk of decline, because that's how it works is through participation. It's through opposition, it's through journalism, all of these components can never stop working, otherwise, the whole machine stopped operating properly.
Leslie Anne 12:16
I think that's really true. Be something I realized recently is how much of our democratic systems or democratic safeguards are actually just societal norms. They're not actually enshrined in law. And because often because of the nature of the separation of different powers of the state, you know, the courts can't influence the making of laws, they can only review the law once it's been passed, for example. And so that makes it hard for there to be checks and balances on our actual democracy and our legislators. And so much of it relies on norms that we as the public have to hold our government to account. But when we become complacent when our civil society isn't poised and ready to do that, it becomes a whole other task.
Kiran 12:59
Yeah. And I think that it's important to remember that our particular democracy or any particular democracy isn't special. It's a pretty well documented combination of factors that have happened before. And we've seen what happens when it continues to succeed. And we've seen examples of what happens when it stops succeeding, we see all the roads ahead of us, and we understand how we get to those places.
Leslie Anne 13:22
Yeah, sorry, there we are nothing special.
Kiran 13:25
You know, not I think it's almost a relief, that it's not, you know, these myths that we hold dear on the thing that are holding our democracy together. It's the nitty gritty work and people doing it. So we just need to keep on doing this.
Leslie Anne 13:39
Absolutely.
Kiran 13:40
So this is what civil society is broadly. And I think it's fair to say that it's become harder to participate in civil society, and that it is currently on the decline. And I think there's two reasons for that. And one of them is social media and the internet, a lot of our organization, and political conversations aren't happening within our community. They're happening with people that's, you know, that think, similarly to us. And then they're also being mediated by algorithms. So we don't really know what happens in between what we say and send out and what someone else receives and why they might be the person receiving it. That information.
Leslie Anne 14:18
Totally. And you're not speaking to people with a range of opinions and viewpoints in the same way you used to be when the algorithms feed you, news that you're more likely to agree with, rather than things that will challenge you.
Kiran 14:31
Absolutely. And I think, I don't know. I also just think in general, it's, it's become a thing that people participate in that. Do you have any insights into how that happened? I think part of it is globalization and the internet and the change in industries in places like Canada and the US.
Leslie Anne 14:55
I think there's more movement of young people in particular Work and for education, and a lot of the forms of civil society that would have been really prevalent to our parents and our grandparents, I'm thinking union jobs and you know, Union towns, where there's a mill, a mine, etc, that employ a lot of people, church. Religion is a big aspect of civil society. A lot of these kinds of civil society are things that as young people, I think we tend to lose when we move away from home, we might not be involved in a church in this place where we go to university the same way we would have been in our hometown, for example, and I think that's part of it.
Kiran 15:35
To me, at least what I see now makes a lot of sense to me. It's sad, because I think that having community use is something that we all crave and we all desire is a net benefit in our lives and strip away the politicization per second that imagine that we were able to talk about climate change, really, and we're solutions oriented discourse, in our churches, in our unions, in our town halls and associations, I think that the feeling of this is what we need to do in order to act, but I don't believe or have faith that that's going to happen. I think that that feeling would be so dampened by these various institutions and communities that we would have.
Leslie Anne 16:16
I think another part of it is the way our politics and particularly around issues like climate change, for example, have become so divisive and so antagonistic, almost that it's not, it's considered a foe pod to talk about politics, in a lot of settings. Whereas I think back to, you know, my dad's generation or my grandparents generation, where you knew certain families tended to vote conservative other certain families tended to vote liberal, and it was just a thing. And you'd still talk about politics, because everyone kind of had an idea of what people thought anyway, so they'd have the conversation, whereas now it tends to be kind of a foe pod, ask people about politics or bring it up, because no one wants to risk having a contentious discussion. And I think that's a loss as well, because even the types of civil society that do still exist, especially for folks our age, I'm thinking about, like sports teams, intramural teams, things like that. No one talks about politics, it'd be so be considered abrasive, or impolite. And so even a civil society that we have is kind of a civil society light. In some ways.
Kiran 17:29
It absolutely does make sense. There's something to be said, for being okay, about being okay to disagree with someone that you both state your opinion, and you don't come to the same conclusion on it. And you argue and you debate the facts, and then you come away from it, having had that discussion, and maybe your mind hasn't been changed, but you've put it out into the open. And like so much of this discourse that was described by this New Yorker article as being really revitalizing democracy, is that this opposition, this debate wasn't simple. Yeah, I think that's really important.
Leslie Anne 18:06
I do want to caveat that that I don't think either of us would ever could I put this there's some things that should not be debated. And there's some things where it's okay to not want to be. And it's some things that it's okay to say, you know, I can't be friends with someone who believes this way. And the things that I would I put in that camp are things like queer rights, trans rights, things like that aren't up for debate. And I want to be clear that that's not the kind of thing we're advocating for, you know, those are the kind of things that you don't have to open up for debate, because they shouldn't be debated. But there are other things that when it comes to maybe how to live that kind of good life that we talked about, there are other things where you can agree to disagree, and that's fine, too. So that makes sense. Kiran?
Kiran 18:51
Absolutely. Yeah, it makes sense. Thank you for bringing that up. Because I completely agree. And I think, you know, it's impossible to describe the line that needs to be drawn, because I think it is context specific. But I also think it's clear. And I am more than happy to debate policies relating to economic prosperity, our vision of what our economy should look like, I'm not happy to debate policies pertaining to someone's rights to live in a way that's true to themselves or in a way that allows them to access personal or bodily freedom. That's a really good way of putting it totally, I do think what we are talking about here, fortunately, is pretty much everything that falls into the climate bucket. So I think there are so many climate policies that we should be debating. One of the things that I think is could be enriched by the protest movement is that protesting is an integral part of the response to climate change. And I think we've just seen the impact of that in a way that that's undeniable, but it's not enough by itself, because it misses the heart. We get there. And I think historically, you know, if you look back at the types of changes that protesting has been able to speed up, and now, it's changes where the policy response is clear. But here, I think, you know, we see that we need to get to zero emissions, I think that the imperative is clear. But the policy response of how we get there is not necessarily clear. And it is open to debate, people who want zero emissions don't necessarily and shouldn't necessarily have to explain exactly how Canada gets to zero emissions, because it's complicated and involves a lot of different things that we need to do. So that's why we need other forms of civil society, in addition to protesting policy associations, where citizens come together, you know, citizens assemblies that actually craft that policy, that gets us from knowing we need to get to zero emissions, just explaining, we get there through this combination of agriculture, this combination of green energy, this combination of conservation of existing forests, like this is the policy package that we as a society and as community have decided upon, is going to get us where we need to be.
Leslie Anne 21:07
Oh, girl, can you imagine trying to put that on a protest sign? Yeah, it would be too long. And that's that's not the point of protesting. It would be such fine print.
Kiran 21:16
It would, you'd have to make a joke about it.
Leslie Anne 21:18
Totally.
Kiran 21:19
But I think and I think that's so true, is protesting is an important part. And it can it can kind of it can trigger the conversation with political leaders. But then there needs to be somebody there who has thought about what that policy should look like to kind of make that pitch, you need somebody doing a variety of things. But right now, we're missing a lot of what that civil society aspect could be. Yeah. And that goes back to, I think, me wanting to be careful of it to finding the reasons for or the ideal response to the climate crisis too narrowly, because I don't want to, you know, I think all of these things are important, which is also I think, in of itself, kind of an unsatisfying response, what do we need to do, we need to do everything or like, Oh, god, that's too much for me to do is too much on our plate. But not everyone wants to do everything equal, just have to do something.
Leslie Anne 22:10
That's something I think about a lot. And particularly at a time in my life when I had a life coach, which sounds kind of bougie. But I promise you, Victoria was great. That's an idea of self care, I think it's something we talked about a lot was my feeling my need to feel like I was contributing in every different direction. But rather, it was probably more valuable to everybody and more sustainable for me. If I actually looked at what do my, what are my skills suited to? Where can I make the most impact? And I think that's really important to remember is not everybody needs to do everything, but look at what you can do. And where can you make a difference, and put your energy there. And if everybody did that, they'd be doing amazing. And I think we can, you know, like the fact that democratic norms are eroding, doesn't make us special just means that we already know what to do to fix them. And that doesn't make us special either. And it's very comforting, in a way. It's very comforting. But alternatively, I would also like to say, because we are all special, and have our own special talents, we don't all need to do everything. We just need to figure out where to direct our special because we are both all special.
Kiran 23:19
But our problems are not special. Humans are special people were the universal problems. I appreciated this quotation that I was told that it really resonates with me, back to you wanting to do everything, that humans are finite beings with the sense of the infinite mess. Like that encapsulates how we feel. It encapsulates the feeling I get when I'm like lying on the grass, and I look up and there's so many stars, and the universe is so big, and I'm like, wow, I'm just a tiny human, tiny, tiny eye is the only thing is for me. Like, I never have had any inclination to be a protester.
Leslie Anne 23:59
And yeah, you haven't.
Kiran 24:01
Yeah. There's nothing in me that wants that.
Leslie Anne 24:06
And that's okay. Whereas I go the other way, sometimes people have to tell me to not go protest and do my assignments instead.
Kiran 24:16
That doesn't mean I will never be a protester, or go to a protest. But I think it shows how, if we're presented with a single response, and this is how we've narrowed civil society see this one option, or just, you know, a handful of options, it really makes a lot of us feel like then well, if I don't want to do that, there's nothing I can do. I have no alternatives. I think, if anything, there's a takeaway, that it's anything that you want to do with other people that you know, you share some, some part of your life with is an alternative and that's a valuable and meaningful and useful alternative totally.
Leslie Anne 24:57
And what I think is really interesting is you and I have such different instincts when it comes to approaching problems, where I'm the one to take to the streets, and you're the one to do a lot of other things to research to write to understand, we can still come together and engage in a form of civil society by creating this podcast by creating this community of listeners. And so I think it's really important to remember that you don't have to be one or the other. And in fact, civil society is something you can do with not only people you have something in common with, but also people with different approaches.
Kiran 25:31
Media, for example, one example is the media organization that runs the popular American political podcast, Pod Save America. And they have been so successful, because they have Yes, provided, you know, quote, unquote, no bullshit source of news. But they've also created a community of people who are able to engage in the political protest directed by Pod Save America, you know, they're told to quote, they're told, they're provided with options for participating in different campaigns, they're able to donate to different causes, they're able to give them a whole bunch of options, there are all sorts of ways that they can help out in causes that they feel really strongly about, and that they know other people feel strongly about because they're all listening to America. So that really takes us to the final point that I wanted to make, which I think is that civil society pushes back on the stereotype that we shouldn't have faith in other people. So as an example, I briefly mentioned it, and I want to go into more detail about it what a citizens assembly is, and I know a few countries are trying them out for climate issues. So for example, France has assembled of citizens assemblies, randomly chosen who apply, and they all come together, and they craft. I'm a policy for France. And I think the response has been, yeah, I think the response has been really positive so far. And I know that this is an idea being considered by lots of organizations and in lots of places, because the first thing is that it's actually proven to be very successful, that they come up with good policy with high degrees of democratic participation and legitimacy. And then the second thing is that once you see this example of success, you know, you as the individual thinking, we need to act, we still have time, but I don't know how to be a part of that, see that? People want to do that. That's so incredible. I absolutely love that. And I think it's really important to think about it and like, No, I'm not gonna say like that, I think it's a really powerful thing, because I have been in spaces where we've been able to talk about policy and generate policy. And there's often that gap of how do we actually get it in front of somebody who matters in terms of deciding what the policy for the government will be. And so I really love to see people in positions of power within the democracy embracing this totally, totally empty, you know, and not all civil society, as us. You know, like, I think, like any, I don't know how to say this delicately, like any tool on the democratic toolbox, I think these things can be misused to part of accepting and embracing civil society is recognizing that you might not agree with all of the organization's and you might not agree with all the policies put forward.
Leslie Anne 28:21
But that's the same with democracy, I might not agree with all candidates. But if we work to strengthen civil society, and we worked as in, we, as individuals work to strengthen and support the civil society organizations that support what we believe in, then we're ensuring that our beliefs are represented in our democracy, we can't pick and choose the civil society that we agree with as being the only valid civil society because that's just not how democracy works. But we can make sure and fight for people to understand democracy for a political literacy in schools so that people are able to engage and understand the context and hope that our public makes decisions that we agree with. It's a that's a really interesting example. And I think I have a lot of questions about what it is in the US versus Canada that makes those reactions be the opposite. It's really powerful interest groups is the answer.
Kiran 29:15
Oh, yeah, I guess that's another it's it's very, it's literally the National Rifle Association to power as an institution and its high degree of success. And then a radical, you know, the quote unquote, radical more like, very uncompromising turn that it's taking. I think something that's kind of going unsaid here is not only because it's not only the role of civil society, but it's to what degree are Democrats, democratic institutions, allow lobbying, and allow money in politics. These we can't ignore the fact that some civil society organizations like donations do you engage in lobbying. And not to say that lobbying is an inherently bad thing? It is really at its core, just ensuring that voices are heard. But I think it's important to also understand who is being heard in lobbying and ensuring there's transparency and all of those things. Because that is part of what which groups are being heard is the money.
Definitely, I feel like if I could paint a picture of civil society, it's this layer, the sandwich, you know, it's the cheese and a grilled cheese, but the bottom slice being the individual on the top side of seeing, national political outcomes, and so if you picture the cheese, the cheese is compromised by money in politics, because it distorts it. It's compromised by mediated social media platforms, because that's distorts it.It's not the other things, too, is all that compromise cheese, the cheese, like melts at the side and then burns to your pan, and then you're sad about and then the cheese that is left is the civil society that like on it, that translates accurately the public's opinion. Yes. Oh, boy, am I taking this grilled cheese too far now?
Leslie Anne 31:10
I think you're actually taking it in the right direction. So I hope we managed I think civil society is a complicated concept. I hope we managed to demystify it a little bit. And I really want to hear from folks listening, what kind of civil society are you involved with? Kiran? Do you have a favorite form of civil society that you're involved with on a regular basis?
Kiran 31:30
Probably this podcast currently. We often in our own lives, don't think about the things we do that are actually civil society. Totally. Our classes? Definitely, definitely. Yeah, right. Now, I wish I could give you more examples. But I feel like this is part of the problem.
Leslie Anne 31:46
Well, I love that that's one form of civil society that you do. I won't answer the podcast because I feel like that's cheating. But tomorrow morning, on a Sunday at 9:30am, I have a zoom call for a property owners association that I'm a member of, because that's really fun civil society.
Kiran 32:05
That's classic civil society.
Leslie Anne 32:07
I love that it's so classic. But really, it's just because I like the lake that my family's cottages on more than I like the other people on the lake. And I want to prevent them from doing anything that will hurt the turtles in the fish.
Kiran 32:21
That's a very conservation oriented position for you to be in those.
Leslie Anne 32:24
Yeah, that's a nice segue into next week's.
Kiran 32:27
Also, if you're hearing this episode, and you're like, Man, these girls really like to talk about theories of political change a lot. Which is true, because I love it. But next week, we are talking about things much more practical, which is I would say, talking about how conservation, how conservation is the climate solution. Very exciting. And how not only can conservation be a climate solution, but how climate change affects our conservation efforts and how we need to understand both of them.
Leslie Anne 32:55
But most importantly, I will be asking our guests about her favorite turtles.
Kiran 32:59
I just I'm glad that the guests of our pods and the listeners are podcast, like are continuing to gain turtle expertise.
Leslie Anne 33:08
Yeah, between the manatees and my turtles, y'all are just gonna learn a lot about critters.
Kiran 33:13
And so civil society is a climate solution. It also shows how much climate solutions need democracy, the solution to climate change is not mandating zero emissions in a way that people are deeply unhappy with, and affects their lives negatively. It even though that feels You know, that's like the, that might be the the band aid response instinct. It's not it's that these things need to go together. If we want long lasting solutions, they need to be democratic, we need to have buy in from everybody.
Leslie Anne 33:47
Absolutely. And if we want solutions that that you know, the nice thing about climate solutions is that they benefit our lives in ways but they're just good even if we weren't facing climate change. So we should be down for them. And I think we talk about them in our civil society organizations and we will be gone. So should we talk about something that is a little bit fun now climate our climate allies so I thought this is very cool and exciting because I feel like just something thrown around all the time is like jobs retraining.
We're just gonna retrain all the jobs,
retrain those jobs, retraining the jobs,
Kiran 34:28
retraining the people,
Leslie Anne 34:30
retrain the trains. retrain the trainer's everybody, train,
Kiran 34:38
everybody to train the trainer's training.
Leslie Anne 34:41
Let's get on the retrain train,
Kiran 34:43
the rebalancing the train.
Leslie Anne 34:57
That's all you need.
Kiran 35:00
we're the participants in the podcast and of the audience. So Lethbridge College in Alberta has a new program for training wind technicians. And there's evidence to people previously with jobs in oil and gas who lost them being retrained to be working and being retrained to, like be the ones up in the air, then being returned to service windmills which is very exciting.
Leslie Anne 35:33
And maybe, and maybe paint them dark colors.
Kiran 35:36
Yeah, and maybe painting in dark colors is true, or like murals, just throwing it out there Lethbridge college, paint those windmill blades. So apparently one of their one of their catchphrases that you can't be afraid of heights to make sense. But I think there's a lot of, you know, the thrill seeker, and a lot of us would really enjoy that.
Leslie Anne 35:56
And I think it just makes sense to take people who have worked in an industry that generates energy and retrain them to work in another industry that generates energy, because well, I don't want to oversimplify this. I know there are vast differences between the skill sets needed to work in oil and gas and the skill sets needed to work in wind. But I think some of the basic premises and the context that they work in are so similar. And I'm sure the dynamics in some of those jobs are very similar, because you'd be working with similar stakeholders. But I really do think we have an important opportunity to retrain folks and give folks another avenue for a career without losing maybe as much as they would we didn't offer these opportunities.
Kiran 36:36
Yeah, because going back to the individual, it's not someone's fault. It's it's not there's no, you know, I think only positives can come out of a program like this. And I think it's really awesome to see it in action. And I think that there are complexities in this conversation, that it's not easy to ask someone to change their career or their skill set. And it doesn't necessarily mean that the pros and cons of their new job will, you know, exactly map on to the pros and cons of their old job. So I don't take it for granted at all, that this kind of change is difficult. But I think that a training program like this, and the success of it shows that it can be done, and that this is the kind of thing that we need more moving forward. And if we embrace it, the transition will be so much smoother.
Leslie Anne 37:21
And not only do I love to see the ally ship between Lethbridge college, and the wind energy industry and these workers, I would also love to see as oil and gas does become less of a main industry in Canada. And as we do begin to transition and as many oil and gas companies themselves are beginning to engage more in the renewable contacts. I would love to see them be part of these programs as well with them supporting their workers and becoming retrained to work in the renewable sector. Because I think that is a stakeholder that we could absolutely have be part of these conversations. Absolutely. I think the more that people are enthusiastic and on board, the better.
Kiran 38:02
Tune in two weeks to talk titles research and conservation, but especially guests, Professor Jackie Litzgus from the Department of Biology at Laurentian University. She's an expert in the field of conservation, and we explore how conservation can relate to climate change solutions. This is Kiran and Leslie Anne and we'll see you folks soon.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
