Ep. #165 - Amanda Lynch & Siri Veland

• Main Authors: Boyer, Dominic (podcast host), Howe, Cymene (podcast host), Lynch, Amanda, Veland, Siri
• Format: Audio
• Language: English
• Published: Cultures of Energy, Rice University 2019
• Subjects: environmental humanities; Bodø; Lynch; Norway; Nordland
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1911/112871

This recording and transcript form part of a collection of podcasts conducted by the Cultures of Energy at Rice University. Cultures of Energy brings writers, artists and scholars together to talk, think and feel their way into the Anthropocene. We cover serious issues like climate change, species extinction and energy transition. But we also try to confront seemingly huge and insurmountable problems with insight, creativity and laughter. Is coughing an identity? Well, if it’s your identity your cohosts have the scoop on a reputed new coughing cure on this week’s podcast. We are then (15:26) joined by a dynamic duo—Amanda Lynch (Director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society) and Siri Veland (Senior Researcher at the Nordland Research Institute in Bodø, Norway). We talk to them about how their collaboration on climate change adaptation led to a new book, Urgency in the Anthropocene (MIT Press, 2018) which takes a distinctively positivist-meets-constructivist approach to its problem. We talk about the challenges and joys of talking about the Anthropocene across the earth sciences and social sciences. We discuss the urgency of thinking with greater imagination but also of being careful what kinds of imagination we embrace. From there we turn to the Anthropocene as a kind of myth that enables but also constrains government and policy responses. We talk modes of coexistence and the recognition of dignity as a starting point for listening. And we close by discussing their latest collaboration, the ArcticChallenge Project and its focus on oil ontologies.