What does climate change sound like?

Shared by NARDA NELSON, TERESA DIXON, and ROSALIND TURCOTTE

What does climate change sound like? Rachel Carson (1962) warned that a silent spring was coming, but last year Haro Woods started to roar.  Listening here with young children is a complex place to be.  Orientations shape how sounds sound (Ahmed, 2010), as we try to make sense of a swath of ‘our’ beloved forest cut down for a 5,000m3 tank installation, to catch wastewater run-off before it finds its way to the Salish Sea. 

Buzz-blasts draw excited toddler bodies in while pushing others out, producing a tangle of affect and emotion that is difficult to grasp.  Is this what climate change sounds like?  The sound gnaws at our uptake of a Pedagogy of Listening (Rinaldi, 2001).  It rattles hearts, guts, and minds with the grind of unsettling assumptions: which sounds belong in the forest, or not?  They are here now, whether we like it or not.  With us.  Of us, as sewage attenuation tank grabs a foothold on Chekonein Family lands.

---

References

Ahmed, S. (2010). Orientations Matter. In D. Coole and S. Frost (Eds.) New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, & Politics, pp. 234-257. London, UK: Duke University Press.

CRD. (December, 2019). Wastewater Treatment Project. Project Update #8.

Carson, R.L. (1962). Silent Spring. Boston, MA: Paul Brooks.

Rinaldi, C. (2001). Pedagogy of listening: the listening perspective from Reggio Emilia. Innovations in Early Education: The International Reggio Exchange, 8(4), 1-4.