Ground to cover

Now into the third and final day of the conference, it takes a moment to piece together everything that has happened since I touched down at Umeå Airport on Wednesday morning. But, yes, Elin and I went for a rainy river run, I attended the first programme board meeting of the semester on Teams, and had coffee with my former colleague Linnéa at Kulturbageriet before taking bus number 1 up to the Humanities Building for an evening of wine and a presentation of the research project “Forests of Emotions”. After the strong impression that Lisa Röstlund’s Skogslandet made on me, I found myself nodding in agreement with the basic premise that emotions are fundamental to how both forest owners and conservationists relate to forests, and that more “facts” alone are unlikely to make much of a difference.

Then, after waking up above the rooftops at Comfort Hotel Winn, it was my turn to present my paper An Ecomodernist Critique of Emissions Sufficientarianism. Without hiding behind any PowerPoint slides, and bringing nothing more than a few keywords, I took to the podium, knowing that the only way I could do this was by being fully present and speaking my mind, frightening as that might be. Rereading my paper a few days earlier, I had been struck by how much ground it covers, and how much each step builds on the previous one. In retrospect, I am not sure whether I managed to bring the argument full circle, from the geophysical realities of climate change to how degrowth risks foreclosing more emancipatory planetary futures. At times, I fear I may have been unnecessarily polemical, but clearly I was saying something that no one else was saying.

Afterwards, I sat down to listen to presentations on everything from the tragedy of wilderness appreciation to teleological contextualist perspectives on biodiversity offsetting, before it was time for Teea Kortetmäki’s fascinating keynote on “After wilderness: cohabitability in a humanized world”. With my mind both bubbling with thoughts and exhausted from the intensity of all the conversations, it felt good to take the bus downtown for some Indian food together.

Yet, reflecting on those conversations, I was again struck by how rarely some people on the political Left seem to consider their own role in the worsening affective polarization of society. I guess a little perspective-taking would go a long way here. Imagine how a committed vegan would feel if suddenly forced to eat steak, and perhaps it becomes easier to understand why people resist having their deeply held values challenged, even when those challenges are morally justified.