Blog

Welcome to the new Yale Forum Blog!

We will be sharing a variety of original content including interviews, reviews, reports from the field, new and enhanced resources on the Forum website, content from our new video podcast series, FORE Spotlights, and much more. 

Check back every Tuesday and Thursday for new content. 

August 24, 2023
As I reported last week, the RITA Summit was a rich and varied buffet of mental health professionals, scholars, activists, and more all coming together to address the issues of eco-anxiety and climate grief and how we find the strength to do this work and live in this increasingly challenging world. 

 
The event sparked much Hope in many who attended. And yet, I was also quite surprised by the final panel’s responses to moderator Mary Evelyn Tucker’s...

August 17, 2023

As we've reported here in the blog and on our social media channels, last week was the RITA (Resilience in the Anthropocene) Summit hosted by the Loka Inititative at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. This gathering brought together activists, scholars, environmentalists, mental health practitioners, and more to discuss the growing crisis of climate/eco-anxiety and grief and globally mounting solastalgia and how we can transform and transmute this personally, in our communities, and as a planetary whole. This review is greater in...

August 10, 2023

Today we'd like to make our readers aware of a new page on our website. As part of our eco-anxiety section, we've just added an “SOS” page of quick practices to help when one is experiencing eco-anxiety and grief in the moment. We at the Forum are always working to find resources to share with you that will help support the field and the wider environmental community. And one of the primary areas of need in the last few years has been in this area of fear and despair brought on by our increasingly unpredictable climate and its...

August 3, 2023

Today, we'd like to uplift the new issue of Kosmos Journal, and particularly the theme of this issue–the gift of grief. In our quest for Hope, we often eschew and run from grief, sadness, mourning, and longing. But the articles in this issue provide a window into the transformation that can happen if we allow ourselves to fully feel it all, instead of resisting and running away. Meaning, elevated consciousness, and yes, even Hope can be found in those depths. 

From the editor's introduction: 
Can we humans also learn to spin gold...

July 27, 2023

  This August, the Loka Initiative at University of Wisconsin Madison will be hosting The RITA (Resilience in the Anthropocene) Summit, a 3-day online event to support individuals and communities struggling with eco-anxiety and grief. 

The summit offers a wide variety of speakers and panelists. Forum readers will be familiar with Mary Evelyn Tucker, Bobbi Patterson, and Fletcher Harper, but there are also many BIPOC speakers bringing new perspectives into the conversation. Keynotes will be delivered by Richard Davidson, founder and chair...

July 25, 2023

This episode of Spotlights features Freya Mathews, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Environmental Philosophy at Latrobe University, and author of several books, including The Ecological Self (1991, reissued with new intro in 2021), For Love of Matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism (2003), Reinhabiting Reality: Towards a Recovery of Culture (2005),  and her new book, The Dao of Civilization: a Letter to China (2023). We discuss her personal and professional path toward metaphysics, conservation ethics, and ecological civilization, with special attention to the unique...

July 20, 2023

My town is starting to pick up the pieces. 2023 hasn't been the easiest year here in north-central Vermont. Winter fought to stay around even harder than usual, snowing on and off into May. The frogs emerged and began to mate, but the ice and snow returned and killed many of them and their offspring. Then the rains began–crops and gardens struggled to grow with abundant water and little sun, and then the waves of toxic wildfire smoke arrived. 

And then last week...

July 13, 2023

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Worldviews and Ecology: Religion, Philosophy, and the Environment, one of the first books in the Orbis Ecology and Justice Series.

This important early work in the field, edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, includes a section with essays on the perspectives of different world religions; a section on contemporary ecological perspectives with contributions by such notables as Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, George Sessions, and Larry Rasmussen; introductory essays by Tu...

July 11, 2023

This episode of Spotlights features Sigurd Bergmann, PhD, professor emeritus in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and founding contributor to the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment. He discusses his transdisciplinary approach to eco-theology and the study of religion and ecology, taking a global perspective and crossing disciplinary fields of art, architecture, ethics, religion, and the environment. He also discusses some of his many books, including...

July 6, 2023

The ocean is profoundly peaceful and grounding – immersing even a toe in that vast salty bath can help connect us to an ancient and primordial place deep within. It can strip away the busy, noisy, technicolor trappings of the modern everyday, and for me all of this provides the bedrock on which I'm able to rebuild my sometimes waning hope.

The ocean gives so much to us. But what hope are we giving back to the ocean? Oceanographer Sylvia Earle has an answer to this very important question. “Hope Spots”...