Climate Diary
This is to tell you all about the launch of a project on Mastodon that is very sympathetic with our Extreme Weather Stories collecting. It’s the idea of Pauline Von Hellermann, an anthropologist at Goldsmiths (University of London).
It’s the #ClimateDiary hashtag
Pauline says:
“I’ve been thinking for a while that it would be good to have a collective Climate Diary (along the lines of the Sussex Mass Observation project): people from across the world recording and sharing everyday observations, experiences, thoughts, feelings relating to the #ClimateCrisis. I would like to try out simply using a #Hashtag — #ClimateDiary — here on #Mastodon to create this and I would like to invite you all to join in and share widely!
The idea is to create something that captures and helps record #ClimateChange in all its different manifestations, large and small, throughout the world. We all (most of us) know it’s happening, but it’s so slow, so on and off, that it’s often really hard to grasp. And whilst #ExtremeWeather events are recorded, smaller changes, and how people experience them and how it affects their lives, is largely completely unrecorded, uncaptured. It would be good to try and do this, I feel.
At the same time, a collective #ClimateDiary might also help emotionally — in the way that all diary writing helps to work through emotions, but also by sharing and connecting across the world, especially if you feel alone and isolated in thinking about climate in your own community and family. It might be quite therapeutic to be able to share and connect your thoughts and feelings
So let’s try this! Use #ClimateDiary in your toot whenever you want to make a Climate Diary post, and if you feel like, also follow the #ClimateDiary hashtag yourself. I will myself follow, search and re-toot all #ClimateDiary posts and can be a sort of hub, at least initially.”
She also mentions our project, and that we’ve been talking about linking up in some way, including posting here to share some of the diary entries. This first blogpost is to amplify the idea. There’s no reason why not to use the hashtag on other platforms, but Mastodon is where the community is and where stories will be collected.
Support for the idea:
“I find #ClimateDiary a powerful and low effort way of understanding climate change as experienced by people, penetrating the “mundaneness” of environmental disaster. Making one notice the otherwise subtle. It reminds me of phenology, I was introduced to by Michelle Bastian. Phenology is an outsider branch of biology that observes and record plants seasonal cyclical relating to the climate. It is not only biologists who record but is a form of citizen science.” @s_lundsteen@mastodon.green
“It’s created a space for non-experts like me to share observations about niggling wee things that seem wrong based on lived experience. Some of them may turn out to be due to faulty memories (when a given flower buds) or naturally shifting baselines, others unfortunately real. It’s nice to have a collective space to share and to learn from other people’s observations elsewhere.” @CiaraNi@mastodon.green
“I thank you for the great idea with the #hashtag #ClimateDiary. It meets my work with the podcast #NatureMatchCuts which is driven by the idea that we need to #reconnect with #nature and work with #EcoGrief and everyday life to motivate more people to #ClimateActivism and engagement for #biodiversity. Driven by love for the planet, not only statistics. I hope many subscribe to your hashtag and share their stories!” @NatureMC@mastodon.online
