With cave diver and climate advocate Jill Heinerth. Climate change affects us all. But women, girls, and gender-diverse people often experience harsher impacts of climate change, especially those who are most marginalized. They’re also an important part of effective climate solutions. Gender equality itself is a climate crisis solution.
Anishinabek Nation Chief Water Commissioner Autumn Peltier says, “I advocate for water because we all came from water and water is literally the only reason we are here today and living on this earth.”
The United Nations says, “from unpredictable rainfall patterns to shrinking ice sheets, rising sea levels, floods and droughts – most impacts of climate change come down to water.” Knowing what’s happening with our world’s water – and how we can protect and honour it as a life-giving force we all need – is essential.
More people have walked on the moon than visited many of the places our guest Jill Heinerth has explored on Earth. From the most dangerous technical dives deep inside underwater caves to swimming through giant Antarctic icebergs, she collaborates with climatologists, archaeologists, biologists, and engineers worldwide.
Jill is a tireless advocate for underwater conservation and water resource protection. She has made award-winning TV programs, consulted on movies, and produced documentary films. Over two and a half million people have learned about climate change, water advocacy, and exploration by viewing her TED Talks.
Jill was named the first Explorer-in-Residence of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and she is the recipient of many medals and awards. She is author of the bestselling memoir, Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver, and focus of a new documentary, Diving Into The Darkness.
Transcript
00:00:04 Jill
We all need to make it personal like we all need to be citizen scientists kind of contributing to the understanding of, you know, whether we’re learning something new online or whether we’re experiencing something firsthand, we need to talk and share on these experiences and messages.
00:00:23 Andrea
What does it mean to be a water literate citizen scientist in our era of climate change?
I’m Andrea Gunraj from the Canadian Women’s Foundation.
Welcome to Alright, Now What? a podcast from the Canadian Women’s Foundation. We put an intersectional feminist lens on stories that make you wonder, “why is this still happening?” We explore systemic routes and strategies for change that will move us closer to the goal of gender justice.
The work of the Canadian Women’s Foundation and our partners takes place on traditional First Nations, Métis and Inuit territories. We are grateful for the opportunity to meet and work on this land. However, we recognize that land acknowledgements are not enough. We need to pursue truth, reconciliation, decolonization, and allyship in an ongoing effort to make right with all our relations.
00:01:19 Andrea
Climate change affects us all. But its impacts are deeply gendered. Women, girls, and gender-diverse people often experience harsher impacts of climate change, especially those who are most marginalized. They’re also an important part of effective climate solutions. Gender equality itself is a climate crisis solution.
Anishinabek Nation Chief Water Commissioner Autumn Peltier says, “I advocate for water because we all came from water and water is literally the only reason we are here today and living on this earth.”
The United Nations says water and climate change are inextricably linked. “From unpredictable rainfall patterns to shrinking ice sheets, rising sea levels, floods and droughts – most impacts of climate change come down to water.”
Knowing what’s happening with our world’s water – and how we can protect and honour it as a life-giving force we all need – is essential.
More people have walked on the moon than visited many of the places our guest Jill Heinerth has explored on Earth. From the most dangerous technical deep dives inside underwater caves to swimming through giant Antarctic icebergs, she collaborates with climatologists, archaeologists, biologists, and engineers worldwide.
Jill is a tireless advocate for underwater conservation and water resource protection. She has made award-winning TV programs, consulted on movies, and produced documentary films. Over two and a half million people have learned about climate change, water advocacy, and exploration by viewing her TED Talks.
Jill was named the first Explorer-in-Residence of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and she is the recipient of many medals and awards. She is author of the bestselling memoir, Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver, and focus of a new documentary, Diving Into The Darkness.
00:03:22 Jill
My name is Jill Heinerth and I’m a full-time underwater explorer. I’m also the Explorer-in-Residence for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and that gives me a chance to spend a lot of time with young people, hopefully inspiring them to chase their curiosity and explore as well.
I mean, I spend my life diving into the darkness. I’m swimming through water-filled passageways beneath your feet. These underwater cave systems, and I know that can seem really abstract to people, but I’m literally swimming through the veins of Mother Earth. I’m in the sustenance of the planet — that water that provides for humanity, provides for nature, and even all of the industries that, you know, give us our modern life.
My job does involve taking risks — big risks, but I only embark on those activities when I feel that it’s worth it, when we can be learning something that may, you know, further our understanding of water issues or climate change or even the resilience of the human spirit.
Back in 2001, I was the first person to cave dive inside an iceberg, and it wasn’t just any iceberg. It was the largest iceberg in recorded history. And I know we’ve seen a lot of talk recently about the A23 iceberg, but this was much, much bigger. This was actually the size of Jamaica.
Frankly, it was a hypothesis when we went down there, but I had envisioned that we would find these cracks and crevices that would lead to tunnels and caverns throughout the interior of the ice. You know, there’s no handbook for the first person to do something, so there’s no best practices when you decide to be, you know, the first to take something like this on. So, it was incredibly risky, but I felt like it gave us a very early look at climate change, the shifting planet, and what the mechanics involved in how we are losing ice in the polar regions.
00:05:32 Andrea
What are the climate change issues you’ve come face to face with, seeing so many things most of us will never see firsthand?
00:05:39 Jill
Well, you know, I think that’s kind of an important point because people rarely make change until it gets personal — until they see it in their own backyard or maybe it affects their families.
And I feel that’s kind of where my role becomes important. You know, I do these incredibly dangerous adventurous things and people kind of look on with wonder and awe about, “Oh my gosh.” You know, “What are you doing?” But it gives me a chance to communicate about the science and share, you know, very direct evidence of things that are happening
Because I think that we all need to make it personal like we all need to be citizen scientists kind of contributing to the understanding of, you know, whether we’re learning something new online or whether we’re experiencing something firsthand, we need to talk and share on these experiences and messages.
Like everywhere I’ve traveled in the last year, all around the world, I’ve landed in places where we’ve been experiencing like never before seen weather crises and so, I’m seeing it in New Zealand, in Mexico, in BC, in you know, Europe… and having that direct impact for me, is like wow, you know, this is this is happening faster than we expected and on a much larger scale than we expected.
And so, I don’t want to scare people, but I do want to bring them the stories, bring them the wonder, and help them to be a part of the legion of people that will understand the issues and make changes for the future.
00:07:10 Andrea
You’ve achieved a lot of incredible firsts as a woman ocean professional. Can you tell me more about that experience?
00:07:17 Jill
You know, as a young person starting my career before the Internet, things were quite different. There were a lot more gatekeepers. There were seemingly more, you know, barriers for someone who was pursuing a career in a quite a male-dominated sphere.
But with the birth of the Internet, that brought along new challenges. You know, I believed every negative comment I ever saw on the Internet until I kind of gained the wisdom to understand that that wasn’t about me, that was about the commenter, and that there really wasn’t any reason why I should be held back as a woman pursuing something that was new and different.
And so, I recognize that visibility is important. That I need to, you know, reach out to the next generation of young women and early career ocean professionals and encourage them and tell them that: “Forget all that stuff you hear online. You can do anything you set your mind to.”
And overall, that leaves me with a sense of optimism and optimism for tackling some of these huge existential threats that we face today. You know, I’m a realist, but I’m also an optimist. And I think that we can rise to the occasion.
00:08:29 Andrea
I’ve seen you use this term “water literacy”. What is it? How can we become more water literate?
00:08:34 Jill
Well, for me as that person that’s swimming through your drinking water, I think of water literacy as understanding where your water comes from, how you might be unintentionally affecting it, and how we can maintain a healthy supply for the future. Because we have lots of water on the planet, but what we’re running out of is clean, fresh drinking water resources that we can afford.
And so, protecting that groundwater means that we have to recognize that everything we do on the surface of the earth will be returned to us to drink and that water literacy means understanding that my water doesn’t come from a tap. It comes from an aquifer or a local supply. And I do need to understand that connective path, but I also need to recognize that when I, you know, bite into a hamburger, that that could represent up to 2000 liters of water use for growing and bringing that meat to market and getting it into my kitchen.
So, water literacy is really understanding our footprint. You know, much in the way we look at a carbon footprint, we can do so for water as well.
00:09:41 Andrea
How can we do what you recommend: become citizen scientists, playing our part in an era of rapid climate change and crisis?
00:09:49 Jill
Definitely stay curious, you know, don’t just curl up in the fetal position because some of us want to do that some days. But, you know, stay literate, you know, look to all kinds of alternative sources for information. You know, collaborate with people. Like I’ve become the hands and eyes of scientists in places that nobody’s ever been before. I can extend their reach into the environment. But that’s only good if I also communicate about what I’m seeing and learning.
Everybody can can do that as well, like you know, I was the little kid that loved show and tell in kindergarten and I never stopped, but hopefully we can all you know, get into collaborative groups and share with each other. We were all so shut down and lonely during these COVID times, but now we have an opportunity to get back together and share ideas and move forward with a more firm understanding of our impact on the planet.
I love the whole concept of the Dish With One Spoon treaty where you know, we all recognize that we’re sharing one bowl of sustenance, and we can all eat from it, but we also need to fill it up from time to time and that is, you know, such an important concept.
I think that we all need to embrace our roles as citizen scientists and communicators and really, you know, force ourselves to become more literate about things that we don’t understand and talk about them.
Because these are scary times, but we have a chance. I believe we have a chance to, you know, reverse the trends and, you know, make this world a place that’s like survivable for humanity and all the other species because the planet’s going to be fine, but we’re on a fast pace to destroying our species at this point.
00:11:40 Andrea
You’ve become such a role model for young people moving into climate action. How can we follow your footsteps here?
00:11:46 Jill
I mean, ultimately I just want to be the woman I wish I had met when I was 10 years old. You know, the visibility of caring, of researching, of reading, of learning, being curious, can have a lasting impact on a younger person. And you know, when you’re in an unusual career such as I am, that visibility, you know, just might inspire that next kid to be part of the solutions for the future.
So, you know, maintain a positive outlook. Look for solutions, thinking in a way that can inspire others because it is through community, and it is through connections and collaborations that we have a chance to turn some of these trends around.
00:12:28 Andrea
Alright, now what? Learn more about Jill Heinerth’s work by visiting intotheplanet.com.
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