Did we Care When Birds and Animals Died during the Sixth Extinction?

Climate Crisis Conversations

In this podcast Sally Weintrobe, psychoanalyst and editor of Engaging with Climate Change, is in conversation with Caroline Hickman about the natural relationship which children have with animals. They feel close to them and fascinated by them. Sally sees our prevailing culture of un-care as working to break links between humans and animals and to invite us to treat animals (and the animal we are) as “distanced others”. How are we facing the Sixth Mass Extinction? Can children help adults repair their inner representations of the natural world and our place in it? The danger is animals will die in their millions without being sufficiently loved to be mourned and fought for. Children are as Vaclav Havel put it “pre-political”, meaning not yet so influenced by culture. The pre-political is, however, deeply political.