Eloisa Lewis Talks About the Intersection Between Climate Change and Queerness

Eloisa Lewis is a climate change activist and consultant, as well as a permaculture designer. Her think tank, New Climate Culture, offers a number of services including design consulting for businesses to create environmentally sound business practices and experts for speaking engagements on environmental issues. As a member of the queer community herself, Lewis believes that climate change and queerness are inherently intertwined. OFM decided to sit down with Lewis to talk to her about her mission and how climate change and queerness are intertwined.

So talk to me a little bit first about what you do and your position before we kind of get into more specifics.

I’m a permaculture designer and climate consultant. I run my own think tank called New Climate Culture, and we offer a wide range of services that are really bespoke for our clients. So we focus on education, things like corporate training, and basically the entire operations and supply chain management and distribution of an organization.

So, one thing we wanted to talk to you today about was climate crisis and how it disproportionately affects underserved communities, particularly LGBTQ people. Can you talk a little bit about that?

I think that social justice and political and climate justice are inherently intertwined because a lot of the issues surrounding climate justice are cultural and have to do with our tolerance and our inclusivity. So I think that the best thing that I can do is speak from my own experience being on the front lines of the water and land defense movements. I think that those are some of the most radically inclusive spaces that I’ve ever found because they’re integrating the secular and cross-cultural nature of what a queer identity is, because being queer is so different depending on what culture you’re raised in and exposed to and what nation you’re in in the world.

And so, for me as an American, I found the most understanding and support in the environmental movement as a queer person, which I thought was really interesting because I’ve been in lots of different queer spaces in the world—I’ve lived in San Francisco and also now I’m in Montreal, Canada—(and) they’re both known to be really inclusive and forward thinking and weird. But again, I’m thinking that the environmental movement is unique and supportive of gay identity because it’s inherently (a) human centric movement. It’s inherently about recognizing people that are different from you across the planet, as deserving of the same human rights, being clean air, clean water, and healthy food, healthy soil, shelter.

The UN, I believe in 2020 began to identify decolonization as one of the most important modalities for reversing global warming and restoring biodiversity. And one of the reasons for that is because biodiversity is in the hands of indigenous people that have not been colonized. So that’s really important as a demonstration of who has been able to maintain what is the most valuable resource on the planet being biodiversity itself and within the modality of decolonization that is inherently the center of what is the climate movement in my life, and in my experience. A

nd when we come to decolonization as a practice in the study—looking at cultures all across the world, pre-colonization, and what is colonization and what has it done across different centuries and different times—again, we’re looking at ideas about basic human rights, tolerance, inclusivity, and mutual aid, being the counter to colonization as a form of violence and domination and basically anti-consent, because the idea would be that you’re taking without asking or taking violently without cause other than some kind of idea of ownership or property.

So yeah, looking at cultural narratives across the world and in within Turtle Island here in North America, there are mythologies and cultural standards of identity that exist outside of mainstream, colonized American perspective, that are extremely queer, extremely LGBTQIA+ and beyond because there’s room for that kind of narrative to exist at all and for it to have existed for maybe centuries, maybe millennia.

And I think that’s really important to recognize that in the least tolerant spaces, there’s the most violence, interpersonal violence, and environmental violence. So I think that underscores and defines why people who are part of marginalized communities—especially within any kind of identity that’s basically nonbinary or cis or hetero, if you’re not falling into those categories. And I’m speaking more to Turtle Island right now, since that’s where I am; we are here. I don’t think everything applies to every region on Earth the same but again, speaking for modern American identity, mainstream pop culture on Turtle Island/Canada/Mexico.

I think for queer people, there’s definitely also a class concern as well in terms of how someone’s disproportionately affected by climate change. Can you possibly talk to how class impacts it/ 

Absolutely. I think that class and caste systems are adjacent, and basically it’s a form of elitism, again, an idea that there are some people who are more deserving of basic fundamental human rights and some people who are not deserving of them at all. And so, yeah, I write anarchist theory. I’ve published two books; I have identified as an anarchist for over 10 years. And in that realm, it really means self-governance. Just breaking down the word, it means self-sovereignty, self-governance, the ability to make choices for yourself, is really the most basic way to describe it because I think people get really complicated and political. And I’m not that way; I’m very simple. I’m a very simple person. And I think that the current systems that we have in place across the world widely are not equitable and don’t allow for self-governance and don’t allow for cooperation over conflict. I think that our current systems encourage conflict and elitism in castes and classism because people don’t know how to measure what is real spiritual wealth and what is real planetary wealth, which is again, coming back to biodiversity, clean air, clean water, and clean food because you don’t have clean air, clean water, clean food, and clean soil without biodiversity.

That’s the thing. They’re married together by the cosmic order. And so for that reason, when you look at what biodiversity is itself, if we’re going to look to nature to guide for our political and economic systems, biodiversity is a place of anarchism and self governance. It’s a place of competition of the best ideas in not necessarily strongest species, but the adapted species, those species that are able to continue to adapt and regenerate and contribute to the ecosystem. So each species plays its part to maintain the health of the ecosystem and if it doesn’t, then it’s considered by either humans or by the ecosystem itself other animals or other species have been a considered to be a threat.

And so I think that, yeah, classism and caste systems are threatening to the health of our planet and of our human family. It’s funny to me that a lot of people who believe in classism and elitism and castes are under the guise and the veil of some kind of spiritual righteousness. But for me the most spiritually affirming and obvious relationship that you can have with another human is to see them as, at basic, deserving of a peaceful environment and a healthy environment in which to operate. And I think that’s the foundation that people have always been trying to share since the dawn of consciousness. I think that that’s what that’s what really being on one planet and having so much diversity is about is about: learning how to share. And people who don’t want to share turn to violence and shaming as an alternative because I think that they don’t understand how possible sharing is and how beneficial it is. You don’t have clean air, clean water, a functioning planet without ecological biodiversity.

And when we think about diversity we should think about also the diversity of narratives that can be experienced by a human and looking to, especially if someone is walking a non-violent path, self-defense is fair because I think lots of people in the world, on every side of every identity, have experienced violence. And so we all should defend ourselves against that violence as that’s survival. Any living creature has an instinct to survive.

I think that’s the misconception. The miscommunication that’s happening is that there are people who are inherently–or maybe not inherently–but there are people who are currently holding the idea that like being poor, or being ugly, or being queer, anything that is an other-ism is bad [and] is deserving of violence. And that’s just incredibly superficial and coming from a place of extreme personal scarcity. Because I don’t feel like, if you are truly in your understanding of abundance and understanding of biology–Life with a capital L—then there’s really no need for us to compete in the ways that we do. There’s good sportsmanship, and then there’s more. And there’s a wide range between those two things.

And so, for me, for example, I would argue in my lifetime that war is just an unnecessary aspect of human identity that we’re still working through. And what happens within happens without so it’s a form of self loathing. Human warfare is a form of self loathing. So war against queer people or against indigenous people, it’s a form of self loathing, and it’s inappropriate. And it’s literally costing us our health and our friends. I like to think of other species as friends and cousins.

We’re in the cycle of violence that can only be ended through understanding and through communication, through tolerance, acceptance, forgiveness, love. And I think that the bravest people on Earth are the people who are able to maintain a hope and love and a sense of acceptance and forgiveness, despite the traumas and tortures of these dogmatic, racist, homophobic, intolerant different ideological groups out there that are promoting separation and segregation over integration and intersectionality.

I just think it’s interesting you bring up the word you bring up anarchism when I look online, and I see you’ve written so much about how consumerism is not the enemy. How do you reconcile that those two competing ideas?

Well, I’m someone who believes in diversity and consent. So, in my lifetime, I’ve lived as an anti-capitalist. I’ve lived with basically no money on trade and gift economies for many years. But I also recognize that most people are not prepared for that. And some people will maybe never want to participate in that type of economy. But I still want to make room for it because I see the value in it, and I think that was the happiest I ever was in my life when I was able to live in ecovillages where there wasn’t a need to exchange fiat currencies.

And so I reconcile it based on the fact that I’m a pragmatist, and that I’m trying to speak to a public who is entrenched in its current behaviors and invested in this reality and try and walk with that route toward a more equitable and community-based mindset and philosophy. And I think of it in the sense of, instead of having an on and off switch—which is a binary, like it’s either light or it’s dark—instead, my philosophy and my modality is more like a light switch that has a gradient. So it’s fading in and out from light to dark, and we’re providing steps and options along the way of different modalities.

Are there any immediate projects you’re working on or goals that you you’re looking for the near future?

Yeah. Right now, we are working with some investors to fund some new projects that I’m going to say are a little bit under wraps still, but we’re seeking investment. So if there’s anyone out there who is resource-wealthy and would like to partner with my company, I would love to send them more information about investment opportunities that we’re offering for clients and partners. I feel like I’m always in the mode of, of educating different communities. I’m always working with farmers directly. I love the cannabis community. That was the first thing that I ever farmed. I think that my group would love to acquire land to build some demonstration sites where we can enhance biodiversity for locals and provide clean food as well as plastic alternatives.

So those are the things that we’re in research and development about that I can speak about. We’re looking for anyone who’s interested in either bringing us onto their land as a contributor, or, of course, we are interested in acquiring land as a group to enroll in starting a land trust so that we’re able to create more spaces where we can allow people to thrive because it’s not just about the biology. Also, something I’m providing for communities is community guidelines and standards to set up key safe practices because there’s the biological permaculture and social permaculture. I happen to be a really strong expert and advocate within the social permaculture space especially.  People can go and check out Trauma Circle Medicine on YouTube with Elouisa Lewis. That is a beginning, free, 45-minute workshop for free that I did with Northwestern Permaculture Convergence to explain and share how we focus on conflict resolution through communication and cooperation instead of escalating conflict.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I just want to say I stand in solidarity and in shared identity with this community, and I think that we have to just continue to value what we bring to this world, as queer people or as LGBTQIA community, just anything that’s out of the mainstream narrative. And I just want to say I’m sending all my love to everyone out there who I’m reaching through this piece.

Photo courtesy of Eloisa Lewis