Feeling it: UW Bothell class helps students face emotional impact of a warming planet

When she first started learning about climate change from one of her elders, Fawn Sharp was invited on a helicopter flight over the Olympic Mountains to survey the Mount Anderson glacier.

Jennifer Atkinson, a senior lecturer at the University of
Washington at Bothell, teaches a class on loss and
grief associated with climate change.

But the glacier was gone, melted away by the warming climate.

Sharp, who is now finishing her fourth term as president of the Quinault Indian Nation, remembers a deep sense of loss when she discovered the glacier had vanished.

It’s the same feeling of despair that haunts the tribe over the demise of historic sockeye runs, and the need to relocate the village of Taholah because of ocean encroachment, increasingly severe storm surges and flooding, Sharp said.

Read The Seattle Times story - “Feeling it: UW Bothell class helps students face emotional impact of a warming planet.”