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Hope Matters:
A Conversation with Elin Kelsey

September 17, 2021
Marston Library L-136
& via Zoom
12:50–1:40 PM (EST)


We are at an inflection point: today, more people than ever before recognize that climate change and biodiversity loss are urgent and existential threats. Yet constant reports of climate doom are fueling an epidemic of eco-anxiety, leaving many of us feeling hopeless and powerless –and hampering our ability to address the very real challenges we face.

Elin Kelsey’s new book Hope Matters boldly breaks through the narrative of doom and gloom that has overtaken conversations about our future to show why hope, not fear, is our most powerful tool for tackling the planetary crisis. Award-winning author, scholar, and educator Kelsey reveals the collateral damage of despair – from young people who honestly believe they have no future to the link between climate anxiety and hyper-consumerism – and argues that the catastrophic environmental news that dominates the media tells only part of the story. She describes effective campaigns to support ocean conservation, species resilience, and rewilding, demonstrating how digital conservation is helping scientists target specific problems with impressive results. And she shows how we can build on these positive trends and harness all our emotions about the changing environment – anger and sadness as well as hope –into effective personal and political action.

Timely, evidence-based, and persuasive, Hope Matters is an argument for the place of hope in our lives and a celebration of the turn toward solutions in the face of the environmental crisis.


How to Attend

This event is a virtual seminar (webinar). If you are on the UF campus you may attend a very large screen broadcast of the webinar in the company of a live audience in Marston Library L-136, or you may access the webinar remotely in real time, via Zoom.
To attend via Zoom, you will need access to the Internet and a working copy of the Zoom desktop client, mobile app, or web client. These are available for free from this page. Zoom software is compatible with Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Chrome OS, and Linux computers and handheld devices. The Zoom web client is compatible with Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Chromium Edge. University of Florida faculty, staff, and students are advised to download the software from UF’s Zoom portal.

Once you have downloaded and installed the Zoom software, when a webinar is scheduled to begin click on the Zoom webinar link noted above. No passcode entry is required to join a webinar. Once you have joined you will be able to see and hear the event speakers and view any media they share with the audience. You may interact with the speakers via Zoom’s Q&A feature and at the discretion of the event moderator.


Face Coverings Expected During Indoor Campus Events

This event adheres to the University of Florida’s guidelines for campus events during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, including the expectation that all attendees will wear approved face coverings at all times during this event and within buildings even if they are vaccinated. We recommend that you familiarize yourself with and adhere to the University’s guidelines for campus operations during the pandemic.


About the Speaker

Elin Kelsey, PhD, is an activist, scholar, and educator in the area of evidence-based hope. Her work focuses on the reciprocal relationship between humans and the rest of nature, particularly in relation to the emotional implications of the narrative of environmental doom and gloom on children and adults. She has been a consultant, visiting fellow, or writer-in-residence at numerous environmental and educational institutions, including the Arteles Creative Center, Hämeenkyrö (Finland), the Cairns Institute, James Cook University, (Australia), the Clayoquot Biosphere Trust, Sydney Inlet (Canada), the London Goodenough Trust (UK), Mesa Refuge, Point Reyes (US), the Monterey Bay Aquarium (US), the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (Berlin), the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center (Italy), and Stanford University (US). As a current Adjunct Faculty member of the University of Victoria School of Environmental Studies, she is spearheading the development of a solutions-oriented paradigm for educating environmental scientists and social scientists.

The author or co-author of more than thirty scholarly papers and book chapters on conservation education and hopeful responses to environmental crisis, she is the author of three environmental books for adults (Hope Matters, 2020; Watching Giants: The Secret Lives of Whales; 2009, and Saving Sea Otters: Stories of Survival, 1999), and is an award-winning author of more than a dozen books for children on the environment and the lives of non-human animals.

Kelsey divides her time between Monterey, California, and Victoria, BC.

This event is free and open to the public. No advance registration is required.



“Hope Matters” is sponsored by Imagining Climate Change.