Crossing the Aisle for Mother Earth

How one Western Washington University student’s thesis evolved into a lesson on listening and compassion

By Olivia Palmer

April 7, 2022

For her master’s thesis, Sydne Tursky is talking to people about the things that they don’t talk about. Tursky, a second-year graduate student at Western Washington University’s College of the Environment, is working to understand the impacts of framing on white evangelical Christians’ views of climate policy. Last summer, she returned to her hometown of Van Buren, Arkansas to interview 25 white evangelical Christians about the environment. Her conversations gave her a window into a range of different worldviews and taught her some valuable lessons about what it means to master the long-forgotten art of talking to people you don’t agree with.

Olivia Palmer is a third-year environmental journalism major who’s passionate about storytelling in my communities. She has written and edited for both The Front and The Planet, as well as contributed to a hyperlocal online Seattle newspaper. One of her favorite stories that she has written was on water adjudication in the Klamath Basin; the project involved interviews with a range of subjects, including tribal leaders, fish biologists and farmers. You can read the story in The Planet’s spring 2021 issue.