October 5, 2025 • 57 mins
The world feels like a really bad parody movie right now – but it’s not funny. There’s a constant background hum of dread – climate change, biodiversity collapse, war – and it’s no wonder eco-anxiety has become a collective condition.
Because of all this, I’m replaying one of our most popular episodes: my conversation with psychologist Dr. Susie Burke about eco-anxiety.
It’s a surprisingly uplifting conversation about climate change – yes, really...
Dr. Susie has years of experience in climate psychology and shares practical ways to handle eco-anxiety and other intense emotions, whether you’re angry, tired, or just numb.
She reminds us that positive change is happening elsewhere and is within our reach. It's a breath of fresh air for anyone overwhelmed by constant climate news (and the news in general, frankly).
In this episode, we talk about:
- The perception gap: why more people care about climate change than you might think
- The mental health impact of climate change and why eco-anxiety is normal
- Strategies to cope with climate emotions, from small practical steps to collective action
- How shifting business and consumer behavior can drive more change than waiting for governments
- Why we are the first generation with a real shot at creating a sustainable world
- How to support children in understanding and feeling empowered about environmental issues
More About Dr. Susie Burke
Check out her website here
Subscribe to Emily Writes here
More about Hannah Ritchie
Author of Not the End of the World, check out her website and books here
More about The Conceivable Future
Written by Meghan Elizabeth Kallman and Josephine Ferorelli, their website is here
Tedx Talk: Changing the World: Why it Fails and What Works
By Winnifred Louis, watch it here
Thanks for joining me on this episode of Because Why?!
Mā te wā - see you next week.
You can get involved with the podcast online in the meantime, of course.
Find our full podcast via the website here: https://www.nowthatwhatsicall.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/becausewhypod/
You can follow me on socials on the below accounts.
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For our latest big project, find out more about Incrediballs here: https://incrediballs.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The world feels like a really bad parody movie right now, but
it's not funny. Our government last weekend, of
course, refused to recognize Palestine as a state, which is
somehow both the bare minimum. And yet I don't know how to
explain this, but deeply arrogant.
Like who do we think we are to recognize a state that already
exists? But also, who are we not to not,
(00:24):
you know? And the fact that then we didn't
somehow actually did surprise me, but probably shouldn't have.
And of course, while they're busy ignoring human suffering,
they just continue to chip away and cede further division,
refuse to do anything about the climate crisis and continue
their war on nature. It's great.
That's just El Tiro. It's exhausting, and for a lot
of people this is definitely tipping into something that
(00:46):
feels a little bit heavier. Right?
There's like a a permanent background harm of dread,
climate change, biodiversity collapse, war, the potential for
nuclear war. Although I've got to be honest,
that's just not something I evenspare a moment's thought about.
Maybe I'm delusional, but I justdon't think we're going to get
there. Even though it feels like
governments are either asleep atthe wheel or driving as fast as
(01:07):
they can towards a Cliff, It's no wonder that eco anxiety is
now a collective condition. Because of this, and also
because I'm slack and it's near the end of the semester and I'm
just a little bit busy, I'm actually replaying one of our
most popular episodes, which wasthe conversation I had last year
with psychologist Dr. Susie Burke about eco anxiety, how to
live with it, how to turn it into something more useful.
(01:28):
And actually, she had some really interesting stats about
why not everything sucks as muchas it feels like it does, which
is good because I needed some uplifting conversation too,
actually. And while we're on the subject
of doing something useful, localbody elections are important.
I know that it feels like the only everything that matters is
the every three years election for the people who will continue
making really peculiar decisions.
(01:49):
But local body elections matter.Auckland current turn out is 9%
nine. We cannot complain about
democracy if we do not participate in democracy.
Go and vote. If you want things to change, go
and vote. And a random shout out.
I don't do this very often. If you're looking for a deeply
witty, insightful writer, go andsubscribe to Emily Writes.
She wrote one of the funniest articles I've ever read about
(02:11):
Tarzan a few years ago. And ever since I've been a big
fan of all that she does. And she has an excellent way of
articulating despair, but also giving you really useful things
that you can do about it. So welcome back to Because Why?
I'm Brienne West, and today I'm asking because why wouldn't we
give up? So I'm very excited to have
Doctor Susie Burke with me today.
So Doctor Burke is a psychologist who has made it her
(02:32):
mission to help people understand and handle the mental
load of climate change. Her background includes working
in disaster response and environmental issues, giving a
first hand look at how the climate crisis impacts mental
health, developing strategies tocope with climate anxiety and
eco grief, to finding ways for people to build resilience.
She is a leading voice on this. I am so excited and just really
(02:56):
appreciate you being here. So welcome.
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
First questions or was the worstquestion.
Tell me about you, how you got to where you are and what it is
you spend your day doing. Gives people context.
OK, thank you. Well, I'm a psychologist and I
work in central Victoria and formany years, for about 17 years I
(03:16):
was working at the Australian Psychological Society.
I'm not currently there, but fora long happy 17 years I was
working on climate change and disasters.
So when people would ask me why is a psychologist working on
climate change, I'd say, well it's for three reasons. 1 is
because climate change is causedby human behavior, and as
experts in human behavior, that's something we're
(03:38):
interested in. And the second thing was that
climate change has an impact on people's psychological health
and well-being. Of course, that's something that
we're interested in. And the third reason was because
all of the changes that are required to restore a safe
climate involve changes in humanbehaviour, whether that be at an
individual level or a community level or an international level,
(04:00):
it all requires changes in humanbehaviour.
Tada, that's our area of interest and expertise again.
So I thought it was fairly obvious why psychologist should
be working on that. And so when I was there, I
developed a number of resources with my colleagues on a range of
different topics. So some of those topics were
(04:22):
around the impact or the mental health and psychological impact
of climate change. And I was also working in
disasters as well. So that was often looking at the
mental health and psychological impact of extreme weather event
disasters, for example. But I was also spending a lot of
time looking at how people can overcome psychological barriers
(04:44):
to engaging with the topic of climate change.
And sometimes the reason why we have a barrier to engaging with
it is because of the emotions that we feel about the topic of
climate change, which can sometimes tempt us to slip away
and distract ourselves, which wecan do endlessly with other
things in life. And there are of course, a
(05:06):
number of other barriers that are not so individual that might
be more structural in communities that are barriers to
taking action on climate change.So I looked at that as well.
And more recently I've been working with a couple of
developmental psychologists and we've been writing a number of
articles on the psychological effects of climate change on
children and young people and adults.
(05:27):
And so we've sort of become a bit more specialized, looking at
coping and impacts of climate change on people.
Is it a is it a growing field oris it is it fairly well
established field now or is it still in the infancy?
I think it's growing. When I first started working in
this, I was surprised to be a much sited author.
(05:51):
In 2010, I think when we were together with some colleagues,
we wrote an article on the psychological impact of front
end. Now I feel like everyone's
talking about it, which is good.And when people ask whether
levels of anxiety increasing will of course levels of
knowledge and awareness and therefore concern and therefore
(06:12):
anxiety are of course we're going to increase.
And because the problem is an escalating problem, of course
we're going to expect that to continue to be the case.
So what is it manifesting like if there are people listening
who don't feel climbing anxiety,very jealous of those people.
What is it? What are the problems that
(06:32):
people are? I guess what are you coming
across when you talk to people? OK, well there's lots of
different terms that are used, so let's unpack them a little
bit. So climate emotions is a word I
see popping up in the literaturea lot.
Now that's a nice broad term. There's lots of words for that
have got anxiety in them, like eco anxiety or climate anxiety.
(06:54):
There's one psychotherapist, Ro Randall, in the UK who prefers
to use the term or prefers that we use the term climate distress
because that is kind of a bit more of a vague and general term
that in companies, both guilt and anger and anxiety, which are
all very much a part of it. So really there is this broad,
(07:16):
there's this broad number of terms and some articles have
been written really looking finally at the differences
between this plethora of terms. But I'm not going to get so
caught up in that actually doesn't really bother me too
much. But I did think I would briefly
refer to a scoping review that was done in 2021.
So some researchers, Coffee ET al.
(07:39):
Did this paper where they lookedat 1500 papers on eco anxiety
or, or various other names for it and looked to find the really
high quality ones that were really studying it so that they
could help to define the terms and understand the scope of it.
And So what they were doing was they were operationalizing the
Termico anxiety and what they argued was that it's a broad
(08:02):
range of negative emotions and negative physical symptoms that
are associated with climate change and other environmental
threats. And so the broad range of
negative emotions would include worry and anxiety and grief and
guilt and anger and a whole lot of others, helplessness and
hopelessness and all those sortsof negative emotions.
(08:24):
And the negative physical symptoms would be things like
feeling sick and panic attacks and and being paralysed or
feeling paralysed. So that was how it was defined
or can be usefully defined. But it's also useful to think
about, well, what is anxiety andin to what degree is it
pathological? So anxieties is a future
(08:46):
oriented stance. It's when we're looking into the
future and we're thinking, am I,is there a threat there?
So it's an appraisal of a threat, the climate crisis, but
it's also a motivator. It's something that can motivate
people to respond appropriately to a threat to the threat.
So it's kind of quite a good thing.
(09:06):
So it's it's rational, it's appropriate and it's deserved to
feel some modicum of of anxiety in response to the climate
crisis. So it's best to consider it in a
continuum. And therefore it's not
pathological. But at the higher levels of
anxiety that can be associated with poor mental health.
And that can be hard for people that can be, you know, some
(09:28):
suffering in that. So does that help to explain the
terms and the scope of it? Yes, it's a lot bigger.
Yes, calling it eco anxiety doesn't really encompass the
fact that actually sometimes it's just really sad or
enraging. So in climate emotions, OK or
climate distress. I quite like that distress.
Climate emotions, Yeah, yes, yeah.
So that's also interesting to think, well, what's the extent
(09:49):
of it? Like how many people are feeling
this? And often in the literature, the
surveys will be looking at concern, climate concern, which
can carry with it a level of distress.
And so I always find it interesting to look at a paper
(10:10):
that was written in Australia, published in 2020.
So that was the first year of the pandemic.
We've been locked down for a long time and GDP was down 7%.
The focus was very much on COVIDand people's levels of concern
(10:31):
about climate change were at a record high, so that's telling.
Interesting. Yeah.
And the figures that generally sit around, you know the mid 70%
up to the mid 80% of people who experience very or fairly high
concern. And in this particular one, it
(10:52):
went up to about 80 high 80s. Eighty 8% of people, if they'd
had a direct experience of something that they considered
to be climate change. So that might have been them
having been caught up in an extreme weather event disaster.
We have lots of them. And there was also,
interestingly, a 10% difference between men and women.
(11:13):
So people will often say, well, who are the people who are most
vulnerable to feeling anxious? And seems to be in the
literature that women edge up a little bit over men, young girls
more so than young boys. You know, I'm talking about
teenagers, young adults, people who are most aware of the
(11:35):
climate fresh would have higher levels of climate distress.
So that would be people who might be scientists or activists
or other sort of environmentallyoriented workers.
Yep. Yes, so women directly impacted
and those who are most aware tend to have the highest.
And then there's been lots of studies that have been done on
(11:58):
Oh, actually, no. Before I tell you that whilst I
was waiting for you to join a car, the call, I found a very
interesting article. I was following up my new
favorite author, Hannah Ritchie,who's a climate writer, and she
was referring to articles about people's perceptions of other
people's levels of concern. Because one of the things that
people often feel anxious about is a misunderstanding of how
(12:23):
many other people care deeply about the climate crisis and
they're doing something about itand would back, you know, good,
strong climate policies. And then they feel they're on
their own. They feel that they're on their
own. Yeah, it's called the perception
gap and it's a really common phenomena and we misunderstand
how many other people do care. So in this study that was
(12:45):
published this year, 2024 study,it was a big one of people's
climate change beliefs. 59,000 people across a lot of
countries, across 63 countries were surveyed for their beliefs.
And a belief in climate change was a that it was human caused,
that it was tantamount to an emergency, that it would have a
(13:06):
terrible impact on humanity. So with that comes a fair level
of concern and distress. And 86% of people said yes, they
had high concerns. So that's that's in that, you
know, mid 80s range. But then another study that also
found comparable ones also looked to see how much people
(13:27):
were thinking that other people were also sharing those
concerns, and the figures were alot less.
It's a bit of a problem because it increases your own anxiety.
Oh, I'm alone. It decreases your preparedness
perhaps to raise the topic and talk about it and share your
concerns with other people because you might be thinking
other people don't care. And also it's problematic
because if politicians are also suffering from the same
(13:50):
perception gap, which of course they would because they are also
humans, then they're going to bemisunderstanding how much
support they would have for good.
Serious climate policies, and that's problematic.
That is so interesting. Not at all surprising because
when you said 8, you know, between the mid 70s and mid 80s,
(14:10):
I thought, but is that people just being like, yeah, I'm
worried about it, but you know, meh.
But you're talking about quite serious concerns.
That's an entirely different conversation.
So then the next question, of course, comes up is, but you,
you may have already answered inVenus is why is it not a bigger
piece of action? And maybe the answer is because
(14:30):
everyone's looking at each othersaying, I don't want to bring it
up because I don't think you care.
And I feel stupid because when Ido speaking events, I absolutely
talk, tone down a lot of my thoughts and concerns about
environmental destruction in general, and particularly
climate change, because I do feel that I will be one of the
few people in the room who is worried about it.
Yes, yes, it's interesting. Well, OK.
(14:51):
Well, you've said a lot of things just there.
I'm going to address all of them.
Excellent. I'm just going to start by
telling you about another one ofmy favorite writers.
I've got a lot of favorite climate writers, George
Marshall. He's also in the UK and he used
to be the sort of activist that would tie himself to, you know,
coal trucks and, you know, be a real activist.
(15:13):
But more recently, his activism has come to be a challenge to
himself to talk about the threatof climate change every single
day with somebody. And he never cheats.
So if on one day he's actually giving a talk to 15,000 people,
he doesn't think I'm covered forthe next 15,000 days.
He treats that as one person andheads off the next day to make
(15:36):
sure he's talking about it. Because breaking the conspiracy
of science around climate changeis one of the most important
things you can do. Because you're breaking that
perception gap and you're letting other people know that
you might like them, share theirconcerns, and that climate
change is a real threat. And therefore we it's very
legitimate to be talking about it and to be doing something
(15:57):
about it. So that would be one way of
responding to that. The other thing is that when we
look at how people coping with climate change, there are three
strategies that we get people touse.
So there's emotion focused coping strategies, problem
focused coping and meaning focused coping, and I'll talk
(16:18):
about all of them. But emotion focused coping is
the things that we do to manage the emotions.
So the uncomfortable feelings inour body, which are where
emotions are felt. And so that might be things like
breathing exercises or having a nice chat with a friend or
talking about how we're feeling or having a cry or moving our
body or it's a whole host of things.
(16:40):
This is what psychologists spenda lot of time doing with people
is teaching them strategies to be able to manage uncomfortable
feelings. And then problem focused coping
strategies are the things that we do.
So we do things with our body. So the things we do with our
legs and our arms and our words are doing things to reduce the
threat of climate change. That's mitigation.
(17:01):
That's the word that gets used in the climate field to talk
about things that are reducing carbon emissions and
sequestering carbon. And I mean, those things can
also be adaptation things as well, preparing yourself for the
possibility of extreme weather events and things like that.
But I particularly like people to focus on the reduced carbon
emissions and sequestering carbon around.
(17:23):
That's the first priority, so that might be things like being
involved in a group and campaigning to blockade the
coal, the second largest coal port in the world.
That's I'm just flagging something that I'm going to be
doing with some of my friends ina few weeks in Newcastle.
You're amazing. That's.
Brilliant rowing canoes out intothe shipping lands and blocking
(17:45):
the ships, the coal ships from taking coal out to other
countries so that those sorts ofthings.
So that's sort of, I mean that'sa particular type of activism,
but it also might be, you know, being involved in a group that's
trying to get some grants for getting solar panels on people's
roofs and things like that. Anything that's about reducing
carbon emissions. So that's problem focused
(18:05):
coping, the things that you do to reduce the problem that's
causing the anxiety. And then the third one is
meaning focused coping. So that's the way in which we
use our thinking to think differently about the problem of
climate change so that we can activate some hope.
And in fact, having a sense of hope is kind of a really urgent
(18:28):
thing to to do. Urgent optimism is what 1
writer. Oh, that woman I talked about
before, Hannah Ritchie, that's one of the phrases that she uses
in her book, Not the End of the World, which I highly recommend.
It's a good title too, isn't it?It's a great title, End of the
World. So going back to the thing that
(18:50):
you said earlier, one of the things that we do when we're
getting people to think about meaning focused coping is to
look around at all of the millions of people around the
planet who are actually activelyworking on solving problems of
climate change, of which there are 1,000,000.
But they might not just be in front of your nose.
So sometimes you have to go looking for them and sometimes
you have to save some of your time that you might be spending
(19:13):
on following geopolitical unfolding disasters in the world
at the moment and save yourself from that and go and use some of
that time to go and look at for some of the amazing things that
are happening around the world. And one of the things that
Hannah Ritchie's writing about in Not the End of the World is
that when we look at the large data sets, so she works in an
(19:33):
organization that looks at the world in data.
So these massive data sets on most measures of human
well-being, we have improved dramatically in all of these
measures in the last 50 years. It's really important to
remember that because they don'tturn up in the news.
It's not very newsy to say that,you know, 100 and or some of the
(19:54):
numbers that 128,000 people every day for the last 25 years
have come out of extreme poverty.
Like they're sort of funny numbers and they're not numbers
that get cited in the news. But actually that's those are
amazing. Things And So what she's arguing
is that the this generation, andwhen I say this generation, I
(20:15):
mean you and I look like, you know, might be the same
generation, but it also includesall the generations that are
alive at the moment. We might be the first
generations to actually achieve A sustainable world.
And that's actually a really exciting thought because the
world has never ever been sustainable because
sustainability means a healthy life for everyone on the planet
(20:36):
now, plus an end to environmental destruction.
And we've never been able to achieve both of those at the
same time. So in previous years when we
perhaps haven't been as environmentally destructive,
we've had, you know, 50% of children dying before the age of
five. So we've never had healthy lives
(20:58):
for all people. So that's kind of an exciting
thought. And it's borne out by these
trends in large data, which shows that, you know, we are
continually making these enormous improvements in
well-being of so many things on the planet.
So that means millions of peoplearound the planet are actually
working on environmental solutions, just maybe not in
(21:22):
front of our noses. You are probably one of the
first people to ever talk about this as a opportunity, if you
like the opportunity to make ourworld a sustainable one for the
first time ever. And I've genuinely never thought
about it like that before, but it's actually something that's
broken through the, I'm not nihilistic, but something I
(21:44):
don't say very often as I I'm just not sure if we're going to
get it get together enough and. Fatalistic.
Yeah, That fatalistic. Yeah, Yeah, I know.
But how exciting to think that we could be the generations of
the first to achieve a sustainable world.
The other interesting thing to consider too, because often what
will come up will be the question about young people's
(22:07):
reproductive choices. That was going to be one of my
questions. Well, it's jump in there.
Yeah. Should I have a child?
She also makes the point. Nah, it's not her.
It's these other two American writers, Josephine Ferrarelli
and Megan Cullman, who wrote a book called The Conceivable
Future, And it's all about people's reproductive choices.
(22:32):
And they make the argument that there is no child, you know,
that is a newborn now, who will ever have as big a carbon
footprint as its parents do. True, probably.
And so that's a really interesting thought either
because we've continued, which we will, to move on to 0 carbon
economies. And we are inevitably going to
(22:55):
be doing that. We just need to carry along or
because of collapse, you know, which means, you know, vast
production in the energy that we've got available to us.
But we have a massively smaller,even though we have these
generous lifestyles, we have smaller carbon footprints than
our grandparents did, who were heavily reliant on coal for
(23:18):
their all of their heating and cooling.
So those sorts of statistics area fascinating way of
reconsidering it. And I mean, they also go and
argue that, you know, we need tobe careful that we don't
internalize the burden of guilt of having a child, whereas that
guilt should really be laid at the feet of the fossil fuel
(23:39):
industries that are continuing to extract and, you know, emit
carbon. And the politicians who enable
those fossil fuel industries because there's a number of
excellent low carbon or 0 carbonsolutions to producing energy
that have been proven to be ableto be 24 hour sustainable.
(24:03):
Yeah, there's a lot of PR aroundthem that they're, they're not
there yet, but it's just nonsense.
Yeah. And that's, that's an
interesting point, yes. And that therefore, so you have
to be careful you don't, yes, you haven't internalized the
guilt. And and also it's really
important this comes up around anxiety as well.
It's really important to not make the mistake of you're
putting too much importance on trying to be impeccable
(24:25):
yourself. You are not the problem.
The problem is a system that's based on extraction and
injustice or, you know, inequality.
And that's the system that we need to be focusing on.
And in order to change the system, that's politics.
Politics is the activities that you do together with other
people to change a system. It's not who you vote for or
(24:47):
what you believe. It's the the things that you do
to change the system. And that's the problem, not
whether you should have one child or not have six children
or things like that. Yeah, guilt is a totally
redundant emotion. It doesn't help, makes you feel
terrible. It doesn't make you do anything.
I don't know. I don't think it's the greatest
(25:07):
motivator. And it's also completely
misplaced because you're right, we should be throwing it at the
CEO of Shell. Yes.
It's a well and good to say don't feel guilty and here are
some coping mechanisms. What are some super practical
things you tell people to do if you are?
Because you do definitely have well, I do good and bad days.
And perhaps you, I read an article the other day that they
think the ocean collapse will happen as soon as 2047.
(25:31):
Being an ocean lover, I mean, that's distressing for
everybody, but that's particularly those sorts of
things are particularly distressing for me.
It absolutely ruins my whole day.
And the obvious answer is don't read them.
But I do think we should have anunderstanding of what's going
on. So if that's not an option, how
do you prevent reading stuff like that, which is horrifying
to becoming this super negative thing that weighs on you and
(25:54):
prevents you from doing anything.
But also just gnaws away. I appreciate exercise and those
sorts of things helps, but is there anything else that you
found particularly useful? Well, just on that particular
example that you gave, Hannah Richie does have a very good
chapter in. Different look around.
Oceans hand fishing and she doesdirectly address some of those
(26:17):
recent articles and the way in which they're reported and has
quite some to say about them. So follow that up I.
Will I will I will put it in thethat.
Would be your meaning focus to coping and stress.
So what I'm hearing you saying is that it feels important to
have some knowledge and to be staying abreast of things.
(26:42):
And so, yes, and on that, and you pick this up from Hannah
Richie, you see how important itis to be reading stuff that is
accurately reported. Which is hard to do.
Which is hard to do. Yeah.
And also we know that our bodies, you know, the distress
(27:03):
in our bodies, the discomfort inour bodies can sometimes tell us
enough, think I need to take a break now and that it's quite OK
at times to put down tools. And it's why the weekend was
invented really was because we don't do very well if we just
work and worry and stress about things and that we need to have
a break. And so putting down tools isn't
giving up. It's just taking a break and
(27:27):
turning towards things that are psychologically restorative.
So those are things like being in nature or spending time in
the very world that you feel so concerned about and love so
much, so being able to enjoy it and to value what remains.
And I mean, there's a lot of literature on the psychological
restoration that we can get frombeing in nature, whether it's
(27:50):
being in the sea or whether it'sbeing in a forest or in a river
or in a desert or whatever, or just sitting and watching a
little bird in your bird bath. So those sorts of things.
And it is really important to keep remembering to turn towards
the very thing that you love so much, which is the natural
world. I mean, that's not everybody's
motivation. It doesn't actually have to be.
(28:11):
It's enough to just be motivatedfor ourselves, humans.
And then the other things are talking about your concerns and
sharing your feelings with otherpeople and having people that
you can do that with. This is an enormous solace for
people because it validates and normalizes the distress that
(28:33):
you're feeling. Plus, we call it a stress
reducing conversation. When you talk to somebody else,
that's a way of being able to regulate yourself emotionally by
sharing your concerns with somebody who's soothing and able
to, yes, communicate that sort of a connection and an interest,
(28:54):
and that can be very soothing. So there's those strategies as
well. And even though you said it has
to be more than just moving yourbody, moving your body is
actually enormously useful way of moving stress hormones
through your body. And even if you've not got much
time, but you just shake your booty, I'm just standing here.
(29:17):
Shake my. Booty, I'm at a dance party.
And doing that, you know, can bea way of being able to move your
body. And anybody that's done any work
on dealing with anxiety or, or therapy will have surely heard
about how the body, the human body is set up to develop a
stress response. As though we're being threatened
(29:39):
by a Saber toothed tiger. And that if there's no Saber
toothed tiger to fight or to flee from, and no village to
return to after you've got away successfully or slain the Saber
toothed tiger to go and cheer and celebrate and laugh and cry
and feast with, then you have tofind something that is an
approximate of that experience. So that's where the moving your
(30:03):
body in some vigorous way or going and connecting with other
people or going and having a feast with somebody or a laugh
or a cry, which is what our human bodies were designed to do
as a response to a threat. Once the threat had passed, then
those are good things to do. Makes sense, yes.
And of course, the problem with climate emergency is threat
doesn't you can't kill it. The threat doesn't pass.
(30:25):
It's still there the next day. But the stress in your body, you
have responsibility to be movingevery day so that the next day
when you are out in the world and more stressors are
happening, that we're still there the day before and your
stress is building up again, at least you've cleared it and then
you clear it again that day and you clear it again that day.
So. Like any refresh on your
(30:46):
computer? Sort of.
Yes, it's closing down your computer or turning it off at
the end of the day. My partner keeps telling me to
do. Oh no, it's so annoying because
then it wants to update and thennothing works.
Never turned it off, which is terrible also.
Exactly. Imagine if we did that and we
never went to bed because we thought oh but then I won't know
where I was yesterday. But magically we actually get
quite quick at being able to getup and reorient ourselves in the
(31:08):
morning. This is true.
You're talking about community really around building a bunch
of people around you, whether it's, and if you don't have
those people around you, I suppose if your family feel
differently or don't want to talk about it and lots of people
don't, I guess it's going out there and finding other people.
And I don't know, there's plentyof grassroots climate action
clubs and things to join, isn't there?
If you feel that way. But it's it's about putting
(31:29):
people around you who aren't nihilistic or or really
fatalistic about it, but who areworking towards making some kind
of change, I suppose. Yeah, that's right.
And Megan and Josephine, those two authors I talked about
before who wrote The ConceivableFuture, they talk about the big
yes and the big no. So they're the ones that are
saying problem is not you. It's not an individual problem,
(31:51):
even though it's we feel it individually.
It's a collective problem. We need collective solutions.
We have to have solutions that are commensurate with the size
of the threat, which means we can't do it ourselves.
We have to do it with everybody else.
And so the big yes is the thingslike, you know, solar panels or
a wind farm, a community owned wind farm or something like
that. And the big no is the things
like the protest and, you know, the reduction of the harms.
(32:15):
And they say that the good thingabout being involved in a group
is that when you go to bed exhausted, somewhere in the
world, somebody else is waking up full of enthusiasm.
And when you get really sick of your big no campaign, there's
always a a group of big yeses just around the corner who are
dying to have you come and join them.
So the big of the yes and the big of the no is to be trying to
(32:39):
imagine the biggest systemic solution you can think of.
And then you have to break it down into a component piece and
then go for one of those pieces will find some people that you'd
like to do it with. Yeah, like a relay.
The whole rest is resistance. You know, a lot of a lot of
climate activists or people in general don't feel they can stop
the work because if they do, they're sort of giving up, not
(32:59):
stop permanently, but just have a rest.
And of course, there are other people there willing to pick up
the baton and carry it on, even if you're just having a couple
of days off, which is so important.
So this is a personal question you may or may not want to
answer, which is obviously completely fine.
Do you have hope for the future?Because you have come across as
incredibly optimistic, which is a real.
It's really nice. Do you, because you work with so
(33:22):
many climate scientists and I know that they're not super
great about the future, but you will see a more well-rounded
view, I suspect, than I do. Do you have hope that we're
going to pull it together to prevent, say, 3°, hopefully
sick? Oh look, we might not prevent
3°. OK.
Are we? We're aiming for two degrees,
(33:42):
aren't we? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
So we're not going to make 1.5. Can we keep under 2°?
I mean, in terms of am I hopefulfor us being able to come in
under a specific number? That's a hard thing to say, but
I think I am an optimist. But I can also be thinking, Oh
(34:06):
my God, we just. But then I can turn to the
things that I love about the world that I am in and the
amazing people who are all doingamazing things.
And I could think, well, that's kind of great.
And I do also believe, because another part of my background
had been through a group called Psychologists for Peace, and we
(34:28):
teach a conflict resolution model, interest based conflict
resolution. It's what they use in teaching
the UN for international conflict and disputes and things
like that. So I very much believe, because
I've worked in that for a long time and in communities, I very
much believe that humans are able to cooperate and
collaborate and that peace is possible because it's just a
(34:51):
learning of a certain set of skills and being able to have
your underlying needs, wants andfears and concerns met.
So I'm sort of optimistic about that.
One the things that I find quitefrustrating is that that's not
taught. And so we don't have a whole,
you know, community of people believing in that because it
does help to know how to resolveconflicts.
(35:15):
And so of course, because I do believe that humans are entirely
capable of doing that, then I dobelieve that it's possible for
us to collaborate and solve problems.
And so in terms of dystopian novels, I do prefer the ones
that demonstrate people being able to divide up things equally
and look after each other and not each of the dying people,
(35:38):
but try to, you know, share the food out equally and keep going.
Yeah. OK.
Yeah. Interesting.
How do you talk to children about it?
Do you get a few parents who areyou know, it's like you can you
shouldn't insulate them from this.
So how do you cope with what I imagine are quite big feelings
(35:58):
in children and teenagers? Because they'll, and look,
another question. I want to talk about social
media, but they will get all of this negativity from social
media because it may be 88, giveor take percent of people who
care and have genuine concern about this.
But I tell you, the 12%, they'reall in social media comments
going on and on about how it's all a big bloody conspiracy.
And that's why that stat is kindof baffling to me, because all
(36:21):
you see online is deniers and conspiracy theorists.
However, how do you have conversations with children
about it in a way that's not dumbing it down and not ignoring
their concerns but not making them so bloody terrified of
their future? One of the first things we say
is you really want to be having that conversation with your
children because as you pointed out, they're hearing about it
somewhere else. So you may as well be part of
(36:43):
that conversation. And so we'll even say that to
young parents as well, as soon as your child is out in the
world at kindergarten or childcare, you really want to be
talking about. Oh wow.
OK. Climate change, you want to know
whether what they know and at that age, it's all about helping
children to fall in love with the world.
Children have to be first fall in love with nature really is
(37:04):
the is the thing that we talk about then and that's, you know,
fun. And yes, so some researchers
that I was reading were talking about how you first have to be
in nature to then be able to work with nature, like build
things. First we have to be able to walk
through along a riverbank, you know, before you can then be
(37:26):
picking up sticks and building alittle house and interacting
with nature. And that has to come before you
can then be for nature, IE fighting for us, you know,
picking up the litter or, you know, getting involved in
campaigns for nature. So that's sort of a progression.
And then the other thing that weadvise parents in talking with
(37:47):
children is to be checking what it is that they know.
That's partly to interrupt what misinformation they might have
picked up to be able to correct any misperceptions.
Then you're wanting to leave them thinking that the world is
(38:08):
a great place and that people are awesome and that life is
worth living. So that's a really important
message that you're wanting to communicate.
And so part of that is what I was talking about with you
earlier, which is looking out for the other millions of people
who feel the same as them and care deeply and are doing
something about it. So we call that.
(38:29):
And it's the same in disaster recovery.
You know, it's looking for the heroes and the helpers.
So orienting them to be able to see that.
And that might also involve getting involved themselves in
things that are contributing to making a better place.
So like my partner takes his sonhas for a number of years along
to the local repair cafe. So he's a good with a
(38:51):
screwdriver, likes pulling things apart.
So that's his, you know, contribution to community
projects that share around creating a sustainable world.
Yeah. I mean, it's a massive, massive
question, but basically open andhonest conversations from as
early as they are likely to encounter it, which is pretty
early. And then getting them involved
(39:12):
in some way that they may enjoy to start getting them.
What I think it's Steve Irwin who said, oh, man, I'm
paraphrasing badly. But first you have to you have
to know it to understand it, to love it, right?
It's it's it's bad theory about nature.
Oh, I remembered a really important one.
Another one that we really talk about is that children have to
see us doing something about climate change because in the
(39:37):
largest study that's been done of children and young people, it
was published in 2021 where theysurveyed 10,000 children across
a number of different countries in the high emissions and low
emissions countries. What they found was that a large
number of children felt that adults had failed to care for
(39:58):
the planet. 85% of young people aged between 16 and 25 had
thought that. So you don't want that to be
you. You need to be one of the people
that they see cares about because we know that people do
care about it. That's a perception gap right as
well. And partly maybe that's because
they're all talking to each other on social media.
(40:18):
And so they're not talking to the older people who are out
there, the knitting nannies and those sorts of people who are
out there of the process and things like that.
So they need to see you taking action and doing something.
So you have to get get up and get out and do something.
It has to be really obvious. Yeah, that makes total sense.
Not only leading by example, butagain, given that, the modicum
of comfort I guess. Yes, to be sure.
(40:40):
Yeah, Yes, because the other thing that they found in that
study was that children and young people have two things
that they're worried about. They're worried about the
climate crisis and they're worried about government
inaction or inaction. And that's it's not just that
they're worried about the climate crisis, I'm worried
about people's behaviour too. Makes total sense and they're
not wrong to worry about it. OK, Social media, I mentioned
(41:04):
earlier, it's a rather toxic negative place, which we know.
How much do you think that's contributing to people's concern
and, and, and what do we call it?
Distress about the climate crisis.
Yeah, yes. Well, when you mentioned it
before, I was thinking maybe that's why I'm an optimist,
because I'm not on social media much.
And that's because I've had teenagers that were growing up
(41:24):
through the development of social media as a thing.
And my children were at a Steiner school, right?
So there were all these values about, you know, that being not
a good thing. So I was very supportive in
that. So how much of that you asked is
contributing to the perception gap?
Well, in this article that I wasjust reading while I was waiting
for you to come online, that wasone of the reasons that they
(41:48):
were saying it's mainstream media as well, because
mainstream media will focus on asensational story because they
will try to make money, which means they have to grab our
attention and they can more easily grab our attention by
sensational negative story. So that is a problem.
And so yes, then of course the loud voices that turn up on
(42:11):
social media are going to have an undue effect.
But really when you asked how much of a problem is it?
It's as much a problem for action on climate change as it
is a problem for eating disorders in women as it is for,
(42:31):
you know, all of the social problems that have got a
connection to negativity on social media.
These are all big problems. Yeah.
That could be a big no or a big yes that somebody might want to
get into is, you know, looking. It doesn't have to be about and
(42:53):
all the panels and wind turbines, you know, that's a
really legitimate campaign that people can get interested in as
well is tightening up social media laws, what people are
allowed to post and things like that.
That's that's much good that canbecome from that.
And in fact, just on that, climate change is actually not
one of the most imminent existential threats to humans at
(43:17):
the moment, very largely considered to be these three
other more imminent existential effects.
It's not a certain time change isn't a huge problem.
We need to do something. About it.
Oh, OK, there's something else Ihave to worry about.
OK. Yeah.
So the more imminent ones would be another pandemic, a bigger,
worse pandemic. It's always a big AI, artificial
(43:37):
general intelligence. So, and this is where the social
media comes in because it's the speed of the development of
artificial intelligence without the sufficient international
rules and this incredibly fast moving thing.
And so that's a very legitimate big yes or big no campaign for
(44:00):
people who are good at that sortof thing to get interested and
involved in that sort of connected.
And the third one is largely considered to be, you know,
another large World War. Yes, that's certainly a concern
at the present, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
And I'm watching things like thebird flu progression through the
States at the moment and a few other things going on.
(44:22):
There's a few epidemics breakingout in parts of Africa and yeah,
it's all very interesting, all very concerned.
And the more we encroach on natural spaces, of course, the
more we are likely to have zoonoses and move into
pandemics. Yeah, which is.
And so we've descended into thismiserable and anxiety provoking
place in this conversation. We couldn't have it too
(44:44):
cheerful. But This is why it's also
important to have that other perspective, which is those
enormous improvements that thereis no better time to be alive
than today, and that every single country has made massive
progress in decreasing child mortality, increasing life
expectancy, increasing access towater, energy, sanitation and so
(45:05):
on and so forth. You know, across all countries,
even the poorest countries in the world.
And that's massive. That's humans that have enabled
that to happen through just chipping away and improve and
improving things. And that's we need to keep
remembering those sorts of things.
Yes, you're absolutely right because you do see again,
comments everywhere, people saying you have conversations
(45:26):
with people and then you know, Ihate it here.
We've just destroyed things. All that ever happens if we make
everything worse. You do see that constant
negative thread through every conversation.
Maybe it's just maybe some people are hanging around with,
oh God, but what are the common denominator here?
No, I do. I do see that a lot though, but
(45:47):
it is absolutely worth noting wewell, I'm not sure about right
this minute, but certainly a couple of years ago was one of
the most peaceful times on Earthand.
Yeah, yes, yeah, that's right. That's right.
And the levels of violence and deaths through, you know,
violent conflict have decreased and decreased and decreased.
And these things are all facts. And the other thing on that is
(46:08):
that there's this exercise environmental psychologists
sometimes do as a, you know, in order to promote meaning focused
coping for our present times, which is to get people to
consider what period in history they would prefer to have been
alive. And it's quite hard to find a
(46:29):
time that would be better. Anyway.
I should leave that. Especially if you're a woman.
Especially if you're a woman or a friends were disabled or yeah,
yes, listen to somebody the other day and she said, oh, I
would really not want to be He have been alive in feudal times
and somebody once said I thoughtthat the 90s was pretty good,
(46:51):
but not if you were trans and no.
If you're a straight white male,good to go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you did right.
Yeah, so it's a very interestingexperiment.
And of course, even if you were a straight white male, if half
of the population is subjugated and oppressed and you know, then
(47:12):
it's not that great. I wouldn't have thought so,
although I will refrain from talking about some of the
debates that are going on in some of the political arenas at
the moment, but yes. Yes, and and the so that's an
important thing to think. And also this is Thomas Doherty.
He's an environmental psychologist in America.
I also heard him say as part of that thought experiment that
(47:33):
it's a bit you're using hubris. If you're thinking that this is
the worst, you know that these are these problems are the worst
problems that we've ever had because the people at the time
of the Black Plague probably thought that that was the worst
time. People in the trenches in the
Second World War probably thought that was the worst time.
(47:53):
Like, it's a bit hubristic, if that's a word, to say that this
is the, you know, that these arethe most challenging times.
Yeah, I think what makes this so?
Obviously I can't speak because I've never lived through a Black
Plague epidemic, obviously, but what makes this so
all-encompassing is because it is all-encompassing.
(48:14):
It's not just us as a species, it's every other species we're
dragging down with us. And I find that particularly
heartbreaking. What do you think?
This is my last question for you, and I think I know the
answer. Why is it so polarizing?
Why is it one of these topics? People say, oh, I don't want to
get political, but talk about climate change.
Why is it so hard to talk about?Is it because people feel guilty
(48:35):
and then they get defensive? Yes.
Well, I mean, a prolific use of fossil fuels has been kind of
fun. So 1 can feel a little bit
defensive at the loss of that abundance of energy, which is
(48:59):
why the solutions are not to necessarily anticipate that we
have to have a low energy future, but that we need to have
a 0 carbon energy future. So and.
They are not mutually exclusive.They're not mutually exclusive.
Yeah. And why else do people get so
(49:22):
defensive? I mean, we can feel defensive if
we think that we're going to be made to feel guilty for our
fossil fuel use. And so one of the important
things that we know when we're talking to somebody across a
values divide is to be very careful not to shame them or to
(49:43):
make them feel guilty. Because we know that pointing
out to somebody how bad they areor pointing out how big the
problem is, there's no evidence that that ever changes a
person's behaviour. And in fact, what the research
shows is that the opposite is often true, that if you
criticize somebody for their behaviour or shame them, it
(50:04):
usually results in them hardening their position and
doubling down on their problematic behaviour.
So instead, and this comes back to that psychologist for peace
bias that I've got, and instead what we need to do is
communicate warmth and openness and curiosity and use a warm
voice and use warm eyes and communicate safety to another
(50:27):
person when we're talking to them.
And be curious about what are the things that they care about
and show them the ways in which we share some of those values.
And if you can, you can also communicate to them how those
things that they care about, youknow, like surfing, he's also
consistent with caring about theplanet because they're, the
(50:50):
oceans are a little bit too warm, then the sharks come in a
little bit closer. And that's a real pest when
you're a surfer. So, you know, looking for the
10% on which you agree and then being able to see if you can
match somebody to say that that actually means that they sort of
do care about climate. Which can be very frustrating to
do, but it's well worth doing. Yes, and the point is, so as I'm
(51:15):
talking, I'm in my head, I'm thinking about Winifred Lewis
who's a social psychologist at University of Queensland.
She's done these wonderful videos where she talks about and
she's got an awesome Ted talk aswell.
It's really worth seeing. Winifred Lewis is her name and
she talks about how the point isto we underestimate how much a
(51:38):
person who has different values to us doesn't trust us.
We really underestimate that. So that's the first thing, is to
have realistic expectations about where we're going to get
in a conversation with somebody who doesn't share the same
values, who doesn't see us as being one of them.
It's very low. But to leave the conversation
with them having thought that was quite a nice conversation.
(52:01):
That person was quite a nice person.
And then there's a greater chance that they'll be willing
to have another conversation with you another time or with
somebody else. You're not going to change their
mind necessarily. You're not going to change their
mind. No, no, you're not.
No, that, that trust comment is quite interesting.
But of course, if you're talkingto someone, you don't share any
of their, their thoughts or values.
(52:21):
If you're going to assume some things about them that therefore
you wouldn't, that would mean you wouldn't trust them.
That makes perfect sense. I have one final question for
you. This is kind of the fun question
I ask everybody, and I understand the answers are very
interesting. So if you are the supreme global
overlord, you had the power to do anything to make the world a
better place. What would be the very first
thing you would do? Or I'd teach everybody interest
(52:43):
based conflict resolution. What do you?
Mean interest based. So interests are the things that
underlie your position and they are your needs, your wants, your
fears and your concerns. So just say you wanted to go to
Hawaii for the holidays and yourpartner wanted to go to the
(53:05):
local beach. That's your position.
But underneath that are your interests.
Your interests might be to need a nice warm climate, to wanting
to eat tasty food and to have rich cultural experiences and to
(53:25):
have a lovely connecting time with your partner and to not
have to think about work. These are all your needs and
your wants and your fears and your concerns.
So that's your interest and yourother and your partner is has
got their interests as well. They're interested in getting a
suntan and you know, these sort of things, concerned about being
bored on a holiday and things like that.
(53:47):
And then what you do is you brainstorm on the basis of those
interests, A whole lot of different options where you're
looking for some way of being able to meet all of those needs,
wants, fears and concerns that you've generated, some of which
you have in common. And once you've done that, you
then come up with a solution that has probably got several
(54:09):
elements. It's not just we should go to
Hawaii or we should go to the local beach, but there be a
whole lot of combination of things that comes up to being
your holiday plan. So it might be that you decide
to find a beach that's much further away but doesn't involve
going on an airplane because oneof the fears might be, you know,
(54:29):
scared about or might be guilt about your carbon footprint or
scared about plane crashing or something like that, right?
And so you come up with these options that meet all you need
to get the sun tan, have a relaxing time to connect to, you
know, suede, your guilt, et cetera, et cetera.
And then so it's it's like a, a structured way to compromise by
ensuring you know what the actual problem is.
(54:49):
Yeah, yes, that's right. To know yet to know what the
unmet interests are, the needs, the wants, the fears and the
concerns. So usually usually when we argue
with somebody, we just come up with the first solution.
There's something that we're needing and wanting and feared
and concerned about. When we come up with our first
solution, it's not usually the best solution.
Then we argue it fiercely with the other person and they we
(55:11):
lock in. They're arguing fiercely there
per first preferred solution andyou miss out on actually knowing
what are you really wanting and needing and coming up with a
more anyway. So yes, sorry, that's what I
would do, yeah. That and I guess that would tie
into the ability to have conversations with anybody, even
if you don't fundamentally don'tagree with their position
(55:31):
because at the end of the day, like largely we all want the
same thing. Yeah.
Happiness. Healthiness.
Yeah, we want a safe climate. We want to be healthy.
Yeah. It's just we differ in how we're
going to get there sometimes, I suppose, and.
Yeah. Want to agree on that base.
I guess you go a lot further. Is there anything else you'd
want to say? Generally, get out there and
(55:53):
start blockading some stuff, youknow?
No, I think we've covered a lot.I think I'll leave it there.
Yeah. No, it's been brilliant.
Thank you. I did not expect it to be so
cheerful because I was having a pretty bad day.
And then of course, Susie was waiting for me when I was trying
to log in because my wonderful podcasting software was like,
no, we're just going to log you back out every time you click
into the studio. So that was a mildly stressful
(56:15):
start. That's a good thing.
Would it be? But I got to read some great
articles, so I'm pleased with the delay.
Yes. It worked out well.
So thank you. I really appreciate that.
I think you've shared some really interesting strategies
and some really interesting statistics.
I'm still slightly blown away. The 88, the peak, the scenes of
people believe, truly, deeply believe that it's an emergency.
(56:37):
Let me feel so much better. Hope that has provided some
perspective and a little bit of maybe not optimism, but a little
bit of soothing maybe. I know that I really enjoyed our
conversation. So if you're tired or you're
angry or you know what, even if you're just numb, that's fair.
But never forget that small actions count.
Voting, helping, showing up. In fact, there's some very
interesting studies out there ona possible cure for depression,
(57:00):
and it's nothing to do with medication.
But let's talk about that in another episode.
Remember, the cure for apathy isaction.
Because why would you give up when there is still so much to
hope for? See you next week.
The world feels like a really bad parody movie right now, but
it's not funny. Our government last weekend, of
course, refused to recognize Palestine as a state, which is
somehow both the bare minimum. And yet I don't know how to
explain this, but deeply arrogant.
Like who do we think we are to recognize a state that already
exists? But also, who are we not to not,
(00:24):
you know? And the fact that then we didn't
somehow actually did surprise me, but probably shouldn't have.
And of course, while they're busy ignoring human suffering,
they just continue to chip away and cede further division,
refuse to do anything about the climate crisis and continue
their war on nature. It's great.
That's just El Tiro. It's exhausting, and for a lot
of people this is definitely tipping into something that
(00:46):
feels a little bit heavier. Right?
There's like a a permanent background harm of dread,
climate change, biodiversity collapse, war, the potential for
nuclear war. Although I've got to be honest,
that's just not something I evenspare a moment's thought about.
Maybe I'm delusional, but I justdon't think we're going to get
there. Even though it feels like
governments are either asleep atthe wheel or driving as fast as
(01:07):
they can towards a Cliff, It's no wonder that eco anxiety is
now a collective condition. Because of this, and also
because I'm slack and it's near the end of the semester and I'm
just a little bit busy, I'm actually replaying one of our
most popular episodes, which wasthe conversation I had last year
with psychologist Dr. Susie Burke about eco anxiety, how to
live with it, how to turn it into something more useful.
(01:28):
And actually, she had some really interesting stats about
why not everything sucks as muchas it feels like it does, which
is good because I needed some uplifting conversation too,
actually. And while we're on the subject
of doing something useful, localbody elections are important.
I know that it feels like the only everything that matters is
the every three years election for the people who will continue
making really peculiar decisions.
(01:49):
But local body elections matter.Auckland current turn out is 9%
nine. We cannot complain about
democracy if we do not participate in democracy.
Go and vote. If you want things to change, go
and vote. And a random shout out.
I don't do this very often. If you're looking for a deeply
witty, insightful writer, go andsubscribe to Emily Writes.
She wrote one of the funniest articles I've ever read about
(02:11):
Tarzan a few years ago. And ever since I've been a big
fan of all that she does. And she has an excellent way of
articulating despair, but also giving you really useful things
that you can do about it. So welcome back to Because Why?
I'm Brienne West, and today I'm asking because why wouldn't we
give up? So I'm very excited to have
Doctor Susie Burke with me today.
So Doctor Burke is a psychologist who has made it her
(02:32):
mission to help people understand and handle the mental
load of climate change. Her background includes working
in disaster response and environmental issues, giving a
first hand look at how the climate crisis impacts mental
health, developing strategies tocope with climate anxiety and
eco grief, to finding ways for people to build resilience.
She is a leading voice on this. I am so excited and just really
(02:56):
appreciate you being here. So welcome.
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
First questions or was the worstquestion.
Tell me about you, how you got to where you are and what it is
you spend your day doing. Gives people context.
OK, thank you. Well, I'm a psychologist and I
work in central Victoria and formany years, for about 17 years I
(03:16):
was working at the Australian Psychological Society.
I'm not currently there, but fora long happy 17 years I was
working on climate change and disasters.
So when people would ask me why is a psychologist working on
climate change, I'd say, well it's for three reasons. 1 is
because climate change is causedby human behavior, and as
experts in human behavior, that's something we're
(03:38):
interested in. And the second thing was that
climate change has an impact on people's psychological health
and well-being. Of course, that's something that
we're interested in. And the third reason was because
all of the changes that are required to restore a safe
climate involve changes in humanbehaviour, whether that be at an
individual level or a community level or an international level,
(04:00):
it all requires changes in humanbehaviour.
Tada, that's our area of interest and expertise again.
So I thought it was fairly obvious why psychologist should
be working on that. And so when I was there, I
developed a number of resources with my colleagues on a range of
different topics. So some of those topics were
(04:22):
around the impact or the mental health and psychological impact
of climate change. And I was also working in
disasters as well. So that was often looking at the
mental health and psychological impact of extreme weather event
disasters, for example. But I was also spending a lot of
time looking at how people can overcome psychological barriers
(04:44):
to engaging with the topic of climate change.
And sometimes the reason why we have a barrier to engaging with
it is because of the emotions that we feel about the topic of
climate change, which can sometimes tempt us to slip away
and distract ourselves, which wecan do endlessly with other
things in life. And there are of course, a
(05:06):
number of other barriers that are not so individual that might
be more structural in communities that are barriers to
taking action on climate change.So I looked at that as well.
And more recently I've been working with a couple of
developmental psychologists and we've been writing a number of
articles on the psychological effects of climate change on
children and young people and adults.
(05:27):
And so we've sort of become a bit more specialized, looking at
coping and impacts of climate change on people.
Is it a is it a growing field oris it is it fairly well
established field now or is it still in the infancy?
I think it's growing. When I first started working in
this, I was surprised to be a much sited author.
(05:51):
In 2010, I think when we were together with some colleagues,
we wrote an article on the psychological impact of front
end. Now I feel like everyone's
talking about it, which is good.And when people ask whether
levels of anxiety increasing will of course levels of
knowledge and awareness and therefore concern and therefore
(06:12):
anxiety are of course we're going to increase.
And because the problem is an escalating problem, of course
we're going to expect that to continue to be the case.
So what is it manifesting like if there are people listening
who don't feel climbing anxiety,very jealous of those people.
What is it? What are the problems that
(06:32):
people are? I guess what are you coming
across when you talk to people? OK, well there's lots of
different terms that are used, so let's unpack them a little
bit. So climate emotions is a word I
see popping up in the literaturea lot.
Now that's a nice broad term. There's lots of words for that
have got anxiety in them, like eco anxiety or climate anxiety.
(06:54):
There's one psychotherapist, Ro Randall, in the UK who prefers
to use the term or prefers that we use the term climate distress
because that is kind of a bit more of a vague and general term
that in companies, both guilt and anger and anxiety, which are
all very much a part of it. So really there is this broad,
(07:16):
there's this broad number of terms and some articles have
been written really looking finally at the differences
between this plethora of terms. But I'm not going to get so
caught up in that actually doesn't really bother me too
much. But I did think I would briefly
refer to a scoping review that was done in 2021.
So some researchers, Coffee ET al.
(07:39):
Did this paper where they lookedat 1500 papers on eco anxiety
or, or various other names for it and looked to find the really
high quality ones that were really studying it so that they
could help to define the terms and understand the scope of it.
And So what they were doing was they were operationalizing the
Termico anxiety and what they argued was that it's a broad
(08:02):
range of negative emotions and negative physical symptoms that
are associated with climate change and other environmental
threats. And so the broad range of
negative emotions would include worry and anxiety and grief and
guilt and anger and a whole lot of others, helplessness and
hopelessness and all those sortsof negative emotions.
(08:24):
And the negative physical symptoms would be things like
feeling sick and panic attacks and and being paralysed or
feeling paralysed. So that was how it was defined
or can be usefully defined. But it's also useful to think
about, well, what is anxiety andin to what degree is it
pathological? So anxieties is a future
(08:46):
oriented stance. It's when we're looking into the
future and we're thinking, am I,is there a threat there?
So it's an appraisal of a threat, the climate crisis, but
it's also a motivator. It's something that can motivate
people to respond appropriately to a threat to the threat.
So it's kind of quite a good thing.
(09:06):
So it's it's rational, it's appropriate and it's deserved to
feel some modicum of of anxiety in response to the climate
crisis. So it's best to consider it in a
continuum. And therefore it's not
pathological. But at the higher levels of
anxiety that can be associated with poor mental health.
And that can be hard for people that can be, you know, some
(09:28):
suffering in that. So does that help to explain the
terms and the scope of it? Yes, it's a lot bigger.
Yes, calling it eco anxiety doesn't really encompass the
fact that actually sometimes it's just really sad or
enraging. So in climate emotions, OK or
climate distress. I quite like that distress.
Climate emotions, Yeah, yes, yeah.
So that's also interesting to think, well, what's the extent
(09:49):
of it? Like how many people are feeling
this? And often in the literature, the
surveys will be looking at concern, climate concern, which
can carry with it a level of distress.
And so I always find it interesting to look at a paper
(10:10):
that was written in Australia, published in 2020.
So that was the first year of the pandemic.
We've been locked down for a long time and GDP was down 7%.
The focus was very much on COVIDand people's levels of concern
(10:31):
about climate change were at a record high, so that's telling.
Interesting. Yeah.
And the figures that generally sit around, you know the mid 70%
up to the mid 80% of people who experience very or fairly high
concern. And in this particular one, it
(10:52):
went up to about 80 high 80s. Eighty 8% of people, if they'd
had a direct experience of something that they considered
to be climate change. So that might have been them
having been caught up in an extreme weather event disaster.
We have lots of them. And there was also,
interestingly, a 10% difference between men and women.
(11:13):
So people will often say, well, who are the people who are most
vulnerable to feeling anxious? And seems to be in the
literature that women edge up a little bit over men, young girls
more so than young boys. You know, I'm talking about
teenagers, young adults, people who are most aware of the
(11:35):
climate fresh would have higher levels of climate distress.
So that would be people who might be scientists or activists
or other sort of environmentallyoriented workers.
Yep. Yes, so women directly impacted
and those who are most aware tend to have the highest.
And then there's been lots of studies that have been done on
(11:58):
Oh, actually, no. Before I tell you that whilst I
was waiting for you to join a car, the call, I found a very
interesting article. I was following up my new
favorite author, Hannah Ritchie,who's a climate writer, and she
was referring to articles about people's perceptions of other
people's levels of concern. Because one of the things that
people often feel anxious about is a misunderstanding of how
(12:23):
many other people care deeply about the climate crisis and
they're doing something about itand would back, you know, good,
strong climate policies. And then they feel they're on
their own. They feel that they're on their
own. Yeah, it's called the perception
gap and it's a really common phenomena and we misunderstand
how many other people do care. So in this study that was
(12:45):
published this year, 2024 study,it was a big one of people's
climate change beliefs. 59,000 people across a lot of
countries, across 63 countries were surveyed for their beliefs.
And a belief in climate change was a that it was human caused,
that it was tantamount to an emergency, that it would have a
(13:06):
terrible impact on humanity. So with that comes a fair level
of concern and distress. And 86% of people said yes, they
had high concerns. So that's that's in that, you
know, mid 80s range. But then another study that also
found comparable ones also looked to see how much people
(13:27):
were thinking that other people were also sharing those
concerns, and the figures were alot less.
It's a bit of a problem because it increases your own anxiety.
Oh, I'm alone. It decreases your preparedness
perhaps to raise the topic and talk about it and share your
concerns with other people because you might be thinking
other people don't care. And also it's problematic
because if politicians are also suffering from the same
(13:50):
perception gap, which of course they would because they are also
humans, then they're going to bemisunderstanding how much
support they would have for good.
Serious climate policies, and that's problematic.
That is so interesting. Not at all surprising because
when you said 8, you know, between the mid 70s and mid 80s,
(14:10):
I thought, but is that people just being like, yeah, I'm
worried about it, but you know, meh.
But you're talking about quite serious concerns.
That's an entirely different conversation.
So then the next question, of course, comes up is, but you,
you may have already answered inVenus is why is it not a bigger
piece of action? And maybe the answer is because
(14:30):
everyone's looking at each othersaying, I don't want to bring it
up because I don't think you care.
And I feel stupid because when Ido speaking events, I absolutely
talk, tone down a lot of my thoughts and concerns about
environmental destruction in general, and particularly
climate change, because I do feel that I will be one of the
few people in the room who is worried about it.
Yes, yes, it's interesting. Well, OK.
(14:51):
Well, you've said a lot of things just there.
I'm going to address all of them.
Excellent. I'm just going to start by
telling you about another one ofmy favorite writers.
I've got a lot of favorite climate writers, George
Marshall. He's also in the UK and he used
to be the sort of activist that would tie himself to, you know,
coal trucks and, you know, be a real activist.
(15:13):
But more recently, his activism has come to be a challenge to
himself to talk about the threatof climate change every single
day with somebody. And he never cheats.
So if on one day he's actually giving a talk to 15,000 people,
he doesn't think I'm covered forthe next 15,000 days.
He treats that as one person andheads off the next day to make
(15:36):
sure he's talking about it. Because breaking the conspiracy
of science around climate changeis one of the most important
things you can do. Because you're breaking that
perception gap and you're letting other people know that
you might like them, share theirconcerns, and that climate
change is a real threat. And therefore we it's very
legitimate to be talking about it and to be doing something
(15:57):
about it. So that would be one way of
responding to that. The other thing is that when we
look at how people coping with climate change, there are three
strategies that we get people touse.
So there's emotion focused coping strategies, problem
focused coping and meaning focused coping, and I'll talk
(16:18):
about all of them. But emotion focused coping is
the things that we do to manage the emotions.
So the uncomfortable feelings inour body, which are where
emotions are felt. And so that might be things like
breathing exercises or having a nice chat with a friend or
talking about how we're feeling or having a cry or moving our
body or it's a whole host of things.
(16:40):
This is what psychologists spenda lot of time doing with people
is teaching them strategies to be able to manage uncomfortable
feelings. And then problem focused coping
strategies are the things that we do.
So we do things with our body. So the things we do with our
legs and our arms and our words are doing things to reduce the
threat of climate change. That's mitigation.
(17:01):
That's the word that gets used in the climate field to talk
about things that are reducing carbon emissions and
sequestering carbon. And I mean, those things can
also be adaptation things as well, preparing yourself for the
possibility of extreme weather events and things like that.
But I particularly like people to focus on the reduced carbon
emissions and sequestering carbon around.
(17:23):
That's the first priority, so that might be things like being
involved in a group and campaigning to blockade the
coal, the second largest coal port in the world.
That's I'm just flagging something that I'm going to be
doing with some of my friends ina few weeks in Newcastle.
You're amazing. That's.
Brilliant rowing canoes out intothe shipping lands and blocking
(17:45):
the ships, the coal ships from taking coal out to other
countries so that those sorts ofthings.
So that's sort of, I mean that'sa particular type of activism,
but it also might be, you know, being involved in a group that's
trying to get some grants for getting solar panels on people's
roofs and things like that. Anything that's about reducing
carbon emissions. So that's problem focused
(18:05):
coping, the things that you do to reduce the problem that's
causing the anxiety. And then the third one is
meaning focused coping. So that's the way in which we
use our thinking to think differently about the problem of
climate change so that we can activate some hope.
And in fact, having a sense of hope is kind of a really urgent
(18:28):
thing to to do. Urgent optimism is what 1
writer. Oh, that woman I talked about
before, Hannah Ritchie, that's one of the phrases that she uses
in her book, Not the End of the World, which I highly recommend.
It's a good title too, isn't it?It's a great title, End of the
World. So going back to the thing that
(18:50):
you said earlier, one of the things that we do when we're
getting people to think about meaning focused coping is to
look around at all of the millions of people around the
planet who are actually activelyworking on solving problems of
climate change, of which there are 1,000,000.
But they might not just be in front of your nose.
So sometimes you have to go looking for them and sometimes
you have to save some of your time that you might be spending
(19:13):
on following geopolitical unfolding disasters in the world
at the moment and save yourself from that and go and use some of
that time to go and look at for some of the amazing things that
are happening around the world. And one of the things that
Hannah Ritchie's writing about in Not the End of the World is
that when we look at the large data sets, so she works in an
(19:33):
organization that looks at the world in data.
So these massive data sets on most measures of human
well-being, we have improved dramatically in all of these
measures in the last 50 years. It's really important to
remember that because they don'tturn up in the news.
It's not very newsy to say that,you know, 100 and or some of the
(19:54):
numbers that 128,000 people every day for the last 25 years
have come out of extreme poverty.
Like they're sort of funny numbers and they're not numbers
that get cited in the news. But actually that's those are
amazing. Things And So what she's arguing
is that the this generation, andwhen I say this generation, I
(20:15):
mean you and I look like, you know, might be the same
generation, but it also includesall the generations that are
alive at the moment. We might be the first
generations to actually achieve A sustainable world.
And that's actually a really exciting thought because the
world has never ever been sustainable because
sustainability means a healthy life for everyone on the planet
(20:36):
now, plus an end to environmental destruction.
And we've never been able to achieve both of those at the
same time. So in previous years when we
perhaps haven't been as environmentally destructive,
we've had, you know, 50% of children dying before the age of
five. So we've never had healthy lives
(20:58):
for all people. So that's kind of an exciting
thought. And it's borne out by these
trends in large data, which shows that, you know, we are
continually making these enormous improvements in
well-being of so many things on the planet.
So that means millions of peoplearound the planet are actually
working on environmental solutions, just maybe not in
(21:22):
front of our noses. You are probably one of the
first people to ever talk about this as a opportunity, if you
like the opportunity to make ourworld a sustainable one for the
first time ever. And I've genuinely never thought
about it like that before, but it's actually something that's
broken through the, I'm not nihilistic, but something I
(21:44):
don't say very often as I I'm just not sure if we're going to
get it get together enough and. Fatalistic.
Yeah, That fatalistic. Yeah, Yeah, I know.
But how exciting to think that we could be the generations of
the first to achieve a sustainable world.
The other interesting thing to consider too, because often what
will come up will be the question about young people's
(22:07):
reproductive choices. That was going to be one of my
questions. Well, it's jump in there.
Yeah. Should I have a child?
She also makes the point. Nah, it's not her.
It's these other two American writers, Josephine Ferrarelli
and Megan Cullman, who wrote a book called The Conceivable
Future, And it's all about people's reproductive choices.
(22:32):
And they make the argument that there is no child, you know,
that is a newborn now, who will ever have as big a carbon
footprint as its parents do. True, probably.
And so that's a really interesting thought either
because we've continued, which we will, to move on to 0 carbon
economies. And we are inevitably going to
(22:55):
be doing that. We just need to carry along or
because of collapse, you know, which means, you know, vast
production in the energy that we've got available to us.
But we have a massively smaller,even though we have these
generous lifestyles, we have smaller carbon footprints than
our grandparents did, who were heavily reliant on coal for
(23:18):
their all of their heating and cooling.
So those sorts of statistics area fascinating way of
reconsidering it. And I mean, they also go and
argue that, you know, we need tobe careful that we don't
internalize the burden of guilt of having a child, whereas that
guilt should really be laid at the feet of the fossil fuel
(23:39):
industries that are continuing to extract and, you know, emit
carbon. And the politicians who enable
those fossil fuel industries because there's a number of
excellent low carbon or 0 carbonsolutions to producing energy
that have been proven to be ableto be 24 hour sustainable.
(24:03):
Yeah, there's a lot of PR aroundthem that they're, they're not
there yet, but it's just nonsense.
Yeah. And that's, that's an
interesting point, yes. And that therefore, so you have
to be careful you don't, yes, you haven't internalized the
guilt. And and also it's really
important this comes up around anxiety as well.
It's really important to not make the mistake of you're
putting too much importance on trying to be impeccable
(24:25):
yourself. You are not the problem.
The problem is a system that's based on extraction and
injustice or, you know, inequality.
And that's the system that we need to be focusing on.
And in order to change the system, that's politics.
Politics is the activities that you do together with other
people to change a system. It's not who you vote for or
(24:47):
what you believe. It's the the things that you do
to change the system. And that's the problem, not
whether you should have one child or not have six children
or things like that. Yeah, guilt is a totally
redundant emotion. It doesn't help, makes you feel
terrible. It doesn't make you do anything.
I don't know. I don't think it's the greatest
(25:07):
motivator. And it's also completely
misplaced because you're right, we should be throwing it at the
CEO of Shell. Yes.
It's a well and good to say don't feel guilty and here are
some coping mechanisms. What are some super practical
things you tell people to do if you are?
Because you do definitely have well, I do good and bad days.
And perhaps you, I read an article the other day that they
think the ocean collapse will happen as soon as 2047.
(25:31):
Being an ocean lover, I mean, that's distressing for
everybody, but that's particularly those sorts of
things are particularly distressing for me.
It absolutely ruins my whole day.
And the obvious answer is don't read them.
But I do think we should have anunderstanding of what's going
on. So if that's not an option, how
do you prevent reading stuff like that, which is horrifying
to becoming this super negative thing that weighs on you and
(25:54):
prevents you from doing anything.
But also just gnaws away. I appreciate exercise and those
sorts of things helps, but is there anything else that you
found particularly useful? Well, just on that particular
example that you gave, Hannah Richie does have a very good
chapter in. Different look around.
Oceans hand fishing and she doesdirectly address some of those
(26:17):
recent articles and the way in which they're reported and has
quite some to say about them. So follow that up I.
Will I will I will put it in thethat.
Would be your meaning focus to coping and stress.
So what I'm hearing you saying is that it feels important to
have some knowledge and to be staying abreast of things.
(26:42):
And so, yes, and on that, and you pick this up from Hannah
Richie, you see how important itis to be reading stuff that is
accurately reported. Which is hard to do.
Which is hard to do. Yeah.
And also we know that our bodies, you know, the distress
(27:03):
in our bodies, the discomfort inour bodies can sometimes tell us
enough, think I need to take a break now and that it's quite OK
at times to put down tools. And it's why the weekend was
invented really was because we don't do very well if we just
work and worry and stress about things and that we need to have
a break. And so putting down tools isn't
giving up. It's just taking a break and
(27:27):
turning towards things that are psychologically restorative.
So those are things like being in nature or spending time in
the very world that you feel so concerned about and love so
much, so being able to enjoy it and to value what remains.
And I mean, there's a lot of literature on the psychological
restoration that we can get frombeing in nature, whether it's
(27:50):
being in the sea or whether it'sbeing in a forest or in a river
or in a desert or whatever, or just sitting and watching a
little bird in your bird bath. So those sorts of things.
And it is really important to keep remembering to turn towards
the very thing that you love so much, which is the natural
world. I mean, that's not everybody's
motivation. It doesn't actually have to be.
(28:11):
It's enough to just be motivatedfor ourselves, humans.
And then the other things are talking about your concerns and
sharing your feelings with otherpeople and having people that
you can do that with. This is an enormous solace for
people because it validates and normalizes the distress that
(28:33):
you're feeling. Plus, we call it a stress
reducing conversation. When you talk to somebody else,
that's a way of being able to regulate yourself emotionally by
sharing your concerns with somebody who's soothing and able
to, yes, communicate that sort of a connection and an interest,
(28:54):
and that can be very soothing. So there's those strategies as
well. And even though you said it has
to be more than just moving yourbody, moving your body is
actually enormously useful way of moving stress hormones
through your body. And even if you've not got much
time, but you just shake your booty, I'm just standing here.
(29:17):
Shake my. Booty, I'm at a dance party.
And doing that, you know, can bea way of being able to move your
body. And anybody that's done any work
on dealing with anxiety or, or therapy will have surely heard
about how the body, the human body is set up to develop a
stress response. As though we're being threatened
(29:39):
by a Saber toothed tiger. And that if there's no Saber
toothed tiger to fight or to flee from, and no village to
return to after you've got away successfully or slain the Saber
toothed tiger to go and cheer and celebrate and laugh and cry
and feast with, then you have tofind something that is an
approximate of that experience. So that's where the moving your
(30:03):
body in some vigorous way or going and connecting with other
people or going and having a feast with somebody or a laugh
or a cry, which is what our human bodies were designed to do
as a response to a threat. Once the threat had passed, then
those are good things to do. Makes sense, yes.
And of course, the problem with climate emergency is threat
doesn't you can't kill it. The threat doesn't pass.
(30:25):
It's still there the next day. But the stress in your body, you
have responsibility to be movingevery day so that the next day
when you are out in the world and more stressors are
happening, that we're still there the day before and your
stress is building up again, at least you've cleared it and then
you clear it again that day and you clear it again that day.
So. Like any refresh on your
(30:46):
computer? Sort of.
Yes, it's closing down your computer or turning it off at
the end of the day. My partner keeps telling me to
do. Oh no, it's so annoying because
then it wants to update and thennothing works.
Never turned it off, which is terrible also.
Exactly. Imagine if we did that and we
never went to bed because we thought oh but then I won't know
where I was yesterday. But magically we actually get
quite quick at being able to getup and reorient ourselves in the
(31:08):
morning. This is true.
You're talking about community really around building a bunch
of people around you, whether it's, and if you don't have
those people around you, I suppose if your family feel
differently or don't want to talk about it and lots of people
don't, I guess it's going out there and finding other people.
And I don't know, there's plentyof grassroots climate action
clubs and things to join, isn't there?
If you feel that way. But it's it's about putting
(31:29):
people around you who aren't nihilistic or or really
fatalistic about it, but who areworking towards making some kind
of change, I suppose. Yeah, that's right.
And Megan and Josephine, those two authors I talked about
before who wrote The ConceivableFuture, they talk about the big
yes and the big no. So they're the ones that are
saying problem is not you. It's not an individual problem,
(31:51):
even though it's we feel it individually.
It's a collective problem. We need collective solutions.
We have to have solutions that are commensurate with the size
of the threat, which means we can't do it ourselves.
We have to do it with everybody else.
And so the big yes is the thingslike, you know, solar panels or
a wind farm, a community owned wind farm or something like
that. And the big no is the things
like the protest and, you know, the reduction of the harms.
(32:15):
And they say that the good thingabout being involved in a group
is that when you go to bed exhausted, somewhere in the
world, somebody else is waking up full of enthusiasm.
And when you get really sick of your big no campaign, there's
always a a group of big yeses just around the corner who are
dying to have you come and join them.
So the big of the yes and the big of the no is to be trying to
(32:39):
imagine the biggest systemic solution you can think of.
And then you have to break it down into a component piece and
then go for one of those pieces will find some people that you'd
like to do it with. Yeah, like a relay.
The whole rest is resistance. You know, a lot of a lot of
climate activists or people in general don't feel they can stop
the work because if they do, they're sort of giving up, not
(32:59):
stop permanently, but just have a rest.
And of course, there are other people there willing to pick up
the baton and carry it on, even if you're just having a couple
of days off, which is so important.
So this is a personal question you may or may not want to
answer, which is obviously completely fine.
Do you have hope for the future?Because you have come across as
incredibly optimistic, which is a real.
It's really nice. Do you, because you work with so
(33:22):
many climate scientists and I know that they're not super
great about the future, but you will see a more well-rounded
view, I suspect, than I do. Do you have hope that we're
going to pull it together to prevent, say, 3°, hopefully
sick? Oh look, we might not prevent
3°. OK.
Are we? We're aiming for two degrees,
(33:42):
aren't we? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
So we're not going to make 1.5. Can we keep under 2°?
I mean, in terms of am I hopefulfor us being able to come in
under a specific number? That's a hard thing to say, but
I think I am an optimist. But I can also be thinking, Oh
(34:06):
my God, we just. But then I can turn to the
things that I love about the world that I am in and the
amazing people who are all doingamazing things.
And I could think, well, that's kind of great.
And I do also believe, because another part of my background
had been through a group called Psychologists for Peace, and we
(34:28):
teach a conflict resolution model, interest based conflict
resolution. It's what they use in teaching
the UN for international conflict and disputes and things
like that. So I very much believe, because
I've worked in that for a long time and in communities, I very
much believe that humans are able to cooperate and
collaborate and that peace is possible because it's just a
(34:51):
learning of a certain set of skills and being able to have
your underlying needs, wants andfears and concerns met.
So I'm sort of optimistic about that.
One the things that I find quitefrustrating is that that's not
taught. And so we don't have a whole,
you know, community of people believing in that because it
does help to know how to resolveconflicts.
(35:15):
And so of course, because I do believe that humans are entirely
capable of doing that, then I dobelieve that it's possible for
us to collaborate and solve problems.
And so in terms of dystopian novels, I do prefer the ones
that demonstrate people being able to divide up things equally
and look after each other and not each of the dying people,
(35:38):
but try to, you know, share the food out equally and keep going.
Yeah. OK.
Yeah. Interesting.
How do you talk to children about it?
Do you get a few parents who areyou know, it's like you can you
shouldn't insulate them from this.
So how do you cope with what I imagine are quite big feelings
(35:58):
in children and teenagers? Because they'll, and look,
another question. I want to talk about social
media, but they will get all of this negativity from social
media because it may be 88, giveor take percent of people who
care and have genuine concern about this.
But I tell you, the 12%, they'reall in social media comments
going on and on about how it's all a big bloody conspiracy.
And that's why that stat is kindof baffling to me, because all
(36:21):
you see online is deniers and conspiracy theorists.
However, how do you have conversations with children
about it in a way that's not dumbing it down and not ignoring
their concerns but not making them so bloody terrified of
their future? One of the first things we say
is you really want to be having that conversation with your
children because as you pointed out, they're hearing about it
somewhere else. So you may as well be part of
(36:43):
that conversation. And so we'll even say that to
young parents as well, as soon as your child is out in the
world at kindergarten or childcare, you really want to be
talking about. Oh wow.
OK. Climate change, you want to know
whether what they know and at that age, it's all about helping
children to fall in love with the world.
Children have to be first fall in love with nature really is
(37:04):
the is the thing that we talk about then and that's, you know,
fun. And yes, so some researchers
that I was reading were talking about how you first have to be
in nature to then be able to work with nature, like build
things. First we have to be able to walk
through along a riverbank, you know, before you can then be
(37:26):
picking up sticks and building alittle house and interacting
with nature. And that has to come before you
can then be for nature, IE fighting for us, you know,
picking up the litter or, you know, getting involved in
campaigns for nature. So that's sort of a progression.
And then the other thing that weadvise parents in talking with
(37:47):
children is to be checking what it is that they know.
That's partly to interrupt what misinformation they might have
picked up to be able to correct any misperceptions.
Then you're wanting to leave them thinking that the world is
(38:08):
a great place and that people are awesome and that life is
worth living. So that's a really important
message that you're wanting to communicate.
And so part of that is what I was talking about with you
earlier, which is looking out for the other millions of people
who feel the same as them and care deeply and are doing
something about it. So we call that.
(38:29):
And it's the same in disaster recovery.
You know, it's looking for the heroes and the helpers.
So orienting them to be able to see that.
And that might also involve getting involved themselves in
things that are contributing to making a better place.
So like my partner takes his sonhas for a number of years along
to the local repair cafe. So he's a good with a
(38:51):
screwdriver, likes pulling things apart.
So that's his, you know, contribution to community
projects that share around creating a sustainable world.
Yeah. I mean, it's a massive, massive
question, but basically open andhonest conversations from as
early as they are likely to encounter it, which is pretty
early. And then getting them involved
(39:12):
in some way that they may enjoy to start getting them.
What I think it's Steve Irwin who said, oh, man, I'm
paraphrasing badly. But first you have to you have
to know it to understand it, to love it, right?
It's it's it's bad theory about nature.
Oh, I remembered a really important one.
Another one that we really talk about is that children have to
see us doing something about climate change because in the
(39:37):
largest study that's been done of children and young people, it
was published in 2021 where theysurveyed 10,000 children across
a number of different countries in the high emissions and low
emissions countries. What they found was that a large
number of children felt that adults had failed to care for
(39:58):
the planet. 85% of young people aged between 16 and 25 had
thought that. So you don't want that to be
you. You need to be one of the people
that they see cares about because we know that people do
care about it. That's a perception gap right as
well. And partly maybe that's because
they're all talking to each other on social media.
(40:18):
And so they're not talking to the older people who are out
there, the knitting nannies and those sorts of people who are
out there of the process and things like that.
So they need to see you taking action and doing something.
So you have to get get up and get out and do something.
It has to be really obvious. Yeah, that makes total sense.
Not only leading by example, butagain, given that, the modicum
of comfort I guess. Yes, to be sure.
(40:40):
Yeah, Yes, because the other thing that they found in that
study was that children and young people have two things
that they're worried about. They're worried about the
climate crisis and they're worried about government
inaction or inaction. And that's it's not just that
they're worried about the climate crisis, I'm worried
about people's behaviour too. Makes total sense and they're
not wrong to worry about it. OK, Social media, I mentioned
(41:04):
earlier, it's a rather toxic negative place, which we know.
How much do you think that's contributing to people's concern
and, and, and what do we call it?
Distress about the climate crisis.
Yeah, yes. Well, when you mentioned it
before, I was thinking maybe that's why I'm an optimist,
because I'm not on social media much.
And that's because I've had teenagers that were growing up
(41:24):
through the development of social media as a thing.
And my children were at a Steiner school, right?
So there were all these values about, you know, that being not
a good thing. So I was very supportive in
that. So how much of that you asked is
contributing to the perception gap?
Well, in this article that I wasjust reading while I was waiting
for you to come online, that wasone of the reasons that they
(41:48):
were saying it's mainstream media as well, because
mainstream media will focus on asensational story because they
will try to make money, which means they have to grab our
attention and they can more easily grab our attention by
sensational negative story. So that is a problem.
And so yes, then of course the loud voices that turn up on
(42:11):
social media are going to have an undue effect.
But really when you asked how much of a problem is it?
It's as much a problem for action on climate change as it
is a problem for eating disorders in women as it is for,
(42:31):
you know, all of the social problems that have got a
connection to negativity on social media.
These are all big problems. Yeah.
That could be a big no or a big yes that somebody might want to
get into is, you know, looking. It doesn't have to be about and
(42:53):
all the panels and wind turbines, you know, that's a
really legitimate campaign that people can get interested in as
well is tightening up social media laws, what people are
allowed to post and things like that.
That's that's much good that canbecome from that.
And in fact, just on that, climate change is actually not
one of the most imminent existential threats to humans at
(43:17):
the moment, very largely considered to be these three
other more imminent existential effects.
It's not a certain time change isn't a huge problem.
We need to do something. About it.
Oh, OK, there's something else Ihave to worry about.
OK. Yeah.
So the more imminent ones would be another pandemic, a bigger,
worse pandemic. It's always a big AI, artificial
(43:37):
general intelligence. So, and this is where the social
media comes in because it's the speed of the development of
artificial intelligence without the sufficient international
rules and this incredibly fast moving thing.
And so that's a very legitimate big yes or big no campaign for
(44:00):
people who are good at that sortof thing to get interested and
involved in that sort of connected.
And the third one is largely considered to be, you know,
another large World War. Yes, that's certainly a concern
at the present, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
And I'm watching things like thebird flu progression through the
States at the moment and a few other things going on.
(44:22):
There's a few epidemics breakingout in parts of Africa and yeah,
it's all very interesting, all very concerned.
And the more we encroach on natural spaces, of course, the
more we are likely to have zoonoses and move into
pandemics. Yeah, which is.
And so we've descended into thismiserable and anxiety provoking
place in this conversation. We couldn't have it too
(44:44):
cheerful. But This is why it's also
important to have that other perspective, which is those
enormous improvements that thereis no better time to be alive
than today, and that every single country has made massive
progress in decreasing child mortality, increasing life
expectancy, increasing access towater, energy, sanitation and so
(45:05):
on and so forth. You know, across all countries,
even the poorest countries in the world.
And that's massive. That's humans that have enabled
that to happen through just chipping away and improve and
improving things. And that's we need to keep
remembering those sorts of things.
Yes, you're absolutely right because you do see again,
comments everywhere, people saying you have conversations
(45:26):
with people and then you know, Ihate it here.
We've just destroyed things. All that ever happens if we make
everything worse. You do see that constant
negative thread through every conversation.
Maybe it's just maybe some people are hanging around with,
oh God, but what are the common denominator here?
No, I do. I do see that a lot though, but
(45:47):
it is absolutely worth noting wewell, I'm not sure about right
this minute, but certainly a couple of years ago was one of
the most peaceful times on Earthand.
Yeah, yes, yeah, that's right. That's right.
And the levels of violence and deaths through, you know,
violent conflict have decreased and decreased and decreased.
And these things are all facts. And the other thing on that is
(46:08):
that there's this exercise environmental psychologists
sometimes do as a, you know, in order to promote meaning focused
coping for our present times, which is to get people to
consider what period in history they would prefer to have been
alive. And it's quite hard to find a
(46:29):
time that would be better. Anyway.
I should leave that. Especially if you're a woman.
Especially if you're a woman or a friends were disabled or yeah,
yes, listen to somebody the other day and she said, oh, I
would really not want to be He have been alive in feudal times
and somebody once said I thoughtthat the 90s was pretty good,
(46:51):
but not if you were trans and no.
If you're a straight white male,good to go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you did right.
Yeah, so it's a very interestingexperiment.
And of course, even if you were a straight white male, if half
of the population is subjugated and oppressed and you know, then
(47:12):
it's not that great. I wouldn't have thought so,
although I will refrain from talking about some of the
debates that are going on in some of the political arenas at
the moment, but yes. Yes, and and the so that's an
important thing to think. And also this is Thomas Doherty.
He's an environmental psychologist in America.
I also heard him say as part of that thought experiment that
(47:33):
it's a bit you're using hubris. If you're thinking that this is
the worst, you know that these are these problems are the worst
problems that we've ever had because the people at the time
of the Black Plague probably thought that that was the worst
time. People in the trenches in the
Second World War probably thought that was the worst time.
(47:53):
Like, it's a bit hubristic, if that's a word, to say that this
is the, you know, that these arethe most challenging times.
Yeah, I think what makes this so?
Obviously I can't speak because I've never lived through a Black
Plague epidemic, obviously, but what makes this so
all-encompassing is because it is all-encompassing.
(48:14):
It's not just us as a species, it's every other species we're
dragging down with us. And I find that particularly
heartbreaking. What do you think?
This is my last question for you, and I think I know the
answer. Why is it so polarizing?
Why is it one of these topics? People say, oh, I don't want to
get political, but talk about climate change.
Why is it so hard to talk about?Is it because people feel guilty
(48:35):
and then they get defensive? Yes.
Well, I mean, a prolific use of fossil fuels has been kind of
fun. So 1 can feel a little bit
defensive at the loss of that abundance of energy, which is
(48:59):
why the solutions are not to necessarily anticipate that we
have to have a low energy future, but that we need to have
a 0 carbon energy future. So and.
They are not mutually exclusive.They're not mutually exclusive.
Yeah. And why else do people get so
(49:22):
defensive? I mean, we can feel defensive if
we think that we're going to be made to feel guilty for our
fossil fuel use. And so one of the important
things that we know when we're talking to somebody across a
values divide is to be very careful not to shame them or to
(49:43):
make them feel guilty. Because we know that pointing
out to somebody how bad they areor pointing out how big the
problem is, there's no evidence that that ever changes a
person's behaviour. And in fact, what the research
shows is that the opposite is often true, that if you
criticize somebody for their behaviour or shame them, it
(50:04):
usually results in them hardening their position and
doubling down on their problematic behaviour.
So instead, and this comes back to that psychologist for peace
bias that I've got, and instead what we need to do is
communicate warmth and openness and curiosity and use a warm
voice and use warm eyes and communicate safety to another
(50:27):
person when we're talking to them.
And be curious about what are the things that they care about
and show them the ways in which we share some of those values.
And if you can, you can also communicate to them how those
things that they care about, youknow, like surfing, he's also
consistent with caring about theplanet because they're, the
(50:50):
oceans are a little bit too warm, then the sharks come in a
little bit closer. And that's a real pest when
you're a surfer. So, you know, looking for the
10% on which you agree and then being able to see if you can
match somebody to say that that actually means that they sort of
do care about climate. Which can be very frustrating to
do, but it's well worth doing. Yes, and the point is, so as I'm
(51:15):
talking, I'm in my head, I'm thinking about Winifred Lewis
who's a social psychologist at University of Queensland.
She's done these wonderful videos where she talks about and
she's got an awesome Ted talk aswell.
It's really worth seeing. Winifred Lewis is her name and
she talks about how the point isto we underestimate how much a
(51:38):
person who has different values to us doesn't trust us.
We really underestimate that. So that's the first thing, is to
have realistic expectations about where we're going to get
in a conversation with somebody who doesn't share the same
values, who doesn't see us as being one of them.
It's very low. But to leave the conversation
with them having thought that was quite a nice conversation.
(52:01):
That person was quite a nice person.
And then there's a greater chance that they'll be willing
to have another conversation with you another time or with
somebody else. You're not going to change their
mind necessarily. You're not going to change their
mind. No, no, you're not.
No, that, that trust comment is quite interesting.
But of course, if you're talkingto someone, you don't share any
of their, their thoughts or values.
(52:21):
If you're going to assume some things about them that therefore
you wouldn't, that would mean you wouldn't trust them.
That makes perfect sense. I have one final question for
you. This is kind of the fun question
I ask everybody, and I understand the answers are very
interesting. So if you are the supreme global
overlord, you had the power to do anything to make the world a
better place. What would be the very first
thing you would do? Or I'd teach everybody interest
(52:43):
based conflict resolution. What do you?
Mean interest based. So interests are the things that
underlie your position and they are your needs, your wants, your
fears and your concerns. So just say you wanted to go to
Hawaii for the holidays and yourpartner wanted to go to the
(53:05):
local beach. That's your position.
But underneath that are your interests.
Your interests might be to need a nice warm climate, to wanting
to eat tasty food and to have rich cultural experiences and to
(53:25):
have a lovely connecting time with your partner and to not
have to think about work. These are all your needs and
your wants and your fears and your concerns.
So that's your interest and yourother and your partner is has
got their interests as well. They're interested in getting a
suntan and you know, these sort of things, concerned about being
bored on a holiday and things like that.
(53:47):
And then what you do is you brainstorm on the basis of those
interests, A whole lot of different options where you're
looking for some way of being able to meet all of those needs,
wants, fears and concerns that you've generated, some of which
you have in common. And once you've done that, you
then come up with a solution that has probably got several
(54:09):
elements. It's not just we should go to
Hawaii or we should go to the local beach, but there be a
whole lot of combination of things that comes up to being
your holiday plan. So it might be that you decide
to find a beach that's much further away but doesn't involve
going on an airplane because oneof the fears might be, you know,
(54:29):
scared about or might be guilt about your carbon footprint or
scared about plane crashing or something like that, right?
And so you come up with these options that meet all you need
to get the sun tan, have a relaxing time to connect to, you
know, suede, your guilt, et cetera, et cetera.
And then so it's it's like a, a structured way to compromise by
ensuring you know what the actual problem is.
(54:49):
Yeah, yes, that's right. To know yet to know what the
unmet interests are, the needs, the wants, the fears and the
concerns. So usually usually when we argue
with somebody, we just come up with the first solution.
There's something that we're needing and wanting and feared
and concerned about. When we come up with our first
solution, it's not usually the best solution.
Then we argue it fiercely with the other person and they we
(55:11):
lock in. They're arguing fiercely there
per first preferred solution andyou miss out on actually knowing
what are you really wanting and needing and coming up with a
more anyway. So yes, sorry, that's what I
would do, yeah. That and I guess that would tie
into the ability to have conversations with anybody, even
if you don't fundamentally don'tagree with their position
(55:31):
because at the end of the day, like largely we all want the
same thing. Yeah.
Happiness. Healthiness.
Yeah, we want a safe climate. We want to be healthy.
Yeah. It's just we differ in how we're
going to get there sometimes, I suppose, and.
Yeah. Want to agree on that base.
I guess you go a lot further. Is there anything else you'd
want to say? Generally, get out there and
(55:53):
start blockading some stuff, youknow?
No, I think we've covered a lot.I think I'll leave it there.
Yeah. No, it's been brilliant.
Thank you. I did not expect it to be so
cheerful because I was having a pretty bad day.
And then of course, Susie was waiting for me when I was trying
to log in because my wonderful podcasting software was like,
no, we're just going to log you back out every time you click
into the studio. So that was a mildly stressful
(56:15):
start. That's a good thing.
Would it be? But I got to read some great
articles, so I'm pleased with the delay.
Yes. It worked out well.
So thank you. I really appreciate that.
I think you've shared some really interesting strategies
and some really interesting statistics.
I'm still slightly blown away. The 88, the peak, the scenes of
people believe, truly, deeply believe that it's an emergency.
(56:37):
Let me feel so much better. Hope that has provided some
perspective and a little bit of maybe not optimism, but a little
bit of soothing maybe. I know that I really enjoyed our
conversation. So if you're tired or you're
angry or you know what, even if you're just numb, that's fair.
But never forget that small actions count.
Voting, helping, showing up. In fact, there's some very
interesting studies out there ona possible cure for depression,
(57:00):
and it's nothing to do with medication.
But let's talk about that in another episode.
Remember, the cure for apathy isaction.
Because why would you give up when there is still so much to
hope for? See you next week.
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