image credit | Marc Pell

Season 5, Episode 20: A View From Wales with Marc Williams

Thomas had a great conversation with Marc Williams, a Welsh-speaking psychologist from Cardiff University, and one of  few psychologists who, like Thomas, blends clinical and environmental psychology. Marc talked about his formative experiences growing up in West Wales and his recent research on environmental identity and evidence-based therapy for climate distress. 

Some Welsh nature terms and sayings:

• “Amgylchedd” – “environment”

• “Cynefin” roughly translates to ‘habitat’, but means ‘place of belonging’

•  ”Dod yn ôl at fy nghoed” = ‘returning to my trees’, i.e., returning to a balanced or peaceful state of mind

• “Daw eto haul ar fryn” = ‘The sun will shine on the hill again’ (better days are coming)

Links

• Marc Williams

  • Key Papers:

    • Georgia King, Matt Adams, Nick Maguire & Marc Williams (2026). Reimagining clinical psychology for a changing planet. 

    • Jessica Morgan, James Gregory & Marc Williams, M. O. (2026). ‘Taking the green pill’: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of the lived experiences of climate distress. 

    • Marc Williams and Victoria Samuel (2024)  Acceptance and commitment therapy as an approach for working with climate distress. 

    • Marc Williams (2023) Climate distress and social identity: bringing theory to clinical practice.

Fire Danger in Wales: Warning after fires near popular mountain ahead of holiday weekend

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

Thomas Doherty:  Well, hello, I'm Thomas Doherty and welcome to climate change and happiness. This is a podcast show for people around the globe who are thinking and deeply about climate change, but also other environmental issues and their connections with nature and all the relations with our life and our beliefs and our politics and our families. And typically I would be joined by my cohost Panu Pikala, but he's been called away today. So it's just myself hosting, but I am very lucky and proud to have a guest with me today.

Marc Williams: Hello, my name is Marc Williams. I'm a clinical psychologist and researcher at Cardiff University in Wales.

Doherty: Yes, and I'm so excited to have Marc here. I've met Marc a little bit and I've followed a lot of his work. Myself, my career has led me to bridge clinical psychology and environmental psychology, study of people's connections with nature and how that plays into our health and into therapy. And Marc is one of the few people I know in the world who has really mindfully and structurally done a similar kind of integration. So we're going to be talking about that. And if you have thoughts or questions, you can always reach us at [email protected] and recommend our show to people. Marc, glad to have you here. I know you're coming in from Wales and I'm here in Portland, Oregon, we usually step back and start a little bit of our conversation with the person's background story and a little bit of how you came to be doing this unique kind of work bridging these different kinds of psychology.

Williams: Yeah, well it's been a winding path. Can't pretend I always set out to sort of take this path, but you know, I suppose I was ensconced in nature as a child, grew up in West Wales with nature literally at my doorstep and developed that connection and I would say a sense of identity with the natural world in that this is somewhere I was often quite solitary, somewhere I would think about myself, about the world and then kind of through that and I suppose through relationship with kind of my childhood pets sort of developed an interest in more in kind of animal welfare than kind of environmentalism per se. And, you know, that led to kind of personal choices in my life around diet. But it wasn't until, you know, decades later, really, that this became anything of note in my kind of career. became a clinical psychologist. That, you know, that was an interest of mine. And then just had the good fortune, I suppose years after qualifying as a psychologist to have the opportunity to do a PhD in environmental psychology.

So this was, you know, the remit of that had to do with nature. I had obviously a lot of say in the specifics within that. And I also got to do that in Welsh. So, you know, to write that in Welsh and that was actually the condition of the scholarship. So it sort of brought together, I guess, different parts of myself into one project, which is incredibly kind of fortuitus to have had the opportunity. But then sort of was left with more questions about what do I do with this PhD certificate? Is it decorative? Do I just put it up on the wall? or do I bring that in to my career as a clinical psychologist? I'm sort of still answering that question I suppose in terms of you know how do I use this new knowledge to integrate that within clinical psychology, how to help people who are very distressed by climate change, as well as can I have a role in shaping actually the discipline of clinical psychology to meet this challenge. So yeah, I'd say that's been sort of my journey in a nutshell.

Doherty: Yeah, yeah, this is really great. There's a lot of directions we can go. Let me see what was I thinking here? Well, thought we could, among all these things, I thought we could talk a little bit about this idea of eco anxiety, because I know you've studied this and written about this. Now, this is also an area that I go deeply into in various directions, thinking about it, training clinicians, working with people. So I would love to hear a little bit how you talk about this topic. I know for myself, it's complicated. And I think it's important to think about how you get into it. I was just doing a podcast with some other folks yesterday, and people often ask me “Thomas, what is eco anxiety, is it a disorder? And I have to always step back and say, well, anxiety is a feeling and it's a normal feeling that we all have for various reasons and we can have anxiety about the environment. so that's normal, but it could be a disorder if someone is really debilitated by anxiety where they can't sleep or can't do their work or avoiding things.

But I also recently tell people, well, eco anxiety is also more of an identity. Like when someone says I have eco anxiety, it means they're signaling something to other people that they, you they believe in science, they're concerned about the climate. So it's like a statement of, least that's what I think about statement of identity, social identity. And then, you know, then it goes in a lot of directions from there, and then there's the danger of under diagnosing people's problems and assuming that they're all normal when they might actually be debilitated. So I've been trying this validate and engage model is what I call it, where you validate all the concerns, but you engage where you need to more clinically. So I just want to see how that plays out similarly or differently and how you look at this.

Williams: Yeah, well, you're absolutely right in that it's incredibly complicated and my ideas about this are always developing. I suppose with more people I encounter who would say they experience this, even broader than eco-anxiety, just distress, I suppose, because obviously it can take various kind of, have different kind of emotional emphases. But I think that even what words we use like disorder, this is a of a movement, certainly in the UK, it might be in the US as well, what this word even means and the broader implications of locating something within someone rather than within the broader system. And that there's no end to that debate and there's no easy resolution. But I would say that two things can be true at the same.

Doherty: Yep.

Williams: I think that obviously there is a real backdrop to kind of distress in relation to climate change or eco-anxiety whatever term we use but that there's always a personal story as to why someone is distressed and what particular flavor it takes on. So yeah I mean thinking about that you know when I'm working with people who worry about this there's always something to understand in terms of what are you in particular worried about, what is worrying about it for you, how does it offend your specific values and then that leads on to specific kind of resolutions or interventions, ways that can be useful to them.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love that. I like the idea of resolutions. That's a great way to think about this because that's more open ended. A resolution could be validating students normal feelings because they're studying an environmental topic and or it could be more support or intervening even more strongly with therapy or medication if someone's really debilitated. So yeah, I like that. That that resolutions piece. And It sounds like one of the things you're doing also is really trying to study what kinds of therapy styles are helpful in this in this area and it seems like you've been pretty strong in the broadly in the in the cognitive behavioral realm with ACT therapy and compassion focused therapy. You want to talk a little bit about what you're seeing the trends are and like in the in developing and applying therapies in this area.

Williams: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. The  trends I suppose I'm aware of this through some research I'm involved in. I'm supervising a project at the moment that's doing a systematic review of all the different kinds of interventions that are being used specifically actually for young people who have eco-anxiety. And what I find most interesting about this is that most interventions don't have a clear theoretical backing at all and you know that as a clinical psychologist who's had theory and research absolutely drummed into me throughout my training and beyond that's something I'd like to comment on because I think that without theory, we can't really evaluate why something has been helpful. And it makes it harder to have a focused intervention that we could have any hope of being useful in a way that's replicable. So that's what I'm noticing is actually the lack of theory in space. Not to say universally, but in a lot of the papers we reviewed, there clearly wasn't sort of underlying theory that was explicitly articulated.

Doherty: Yeah, yeah, exactly. think there's some general assumptions. It reminds me when I helped start the Eco-Psychology Journal some years ago, trying to do an academic journal in this area and many people came in not really wanting to be questioned about their work. They just would make a statement like, well, the planet is in crisis and, you know, and then, you know, we'd say, well, what way is it in crisis? What do you mean by crisis? And there was a lot of received wisdom about, obviously in crisis, why should I have to explain this to you? So yes, it sounds like you're trying to trying to parse that out a little bit. What are you finding or what are you thinking in the theory realm?

Williams: Yeah. I think so. So I mean, you know, I suppose I've got to own up to obviously my own lens here and preconceptions because as you say, I come very much from a cognitive standpoint and I rely a lot on my prior knowledge of cognitive theory, broadly speaking, and that includes things like standard cognitive behavior therapy and offshoots you could argue to various extents, like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and the one I really find most useful, Compassion Focused Therapy. More and more, I think that is a really helpful framework to understand many of the themes that arise in eco-anxiety and climate distress where I find almost invariably there's this high level of kind of self-criticism, extremely high standards, a kind of a burden of responsibility that people are carrying to the exclusion of considering other people's roles and I just think I found some that that's useful in my clinical, I'm trying to write up a case study at the moment using that kind of framework because I think that what's inherent in this idea of compassion is helping people to not just kind of be alert to kind of suffering and people usually are, but their own suffering as part of that and to extend the same compassion to themselves that they clearly have for other people on the planet.

Doherty:  Yeah. So listeners, you know, we're talking and there's a lot of therapists in the, in the, listening group that will, will understand this. My understanding of compassion focused therapy, it often comes down to that three, three level model where we have the part of our nervous system that's approaching things and wanting things. and then there's the threat part of our nervous system that's protecting us. And then there's the soothing part, the calming part, the parasympathetic nervous system and the oxytocin and these calming neurotransmitters. I've used that in therapy a lot myself. And I always find that It's very easy for people to say what threats they're facing. Everybody's got that top of mind. And then every day they're approaching something all day, their job, their family, they're chasing things especially in kind of capitalist society. We're taught to approach. But when I say well, what are you? What are you content with or what do you calm yourself with?

Williams: Yes.

Doherty: Hmm, I don't know. I don't know. And so, that's a super useful theory. know, so, yes, and that that's like this podcast, you know, we're asking like climate change and happiness, like, when are we happy? And, you know, our happiness muscle is pretty weak, we might say, or pretty beleaguered.

Williams: What is that? What's content? Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I think that's actually one of the reasons I really like that model is that it's one of the tests of a good theory. I think it's just how useful it is and how much it explains things to people. Therapeutically, you need that to be quite an intuitive understanding. I don't think you want something too hifalutin. You want something that people can immediately connect to. And I find it quite versatile, actually, because some of the specific kind of recurring challenges, I think, for people who are very involved in the climate movement that have to do with just the social psychology of caring about something that others don't as much or aren't as willing to talk about. And you can actually apply that idea that we have three basic emotion regulation systems to help people understand social interactions that might arise, including, well, you know, why are people shutting down when I'm trying to talk about climate change? Well, maybe their threat system is activated. How can we do this in a way that bypasses that, that, you know, helps people feel, you know, energized in a more of a drive system or helps people feel more of a connection with you that, you know, that draws on the soothing system. So you can almost repeat those three models, I think, in various situations, when you're about various kind of problems that arise from being very climate distressed.

Doherty:  Mm-hmm, yeah.

Williams: So it's versatile. you know, generally speaking, I would say I really like anything cognitive that brings in an understanding of why is it that you're finding yourself in a constant state of distress? And I think that another really useful aspect of this is what came out from a recent paper that, again, I supervised, which was a kind a phenomenological analysis of climate distress where people were saying “I should be distressed and it would be morally unacceptable not to be. And also, if I weren't distressed, I wouldn't be doing anything to fight climate change”.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Williams: So that's incredibly interesting proposition and almost, it feels like it almost undermines the entire concept of therapy in this space. So that really gave me pause for thought.

Doherty: Yeah, no, this is really great. And this is something I've been talking about with John Frazier, who we just had on our podcast recently, who works with conservation professionals and zoo professionals who, who are incredibly impacted by stress, protecting wild species and, protecting species in zoos and all the linkages between zoos and wildlife refuges around the world. Zoo folks are some of the most stressed people I've ever met but they don't seek self-care because they're very selfless and into animal rights. And so the care needs to go to the animals, not to me. And I think it becomes a badge of honor in a way. And so, yes, that's a paradox. The people that are most distressed, the climate professionals don't really have a rationale why they should take care of themselves. And then the eco-therapists are sort of like helpers looking for clients and can't find the client because the very clients they want to work with are not really interested in what they're selling.

Williams:  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, the people I've met have kind of come to me via this website, the kind of climate specific therapy website, and I haven't, you know, haven't had to go out sort of looking. But on the other hand, I can see how many people wouldn't even consider therapy. In fact, it's what came up in this paper, you know, the participants were saying “a therapist would just tell me to stop worrying or stop thinking about this or to not spend so much time being active in the climate space”. And I actually think some therapists do say that, you know, that there's some research to show that these are the kinds of responses some people get from therapists who aren't sort of climate aware.

Doherty: Yeah.

Williams: But I think linked to that what's interesting is that some people, they would like to have a therapeutic space, a counseling space, just a reflective space with someone who they know is essentially not a climate denier because that gives that person some credibility and you know that whatever they say to you, they're not saying it because they're dismissing climate change.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Yes. This is this is stuff I talk about in my book a lot. Both ways to validate people's concerns. “Validate, elevate, create” you know my catchphrase. An example of a young client who is doing activism and I said my previous therapist didn't know what a Keeling curve was, which is the measure of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, basic climate science. So what they were saying is my previous therapist had no understanding of climate science. Thus, couldn't really, I felt like they couldn't understand me or take me seriously. Yeah.

Williams: Yeah. And I think that also brings in a kind of an interesting question when it comes to the role of the therapist, because what I've found is that there's the risk that almost someone seeks out permission within the therapy space to do a certain thing. I think this can happen with the question of, should I have children or not? Which is very at the forefront of some young people's minds.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Williams: where the therapist could be in a position where there's an expectation that they'll say, yes, you may. You know, I'm not a climate denier and I know what the science says and I still think you're okay to go ahead. Where I actually think therapy can be hugely beneficial, not obviously in, you know, giving people any kind of advice in that direction, because I don't think that's the role of therapy, but in helping someone to understand “What are the factors that you're drawing down to help you make this decision? How much are you relying on your view of what's right and your kind of intrinsic values? How much are you relying on fear of what others might, how others might judge you either way?” That's another part of social psychology I think of eco anxiety that that is operating for some people is almost the fear of judgement.

Doherty: Yes. Yeah, I suppose that goes that goes in every direction because some people are isolated, which is one of the big risk factors. And so some people are fearing judgment because their very beliefs will be judged by their family or their community negatively, like they'll be made fun of or intimidated even. Or then or on the other hand, they're not they're not green enough, they're not eco enough. I think that's what happens in like extinction rebellion and some of these subcultures. Like then it's a race to see who's the most green, who's going to put in the most hours. who's going to risk getting arrested, that kind of thing.

Williams: Yeah, you know, again, what I like about compassion-focused therapy, is it has the base of—really something similar to existential therapies—that idea that well there are certain kind of undeniable facts about the difficulties of just living and I would say that one of those is that other people will judge you no matter what you do and so with the decision like having children, you know, the truth is that whatever decision you make, someone's going to judge you. The question is, what's your decision based on your own judgment?

Doherty: Yeah. We've got a little more time, so I want to swing back to the Welsh, the specific Welsh context, I think is really unique for you in terms of the language. But I do want to say it does sound like even though you're a cognitive practitioner, a lot of what you're talking about sounds very existential.

Williams: Mm-hmm. I think so. mean it's hard not to integrate things with something so complex and that presents so many different ways. I think I'm always bringing it back to well how can I how can this be expressed in cognitive terms? I like a kind of theoretical consistency, you know, I suppose I'm not in favor of sort of eclecticism, I like the integration.

Doherty: Yeah. No, that's great. And I think in your discipline there is really the model for us moving this field forward to actually be taken seriously among other therapists who do the deep theory work and frankly see, you know, eco therapy, eco psychology is really a kind of environmentalism that's not necessarily done the work to make itself a therapy yet. So anyway, this is really great. Where was I going? yes. Okay. So yeah, let's bring it out into the world. You mentioned there's a new government in Wales. And so I want to bring this into even how you think about your role in society as a person yourself as a citizen. But also, did you notice special things about doing environmental psychology or eco therapy when you were writing and working in the Welsh language versus English?

Williams: Yeah, first of all, I don't know if specialist is the word for this, but just the added challenge was almost like a personal challenge to translate concepts into Welsh because I learned Welsh in a non-academic context. After school everything was in Welsh. In school, my degrees were in English up until the PhD. So, you know, learning to translate concepts was an added sort of challenge there. But I think that one of the interesting things is just thinking about what kind of language embodies in terms of nature because what I found was when I was trying to translate certain concepts you realize that you could only go for an approximation with some things and that you know which is an odd thing to say

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Williams: It even makes you think about what does translation even mean in that case, you know? Words like Cynefin, which I guess again loosely translates to habitat, is a word we use to describe sort of the place where we belong. I think it just sort of shows in my mind that the history of the Welsh language and maybe of the Welsh people is one that's quite close to the natural world. It's possible that I'm taking this reasoning too far, but it sort of led me down a path of thinking, does that mean that almost our identity has been more close to nature in terms of how we conceptualize ourselves?

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Williams: If we're ready to refer to our own environment as a habitat, that means seeing ourselves as quite similar to the natural world. Actually this was kind of the topic of my PhD was part of it was nature connectedness. Part of my thesis was that we should conceptualize this within kind of social identity theory. That nature connectedness reflects a sense of social belonging to the natural world, like we'd belong to any other human group.

Doherty: So in Welsh, the word for environment is habitat. The use for the word that we, the English, use environment. Is that how that works?

Williams: So it's different. So the word for environment is Amgylchedd, which actually literally means the same as the word environment. Guess it's like the French; it sort of refers to stuff that's around us and it's the same in Welsh. Amgylchedd is like stuff that is circling us.

Doherty: Uh-huh. Yeah.

Williams: Whereas Cynefin is more specifically, you know, refers to kind of a place where you as a person might belong, you know, like your kind of your hometown or your culture. it's more abstract in some ways.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love it. When I went to New Zealand, I learned about the Māori language and the idea of Tūrangawaewae or standing place. This really rich concept of my standing place where my tribe or my iwi is located and are in place. And then I have a certain authority and protection over that space but standing place I love because we can also form standing places too. We might not necessarily be gifted one by our culture, but we could choose a standing place, which then moves into stewardship and being connected and rooted and having a sense of place. And so it sounds like you worked with all those kinds of things.

Williams: Yeah, I mean, you know, not much of this came in. It's quite, you know, it's a psychology kind of PhD, so it doesn't really go much into those other things, but it sort of sparked those ideas. And Māori is interesting, because I think that's the place that's just that pushes Welsh off the perch for having the longest place name. I think maybe in Māori they have the longest and then Welsh comes second. But place names are another interesting one. In Welsh they're very kind of, I think they're called toponyms, so they always refer to, not always, but a lot of the time to geographical features.

Doherty: Uh-huh. yeah.

Williams: Which is also interesting because some of them, those purported geographical features no longer exist. what's encoded in the name is almost like a past that's no longer there.

Doherty: Yeah. Like the path that crosses over this river or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, that's as fascinating. There are so many directions we can go. I want to wrap it up with something practical. And I think, I believe it's positive, but we'll see. You talked about some new government changes in Wales.

Williams: That's it.

Doherty: And do you see that as being helpful for Wales in terms of it as a nation and in terms of, you know, adapting to climate change and things like that?

Williams: Yeah, I think so. I mean, whenever I think about adapting to climate change, I was divided into mitigating, trying to actually prevent more climate change as much as possible, and then adapting. I can see it helpful for both. Certainly, there's more power, I guess, to adapt locally. Obviously, any mitigation has to be a global effort. But Wales is very vulnerable, especially vulnerable within the UK to flooding. So there needs to be enough funds within Wales for council for example to kind of not just react but to prevent damage from flooding. I don't feel that there has been enough of that thinking up to this point so that my hope is that the new government will take that seriously.

They certainly came on board on a platform of you know being more climate conscious than I'd say previous governments and I think we just have such a problem with recurring flooding where an area might experience flooding over and over again over many years. So that's the kind of thing I'm hopeful about, that there could be better preventative approaches for those kinds of problems that we have.

Doherty: But it sounds like they're generally aware of the problem and not a denying style of government.

Williams: Yeah, I don't think they're denying style. They're very kind of concerned, I'd say, conservation in general, including language conservation. I think they feel like they kind of go hand in hand. I also don't want to sound like a spokesperson for any particular kind of government. It's just time will tell, isn't it? I don't know what they'll be like. so far, there's a lot of positive energy coming out. essentially, their main aim is to try and decentralize power more from Westminster so that Wales has more control over certain functions. At the moment, it's only certain things it can do with more kind of devolved powers and not to get too technical but renegotiating a specific formula that determines how much money we get. Which at the moment is I think there's a compelling argument to say that it's not enough. So with more of those powers I think we'll be more freed up to adapt to climate change.

Doherty: Yeah, so some more self-government more autonomy, which of course plays into a long, long, long history, which we won't have time to get into. But, yeah, but it's a really proud and interesting culture. So it's really neat. And I love the language piece. Well, we're going to wrap up for now. We could easily go on as we always say so many things.

Williams: Yes, yeah.

Doherty: Marc, I just really am proud of your work. I think it's really great what you're doing. It's very inspiring. And we're going to have a bunch of links in the show notes if you're interested in some of these research studies that Marc has been working on. They're very helpful for eco therapy people. So we'll put some links in there and I'll make sure to get some of those Welsh terms properly spelled for our transcript and for our show notes.

Williams: Yeah.

Doherty: And anyway, Marc, what are you where are you going for the rest of your evening there?

Williams: Well, it's turned into quite a sunny day, so I imagine I'll take a nice little stroll on my way back home. And we've got a bank holiday weekend here, so we're looking forward to just a long weekend of relaxation.

Doherty:  Alright, well that's great. We're recording around the Memorial Day holiday here in the US, so we actually have a longer weekend too. So it's that time of the season where people are turning to the outdoors, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. And so here's wishing a good season for people and good and safe season. And Marc and listeners and everyone, Panu, where you are, be well.

image credit | Ali Kazal

Season 5, Episode 19: On A Career in Climate Wayfinding: With Katharine Wilkinson

Join Thomas and Panu to listen in on their great  conversation with Katharine Wilkinson who reflected on her career as a woman working in climate science and policy, and how she reached back to her roots with her latest book and program Climate Wayfinding.

“Sometimes I think the paradox of calling is that we have certainty and uncertainty in the same breath.”

— Katharine Wilkinson, from the episode

Links

• Katharine Wilkinson

• Books

  • Climate Wayfinding (2026) 

  • All We Can Save, (2020) a collection of writings by 60 women leading on climate, co-edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson 

  • Between God and Green (2012)

• Climate Wayfinding Program

• Project Drawdown

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

Thomas Doherty: Well hello, I'm Thomas Doherty.

Panu Pihkala: I am Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: And welcome to climate change and happiness. This is our podcast, the show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about climate change and other environmental issues, including your positive connections with nature and your values. This episode should be coming out in the summer of 2026. And we'll be trying to anticipate a little bit about what we're going to be finding in the summer. We are really lucky to have a special guest with us today.

Wilkinson: I'm Dr. Katharine Wilkinson. I'm a climate writer and teacher. I co-founded and lead the All We Can Save project and recently published the book Climate Wayfinding.

Doherty: Yeah, and we've been chatting with Katharine. Katharine is someone we don't know personally, but we know of professionally. Katharine is kind of a veteran of climate science and communication and more recently, public expression. She has her new book Climate Wayfinding which is really great and accessible. And she's been traveling around talking about this and we're really lucky to grab her coming in from her home briefly in Atlanta, Georgia. And I'm in Portland, Oregon, and Panu, as we know, is in Helsinki. Panu, do you want to get us rolling on our conversation today?

Panu: Warmly welcome, Katharine, also on my behalf. Lovely to meet you. We often start by asking something about the person's journey towards what they later became. Would you like to share something about how did you end up being so intimately involved with environmental and climate issues?

Wilkinson: Thank you, Panu, and thank you, Thomas. It's really a pleasure to get to have this conversation and get to know you both a bit beyond the work that you've done so brilliantly.

I think like a lot of people, my arrival into this work had educational roots. When I was a sophomore in high school, freshly turned 16, I spent four months at a wonderful experiential school called the Outdoor Academy in the Southern Appalachians in Western North Carolina. So I lived in the woods with 25 kids for four months and sustainability and ecology were woven into the ways that we operated as a community, what we were learning in the classroom. I started to read Mary Oliver's poetry. I read Daniel Quinn's novel Ishmael. But I was also having firsthand encounters with the ecological wounds of that part of the world. Mountaintop removal coal mining, clear cuts for industrial timber in the national forest.

And so I was both deeply enlivened by how we were living and what we were learning. And I was utterly heartbroken about the encounters I was having with the gap between the way that we can do things and the way that so often in dominant society we do things. And I still have the journal that I had at that time at the beginning of the semester—we all made a hand bound journal—and I can remember this absolute steadiness of hand when I wrote simple, but profound words “want to help the world, be connected with the earth, change the way I live.” And I remember just so much clarity and conviction about that.

Panu: Hmm.

Wilkinson: And I think sometimes the paradox of calling is that we have certainty. Sometimes I think the paradox of calling is that we have certainty and uncertainty in the same breath. And I had no idea what that would mean for my life moving forward.

Doherty: Hmm.

Wilkinson: And in a lot of ways, I feel like that was a moment of kind of setting the compass arrow, so to speak. And I've zigged and zagged through climate work now from those early days of youth activism for 27 years and counting. Yeah.

Panu: Warm thanks for sharing that, that's very inspirational and testimony to the power of these social experiences outdoors. So a nod to all of the folks around the world who are doing environmental education and outdoor education and all that stuff.

Wilkinson: It's so powerful.

Panu: And very often the impacts are seen only years and years later on or the full impacts. Of course something is visible right away and we have an earlier episode for example with Louise Chawla who has been researching these factors and moments and influences which cause people to go into environmental or nature-oriented trajectories and I hear very powerful ones here and also reminded of the saying by a woman from the east coast that “the world called and I answered”

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Wilkinson: Yes, yes, yes, I do think there is there is a real calling that happens for so many of us and often it is a combination of heartache of some kind and enlivenment about the possibilities.

Doherty: Mm hmm. Yeah. that's wonderful. I think for our episode, since we have a lot of experience here, I think it's good for listeners to realize that what we see now is formed over many years of thinking in society. And even Daniel Quinn's novel, Ishmael, I haven't thought about that in a long time, but I remember reading that at one point. So there are novels and books, even like Katharine’s book or my book or Panu's work that people are reading now, but there were things that we were reading, you know, 20 years ago or 30 years ago that were influencing us. So it is like this long, long, long tradition of environmental protection that most people share, even though we forget that and don't see it. Yeah, there's so many directions to go, but I was curious, Katharine, to talk a little bit, if you wanted to reflect on the beginning of your career, because as we chatted earlier, women are in many roles of leadership now in the climate movement, either in science or policy, government, but that wasn't always the case. And it seemed like that was an explicit focus for you, or maybe you were pushing against some boundaries when you got started. Could you want to take us back in time? I think young people might find this interesting.

Wilkinson: And this is a fun invitation, Thomas. It's taking me back actually to a conversation I remember having with my first boss out of college. So I spent a year working for the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the big environmental NGOs in the US. And was doing a lot of work on the ground in Southern Appalachia in Tennessee. And my boss was in New York, and I was up there for some meeting or another. And we went to have lunch and he said, you just need to get a PhD. It doesn't really matter what it's in, but you're going to need to have that for credibility in this space.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Wilkinson: And I think it's a testament to what the environmental movement was like at that time. And it really did feel like if you didn't have the bona fides, if you didn't have the research chops, if you couldn't come in with, you know, a PowerPoint presentation full of charts and graphs and data, you know, good luck claiming a seat at the table. And I did do exactly that. The following year I went to the University of Oxford and started work on a on a PhD.

And I did that kind of in my own funny, wildly interdisciplinary way, looking at what was at the time kind of a burgeoning—movement is too strong a word—but initiative around climate within American evangelical Christianity. So it was a mashup of public discourse and religion and politics and culture and very qualitative work.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Wilkinson: But I can remember coming out of that PhD and even after publishing my first book, which was an academic book called Between God and Green, and in some ways still feeling like I kept finding myself in rooms where I didn't feel like I could be taken seriously. And they were often rooms full of mostly men, mostly white men. And certainly, that is where the microphones were sitting. And some years into my own climate trajectory, I found myself feeling pretty darn frustrated about that as a matter of efficacy, as a matter of fairness, as a matter of honoring kind of the full suite of talents and wisdom that we have in this community.

And in 2019, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and I were at a conference together where we were watching these same gender dynamics play out. And we said, we've had enough of these conference sessions. We went on a rage hike along a nearby river. And I shared with her that I'd been thinking about an anthology of writings on climate by women as a way to do sort of a collective chorus uplift, if you will. And that's the work that became the All We Can Save anthology that came out in 2020.

And happily, I think in the last now almost six years since that book came out, it has shifted. I think there is much better representation, but still if you look at boardrooms, if you look at national legislatures, if you look at the places where climate decision making is happening, we still aren't anywhere close to gender parity in terms of who is at the table making decisions about our shared future.

And when that is the case, we know that the outcomes for the planet are better from the community level to the national level. Certainly, we saw that in the Paris agreement negotiations when Christiana Figueres was leading those. It's still something that we need to continue to work on. And what's been interesting for me to reflect on with this new book is that I think in some ways I am reclaiming ways of knowing and things that I knew to be important in the earliest days of my own journey, whether that be poetry, whether that be centering the human spirit, whether that is the building of community. But it took me a long time to really hold and center that in my own work, because these are the things that are coded as feminine in our world, and thus often dismissed as “nice to have”. But really, you know, all the matters of the prefrontal cortex and things with hard numbers and linear trajectories, you know, are still often the things that are celebrated.

Panu: Hmm.

Doherty: Yeah, that's great. I mean, you're more secure, developmentally, that's what we also talk about that in our podcast.

Wilkinson: Yeah, but also but also more secure professionally, right? There was something about kind of earning my stripes maybe in the space that then made professionally safe to explore more of this terrain.

Doherty: Yeah. because if you had showed up with a poem and a playlist in those earlier meetings, it wouldn't have gone very well.

Wilkinson: Yeah, I really tried. I was the lead writer on the book Drawdown, and I really tried to advocate for including just one Mary Oliver poem in that book, and I was resoundingly shot down from that idea.

Doherty: Yeah. Hmm.

Panu: Too bad, too bad.

Wilkinson: I know we need we need the poets. We really do.

Doherty: Yeah. So it's going it's going both ways. I feel like I was at a climate week event in Boston and I was really thinking that they were missing just the arts broadly at the climate week. In terms of not just arts as entertainment but the arts as agents of change. We’re going in lot of directions in our society around climate. All of these trends about bringing women, and that is still true. Most of my training groups with therapists, many of my students, many of the climate psychology alliance people are women. In fact, I'd say it's like 80 to 90 percent women. So in certain areas of the climate movement, there are a lot of women leaders, women centric. But yes, as you say, at the true power seats of the table, the true decision making behind closed doors, it is still really an old boys club still to our detriment. It's easy to think that we've made progress, but, not in all areas. So that’s really interesting.

Wilkinson: I have to share one other gender observation from the book tour with climate wayfinding that has been very interesting to me that even in rooms that have been a really kind of beautiful representative gender mix, most of the men have walked out without the book.

Doherty: Hmph.

Wilkinson: And I think that I actually sort of challenged a group last week to say, you know, if you think that this book is not for you, there may be something in this book that people you work with need you to have, right? That stretching into these spaces of the body, the heart, other ways of knowing, other ways of engaging, that are not about sort of rational debate and laying out strategy, right? But bring in these other dimensions. You may not think you need them, but there may be people that you're working with that needs you to have them. And that was interesting. For a while, I thought, maybe this is just because of all we can save and, you know, kind of the centering of women and that work. But I kept seeing this gender dynamic come up that I found fascinating and a bit discouraging because I think we all need to be cultivating the full spectrum of our capacities in this time.

Doherty: Yeah, I agree. So you're privileged to get into some more high-powered group planning and things like that. So yeah, that's a paradox. I've been talking about with a lot of my climate therapy, climate psychology people, environmentalists pay lip service to the need for self-care. But when it comes down to it, they aren't necessarily the best at this. And they do revert to the science and the instrumental. My needs, my personal needs, are second, almost in a self-punishing way. That's a whole deeper level of this.

Panu: Yeah, that would be an interesting discussion of the psychological models which are often unconscious among various people in this case, environmentalists. And of course for men it's often a tragedy of socialization that there's been so little opportunities for practicing free somatic movement for example.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Panu: Or given credit for being sensitive with creativity and arts, for example. So, it's a big societal problem. There might be listeners who haven't checked out what climate wayfinding is about. So, in a nutshell, what is it about?

Wilkinson: Well, this is an excellent question. So, Climate Way Finding is a book that actually grew out of a program that we've been running at the All We Can Save project for the last four years that was designed to help meet people in this increasingly mapless world that we live in.

This is quite literally true as the climate crisis changes our physical landscapes, but it's also true for us that maps are coming up short internally, organizationally, culturally. Our ways of sense making and navigating are not working. And I think we hear that navigational challenge in the very questions that people ask, and especially in that persistent drumbeat of a question “what can I do? What can I do?” And over the years, I started to think about that question, to use a fungal metaphor as more of a fruiting body of bigger, deeper wonderings that people are holding, certainly that I myself experienced holding.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Wilkinson: And there are entirely too few spaces to take and hold those big questions. And to work our way through the ache, through the doubt, through the sense of isolation and overwhelm or burnout for folks who've been in this work for a long time and towards clarity and a sense of possibility, connection and footholds for forward momentum. So that's what we've been doing with the Climate Wayfinding program. And in its simplest terms, it uses a range of modalities to help people look inward with care, look outward with curiosity, and look forward with courage.

And we started piloting the program. then started training facilitators. It's running now on over 50 college and university campuses across the US and Canada, but we're a tiny nonprofit and the needs for wayfinding are not just for students, right? People of all ages and career stages and climate newbies and burned-out veterans. Like we're all trying to orient and navigate this very tricky time.

And I had kind of a hand to forehead moment of like, yeah, I make books. That's one of the things I do. And we could take the ideas and the content that had been developed for the program and bring it into a book form and not just a book that talks to you, but a book that will walk with you through this journey of exploration, bringing in, of course, bookie things like essays and poetry and stories, but also journal prompts, creative mapping exercises, guided meditations, and even a collective reading group experience. trying to put the journey of climate wayfinding in the hands of anyone with a library card and internet access.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I like integrated book groups really into the content and process of the of the book. Yeah, yeah.

Wilkinson: These questions are too big to hold alone. You know, we really do need to hold them together.

Panu: Yeah, and I love the metaphor of wayfinding for many reasons. One is that I have a long history with maps and orienting the sport where you run with the map in the woods and the idea is that it shouldn't be too easy or you lose interest to it. Well, one could argue that the global situation is a bit too difficult, but anyway, there's a certain dynamic of realizing that uncertainty is always there if there's possibility for something truly big and important. So, it goes to sort of philosophy of vocation and calling, which we touched on briefly earlier on. But if we think of landmarks or things that give us direction, what would you say are some of those? I know that you are writing about them in the book, but as a metaphor and a substance question, what helps us orient in this kind of world?

Wilkinson: So, I think about that inward outward forward as almost creating a kaleidoscope. And that moving through those three lenses kind of ongoing and cyclical actually helps us see more clearly the path ahead.

And of course, the looking inward is in part about the emotions that we bring with us to this topic that this topic brings up within us. You have both done such amazing work on that. I was delighted that we were able to include the climate emotions wheel in the book.

Panu: Mmm.

Wilkinson: And welcoming those emotions in not just as something inconvenient that we would very much like to settle or have go away, but as sources of guidance as teachers in a way as an expression of life itself kind of rising up within us that I think when held with support and compassion can become profound sources of direction about what matters and where we want to send our time, our energy. But we also do, looking inward at the unique expressions of life force we each bring to this wild party of being human on earth, which are the things that give us a sense of inner power and deep joy. And sometimes our gifts, I think, are very clear. And sometimes they have a way of being quite slippery or hard to pin down. And we use a process of kind of somatic reflection to identify those sources of power and joy and then use those almost as a portal to the gifts or the talents that we want to offer and boldly claim in this time.

Looking outward, of course, is in part about what the solutions are. And, of course, we need the mind of the analyst when it comes to solutions. We want to make sure we are steering towards things that could genuinely, meaningfully help. And there are some BS solutions out there in the world.

But my experience with Drawdown was that even when you bring the kind of best of the rational mind and good hard math, what is the toolbox of solutions look like? With our own discernment, it's still an overwhelmingly long list, right? You can flip through the pages of that book. There are a hundred different things, right? Where in the world do you begin? And so, we welcome in the looking outward, our sense of curiosity, wonder. Where does our energy steer us? Not just where does the good mind of the analyst take us? So, kind of melding in the spirit of the artist.

Doherty: Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's great.

Panu: That's wonderful. Thanks a lot.

Doherty: Yeah, that's great because you have the technological expertise because of drawdown. That's a whole other part of your career that we haven't had talked about. if listeners aren't aware, Project Drawdown is a well-known program that really explains how to solve the problems of climate change. We know there's this poly crisis people talk about. There's also a poly solution. There are solutions for almost every technological problem that we have. So, I think maybe we can focus on toward the last part of our talk is what you're seeing out there in the world. To me, a lot of what's happening in climate, reminds me what's what happened in the antiwar movement in this in the 60s and 70s where people started to go inward because they really realized there was a barrier where they couldn't really make the social change they wanted.

Unfortunately, with climate change, we know that it's not so much what we can do. It's what we're prevented from doing, as I say in my book. With all the beauty and the wayfinding, we still have this force that's really stopping us. So, we have to be tough and long-term and savvy politically. That without getting drawn into the politics, you know, context of our time too much, how are you seeing people be creative? Dealing with the censorship and suppression that's happening in the US. I don't want to do the downer thing at the end of the episode, so we know that's tough, but what are the bright spots that people are pushing against.

Wilkinson: Yeah, I think this work has never been easy, but it's maybe never been harder, certainly in an American context. And I've been thinking a lot and in part, this is probably having grown up in Atlanta, where you cannot think about the history of the civil rights movement without thinking about the role of the black church. And when we look at second wave feminism, you know, before any were reaching legislatures. There were consciousness raising circles in living rooms and Quaker meeting houses played an essential role in abolitionism. There's this really important interplay between kind of the big splashy moments of social change that we think about and we're all working towards, right? The big national policy wins, the landmark opinion at the International Court of Justice, right? These big moments that come to mind when we think of what a social movement is and does.

But there's this smaller, quieter, often invisible infrastructure, the more human infrastructure of social change that is so important. And some of its inner, some of its communal. And I think for a movement in duress, you have to reckon with that, right? And you have to reinvest in that. And what I have seen as I have been traveling about with this book is how very much, we need that investment right now in the climate space and the environmental community. But also that people seem game for it in a different way.

I was at a big conference of green building professionals. gave a keynote and then I was running a workshop after and I thought it was going to be mostly about, you know, how to take climate wayfinding and bring it into your organization and build culture and cultivate leadership. And what that room needed to do was to hold hands and sing and cry. And part of what you do as a facilitator is improvise with the needs of who is in the room at a given moment. And so that is what we did. And I wouldn't have thought that that would have been possible in a professional space like that two years ago.

And I am outraged by the reasons for it. But I think we are actually going to be strengthening the very capacities that we have always needed to be a movement and to be leaders and contributors to this work who are not just in it one off, right, not just in it for an action here and there, but in deep, sustained, courageous ways and ways that I think center the realities of what it is to be human on earth in this very tricky time.

Doherty: Well said. Yeah. Yeah, this is a great place to end our conversation that we always say we could we could say more. And that's truly the case. Climate change invites us to think about time in a different way. And this is a long-haul thing. And we're growing through it. So anyway, Katharine, thanks so much for giving us some time here in your busy schedule with your book.

We'll put good show notes in our links for the episode about Katharine's work: All We Can Save, Climate Wayfinding and Drawdown. And so for some people, this will be a history lesson. For other people, it'll just remind you things you already know. Thank you very much, Katharine, and Panu, and listeners for all of our time today.

Panu: Hmm.

Wilkinson: It's really a pleasure to spend this time with you all.

Panu: Thank you, Katharine, and everyone, take care.

image credit | Christian Buehner

Season 5, Episode 18: Supporting Wildlife and Conservation Professionals with John Fraser

Thomas and Panu had a stimulating and wide ranging conversation with John Fraser who reflected on his career as an architect, zoo and museum designer, pioneer in conservation psychology, and creator of innovative nonprofit knowledge and conservation groups. We focused on practical ways to support wildlife and conservation professionals amidst the emotional toll of their globally important work. John also spoke about how social cohesion and community bonds build resilience in small towns like his home in Seward, Alaska.

Links

• John Fraser

  • Google Scholar

  • Dr. John Fraser Receives Prestigious Devra Kleiman Scientific Advancement Award from AZA

• Also cited: 

  • Nathan Geiger's work on active hope (Geiger, Swim & Fraser, 2024, With a little help from my friends: Social support, hope and climate change engagement)

  • Recent CCH episode with Britta Eklöf on the Challenges of Activism and Staying Involved

  • APA Div 34 Society for Environmental, Population, and Conservation Psychology

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity

Thomas Doherty: Well hello, I'm Thomas Doherty.

Panu Pihkala: I am Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. This is our podcast show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about, well, climate change, obviously, and other environmental issues. And we asked this provocative question about, you know, what does it mean to be happy in the modern world? And when we started this podcast a few years ago, happiness wasn't typically, you know, equated with climate change. But lately I've noticed that, you know, people are aware of the need for resilience and kind of positive support. So, I feel like we've kind of helped to move that conversation forward a little bit. And we are really honored to have a special guest with us today.

Fraser: Thanks, I'm Johnny Fraser. really appreciate you inviting me to your podcast. I'm gonna start again, sorry, I did need to start again. Thanks so much for inviting me to your podcast. I'm John Fraser, I'm a conservation psychologist based in Seward, Alaska, but I also spend a lot of time in New York City.

Doherty: Yeah, and I'm so glad to have John here. I have known him for some time. Actually, we met while we were both in our graduate studies, and we'll talk a little bit about that. And John is really a true polymath. He's an architect, and he's helped to advance the field of conservation psychology, and he's worked in museums and with zoos and aquariums, he's run nonprofits. He's been at the Alaska Sea Life Center in Seward. So, lots we can talk about. Panu, do you want to get us started?

Panu: Warmly welcome John, also on my behalf. Lovely to meet you. I've known your work for many, many years, both in relation to the emotional impacts of doing environmental and conservation work. That was helpful when I was writing an English paper in 2019, but you worked on that a lot earlier also. And then I've been doing a series for Finnish environmental educators about emotions and environmental education. Some of your work and work by you and your colleagues has been highly helpful. So lovely to meet you and we'll talk more about emotions in this podcast. But first I'd like to ask you something about your journey towards a person having so strong environmental values and identity. So how did that happen for you?

Fraser: Obviously, you're talking to a fellow who's retiring next month. So, thank you so much for saying you're actually looking at the things I've produced over my career. It's kind of funny to look back when people talk about my origin story because I've often said, you know, I'm just one of those shallow people that follow shiny objects. I was born Canadian in southern Ontario in Haudenosaunee lands, which is near Niagara Falls and spent in an industrial town, steel town, grew up very close though to one of my father's best friends and we spent a lot of time on his farm. I spent a lot of time with, you know, cows and horses and I didn't know about zoos at all. So, when I became an architect and was pursuing a career in architecture, was working all over the world and was asked to work on a zoo project and they there are a bunch of horses that had kicked down and eaten their barn, which I found unusual. And so I remember saying, that doesn't tell me more about these horses. Tell me about their behavior. I don't understand these horses. I learned about what are we're called Przewalski's horse at the time but are now called Mongolian horses because they no longer use the Eurocentric way of framing it. And these are these tough, tough little animals that are very aggressive. And I said, well, this is unusual, but it's a horse. And so let's think this through. And they were surprised to have an architect to immediately jump to animal behavior before you start to build a barn. That turned into an incredible relationship. And they created my career for me because I was a farm guy, I said, it's a zoo. To me, that is a farm. It's just has a lot more people looking at critters. And as they started talking about the work they do in conservation, or what conservation was, I wanted proof. So I've been one of those people that just asked questions, prove me how it works, show me the way. That that's how I ended up in zoos and aquariums.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Fraser: I was designing master planning, found myself at the Oregon Zoo, and then after the Oregon Zoo, I worked in some advertising for a while on some children's media work, built a children's museum, and was recruited to go to the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City. It was when I was there, just in that transition period when I was working for the ad agency, that I met Stephen Keller and Carol Saunders. We were together at a conference—both Carol and Steve have passed—and so I'm honoring them by saying there was far too much wine one evening and we spent a very late night with very good wine talking about the problem of environmental issues, not being about the science of nature, but about how people behave. And that really was, I think around 2000. And so Carol and I kept that conversation going. We ended up co-teaching at Antioch University. And that's where the idea came to invite a bunch of psychologists to get together. And that led to the conference that became Conservation Psychology. In parallel to that, I was pursuing a PhD at Antioch University where I met this other fellow, Thomas Doherty, who shared an advisor. And I remember sitting with my advisor early in my school career describing my work at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

How a cup of coffee tipped the balance of what was going on in a meeting. We had a new ad agency show up. They came in, they brought donuts and Styrofoam cups full of coffee for everybody as hospitality. And one of our senior curators slammed the table down, said, these people are morons. I can't work with them and walked out the door. And I was talking to Vic Pantesco about this, my advisor. And he said, that seems an awfully extreme emotional reaction. And I said, well, believe me, you know, she was upset that they would come to a conservation meeting with Styrofoam. It was just, you know, it was to her a slap in the face of all the work she does. And so we talked more about what that, meetings looked like. And Vic said that appears to be an environmental emotional trauma that they're living through and are having difficulty processing. So we went out and did a study.

Doherty: Yeah.

Fraser: This was back in 2005. And that study mapped PTSD to the experience of environmental loss for people working in frontline conservation. It took us from that time seven years to publish that paper because we were laughed at. And this becomes my career, by the way. So I became a conservation psychologist simultaneously with identifying this traumatic issue of understanding environmental change.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Panu: Mm-hmm.

Fraser: When we first presented that at the Society for Conservation Biology in 2007, you would normally do a presentation to a whole bunch of conservation biologists and they politely clap and we talk about the decline of nature and the collapse of the world and everyone claps a little bit and then they all move on and go get coffee. And we presented and you could have heard a pin drop in the room. The room was packed. A pin would have rung around the room. And finally, we started to hear a little bit of sobbing, and somebody said, you mean I'm normal?

And this became, there were no question and answer. It was very simply people saying that rings true to my life. That this is a trauma I carry in my pocket every day. And that gave us hope. To be honest, that shaped my inquiry into what gives people in environmental work hope. And that's the papers that I think Panu, you were talking about working with. Understanding how we can prevail. What does hope, what is the shape of hope? And how does it work within communities and groups and what does social support look like? And so that became, you know, my next career. I ended up leading the wildlife conservation society and created a new nonprofit called Knology, which is a transdisciplinary social science think tank in New York city and ran that organization until I retired in 2022. That changed the world. I got de-tired. I moved to Seward, Alaska for three years, which I'm just winding up right now to help a small conservation organization in Seward.

Think about the social sciences. And I can say proudly today that I live in the 10th happiest city in America because I did the study. I tested to see how happy is Seward. It is the most beautiful place in the world. It's economically stressed. There is a housing crisis. I live in a town where some people don't have indoor plumbing and where heat is a negotiable in your lease. That you may not have heat. It may be wood fire. It's a small village. It's a summer tourism site that is very busy in the summer, but only 2500 people in a fjord. So it's but it's just beautiful. And what we learned was that people are so attached to nature that that is what gives them resilience. That's what makes them feel secure, even if they live if they are housing insecure, living at the low end on subsistence lifestyles, and often in dry cabins with no access to plumbing and no indoor facilities. You know, it’s an outhouse and this is the way people live their lives. But people who are on the lowest end of the income spectrum in our town feel seen, heard and respected by those at the upper end. We're a town that believes in each other and supports each other. 95 % of people who live in the town where I live now volunteer and donate to nonprofits. And we see this sense of social cohesion that is so powerful that it gives me joy and feeds my soul.

Panu: Mmm.

Fraser:  So this is why we decided to divide our time between our apartment in New York City and our place in Seward, Alaska.

Panu: Fascinating to hear. Thanks a lot for sharing all that.

Doherty: Yeah. Well, Panu, I know you have experience with small villages and fjords up there in Scandinavia, in the Nordic countries.

Panu: We have lakes more than fjords.

Doherty:  Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. What are you thinking about Panu as Johnny is telling this great story?

Fraser: that regions have keywords.

Panu: Yeah, it's moving to hear about the sense of recognition and validation from that silent room. And it's been a big paradigm change in the 2000s in relation to recognition of psychological impacts of doing environmental work. And of course that work is still ongoing and paradigm change hasn't happened everywhere, but situation is very different than it was during those times that you John described earlier. I'm fascinated by the many things that you have been involved with and sounds like there's a great number of different people, but you've been able to find common teams and what I hear from your emphasis such as working together for the common good and taking care of each other seem important to practically all of these groups and probably also a sense of efficacy that people feel that they can do things. So it's inspiring to listen to you.

Doherty: Hmm. Yeah, it is. I was really looking forward to have you on, John, because I knew we could go in a lot of directions. I think, yeah, I think what's helpful for listeners and for young people is to realize, yeah, as I write about in my book, there is a before time where people didn't think about climate change or saw it as some hypothetical speculative issue that was the same experience I had when we did the first American Psychology Association climate task force we were talking about well, you know, there's gonna be mental health impacts of climate change. It's not just gonna be the disasters and the storms and the sea level rise and it's not just the impacts on polar bears. we were still in the polar bear era where people were thinking about polar bears and melting ice flows and we said, well no, this is going to roll out across the world and across the country.

That was before Katrina had already happened. So we saw, we had a glimpse, but people didn't quite connect that with climate change at the time. But then Superstorm Sandy, and then the fires in California, and the smoke and the heat. you know, so now we know. So the future that we predicted and saw caught up with us. And it is notable that the trauma lens that you described, which seemed so far out at the time is not at all—like if we did that talk today you wouldn't even have to preface it. People would be asking you about that or young people are leading on talking about that. yeah, yeah.

Fraser: well, that's a bit of an American view of it, Thomas. I think that the Americans intentionally lived in a denial space when the rest of the world was already acknowledging that the climate change was real. you know, living in Alaska, we are seeing environmental change at a rate that is four times faster than what you see in the lower 48. And I think anybody that's in sort of arctic countries, Panu, I'm not sure you're seeing the same thing, but for us, our salmon are completely changing their whole patterns and habits. We're witnessing trees where there should not be trees. And we're seeing, you know, I live in a town that has had almost no snow for two winters. Now I live in a very tropical part of Alaska. It hovers around freezing all winter, so it doesn't really get too cold. In fact, it never gets below what in Fahrenheit is zero, but minus 20 degrees Celsius, it never gets that cold. So we're living in a very protected area.

But I think the bigger issue is that America was in denial because climate change threatened the American foundation myth. It was fundamental to American identity that prosperity and opportunity to take from nature was unlimited. And that's not true for the rest of the world where people have acknowledged centuries of change and can see and live with centuries of history. America doesn't live in that world. They live in a world where prosperity is just a replaceable, fungible thing, almost like rainforest regeneration. It's not how nature works. And one of the reasons I think is some of my colleagues that helped us with the National Network for Ocean Climate Change Interpretation when we were first starting that project in the 2000s. We were talking about one of the ways that American denial was supported was a lot of effort to make climate change seem complicated.

And when we the story down to its hub, right, its root. The muck and biota of dinosaur dirt, know, dinosaur poop compressed over time becomes something you can burn for energy. So we do, and we end up with basically dinosaur muck in space creating a heat trapping blanket around the planet and that's making it too hot. And once we could say that to a six-year-old and they understood climate change, we said, we don't think we should have dinosaur muck in space. Kids were like, totally bad idea.

Panu: Mm-hmm.

Doherty: Yeah.

Fraser: You know, we don't have to make things complicated. And think I've been very fortunate in my career to say we can simplify a lot of these basic concepts. Right. And often it's the sense of loss of love or acceptance or your foundation myth that is troubling. And if we get to that deep space of where people are and where they find love and how love defines them, then we have the opportunity to give them hope. So that's my career summed up in a sentence, and I guess we're done.

Doherty: Very well said. Very well said. Yeah. It's great. Where should we go here? I feel like there's so many. So I'm just enjoying listening to you, John.

Fraser: Well, why don't I introduce something you may not know I did? Because I worked with some colleagues at NOAA across all of the federal agencies back around 2001 to convene meetings of agencies and nonprofit organizations to think about how we measure environmental education in relation to achieving the agreements of the Paris Accord.

And in developing an understanding as a consensus the group came to realize that in the United States the territories of sovereign nations within its borders were first of all a different framing of what is the United States, what is America. It was not 50 states, it was not Congress, it was a border, a geographic concept that we all agree exists but may not necessarily agree with. But inside that there's a lot of tension around what is governance and what is our relationship to nature, that we need to reframe the understanding of how we talk about nature and sustainability.

And since then I'm inspired by my friend Janet Swim when she says, “I don't want a sustainable marriage. I want a thriving, passionate marriage that lets me live to my fullest potential. And why would I want sustainable nature? Why wouldn't I want a thriving nature that lets me live my life to its fullest potential?”. And so we've got to quit describing sustainability as if we can maintain what's wrong today, because that's okay. That makes us comfortable. Let's admit that we have gone through a strange relationship to nature. It is at a breaking point, like any divorce and if we really want this to work we need to think about what it is to thrive and to get there we need to heal the harms and so working with First Nations peoples or coming from Canada First Nations peoples in the United States who would say you know indigenous or the Native American population. Now I'm in Alaska working with Alaska native groups.

So when we talk about environmental identity. The Western European approach has been to think about environmental identity as an exchangeable part of who I am. It's like I have many other identities in different contexts and it's a measurable, describable thing. But when I talk to people who are from Indigenous communities, those are not separable parts. Nature and me are one. They exist and there is no way to unpack them as separate because my way is the way of speaking about nature. And so when I use in the place where I live on now on Sugpiaq lands, which is the population from the Kenai Peninsula, using the American term. So to be, you know, Chugachmiut from the Chugach forest people of the Chugach, you know, that basically says “we're the people here”. But here is who we are. And that's the part that is so complex in Western European framing to think of me as of place, of nature, of this nature, and therefore when I think of things converging, I use words that also mean rivers and estuary. There's no difference between estuary and my family or ideas that come together. Now I'm saying that really simply here, okay? So there's a whole lot of cultural baggage here that I would need to learn more about to talk in any more intelligent way about it, but I've been enjoying learning the language in part because it's helping me rethink how close colonial structures influence the way we see the nature around us.

And the colonial nature of English itself, the way we describe things, the way we describe places is patrimonial. We describe something like, mean, I'm, Panu, you're on this this call and you think about how Patriarchy includes last names. yet, and so when we describe places or real estate, we already describe ownership and we set preferences and that is not the way the language even works. So it means that we have to have a different relationship. When I describe you, if I say to someone today, you're a cow.

That's considered in English an insult because we treat language like animal names as pejorative. You're an eagle would be, you know, honorific. So dances with wolves was great, but we wouldn't say dances with cows. Dances with cows would be pejorative. But if someone is looking at that through the Alaska native lens, that is an honorific. To be the nurture, the giver of life, right?

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Fraser: So, you know, here we are, you know, in the English language, swine or pig is, you know, the most variations of use of a word to insult someone, right? There are many different ways to use it, but it's always an insult. It's never honorific to call someone a pig. Well, I'm going to say that there are some parts of the sex world where that's actually a positive term, but I'm going to say that these are generally considered negative terms. So I think we can think about this concept of thriving as an aspirational end goal, but really healing is a place where I think the conservation and environmental movement can help think about mind and mental process.

If we put ourselves in the space of needing to participate in healing and garden, we move into a space that is hopeful because it's action hope. And that's really Nathan Geiger's work. You know, working with Nathan on this on hope, this idea of action hope, something that is very targeted, specific and has an outcome that may not be in my life. Whereas W.S. Merwin has said on the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree. That there is this act of something I will never benefit from but if I do it, I create benevolence. I create an opportunity that is not about me. It's that transcendence beyond self. And so I think people can move into that space rather quickly when they feel that they are loved for what they are and what they contribute. And too often I think in the conservation movement, when we say I want to sustain something we cling to the idea that it's okay to be the way we are today, it's good enough. But I don't think our nature should be good enough.

Doherty: Yeah, this is great. This is great, John. I really appreciate it. mean, listeners, know, this is, well, this is what's nice about this podcast. We can have these deep conversations. You know, in my book, this is very validating to me because it's kind of what I tried to parse out in my book, you know, how to sequence flourishing and healing and identity and action. As I talk about in the book and with teaching, there's kind of level one and level two to all these topics. So level one is, yes, I have my environmental identity, and we have these Western assumptions about what identity is. But level two, again, is that it's different for different people and it's much more complex. And we all know that we can't solve problems at the same level we create them. The famous Einstein quote, but often we can't solve problems at the same level. We find them, we encounter them because the consciousness that finds the problem is not the consciousness that can solve the problem. So I think, Johnny, you're talking about this other, this other kind of consciousness where, you know, where we need to go and all the interconnections, the ecology of all this, you know, the feelings. I think the trauma piece people are much more open to accessing right now.

Fraser: Well, we can go back though to children's literature, children's TV and think about people who say profound things because they're trying to describe something complicated to a little kid. Mr. Rogers, an American TV icon, also a minister, once said, if it's mentionable, it's manageable.

Doherty: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Fraser: And it's really interesting because when you think about children who are living in abusive settings, we have made huge progress on ending child abuse. Now we're not there yet, but we've made huge progress because we now talk about it. It is not something to be shamed by if it has happened to you. And it's not something that we as a society will tolerate in the way that we have in past generations. We now talk about rape as a bad thing and we don't blame the victim and that is a radical change in mental concepts, in mental process.

So I think we're in a very different generation now. And that to me is a sign of serious hope. We may have problems with the fact we can talk about them and the fact that we do not blame the victims is already moving us into a better space. I work with zoos and aquariums. We know that veterinary medicine is the highest suicide rate of any profession. And because you deal with death constantly and you deal with very early onset terminal disease because pets don't last as long as humans.

And so people are confronting death in ways we don't anymore because medical science means that I don't have to have 12 children to have three that survived to adulthood. Right. We now have a very high success rate with children growing to adulthood. The normative expectation is my children will live and I can name them when they're born. You know, they're not just called baby for the first year. Like Sweden, you don't get a name until you're a year old because you're not even viable until you're a year out of uterus.

So in a way this idea that we don't experience death the same way that prior generations have. It's not as common in our world. So now pets become this focus where I blame the vet who is caring for my pet. I blame the vet for not doing everything they could. I blame the doctor when I have someone who is, basically in hospital on life support systems and I want to keep them alive. But that's not for the patient, that's for the family. And we're doing the same thing with how we think about holding onto this planet on this idea that I can keep harming it and harming it and harming it and it will still be okay because my life can't be bad. Those are some of the issues we carry. And so poor vets who are in the front line of this are introducing people to death much more frequently in their daily lives and are taking the blame and carrying the blame and having to euthanize animals and deal with different levels of caring from the different clients that they're working with who are basically the custodians of these patients that they work with every day. So it's a third party here that can't explain its pain. And certainly animals conceal pain. They don't show pain when they're living with cancer. Your cat does not look different other than that they start losing weight. They still act the same way.

Doherty: Hmm.

Fraser: that withdrawal and loss of love is tragic and the victim of that experience becomes a vet. So, you know, we work in wildlife, we have a wildlife response team at the Alaska sea life center. There's responsible or animal strandings for Alaska. We have a trained team ready for oiled wildlife response in the event of an oil spill anywhere. Our incident command. If we are asked by the U S government for any coast to manage and coordinate incident command for an oil spill. And so that means we have a team at the ready because we exist as a result of the remediation from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. And that means we carry with us every day that kind of trauma.

In a town that experienced in 1964, one of the most traumatic tsunamis that not only wiped out the town, but it also tore down the oil refineries, it took oil out to sea, it caught fire and came back in as a tsunami on fire. That was what hit the shore. So my community carries that and the people that I work with every day who were in town at the time who are now my age in their 60s and 70s can recall the day when the porch exploded in front of them, when the earth fell below them and when their town burned down and they lived with no resources.

And so now today to live in a house with no heat is like, well, we lived through a tsunami. It's that kind of world. That doesn't mean we're not drawing passion from nature either.

Doherty: This is wonderful, John. As we always say, we could go on and on, but we have to bring our talk to a close today. But we're going to put a number of links to John's work and writing in the show notes. we can follow up on that. We will maybe have you on for another time. And you can talk about retirement. We won't go there today. But listeners, think, you know, it's why we do this podcast is to have these conversations and just, you know, listening to someone like John, you know, such experience and eloquence about all of this stuff. We're not alone. People  are thinking about this stuff and there are hopeful stories and hope is not weak. Hope is strong and hope is real action. There are hard truths that we need to talk about.

John and I will be presenting at the American Psychological Association this summer, talking about this work and hoping to spread this. And I think the audience will be much different than these earlier audiences that we faced years ago. And so I think, you know, people are much more amenable to this. So hopefully we can move things forward. But we're going to wrap it up. Johnny, thanks so much for coming in. I really appreciate it. And Panu thanks for adding yet another interview to your long day of work there in Helsinki.

Panu: Good to meet you, John. Thanks a lot.

Fraser: Thank you both for having me. I really appreciate it. And I still like to think that love is a commodity that is free and we should be sharing it a lot more.

Panu: Exactly.

Doherty: Well said. All right, John and Panu, listeners, everyone be well.

The Artemis II crew captured this view of Earth setting on April 6, 2026, as they flew around the Moon. Image Credit: NASA

Season 5, Episode 17: The Surprising History of the First Earth Day (and What It Means for You Today)

A perfect listen for those feeling cynical about the current state of the environment but longing to rediscover hope: 

Thomas and Panu unravel the powerful stories behind the birth of the first Earth Day—how a simple idea, driven by US citizens from diverse backgrounds, transcended partisanship and grew into a movement with billions of supporters worldwide. You’ll learn some of the mythological and cultural symbolism that makes Earth Day—and the recent Artemis II moon mission—resonate deeply across traditions and generations. You’ll also find practical ways to reclaim Earth Day, celebrating not just ecological awareness, but our own personal connection to nature and our collective future. 

Links

• Adam Rome (2010) The Genius of Earth DayEnvironmental History (Useful primer on the first Earth Day month in the US in 1970)

• Earthset April 6, 2026

• This is the inspiring Easter message an Artemis 2 astronaut has for Earth while traveling to the moon (video). Space.com

• Anaïs Voski The ecological significance of the overview effect: Environmental attitudes and behaviours in astronauts.Journal of Environmental Psychology

• Arbor Day, celebrated worldwide, sometimes at Spring Equinox 

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

Thomas Doherty: Well hello, I'm Thomas Doherty.

Panu Pihkala: I am Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: And welcome to climate change and happiness. This is our podcast for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about the personal side of climate change, particularly their emotions, their emotional responses. And, you know, climate change is linked to all kinds of other things in the world, including our connections with nature and other people around us and how we either suffer with them or celebrate them. So at least myself, I'm enjoying some spring weather here in Portland, Oregon, longer days. We've had our Trillium, our Trillium Festival last week. So the wildflowers were coming out. Panu, how are you doing in Helsinki? And we have Earth Day coming up and we have beautiful moon images from the Artemis, a moon flyby mission. how are you doing? And do you all have any Earth Day or Artemis moon discussions going on in Finland?

Pihkala: Thanks for asking Thomas. In Helsinki there's nice sunshine but it's relatively cold. So we had first spring flowers coming out in March but just a couple of them and we don't have many of them yet so we're still waiting for that lovely phase of spring when the flowers start to come out. we've of course been following the Artemis moon flights.

Already as a boy I was fascinated by lunar landings and all the Apollo stuff. So that's been a long time interest of mine and now my own boys, especially the older one who is now 12, roughly five years ago he was very keen about that also and was more up to date with current space exploration than I was. So certainly runs in the family and this topic also reminds me of

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Pihkala: My earlier research with the history of environmentalism and because of that I know how impactful the first lunar flights were for environmentalism, the famous photos of seeing Earth from space the first time and also how significant things happened at the early 1970s but Earth Day actually is not big in Finland. We have some other annual team days which are much more famous around environmental themes and some environmental NGOs have tried to promote Earth Day here but I've realized that it's much bigger in the states. What's your history with Earth Day Thomas yourself?

Doherty: Yeah, I think this is a great conversation for us. you know, luckily this episode will come, will come out around April 22nd, which is traditionally the Earth Day holiday. And, well, I can identify with the fascination with space program as a child growing up in the US in the 1970s. was exactly like your boys really fascinated with, images of astronauts and when I was a child, they had the moon man, human moon voyage where they had the moon buggy, the car that they drove on the moon. And of course, I was fascinated with that and drawing pictures of it in my school notebooks. So I think parents will either, you know, people of a certain age and also parents will recognize these iconic pictures of that children draw of the astronaut with the umbilical cord coming out from the space from the floating around in space. It's very kind of primal, almost archetypal image.

And so I really, like a lot of people, I'm busy and I'm jaded and cynical. And so when I, with the Artemis moon program, you know, I kind of dismissed some of it at first, but then I did really look into it, and I was quite touched by the crew on the Artemis and their much more modern progressive makeup. And been doing some research on Earth Day. So, it's a really fascinating and genuinely inspiring. Like we need, we need inspiring things. I think we should talk more about Earth Day and the history because I can share some interesting stories today and then also this the Artemis, you know, I'll turn it over to you because I think you have ideas about mythology as well here. But, know, Artemis, the early Apollo missions, you know, the Apollo missions were named after gods. was Gemini, Mercury, Apollo, and it were masculine kind of tough guy, right stuff kind of test pilot moon missions that were quite dangerous, really.

But you know, this new era we've had the space station. We have more diverse space crews the Artemis to crew, you know, as a pilot of color and a married woman scientist. You know, they, they hug each other. They cry over the over the crew leaders loss of his wife to cancer. And, you know, they have that that really genuine overview effect where they look at look at the earth and they send really heartfelt messages just like you or I would that hey, I can see that we're all together on this planet we need. We need to work together. So it's really quite beautiful. You know, it's quite human. And it reminds us that people really do care about the planet and really do care about each other.

You know, Artemis is the sister of Apollo, right? And she is the goddess of as a very independent woman. So it's a great image for today. It's an independent woman Artemis, who likes to spend her time in the woods and protect animals, right? Yeah, so what is that? What does all this conjure for you?

Pihkala: Yeah, thanks for dwelling on that. In my adult years, I've had a slightly ambivalent relationship to space programs because part of that can be technological fascination and linked to utopian dreams of if we fail at sustainability and ecological protection, then at least some part of humanity could move elsewhere in the cosmos and that's not the way to go really. But there's some genuine advancements achieved through space technology that has to be admitted and some very primal sense of awe and wonder related to space travel. So that speaks to the ambiguity also.

Doherty: Yeah.

Pihkala: And this overview effects which you mentioned is a team in environmental psychology research. For example, Annais Voskhi, from Stanford, has been doing interesting studies on the environmental views of astronauts. For example, we might put a link to that in the show notes. But everything which motivates people to care for this fragile

Doherty: Yeah.

Pihkala: in black space is very important. This topic of annual theme days also in my mind evokes ancient stuff, mythologies and rituals and practices and they are of course heavily linked to the solar cycle and to the moon cycle also, the solstice, the equinoxes and

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Pihkala: That's something that I increasingly follow in my life and I know Thomas that you do too. We've sometimes discussed this over the podcast and in many religions and meaning systems. There's various kinds of thematic days over the year and some of those have been adapted to environmental themes and actually quite early on, for example, the Arbor Day.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Pihkala: tree planting day already in the 19th century. I checked Wikipedia entry and found out that in some countries it's even older. The Spanish village of Mondoñedo held the first documented arbor plantation festival in 1594, says Wikipedia. that's old and of course environmental concerns were different.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Wow.

Pihkala: For centuries we've had people who are not happy about cutting down trees for many reasons. I think we must admit that on one hand environmentalism is a relatively recent phenomenon, but on the other hand some of its substance goes way back. also, for example, to the ways that indigenous people have reacted to more industrial and often colonizing influences.

Doherty: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so like a lot of these things, there's many, many layers. And when we stop our incessant movement and just start to consider this thing a lot of unfolds. And I think that's what helped. That's what was positive for me. I had already been I had because of my recent book and because of my work with people and the sometimes the really grim tasks we have with climate work and protecting the environment in this really violent kind of corrupt time that we're living in. I really want to test and see if Earth Day can be something that we can really embrace as something positive. And I really do believe that we can. And yes, Earth Day is not new. And one of the things about Earth Day that I like is that it allows us to really partake of all of these traditions that are quite genuine and they're international and indigenous and ancient the idea of all these seasonal holidays Easter Arbor Day, you know, the equinoxes. They're very, they're very, they're very human. And, yeah, so it's interesting,

I don't think it's, it's hard for people in the modern world to imagine just how striking it was for people to see a picture of Earth from space, from the Apollo missions, because people, it truly is a novel experience in human evolution. had never seen, we'd maybe seen some artistic rendering, but no one had ever seen a literal color photo of the planet existing, and people always use some term like in the blackness of space or something like that. So this is really, it's a really aesthetic, beautiful thing when the sun is shining on the planet.

And it does it does really, it is like a mirror, you know, like it reflects that, hey, we're on a closed sphere. And thus, we all national boundaries and all the things that we think about, they don't appear. So it is a very natural cognitive, psychological insight, that overview effect.

And, you know, people really environmentalists really use that to share that. And that was a part of the energy of the first Earth Day in the 1970s in the US. And I did some research, you know, there's a lot of instructive things with the first Earth Day. So part of it was started by, you know, a senator, a senator from Wisconsin and governor who actually was inspired by the Vietnam War, organization and mobilization and teach ins and wanted to have a teach in about the environment. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. So he got together with a group of young people, the oldest of the oldest in the planning group was age 28. And they came out of the civil rights movement and Chicano activists, a woman who worked for the for the for the Robert Kennedy political campaign. So it was actually quite diverse. And they and they put this out this this teach in and it took on a life of its own. And it is still the largest, the largest public event and protest in US history. was three times bigger than the recent No Kings march that we had in the US.

And there was like 35,000 speakers all around the country. And mostly grassroots organized by communities by families by moms by teachers. So really, it was really a big deal. A really, really a big deal. And it was bipartisan. The there was also a Republican from California, Pete McCloskey.

Pihkala: Hmm.

Doherty: that day, that Earth Day month, there was all kinds of things going all around the country. There was TV shows. The news covered it. Magazines. The U.S. Congress actually took a day off on Earth Day so that legislators could go to their districts and speak. Corporate leaders spoke. Doctors, architects, labor leaders, religious leaders.

So it was actually much more like we think of the current of modern environmental movement. People think about pollution. They were thinking about human rights, civil rights, environmental justice. It's quite, quite amazing, really. And this is a time when there was no internet, no Facebook, no cell phones. So this was really word of mouth. So to me, it just reminds us that as what we know, people care about the planet. People care about nature.

Most people in all countries, 80% of people in the world support climate action and support government action on this. So it is the majority of people. And if we let people really be free to talk about this, they will love doing it. Now, if we tried to this in the difference with today, is that it's all politicized and people actively have made it difficult for people to do this very human, basic thing. but that's negative bad actors that have made it difficult. is a very natural, very natural response to care about other animals and nature and to, and to, and to care about the planet. So it's just good for us to think about.

Pihkala: Mmm. Thanks for sharing all that history. I knew part of that but not all of that. It's very inspiring how large the people's movement was and all the enthusiasm. Naturally when something is done the first time or the couple of first times it's often easier to get people involved but it requires the background motivation which is in this case care for the earth that exists in so many people's hearts as you say Thomas. I totally agree that we too often forget that and something not as large but with some similarities happened at the end of 2010s when climate change awareness became more widespread. Of course we've had people who have been concerned and aware of climate change for decades. But there was something of that attitude that, OK, this is a major issue. Now let's together do something about it. that's in Finland, for example, it led to the largest climate demonstrations we've had. And then, of course, COVID-19 pandemic and other things caused much trouble for that. But the fundamental great power in people who care is of course still very much present.

Doherty: Mm hmm. Yeah. And so I think, you know, another interesting story about Earth Day. So the tea was a really kind of a like a “mod squad” kind of people that came together. So you had these representatives, these older white males. It's really it's really Panu. It's such an interesting time. both politicians, you know, from California, Wisconsin, governor and governor and representative, you know, they it was a time when environmental protection was bipartisan. It wasn't politicized. These guys were not necessarily radicals. They were actually many in many ways quite conservative. Both of them were combat veterans of World War Two, for example.

And, you know, they it was lucky, you know, they pulled together this group and they wanted to call it a teach in and it was kind of dry. And then then they got this mad Madison Avenue advertising guy, Julian Koenig, who's a famous advertising person who, you know, developed some of the iconic ads from Volkswagen cars in the US, you know, this idea of think small, you know, these really kind of funny, you know, we have that show, Mad Men about advertising in the in the 60s. Well, he was one of those Mad Men characters. But he gave them a bunch of ideas like E-Day or Ecology Day, but he said, call it Earth Day, which is a great is one of the best kind of brands in the 20th century. And it was actually Koenig's birthday, April 22nd was his birthday. And so, you know, Earth Day/birthday, that was part of his inspiration.

But, you know, I think what we can take from it is that Earth Day, the first Earth Day is commonly seen as the birth of at least the modern environmental movement in the United States. And its scope and scale, as we've talked about, is really important. But, you know, I think what we can take from it is that we can think of Earth Day as the birthday of our environmental consciousness, you

Some people have a like a real clear environmental wake up like some epiphany that changes their life. But for most of us, our environmental consciousness, our environmental identity, our values, it forms, you know, imperceptibly from our childhood, and it just becomes part of who we are, you know, and on this podcast, we get people to talk about those all that stuff. But you know, so there's no specific birthday of that, except, you know, our own literal coming into the planet as organic beings.

So I think that's where I'm that's what I'm suggesting people do with Earth Day. Parents, teachers think of Earth Day as an opportunity to celebrate the birthday of our environmental values. And I think that's a pretty useful way to start thinking about this holiday that goes forward. So it isn't necessarily tied just to the 1970s. And it's much more international like right now almost 200 countries, you know, celebrate some form of Earth Day. And it is crass and maybe commercialized a little bit. But I think there's a there's like with all these holidays, there's a really healthy, kind of genuine core, like even a spiritual, spiritual core. So that's my mission, this Earth Day, to reclaim, reclaim it and not be so cynical about it.

Pihkala: Yeah, reclaiming the Earth Day. And course, Mother Earth is a very ancient symbol and a pair of words. Some of the young environmental activists who have been interviewed for various studies actually speak very movingly about them.

Doherty: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Pihkala: Ecological crisis and climate crisis damaging their mother, meaning the Earth. So that's one link here and closely related to mythologies and religion also. In Finland we celebrate Mother's Day, the second weekend in May, not too far from Earth Day. And here the start of the warmer days of summer, which usually took place in early June, which is the end of the school year in Nordic countries. So that's a big celebration of the beauty of nature. And when I was working more with religious communities, I was advocating for the idea of having different kinds of thematic days over the year. So there's this traditional celebrating nature's beauty and gratitude and those kinds of things. And then there's a need also for encountering the difficult emotions and that's more new content.

Well, the Remembrance Day for a species 30th of November is one international marker day for that, but there's many other options also. And some of these thematic days come from environmental organizations, the Earth Hour in March is celebrated by many in Finland. And then there's Overshoot Day and there's good psychological discussion of those theme days which tend to be ambivalent on one hand. They remind people of the crisis and problems, but they can also become sort of gloomy reminders and temporary evocations of guilt and shame and then people move on because it sounds so depressing. So it's difficult with the difficulty of emotions and I'm not totally happy at all with the ways that Overshoot Day is dealt with in Finland, for example. I don't see much change happening around that, but anyway, the fundamental idea of having different thematics there is for encountering various aspects of the relationship between humans and the modern human world. That's very important, I think.

Doherty: Yeah. And that's one thing, you know, you learn when you do any kind of environmental or climate work. There's a bunch of different ideas about it. You cannot, you can't get everyone to agree. And so these are primal impulses to recognize. So, you know, the earth hour, overshoot day, these each, these come from some person or group that said, how, can we do? How can we celebrate this kind of thing? And so, yes, there are a myriad opportunities and then they kind of fight for attention in our in our modern kind of you know attention economy.

And I just for listeners who are cynical about Earth Day and don't necessarily buy this. I totally get it. That's many ways how I've thought about Earth Day. By the time I came of age in the, you know, the late eighties and early nineties, Earth Day was a memory. And, you know, we had it was it was not it was seen as almost a cliche. And it's easy to feel cynical. And in fact, all of the great environmental, legal, logistical victories of the first Earth Day era, like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, all of these things are being, you know, really sabotaged right now by the fossil fuel industry that's running, running much of the US government because they bought influence in, in Washington.

So yes, all of these victories need to be protected. So yes, there's no there's no easy answer. And there's a lot of dark forces in the world. But that should not, you know, blot out the beauty of the planet and the genuine, healthy emotions that the Artemis crew is feeling looking at the Earth that your sons, you know, feel about, you know, the idea of space, space travel, these are all genuine, beautiful things. And the way to move on this is to think about it and to be conscious about it. And again, it comes back to the things we talk about all the time, which is on this podcast, which is, know, 360 emotions, we need to feel all the different, all the different emotions and, and not, not somehow disallow ourselves from feeling the positive awe, you know, that that these things bring which are, you know, really natural, healthy human emotions.

So yeah, so listeners, you can think about the birthday of your environmental identity and values as being on Earth Day. And we have many episodes talking about this idea of environmental identity and your whole your whole life story and all the different connections you have with nature. That's I think the way to celebrate Earth Day is to is to talk about our life stories and our nature connections and do an environmental timeline and think about all the key experiences that we've had. Kind of recharge our batteries. It's springy and naturally at least in the northern hemisphere it is a time to focus on so that some of this new growth.

Pihkala: Hmm. Yeah, if you invite just a couple of people who you trust and go out and gather around this, I will be very surprised if you don't come out of that feeling more energy than you did before. There's something really powerful in sharing between people. And one option, of course, is always to do some kind of even spontaneous ritual or co-created ritual which doesn't have to be grandiose, it can be just doing some symbolic activity with the elements of nature that are close by, whether those are branches and stones or something more. And that already then brings you or us closer to the very ancient practice of using ritual to keep us conscious during the annual cycle.

Doherty: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you know, thinking of Artemis that that that image of Artemis is interesting, you know, this goddess, god of the moon, capable woman protector, fierce. You know, one of the stories of Artemis, which I, don't think I'd ever heard that story. So she's this, you might know this story. She saw Artemis, the myths says that Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo, they were born together from Leto. But apparently Artemis was born first. And then she that assisted in the birth of her brother and helped her mother through labor. So Artemis is a hardworking, hardworking woman who of course, immediately goes into helping helps her brother, her mother, her brother be birthed. So she's also the patron of childbirth, of midwives, among other things. just, you know, and the I was reading about the person at NASA who came up with this name Artemis, they needed a name, because it had it didn't have that the program didn't have a compelling name when they were trying to sell this program to the US government and to Congress. And so, you know, they plucked Artemis out, it was actually a name that had been used a little bit already.

But one of the goals for this particular program was that it was going to have women in it And so they picked Artemis as a god goddess, but I don't think they really even realized the depth of the symbology at the time So it's really interesting, you know, so the world is a little more mysterious. You know then then we think I think sometimes and there's all kinds of larger, you know stories and trends going on. Anyway, fascinating stuff.

Pihkala: Yeah, it truly is. When I was more involved with Christian ecological theology, it was interesting to observe that when I was baptized as a baby, the date was April 22nd. Much later on when I was ordained, the date was 5th of June, which is the Global World Environmental Day. So some nice symbolism also related to this comment about the world being a mysterious place. Glad to be talking with you, Thomas, the listeners. I hope you find good ways to celebrate it.

Doherty: Same here. Yeah, thank you, Panu and listeners. Thank you. Again, allow yourself to be a little bit cynical because there's a lot to be cynical about. We all know but also remind remember that there are beautiful things happening in the universe, in the cosmos, and among all of our fellow people. I mean 86% of people in the globe, you know, endorse climate action, environmental protections, and want their governments to work together. So let's keep that in mind. All right, Panu and listeners, everyone be well.

Pihkala: Take care.

image credit | Anastasiya Badun

Season 5, Episode 16: New Researcher Spotlight—Britta Eklöf on the Challenges of Activism and Staying Involved

Ever wondered why some people burn out or quit activism despite caring deeply? Panu and Thomas spoke with Swedish Ph.D. researcher Britta Eklöf who explored this question. Many long-term activists face barriers like social disconnection, exhaustion, and doubts about their impact. Britta’s research shows these obstacles are interconnected, and that small changes can make a huge difference. Creating social support, clear roles, and space for emotions can boost resilience and keep activists involved. It’s not just about fighting for solutions, it’s about sustaining ourselves while doing it. Join us for the conversation. 

Links

• Britta Eklöf

  • ResearchGate

  • Britta Eklöf &Christian A. Klöckner (2025). Helping young people cope with eco-anxiety: a qualitative intervention study.

  • Britta Eklöf, Sara Vestergren, Magnus Wennerhag & Christian A. Klöckner (2025). Remaining in or leaving climate activism – insights from current and former activists on sustained engagement

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

Thomas Doherty: Well hello, I'm Thomas Doherty.

Panu Pihkala: I am Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: Welcome to climate change and happiness. This is our podcast, a show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about climate change and other environmental issues and political issues and social issues and technological issues. And we asked the provocative question, what does it mean to be happy in the modern world? And, you know, one way that people engage in express their values about nature and the natural world and human health is through activism and advocacy. And it's interesting to think about all the different life paths that people have, and also what brings people into groups and how that works in activist circles. And we have, we're lucky to have a guest with us today who's going to help us talk about that.

Britta Eklöf Yes, thank you. My name is Britta. I'm a clinical psychologist based in Stockholm in Sweden. I recently completed my PhD in environmental psychology in Trondheim, Norway. And I was lucky to have Panu Pihkala as the opponent of my thesis two months ago.

Doherty: Yeah, and we're really excited to have Britta here and she's worked with Panu and I found her research really interesting and it helped me to rethink some of my thoughts about environmental groups. So Panu, do you want to get us started?

Pihkala: Warmly welcome Britta, also on my behalf. Glad to continue the conversations. I first became aware of your work a couple of years ago at an environmental psychology conference in Aarhus, Denmark. So naming different Nordic countries. And I know that you have been living in Sweden, so that's already for Nordic countries. And I know that you have many things in your history related to environmentalism and I'd like to ask you to start by telling something about your journey towards where you are now. How did you end up being so heavily involved with environmental topics and psychology?

Eklöf :  Yeah, well. I remember, I mean, there are many starting points I could talk about, for me, watching the Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth in my teenage years, that was a big eye-opener for me. But I didn't grow up in an environment where people talked a lot about environmental issues. So I didn't really have a language for that worry.

Yeah, for any feelings about climate, really. And my first political awakening was more focused on gender equality and global justice. So in my 20s, I was more focused on that. But the information about climate crisis and the concern was really just piling up inside of me. And I was good at compartmentalizing my climate anxiety for sure. Just silently saying to myself, just don't look that direction basically. But then Greta Thunberg appeared. And soon after I heard about the Extinction Rebellion and I saw an announcement on Facebook about introductory lecture in my city and I decided to go with my friend. And I remember clearly that I had a huge resistance before going. And I was very close to cancelling last minute. But I got on my bike and I was 10 minutes late. But that meeting was transformative. I learned a lot about the climate crisis and also about democracy, civil resistance and how social movements work.

Pihkala: Mm-hmm.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Eklöf : So that was my first entry point to activism basically. then shortly thereafter the COVID-19 pandemic hit and I isolated. I was just focused on my day-to-day job.

Pihkala: Mm-hmm.

Eklof: But I clearly got mobilized during that meeting. And during the pandemic also my work contract ended and I started applying for PhD positions in environmental psychology. And I was fortunate to be accepted to one and was also lucky to be given the opportunity to study activism.

And yeah, just to round up, at that point, activism was starting to receive more attention in social and psychological research, but it was mostly focused on why people join climate social movements, and much less on what happens after they join. So, yeah, I wanted to conduct research that would hopefully be useful for activists themselves and therefore decided to study what happens after engagement, what enables long-term engagement and also what leads some people to quit and leave their activism.

Doherty:  That's great. Panu, was your take? What did you learn from the, as you were observing the dissertation process? What were the insights that you gained?

Pihkala: Yes, thanks Britta for telling about that. I totally agree that research on disengagement from environmental activism is very rare. In this podcast, we've had conversations with some scholars who have worked more on how people join environmental movements or become more environmentally aware. The work of Luis Chavala for example has been influential in that regard and listeners you can find that episode online also and having history with studies of religion and ecology I found it amusing that the word epiphany is used in some related research so people having environmental epiphanies and that the word comes heavily from religious circles having a some kind of revelation and so it links.

Eklöf : Yeah.

Doherty: Yeah, epiphany, yeah.

Pihkala: Also, know, North American roots of environmentalism and people having deeply formative experiences outdoors, but that can happen also via documentaries, for example. You mentioned Al Gore's documentary and there's several pieces of research and testimony from people all around the world that it's really been influential for many people's lives and being inspired by other people is a major thing here also.

And that leads to the topic of social dynamics more broadly. And I think that in your research there's very interesting content about the dynamics of environmental movements. And of course there's quite special things going on in the 2010s. Let me say that again. And of course there's some really special things going on in the 2020s with the COVID-19 pandemic which made on the street activities more difficult. And in relation to the culture of new environmental movements such as extinction rebellion that you studied a lot in Sweden. And it's easy to see some very good things in their culture, for example, attention to well-being and emotions and many of the topics we discuss in this podcast.

But also there is no hierarchy officially, but you know, in human groups there tends to develop hierarchy even though people say that there is none. So there's some sort of universal dynamics I see discussed in your studies but also some quite special themes from the 2020s and there's many directions to go from here but if you have some thoughts directly emerging from this, Britta, please go ahead.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Eklöf : No, I'm happy to have you lead the conversation what the next direction should be.

Pihkala: Hehehe.

Doherty: Okay, yeah. Well, let me let me jump in. I think this is this is fascinating. So you know, yes, what draws people into groups, and this role of an epiphany or a wake up call is something that I've observed many times in my life. And then many of our guests have a heavy salient experience or learning. And I know

Eklöf : No.

Doherty: Britta, appreciated your research because it reminded me of older research that I had read from the US, that people get drawn into environmental action through factors like learning something, or they already have pre-existing expertise, or they're placed in a position of leadership where then they learn something. They join a committee in their town or something like that, and it puts them in a leadership position.

What I found inspiring was that there was no one path. Sometimes someone's a pre-existing expert and gets drawn in to an issue. Sometimes someone just as a common citizen who learned something like an environmental issue in their town. Many famous environmentalists started just as regular people. And then of course there's that, there's the experience of just joining some committee or taking leadership and then suddenly you have to make decisions for your family or community which then puts you into an action position so that that I found interesting but it seems that things also are less simple now because of social media and because of technology and post covid so what you know what were you finding in your research about both what drew people in and then what what was actually causing them to disengage.

Eklöf : Yeah, well, yeah, I don't write a lot about what drew people in in my research, but for sure I discussed that in my interviews. I'm not sure if I said it, but I interviewed Swedish activists in the Extinction Rebellion Movement in Sweden, and both current activists and former activists.

Doherty: Yeah.

Eklöf : But yeah, they mentioned some kind of epiphany moment, most of them, and then also a process of anxiety and information accumulating within, and then some kind of informational tipping points almost. And then also being offered somehow a hand that drew them into the movement. So it was often through some kind of social connection. A partner or a friend that said, let's go to this meeting. And it was almost the same for me when I went to that lecture with them. But then, yeah. What's happened then when they joined? Many things, of course.

Doherty: Mm-hmm, Yeah.

Eklof: So in my research, I write about facilitators, things, factors that help them stay engaged. And I also write about barriers that were perceived by both current activists and dropouts. But for the dropouts, it was the lack of facilitating factors that could buffer these barriers or just facing too many barriers that made them eventually quit. And yeah, I can mention them briefly now, and then we can jump into one or many later. Yeah. Let's start with the barriers, actually. They are all interconnected, the facilitators and the barriers. But the first barrier mentioned was lack of social connections in the group or not finding one's role in the group. I'm going to keep it short now and just go through them.

So the first one was lack of social connections in the group. The second one, doubting that the strategy and the actions would have an impact. Third, conflicts or disagreements with the group, The fourth, exhaustion. And it could be related to both the activism itself, but also stress in private life. And the fifth one, difficulties with this type of non-hierarchical organization that Extinction Rebellion is, such as unclear leadership roles or decision-making procedures that are perceived unfair and so on. Yeah, guess had I done the interviews today, I think some activists and dropouts would probably also talk about police repression.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Eklöf : That was not a big theme in my interviews conducted back in 2020. But yeah, it has increased since then.

Pihkala: Yeah, thanks for telling a summary of those topics and recent episode of our podcast deals with politics of repression against environmental activists. So listeners, you can find more discussion of that. And actually in Trondheim, when we met with Britta two months ago, we also discussed that outside the main content of the dissertation. The second opponent was Marlis Wullenkord, who has done climate anxiety research in Germany and many kinds of environmental psychology research. So I really enjoyed the good conversations we had and I'm not going to go much into academic culture now, but you know, a dissertation event is the sort of culmination test of your PhD years and there's different cultures in relation to that. A sort of old power hierarchy culture would be that the opponents try to put the defendant into a small position. But we've been wanting to practice what might be called a more feminist approach to science and communication and academic relations where it's more discussion and learning together. And at best, and including my experience in Trondheim, is that everybody can learn if there's that kind of attitude. But also having that history means that I've been reading Britta's work in detail. So I know a lot about that content. those five barriers that you mentioned. Thomas, what's on your mind when listening to those?

Doherty:  Yeah, it's interesting. I've been trying to compare the more modern extinction rebellion experience with what I know of older environmental. mean, environmental groups have been around for generations now. And it does seem to me all of these barriers existed, say, 20 years ago in organizations, know, people being different unless it was a local group where people came from the same place, but any kind of national level group, people would be different. They would disagree. There's always doubts about impact and, but I think everything has been amplified. I mean, as we talk, it's really interesting because when I look at the research from the nineties, and early two thousands, people didn't talk about anxiety because eco anxiety was not surfaced as an issue.

Eklöf : Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Doherty: And so environmentalists didn't talk about feeling anxious. In fact, I think there was more of a sense that they were healthy and they were protecting the earth. So was actually the opposite of anxiety, but we live in different times. So I think all of these factors are amplified by technology, the weight of information, the instantaneous communication.

Eklöf : Right, yeah.

Doherty: people on their screens, social media, which exacerbates all kinds of interpersonal insecurities and relationship issues. So it does seem like a really high stakes. And of course, the stakes of climate change are much higher now. And people have experienced disasters. They have experienced floods, smoke. So we, know, it's like a kettle on a stove that's been turned up to a boil. The same ingredients, I think, where they have been there forever.

Eklöf : Yes. Yes.

Doherty: environmental groups have always been plagued by having charismatic founders that then are difficult to work with and things like that. That's forever. But now, now it's all amplified. what did you find that? How are people addressing this kind of new metaphor, the boiling pot of environmental work? Yeah.

Eklöf : Yeah, in different ways. In my analysis, I write about how people are driven by different motivations. And for people that are engaging because they want to have an impact and they want to have an impact fast, they have these instrumental motivations. For them, that is their main way to deal with it. And if they feel then that the strategy is inefficient, ineffective, yeah, thank you, that was a reason for them to disengage. And then we have another category that appreciated the social context, they found new friends maybe in the movement, and also appreciated that new type of social context that allowed them to share their climate's and validated their concerns and also having those emotions mirrored by others. For them, just being in that social context was another way to, or how to say, another coping aspect.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Eklöf :  Did I answer your question?

Doherty: Yeah, yeah, I think so. And I think it's great. mean, listeners, you can think about this yourself, but I know I, I like to, I see myself as a pragmatist. So if I'm working in a group, I want to make sure that we know what we're doing and, and, you know, we're going to have a, we're going to have an impact.

Or, you know, I flipped to the validation side, you know, where I said, impacts difficult, we might not have an impact at all. It might fail, but that's okay because we must try our values and we must do what we can do. this totally makes sense. So essentially, I think people become more savvy about these internal factors. I'm thinking of like meaning focus coping versus action and emotional focus coping and all these kinds of things. So it seems like there's a there's some sort of effective groups are able to recognize the needs of the individual person, their self, their, their need for support, their need for meaning. Yeah.

Eklöf : Right. I write about also how I write about that in terms of recommendations, a recommendation for organizer that it's good to be aware that people are driven by different motivation and also need different coping aspects. Because in my interviews, I find that it could be a source of conflict actually, when some people were more focused on, they wanted to spend time planning action and discussing strategy. And then we had another click of people in the group wanted to discuss their emotions and using the time and space for therapeutic reasons kind of. And that could be a source of conflict. The ideal case, I guess, would be that the group can acknowledge all these different needs and wishes. And yeah, acknowledge them, talk about them, and solve them collectively maybe.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Pihkala: Yeah, there may be changes in the organization or network. And while in Norway, I was talking with some people who are active in Extinction Rebellion Norway, and I heard that they had actually appointed facilitators. So they had switched to light hierarchy instead of no hierarchy at all. And then some people take more power and others are annoyed and those kinds of dynamics.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Pihkala: And you can, if people listen to me, you can hear that I'm fond of commonly set rules around hierarchy and power. I don't believe that in the long run it functions without having that sometimes difficult discussion that who is using power and just pretending that everybody has equal power. I don't think that works and that has some links to some earlier research and philosophy also.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Eklöf : Yeah, a note on that, maybe a little bit in defense of Extinction Rebellion. But I had one participant, I'm quoting her now saying that Extinction Rebellion was not built as a organization that was going to last for many years. It was built with the goal of mass mobilization and just spreading as fast as possible. And then I think it is an effective way to

have many action and many things happen quickly to just basically allow people to do whatever they want. They don't need a particular meeting and a voting system in place first. So I think it's effective in that sense. But in the long run, problems might arise with that kind of organization flat non-hierarchical structure.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Pihkala: Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. totally agree. And after all, the amount of action and attention that Extinction Rebellion was able to generate in just a couple of years was unprecedented in environmental activism. And then who knows what might have happened with the new wave of climate activism without the COVID-19 pandemic. So that was a big blow to many things. Then we could go also into activist life cycles. Often there's different age groups where people more probably turn to activism, like when you're a student or then when you're nearing the end of your working life and you have more social freedom and that sort of thing. And also during the COVID-19 years, many young activists of the new climate movement, you know, decided that they have to get places where they can study and try to get some jobs and some income in societies where there is less jobs for young people, partly because of technologization and AI lately and so on. So many things are intertwined here. But moving towards the end of our time, time flies so fast when having these conversations. It would be really nice to hear more about yourrecommendations based on your research about how to deal with these barriers constructively. You said already something about it but I noticed more.

Eklöf : Yeah, thank you for asking. So we spoke briefly about the role of the social context and that can be supported by giving newcomers or long-term activists opportunities to engage with different levels of intensity and workload basically, so that they can switch from roles depending on where they are in life. Also, roles, like knowing one's place in the group is very psychologically soothing. And also strengthening social bonds through opportunities to socialize between actions or strategy work, yeah, just relaxed opportunities to socialize basically. Also, you know, having procedures for conflict resolution in place, and as we were briefly talking about now, also frameworks for decision making, some kind of structure for that.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Eklöf : So that's the social recommendations. Also, I mentioned the barrier being exhausted from overwork. So that can be prevented through fostering open conversations about it. And encourage people to share when they feel overworked and encourage people to ask for help if they are overworked. So normalize that kind of.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Eklöf : And then I also mentioned efficacy doubts as a barrier. And that can be. How do you say? You can deal with that through also offering discussions about different ways to think about strategy and impact. We didn't have time to talk about that, but there are many ways to think about impact, no long-term impact, short-term, different outputs to focus on, et cetera. So just to inform activists about that basically.

Doherty: Yeah, yeah, this is great. I think, you know, what we can do today is is for listeners just raise these things because these are all things you're going to experience in a group. You know, are we really making a difference? What should we be doing? A word that you didn't use, which I've what I've heard, which I've heard from, especially in young environmentalists here, like in the sunrise movement is dealing with interpersonal drama, they would say, which is basically kind of individual egos, individual identity processes, people being sensitive, people being young, different levels of experience, life experience in a group, and also understanding of the issues. So it is challenging because more people are doing environmental work now than ever before, and more different kinds of people.

Eklöf : Mmm.

Doherty: the old days where there was an environmental scientist who started a group and everybody just listened to the him or her and followed orders and was sort of like in a in a military band that doesn't exist anymore. So we need much more like I think the takeaway is more flexibility and recognizing the human factors I think is a good way to think about it.

Yeah. And we're going to have links to Britta's papers and things in our show notes. And this is really good for activists and colleagues like in Climate Emergency Fund and people that we know here in the US that are doing, you know, good work on social and social action. So Britta, where's the rest of your evening going here now that we're wrapping up?

Eklöf : I'm actually gonna go downtown and have a glass of champagne actually because we're celebrating a friend who signed a book contract. Yes, and I guess also celebrating my thesis defense.

Doherty: Great, yeah. You didn't mention that, but celebrating victories, small victories is very important to coping as well. So those moments are key. Yeah, so congratulations. Yeah, to you and your friend. Yeah.

Eklöf : Right, yes. Yeah, yes. What are you going to do?

Doherty: I'm just starting my day. I'm redoing my website and I am working on talking to clients and talking to a colleague in Italy about mental health diagnosis and climate change.

Pihkala: Yeah, and it's 7 p.m. in Finland now. I'm gonna take a short walk before having a sauna. listeners of this podcast over the years, because we usually record this time Thomas' morning and my evening. That sounds like a regular thing, which is very true for Finland. Thanks Britta for joining us. It's been delightful to talk about these things.

Eklöf : Good stuff. Thanks. Thank you for having me. I enjoyed the conversation. And nice meeting you both.

Doherty: Yes, thanks and listeners you can learn more or find us at climatechangeandhappiness.com and take care of yourself as you're doing all of your good work in the world and everyone be well.

image credit | Jeremy Bishop

Season 5, Episode 15: A Journey around the Planet (Without Flying) With Thor Pedersen

Thor Pedersen embarked on a decade-long journey, traveling to every country without flying, redefining the limits of Earth-based travel. Join us to learn about the logistics and lessons of Thor’s global trek, revealing how resilience and cultural understanding transformed his mission into a powerful message about climate change and hope.

Links

• Thor Pedersen

  • (2026) The Impossible Journey

  • I visited every country in the world without flying. Here are eight things I learned.The Guardian

  • Man who visited every country without flying has finally returned home (video)

• Other topics discussed in the episode

  • Paul Salopek, walking around the world for National Geographic, the “Out of Eden walk.”

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

Thomas Doherty: Well hello, I'm Thomas Doherty.

Panu Pihkala: I am Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: And this is our podcast, Climate Change and Happiness, the show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about, well, climate change and happiness and our relationship with nature and making a space to talk about some of these global issues and how they manifest in our life and in our values. And Panu and I have been talking for a few years. He's in Helsinki and I'm in Portland, Oregon. And we've been thinking about travel in the world and all the things that we can learn by traveling and meeting different people and we are lucky to have a special guest today. It's going to help us in our conversation.

Thor Pedersen: Yeah, hi, I'm happy to be on board. My name is Thor Pedersen. I'm from Denmark and I'm best known for reaching every country in the world without flying.

Doherty: Yes, and that's exactly true. And I got a chance to meet Thor just recently at a literary festival and got a chance to meet him and see him speak and read his book. I, like many people, learned about his journey. And he is a very unique person. He's traveled all around the world, to every country in the world, without using a plane, which required, I think, I believe, 10 years.

Many, many interesting adventures and logistical challenges to make this happen. And I'm just fascinated by the whole story. I think people who are open to experience and travel are always fascinated by stories like this. It is truly a modern day journey. I thought it would really be great to bring Thor on our podcast and share this with you, the listener, just to take this conversation in a unique direction with someone who's recently had this global experience and see what insights we can have. I know I've got questions and things I'm curious about, but Panu, do you want to get us started?

Panu Pihkala: Warmly welcome Thor also on my behalf and lovely to have Nordic connections online in this podcast also. Travel is something that a lot of people really enjoy. Of course there's in equality globally about who gets to travel and so on, but there's also very different means of travel. In our climate crisis shaped world, many people are having thoughts and feelings about travel, lots of desires to see other countries and meet people, and there's a of good happening out of that, and then people are wondering about the carbon footprint and sometimes about security issues and so on.

In this podcast we've been touching on these themes earlier, but it's been a long time since we did any focused conversation on travel and that's going to be fascinating. What would you like to share from your journey towards the time and place where you are now? How did you become a human person who has done all this and now is trying to balance between various areas of life as many are doing?

Pedersen: Thank you for the welcome and that is an interesting question. So that comprises a connection between who I was in 2013 and who I might have been when I returned in 23 and who I am today. Back in 2013, I was very ambitious and my project was mostly centered around myself, my ambition and doing something which had never been done before. And then from early on, mean, like the first weeks or the first very few months of traveling, it took a turn and it became more about humanitarian work carried out by the Red Cross. I was traveling as a Goodwill Ambassador of the Danish Red Cross and meeting with the Red Cross.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Pedersen: In every country I was going through. And also the meetings that I had with people in every country I went through. And the culture, the food, the history, the scenery, the infrastructure, mean everything that I moved through. I was looking for something positive to share from every country in the world. And that came from my eyes being opened up very early in the project where I was surprised about the level of development or the local beauty. And again, I mean, some of these cities, the architecture and the way people were dressing. And, you know, these were countries that I felt maybe less about. So I was going through some countries where, you know, to the best of my knowledge, they were lagging behind five, 10, 15 years behind in development and then arriving and seeing that's absolutely not the case.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Pedersen: In some cases they were way ahead and also that there are other ways to measure these things. So, you know, I had been to more than 50 countries at the age of 34. was 34 when I left Denmark and I thought I knew quite a lot about the world. then because I was surprised about these countries and how much positive there was to share about them, I came to the conclusion that maybe a lot of other people also didn't know these things. And then I reasoned that media, mainstream media at least, is often quite negative. By default it focuses on the worst of the worst in our world. And everything I was seeing, not everything, but most of what I was seeing was contradicting the news stream. So I felt that I had a role to play as a voice, as someone who would be sharing the positive in every country and promoting every country around the world as if it was the best country in the world. So that was sort of the evolution of my project and then as it grew and got longer and longer and more and more demanding, I also took upon myself a role as an inspiration and motivation to people who want to achieve things in life.

Doherty: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Pedersen: and when asked, talked to people and said, you know, look at what I have accomplished. And I've basically been out here on my own. So you have a team and if you can work together with this team, then just imagine the synergy and how much you guys would be able to accomplish. And I think there's a strong message in that. I also think that there's a strong message in that if you believe in something, if you have a goal and you truly believe in it and it's something you really want, then what are the main obstacles between reaching that goal and failing is your willpower. You will have bad days, it will be difficult. Not everything's going to be rosy red and fun and perfect. And you have to push through those hard patches. And when a door is locked, then you look for another door. And when someone says no, then you smile and say thank you. And you look for someone else to help you. But you find a way forward.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Pedersen: Yeah, so in 2013 nobody knew who I was and nobody would do an interview with me and I didn't have much to tell or say I came back in 2023 and yeah, I had a big online following and wrote a book and we finished a documentary film and interviews and attention and speaking engagements. So my life has been turned upside down. Yeah, I mean, we can, I can keep talking about this, but yeah.

Doherty: Yeah. No, this is great. Yeah, yeah. I like your book and I highly recommend Thor's book because it's also very personal and you talk about your background and your childhood. And you know, like many people, you were lucky enough to have connections with nature and canoeing and being. Early on, I think you found solace and support in the natural world, even alone as a child or when you needed your own space. And so I think you were comfortable on the land. And then, of course, the whole kind of Viking Nordic Scandinavian history of travel, I think that filled your sales, some of those either stereotypes or truth. But yeah, seems to me that, well, we can go in a lot of directions with our podcast

Pedersen: Yeah.

Doherty: It seems like you started off as an engineer, like working on logistics, because it was a big logistical problem. And then you came back more, I don't know, as a humanitarian or as a philosopher or something like that. So there was a huge, huge, huge personality change, I think, you know, or a growing or maturing into yourself. So jump in.

Pedersen: So my travel hero is Ibn Battuta, who was born out of Morocco some many, many hundred years ago. And there is a quote from him, which is that “travel makes you speechless and then turns you into a storyteller”.

Doherty: I love it. Yeah. Yeah.

Pihkala: That's great.

Pedersen: Yeah.

Doherty: Yeah, what are you thinking about Panu in terms of, you you're you talk to people all around the world and you're in, you know, plumbing the depths of different emotions and experiences. What's coming up in your mind?

Pihkala: Yeah, very fascinating to hear your story Thor. Thanks for sharing some elements of that and there would be a lot of stories to tell. I instantly hear that and thinking of our audience of people who are interested about various aspects of how to try to live well amidst contemporary times and you have already touched on quite important teams like willpower and courage but also the ability to ask for help when that's needed. So it seems that it wasn't just an individual hero's journey that you did but there was quite a lot of things going on between you and other people.

Pedersen: Absolutely. I mean, this is something I often stress that not just me, but anyone as far as I'm concerned who reaches every country in the world, if they think they did that on their own, then they're delusional. For me, I know that this was a collaboration with people across every continent and pretty much every country. was an enormous amount of support, sometimes really small support but meaningful and sometimes in the biggest ways imaginable but you know it's not a single person's achievement, this is a multiplayer game.

Pihkala: If you take a look back at these long journeys, is there some experience and memory of somebody really helping you out perhaps in a way that you didn't expect which comes to your mind?

Pedersen: There is, it's a bit of a story. I'll try to compress it as much as possible, but in West Africa, I had been in West Africa for quite some time and I felt that, okay, now I was starting to understand the culture and how things were and handshakes and this and that. And one of the things I clearly understood was that when you get inside a vehicle, then everybody in that vehicle is a team and that whatever that vehicle faces we face it together. So if you're in a bus, a mini bus in a Bush taxi, then you're a team. This was one thing and you do not desert your team. You know, this is one thing.

The other thing that I thought I understood was that quite often when someone pulls on a uniform, then they become unbelievably corrupted and and they might misuse their power. So the story goes that I've been through hundreds and hundreds of checkpoints on small dirt roads in rural areas and whatnot. And I'm in a Toyota Corolla and there three women in the back and I'm next to the driver up in front and we come to a checkpoint.

There is a very corrupted guy there who's blocking my passage and all my paperwork is in order, everything checks out. But it doesn't matter. The game is that they will keep asking you questions until you say you don't know or if you're confused and they will try to press some money out of you.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Pedersen: So I was in this situation and usually I understand it's a game and I do not lose my temper, but this was just it had been building up for many months. And in this situation, I absolutely lost it. And I, you know, I started shouting at this guy and going like, you know, if your country wasn't as corrupt as it was, then maybe it would be a much better country and the roads would be better and education would be better and health care would be better and blah, blah, blah. You know, you're all blocking the way for each other, this kind of stuff.

And at the point when I lose it he starts smiling because he knows now he has won. You know now he has definitely won the situation and while I'm there very very angry one of the women she comes over to me one of the women from the Toyota Comes over and pulls me aside and says just give him $20. It's all he wants then we can all continue and I explode and go like, know corruption is the cancer of a country blah blah blah.

Then the driver comes over and the driver says to me, you know, we don't have time for this. You have to point out what luggage is yours. We'll take it off and then you can stay here and we will continue without you, but we don't have time to wait. And I explode even more. I start shouting “you people have nothing but time. Everybody has time, know. Everything takes 10 times as much time as it's supposed to. You don't need to rush. You don't have deadlines. What are you talking about?” So I'm really, really angry and upset.

And then somewhere in between all of this, the police is also called over and I'm going to get arrested for not having proper paperwork or something like this. So it's a stressful situation. I'm very angry. I have the driver there. I have this woman here. I'm feeling like, where's the team? You know, we're supposed to be a team. What happened to my team? And they're all going against me. And then suddenly this corrupted guy at the checkpoint, he goes, okay, everything is fine. You can continue. And I look at him in surprise. Like he just changed his mind. I go, yeah, I know it's okay.

Doherty: Mmm.

Pedersen: it's okay yes of course I can go and I get back in the vehicle and we start driving and the women are in the back and the driver is next to me and the driver he's smiling and he's holding on to the steering wheel with two hands and he's just kind of having a good time smiling and I'm really upset you know, what happened to the team? so I look at the driver and I say so that was really nice and he's just smiling and driving and I say so you were going to leave me and he's smiling and driving he's not saying anything and then one of the women in the back said, you know, he helped you. And I turn around and I look at her and go, “what do you mean? He was going to leave me.” And the woman said he was never ever going to leave you. What he did was he was pretending. So he put pressure on the checkpoint. And if the checkpoint believed that you were going to be left behind, then the checkpoint would also be under the assumption that they would have to feed you and give you a place to stay. And then I would become the checkpoints problem. So by doing that, he was playing the game. Actually, he was helping.

So in one second, my mind goes from, this guy I thought who was working against me was really working for me, this guy that I was giving a hard time, he was my friend. And you know, this was a very surprising development for me and I learned something about the culture that I didn't understand before. And I grew, I think, in that moment.

Pihkala: Mmm, thanks for sharing.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Pedersen: My pleasure.

Doherty: Yeah, that's, that's wonderful. mean, yeah, I think all of us, have our preconceptions and then I think there's entitlement as a white skinned male. And then there's global culture. I think one thing you confronted and that we've talked about it in our in our podcast is just, you know, the world is a good place and people are good, but there is injustice and there is a history of injustice and colonialism. And so we never know. We never know what stories people hold and what past grievances they have and where we were clueless about this.

And we still have to go and try to be nice and be accepted for who we are as our own self, our own person. I mean we didn't create these past problems yet we have to speak for them. So it seemed like that was also a theme through you were a unwitting white representative of history or something like that as you went through all these countries. And so that seemed like another burden of the trip that you became more conscious of as you went.

Pedersen: Well, yes, I've had several of such encounters. But I've also had a few episodes where I kind of saw something in a different light. One time in Cameroon, I was couch surfing with this really nice guy and his family, wife and children. They had a small house down a slope. There was a busy road and then there was a dirt road heading down to their house and lots of houses following this dirt road.

And this dirt road was terrible, you would barely be able to drive a normal vehicle down it. The water had been ripping this apart for years probably. It was difficult to walk on. It's a really bad road. And one day I was having lunch with him, eating some fish and we're talking and I said, you know, you guys live here. There must be 20 houses around this road. Why don't you just knock on every door and then you agree that next Thursday everyone got to come out with shovels and then you're going to fix your road and your life will be better.

You know, this is the way I saw it. And then he said to me, well, we could do that. But then maybe after one or two hours of working on the road, a government representative would show up and say, what's going on here? Has this been commissioned by government? And then there's a no, no, we're just doing this for ourselves and go like, yes, but this is a government road.

Stop this and who's in charge and you have to come for a meeting with government. And then, you know, whoever organized would then have to head over and sit in a government office and they would ask questions and they would say, so are you competition to the sitting government? And then you might reply, no, I'm not competition. I'm just fixing my own road. The road has been like this for 10 years. Nothing is happening. And then the government would reply, it's in planning.

So don't go back out and don't do anything to that road. It's in planning. And that might mean nothing's going to happen with that road ever, but you just don't even have the chance to fix your own situation.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's interesting. That reminds me of this whole climate hostage phenomenon that I talk about in my book, this idea that people are kind of trapped. Sometimes we're trapped in a system where we can't control the larger world, and we have to learn to make peace with it and find our meaning and find our agency within that. So that's really interesting. Yeah.

Pihkala: Hmm.

Pedersen: I guess, I mean, you know everyone can do something. I mean at the point when you sit down and say there's nothing I can do. It's game over. Everyone can do something and you can do you can find you know concrete action that you can do. You can also just be a voice and you know something I found was that when I left home in 2013 I had a few small interviews here and there and nobody ever asked me if the non-flying had anything to do with the environment. Nobody asked me that question. Nobody cared. then around 2016 or 2017 Greta Thunberg she entered the stage and she did that in such a big way that it changed the way that we speak and the way that we think and the way that so many people see the world and beyond that point I started to get the first questions about so the non-flying is it because is it because of the environment you're not flying and I would explain so and I'll tell you what so no questions back in 2013, 14, 15 now we're in 2026

When I speak to a journalist, they don't even ask. They assume that the reason I wasn't flying was because of the environment. Because that is the world we live in today. They assume if you're not flying for all of that, it's because of the environment. They're not even asking questions.

Doherty: I'm so glad you shared that that's really that's really helpful. And that does indicate how the world has changed. Panu and I have tracked this world. Panu, you were going to say something earlier. Panu, do you have a thought on your mind?

Pihkala: Yeah, that's a great story of how change happens and a lot of things are going on in the world and we know there's lots of trouble but it's also very healthy to try to keep an eye on the things that have gone into a better direction. is that also and the car story reminds me of discussions we had for example with Bob Dobson on this podcast, Bobby is a psychologists and sustainability expert who is advocating for community resilience, or what he calls transformational resilience, or not just returning to the previous state of things, but growing via adversity. As well Matteo Innocenti from Italy, a climate psychologist we also interviewed, is that in when climate disasters and changes start to grow, we will need much more of that “We are in the same team just because we are in the same place” kind of attitude which you described from your time in Africa. But for the listeners I think it would be very interesting to hear that some of your observations about climate change during your travels. Is there something that comes to your mind first about that?

Pedersen: Hmm. Yeah, thank you for asking. This is truly something I never get to speak about. No one ever asks me about this. I have this unique experience of I cannot remember going through a country where people did not tell me that things were out of the ordinary. They said we had so much rain this year. my grandfather is the last one who can remember that we had this much rain where we are. Or they had no rain at all and they say we can't believe it there hasn't been a drop of rain this year or it's the summer came earlier or winter came earlier or the storms were intensified or it's just everywhere I went people were talking about these extreme observations say you know there is no denying the change it is definitely changing in our lifetime and we can see and measure the change. So that was a big eye-opener for me in terms of what we're doing to our planet and what we probably need to do if we want to keep a place on this planet.

Pihkala: Thanks for sharing, very important to hear. Another big time traveler, Paul Salopek has been writing this story for National Geographic “Out of Eden walk” where he started from Africa and has been going through Asia. That was one of his experiences also that everywhere people are actually talking about the changes that climate change is bringing. I think that's something we miss in the Western industrialized world sometimes. That's how much ordinary people all around the world really observe how change is happening. Of course, then resilience, which is a word which was mentioned, highly important. What comes to your mind? Thought about people's resilience and their skillfulness in responding to the changes that have come as a result of climate change

Pedersen: Well, I believe that people are resilient everywhere. It's just not everyone who has been tested yet. Within the Red Cross, Red Cross delegate would tell me, the people here are so resilient. They're amazingly resilient. But I would then hear this again and again and again and again. And, you know, in my experience, people are resilient. People are good at adapting and people are good at digging in if that's what they want to do. So yeah, I think we don't have to worry about resilience, but we're fragile. As humans, we're incredibly fragile. If the storms get much worse and much more frequent, what are we going to do if the temperature jumps to up or down to a degree where our fragile bodies cannot handle it.

I mean, you have entire cities, entire societies that are built up around air conditioning. You go from an air conditioned vehicle into an air conditioned office, back to an air conditioned vehicle, into an air conditioned restaurant, back into an air conditioned vehicle, into an air conditioned home, a gym, a mall, a dairy farm even, which is air conditioned. So what happens when you cut the air condition? And right now with the recent conflict in the Middle East. mean, normally I don't like saying Middle East in that way, but it is truly across most of the Middle East right now. They are worried that they will start targeting these energy plants or the energy supply. If they cut the air conditioning, then some of these cities, they will be in big, big trouble and these people will be in big, big trouble.

That's how fragile we are. You know, at the other end of it, you could be working in the Arctic or Antarctic and someone comes and takes your jacket away. You know, that's basically what would happen in the opposite. So we are super fragile. There's this standup comedian who made a joke about humans inventing helmets.  Humans are stupid enough to know that they're doing things that are breaking their heads, but they're so dumb that they invent helmets so they can continue doing the things that are breaking their heads. And that's humans, right? So we find a way to live where we're not supposed to live or we cannot live. But what happens when conditions change so much that we cannot live anywhere?

Doherty: huh. Yeah.

Pihkala: Hmm.

Pedersen: You know, it's a real risk. All the cities, all the societies, everywhere we have masses, great masses of people. This is near rivers and near coastlines. If the water comes up, I mean, there's only so much you can do. You have to move hundreds of millions of people. Where are they going to go? Kind of live on people's fields? You know, we have to manage this. And if we're capable, then it's definitely on us to do something about it.

Pihkala: Mmm.

Doherty: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting when they research helmets, parents, you know, let their kids do more risky things when they have helmets. So helmet helmets allow us. Yeah, they we are technology does allow us to take these risks. But yes, instead of just stopping the risk, just keep doing it with the right equipment.

Doherty: Well, we've got to we've got to tie up our conversation, although we always say we could go longer. And what often happens is what just happened in our talk. think listeners, you know, we want to come back to the very beginning of what Thor was talking about the idea of resilience and see this idea of toughness and having a goal and then realizing we're never alone because that's what happens.

We learn about the world, we realize that we're fragile, we realize there are all these problems, and then we have to come back to the beginning of our journey and, and pull together our strengths and our team, and our values and our principles.

And I know when people say, “Thomas, don't you get upset, don't you get disillusioned?” and I say I do but everywhere I've ever gone everywhere in the world people care about these issues. And like you say, Thor, they were experiencing them, it's so obvious we are all feeling similarly.

Pedersen: Don't take my word for it. Paul Salopek, said it as well.

Doherty: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so I'm really honored, Thor, to have you here. I mean, it's rare to meet a true adventurer, you know, in that classic sense. So I really it does elevate our conversation. So I'm really, really proud of you and look forward to tracking your adventures going forward. It's a hero's journey where you have to share your message that you gathered over those 10 years. So anyway, let's wrap it up. We're going to put some links to Thor's book and media and I haven't seen your documentary so we'll need to figure out a way to see that and spread this word around. Stay in touch. I know for both of you its late afternoon so I'll leave you to your families and I'll begin my day here. Panu and Thor, thank you very much

Pedersen: Thank you. Absolutely. Yeah, thank you to both of you. Thank you, Panu. Thank you, Thomas. It's been a real pleasure.

Pihkala: Wonderful to talk with you too.

From Mor Keshet

Season 5, Episode 14: Art Therapy for Climate Resilience with Mor Keshet 

Thomas and Panu explored the intersection of art, creativity, and environmental psychology with art therapist Mor Keshet. Join us to discover practical art activities like mandalas and collage that help process climate emotions and foster identity and resilience.

Links 

• Mor Keshet

• Writings

• Integrative Eco Art Therapy: Addressing Humanity's Fractured Attachment to Nature, Ecopsychology (contact author for copy)  

• Post Traumatic Ecology: Learning Emotional Resilience from the Living World, Biomimicry Institute

• When Gratitude Becomes Embodied: The Mental Health Benefits of Nature-Based Awareness, Psychology Today

• Climate Psychology Alliance - North America

• Ariella Cook-Shonkoff (2025) How Interacting With Mandalas Can Heal Us

• Previous Podcast Episode: Season 2, Episode 12: Art Gives Ecological Grief a Body, with Daniela Molnar

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

Thomas Doherty: Well hello, I'm Thomas Doherty

Panu Pihkala: I am Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: And welcome to climate change and happiness. is our podcast. This is a show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about climate change and other environmental issues. And this is a place where we open up to emotions. And today we're thinking about art and creativity and our connections with nature and expression of our feelings and also art as a therapeutic tool. And to help us in this conversation, we are really excited to have a special guest.

Keshet: Hi, I'm Mor Keshet.

Doherty: Mor is a colleague of mine and Panu's from New York City, Long Island. She will tell more about herself in a minute, but she's a well-established art therapist. And we're going to get into this. So this is a creative episode for you all listeners. So you might even want to have something if you're available, something to write with or sketch with as we're as we're talking, because you might have some ideas. Panu, do you want to get us started?

Pihkala: Welcome Mor also on my behalf. Lovely to meet you. I've been following your work online and noticed that you've been using the climate emotions wheel and that easily lends itself to various creative practices and when facilitating workshops, which is what I sometimes do, I love to explore various creative and somatic methods and so on. So I'm very interested in things that you have been doing, but we often start by asking our guests something about the journey towards the time and place and style where they are now. So would you like to share something about how did you end up becoming so engaged with environmental and climate matters and arts?

Keshet: Yeah, well first of all, thank you both so much for having me here. I'm a big admirer and I appreciate, earnestly appreciate everything that you've both contributed to this field and it's wonderful to be here with you in dialogue. So I've been an art therapist since 2005. I went to the School of Visual Arts for my master's in art therapy and I've always been working with people who've experienced overwhelming life events, right? So homeless adults who were mentally ill and chemically addicted, women who experienced sex trafficking, families who were facing separation from one another.

And this really kind of came from a backdrop of being a granddaughter of an Auschwitz survivor. And I've had this lifelong interest, very, very deep interest in what kind of separates people who simply survive and people who really thrive and feel a tremendous sense of belonging and placement in the world. So this lifelong pursuit. for many years, I was kind of developing this integrative creative arts therapy approach and when I came into private practice work, while I myself have a very deep connection to the natural world, I didn't really think about the overlap and how this lends itself, which is a massive understatement, to clinical practice.

When COVID came around and we were all kind of put in this space, working with people who were already experiencing, were prone to kind of acute levels of dissociation, I was kind of confounded by how even more detached, listless, unmoored, the people that I was working with had become when all of these identity-feeding silos of work and school were out of the picture. So on a whim I started suggesting to clients, this was in the spring, right? I started suggesting to clients that we meet in the park. And I didn't change anything. I brought the same materials. I replaced the big butcher block table with a couple of beach chairs and materials that were easy to take around. But I saw almost an immediate and palpable shift. Where all of a sudden, these kind of very narrow narratives of symptomology and trauma stories and kind of repeated patterns were opening. These channels were just opening and resourcing was expanding, sense of place, sense of presence was just becoming so much more apparent and I thought this is fascinating.

And I started reading, eco-psychology, eco-therapy, and more specifically, eco-art therapy, which is still very much a burgeoning field. This is all emergent, right? And I started thinking about how I can be far more intentional in integrating some of what I was learning into my practice. And I also just said, I'm going to start offering groups. Everyone is so freaked out and isolated and alienated during this COVID time, let's see if I can help in some way beyond my therapy practice. And the groups just really started to take off and I joined the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America where I quickly was asked to co-chair our expressive arts committee and to be a regional coordinator.

And I became a faculty member with the Climate Emotions Resilience Institute and just started doing a lot of public facing work with all different kinds of organizations for a nonprofit. And it seemed to kind of coalesce into this paper that I wrote for eco-psychology about integrative eco-art therapy and how specifically it's addressing humans fractured attachment to the natural world. The shift that I have seen over the last six years of bringing this framework into my practice of working with trauma, essentially, working with overwhelming experience, and we are all either experiencing or witnessing individual and collective trauma, you know, on our communities, on our planet, on the more than human world.

It's been a wonderful journey in progress.

Pihkala: Thank you for sharing that sounds fascinating and courageous to take it outside and almost instantly rewarding is what I hear you say. And Thomas, you have a very long history of taking therapy and psychology outdoors, so I know this resonates with a lot of things in your history and mind.

Doherty: Yeah, well, more your story resonates with almost every guest we have has a some sort of origin moment or origin series of moments. And so that's, that's part of it. You know, you know, in this case, we're talking about art therapy and someone's mission or goals there, but it could be almost any aspect of life or what people do for a living. But, but in this case, it's such a rich area.

In my book, I have a chapter on creativity and arts and it was, it was a really, it was one of the most enjoyable chapters that I worked on just because there was so many. I mean, when you, when we start to realize, well, just to step back and you know, we talk about this on our, on the podcast a lot, but this idea of our environmental identity. So we have this identity in relation to nature and the natural world, which for many people can be quite dormant. Like they haven't really been coached to talk about that aspect of their identity, they haven't been coached to talk about their, you know, environmental values or their aesthetic connections or the places that they love or places in nature that really call to them. It's quite common. So almost everyone has this experience.

But you know, it's just not something that's talked about even in school. You know, we tend to, you know, science is you look at nature through science or politics or justice or natural history which is which is all which are all great but there's a whole other piece here which is you know how my connection to nature is shaped by the books that I read and the paintings that I see and the music that I listen to and once you turn people onto that then it's almost endless all the different influences.

I think artists as artists have always been pioneers in environmental consciousness in any age of human civilization so we think of the romantic movement in Europe, the romantic poets or paintings or a poet like Emily Dickinson or, or Walt Whitman. These are, these are people that are masters at expressing all different kinds of thoughts and feelings around nature and the natural world. And, and then that, and we're talking about bringing this into our own lives, you know, us, us partaking of this. And so I think, I know with myself, I've always had to reassure people, you don't need to be some sort of fancy trained artist to do this kind of thing. Cause I think there's a lot of shame and inadequacy with environmental consciousness. Like, I'm not green enough. I'm not outdoorsy enough. I'm not this, I'm not that. So I, I imagine more that that there's something about empowering people to get past their, their limitations about their preconceived limitations about creativity and art.

Keshet: Absolutely, I mean a couple of things that I always tell people and I'm happy to share with your listeners is that we all have an innate desire to self-express. Christopher Henshelwood who is a famous archaeologist in uncovering and deciphering ancient cave paintings around the world. You know, he's talked about the unique symbolic mind of our species. We've seen to have, as far as I know, across species, it's truly singular to our species to create symbol in response to our experience. And symbol, of course, can be visual, it can be written, it can be spoken, it can be moved. So we've had this innate need to literally say with our hands on the wall, I was here and it meant something to me. This meant something. This meant something to me and to the people around me.

And that is a really unique experience, which you do not have to be Picasso to enjoy. And Picasso, of course, famously said that he painted his whole life to learn how to paint like a child. But there's also, there's so many different access points to one's creativity. I also tell people, I don't draw well. I love to be incredibly expressive and spontaneous. there is photography and there's collage and there's lots of different ways that we can give form to image and to symbolic meaning in our minds. It's right there. It's right under the surface. So much of it is just giving ourselves permission, just permission to begin to tap into that primordial, you know, this repertoire. Being creative, didn't used to be something that you had to pencil in. It wasn't a hobby. You it was just an innate quality of being human. And I think it's really time that we kind of recapture that for ourselves.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Pihkala: Well said, well said. The arts and crafts is a fascinating example of this. We have a Finnish word for that. Using creativity when you are making tools that you need in your everyday life. Which used to be still common in the time of my grandfather in Finland. It's been a very rapid transition from the agricultural society to an industrial and urbanized one. And I think there's been many losses which have happened when we lost that ability to somatically and very holistically practice creativity in relation to the daily things we do. It's much more difficult to shape your laptop into something which reflects your style of being in the world. So heavily resonating with this theme of living very literally, I think, is a fundamental dimension here.

Keshet: Yeah, it's an orientation. It really is an orientation to one's life, right? It's Nietzsche's Ubermensch, where your orientation to life becomes that this is, it's all art. know, this is, we have this wild spontaneity, just like the universe and just like the natural world, to create. We are creative beings.

And we're co-creating right now in this dialogue. And if really that becomes our orientation, then in terms of environmental identity, that sense of interbeing, that sense of deep interconnection with the more than human world becomes so profound and so embodied. So embodied. Yeah.

Doherty: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's, let's talk about specific art activities, just to give, give us a flavor of it, even give listeners something that they could take away. I know I've been really interested in writing creative writing prompts, but more what are some examples of, you know, some of the things you do with people, some of the activities you do.

Keshet: Yeah, so I just, I want to preface it by saying that in eco-art therapy, we make art either in or with the natural world, right? So that means when we are actually in a natural landscape, in a blue or green or otherwise natural landscape, in response to the natural world, so through metaphor and symbolism. right, if a person can't easily access the outdoors for illness or being elderly and immobile or whatever it is, really kind of borrowing from nature in terms of metaphor and symbol, and also as material, borrowing from the natural world as material, whether it's incorporating natural objects into forms that we're creating or making pigments, earth pigments, almost anything that you engage with in the natural world can create pigmentation. Even water from different sources. Rainwater is going to have a very different pigment and biological makeup than saltwater and lake water and so on. So that's really kind of important to know, that you can make within this context, it's in response to or in or with the natural world. And in that sense, the natural world really kind of becomes your co-regulator and your co-therapist, so to speak. We as humans are incomparable to what the natural world can teach and lend us.

So the first prompt that I would like to share is the Climate Emotions Mandala Project which was of course inspired by Panu's research and the creation of the climate emotions wheel. When I first started doing climate cafes quite a few years ago now, it seemed kind of natural to me as an art therapist that we're gonna make mandalas. You know, this is not anything that I conceived of. Mandalas have been around for thousands of years and have been represented in just about every culture as a symbol of wholeness. Right? We have mandalas in the sky. It's the first shape. The circle is the first shape that a child recognizes in the face of their parent.

It's kind of this collective unconscious symbol of wholeness. And climate change and the polycrisis are, you know, it's anything, if it's anything, it's traumatic, it's fragmenting. So having this super accessible symbol for wholeness just seemed to be like a natural thing that can help resource people when they're talking about their feelings in response to climate change. So if you want to make your own climate emotions mandala, it's really so easy. You take a stencil, you can make it any size that you want.

But basically you can take like a paper plate or something round and make just a stencil of a circle on a piece of paper. I'm also happy to share my stencil with anyone that wants it. Kind of divorce yourself of anything that you've seen about mandalas, that they need to look symmetrical and eastern and totally balanced. That's not what this is about.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Keshet: What this is about is once you have that stencil, you notice that it has an outside and an inside, just like you have an outside and an inside. you are contending with that interface of how this changing climate, this rapidly changing world, is affecting the interiority of your experience. So you look at the climate emotions wheel. You see these different emotions, probably some if not all of which you yourself have experienced. And you set an intention, you simply set an intention to allow that to channel through you using line, shape, form, and color. There's no right or wrong. There's no right or wrong whatsoever. And you see what emerges.

And then an easy exercise that people can do in response to that, it's a Gestalt exercise where you look at the art piece, you look at your mandala, and you write down very quickly, as if this is not your piece, as if you're seeing it on a wall of a gallery, three to five adjectives that describe simply what it is that you see. And I'm almost tentative to say the second part of the prompt because I don't want for people to censor themselves. After you say these adjectives, you preface them with I am, right? So if you came up with these adjectives of colorful, complex, painful, jarred, overwhelmed, beautiful, right? You can start to see that you are in fact all of these things.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Keshet: You are, in fact, all of these things all at once, right? We can hold so much dichotomy at once. So that is a quick entree to the Climate Emotions mandala. And in terms of other projects, we're talking about the need for resilience, right? So a really kind of beautiful way for people to connect with their own innate resilience is to borrow from the natural world, right? So a prompt that I love to have people make is a river of resilience. What is within this river? Where is it flowing to? You know, what has made this river resilient? Is it the diversity that's there? Is it the foundation of the river? And really looking at that in terms of creating a map for yourself of resilience.

Then of course there is the incredible and always endlessly resourcing symbol of the tree. This is something that is symbolized in Kabbalah, in the world of the chakras, and the tree of life. The tree of life. And really kind of thinking about your roots, what is rooting you, what is foundational in your trunk? What are you reaching out towards? What is in your upper canopy? And what are you hoping to transcend for, right? So there's so many different ways that you can take or borrow from living systems and create art about them in a way that you both learn from these beings in the natural world and learn about yourself at the same time and thereby also create and deepen that environmental identity where you are in tune, you are attuned to the river, to the tree. And I mean, I can go on and on. There's so many different things.

Doherty: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're, if you're following listeners, just, just to be clear, a mandala is typically a circular kind of image and it's often spiritual, but it could be used in a lot of ways just to make sure people knew that term mandala. And if you just Google mandala and look at different mandala figures, you can see it's a universal around the world, but we're talking about making your own. And I've done exercises like this over, over time. In fact, yeah, I can remember even when I was quite young, younger, first exploring my environmental identity, some of the first art exercise I did were quite impactful because some, we've never, we've never opened up this channel of, you say, externalizing, you know, some of our feelings and thoughts in symbols and in beautiful symbols. So, you know, I was looking up the definition of, I was trying to look up the definition of art because it one of these terms we use, but like, what is it actually, what's the definition and you know, one of the, you know, one of the parts of the definition is producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

And I thought that was really helpful, you know, because it speaks to why the creativity is needed, because those are the things that are missing from our environmental experience a lot is beauty and emotional power, especially when you're thinking about climate change. And dangerous, dangerous issues, but also just our own connections with nature, you reclaiming. It doesn't mean there's not problems. And it doesn't mean that all the other parts of reality don't exist. But what we're doing is foregrounding these true authentic experiences of beauty, connection, interbeing, you know, or the boundary of myself and my identity is fluid with nature and place and stuff like that. And then of course, emotional power because there's just really emotions are so hard to express with words, sometimes a picture or a sound or a painting or a sculpture or a physical movement is much more expressive than any language, you know, we could use. So I think it's just speaks to the power of this. What do you think?

Keshet: Absolutely, I mean there's the science of awe, right? And being in the presence of something that exceeds your current understanding of the world. And you don't have to be standing in front of the Grand Canyon to experience awe. A teenage client that I work with told me a few months ago on their way home from school, it was that golden hour, and they saw on the side of a stop sign a fully intact spider's web and that golden light coming through the spider's web. And, you know, as a result of being engaged in this work and this process, they said to me more seeing this and just pondering for a moment what that required and that this creature knows how to do that. I just felt bigger on the inside. And that was, you know, that was so poignant because this process and being able to externalize that, again, either into written or symbolic form or moved form, you know, it allows for that awe to have a space to exist and for you to metabolize it and therefore integrate it.

Doherty: Yeah.

Keshet: And I want to say in regards to the definition, sometimes in response to climate change and the polycrisis art can be quite ugly. Not necessarily beautiful, not something beautiful to behold, right? It can be ugly, it can be scary, can be anything. But there's beauty in that too. There's truth in that too.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Pihkala: Mm, yeah.

Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Pihkala: Yeah, very interesting. I was about to comment the same, that beauty is a quite complex thing actually. I have some colleagues who work with environmental aesthetics. So that means conceptions of beauty and good and the human relationship with the modern human world. It's quite interesting stuff, know, if you have a powerful storm generated by global warming, anthropogenic global warming, are you allowed morally to feel awe in front of it, for example? So it can lead to complex ethical questions for people. I would say that it's always possible to experience quite a lot of emotions and they can be ambivalent, but if we start self-censoring ourselves, that's going to be problematic, but this could lead into a long discussion about beauty and aesthetics and so on.

But Mor, really love your examples and I see a lot of power in them and the interplay between inner and outer for example is so important here and physical objects can help people to grasp that. Collage is a method that I know some people are using like Claude Watfern, a climate psychologist from Australia and luckily as you said, the field is growing but still there's much to be done in this field. So I'm very grateful for the work you and many people are doing.

Doherty: Yeah. And I think it's helpful to realize that this is also a developmental process because once you do get involved with arts, then you develop, then you realize you have a style or you have an aesthetic or a sensibility that's unique to you. So you might, you might gravitate toward the non-stereotypically beautiful, beautiful images or the powerful images of the awful. Awe, like awe, you know, awe or awful, you know, it depends on how you look at it. So, you know, think about this also listeners, it's a developmental piece, you start, you have these epiphanies, and then you, when you do more exercises, you start to see patterns, and growth, and style, and then you then you need to learn, as all artists do to recognize, well, I have my style that I need to kind of stand for my identity, my particular message and truth, but then there are other truths. There are other styles and then there are other modalities like painting or music, whether you're a musician or an artist or a sculptor. And, and then even one exercise I have are things that I've drawn years ago that I'll look at and I'll learn something from today from many, many years ago. That's another piece to these things last over time.

I know in my writing exercises that I've done with people around environmental identity and their environmental timeline where people will, you know, pick out different key points of their life, key, key turning points or key experiences, and then maybe write about that particular experience, something happened when they were a child or something like that, or as a young person. But then, then I might ask them to then rewrite, rewrite that experience from a different perspective in the, in the time like maybe write it from the place's perspective or the other people's perspective or the animals perspective or the sky's perspective, then you could start to look at these experiences, you know, separating yourself out of them and seeing what the other voices are. And then we get into a truly ecological, you know, ecological perspective. And then you can translate that into a short story or a fiction or a poem. So there's no end. There's no end to it. It's just, it's really I think the key thing is permission to use the tools without, like you say, censoring yourself, which is why we need support and we need our therapists and groups and things like that, Yeah.

Keshet: Yeah. Yeah, Thomas, you said many important things just now, and one of them is that images and things that you create, they are like a relic, you know, it's a time stamp. And there's few things that are, I think, as encouraging for a person who has gone through a challenging time, a challenging journey to be able to look back at that journey and to see the evolution and the emergence of a far more coherent and resourced and connected human. And I have seen that across all the settings in which I have worked. And it is so utterly affirming to be able to see the things which have remained resonant because they are true to your authentic self and the things that you have really been able to emerge from. And that quality of physical creation is really unique and really powerful, especially as we are working to help instill cultural repair as people are really shifting away from this hyper-individualized sense of being to a far more expansive sense of being.

Pihkala: Thank you for voicing all that and the word relic is highly fascinating here also. Dear listeners, I hope you've got a lot of ideas that you could do yourself and know, inviting a couple of people you trust and then showing what you have been doing or developing something together. So at the best situation, there's gonna be an arts therapists available, but if not, get active and creative. There's a lot of very good methods and as usual, we'll be posting links to the podcast websites to things that Mor has been doing and others. As always, time flies. It would be very interesting to continue, but we soon have to wrap up.

Doherty: Yes. Yeah, Mor. Thank you so much. This was a great conversation. It's, you know, Panu and I do this podcast, at least me to energize myself and to remind myself of the creative ideas I need to function. hopefully listeners got some things out of this and we'll have a bunch of neat links in the show notes

Mor, Panu, and listeners everyone be well. Thank you very much.

Keshet: Thank you both.

image credit | Dmitri Bong

Season 5, Episode 13: Fostering “Good Mind”: Teaching for Climate Change with Maria Vamvalis

“And when I talk about regenerative ways of being, I'm really talking about interrupting the logics, ways of knowing that these harmful systems have produced in us. So what does it mean to practice logics that are not rooted in supremacy of humans over animals or … what does it mean to practice a slower way, an emergent way that is rooted with connecting with life, connecting with the land? What does it mean to really hold reverence and devotion for life?”

“I believe that our actions to protect and regenerate come from love. That it's the bird song that we love that ultimately makes us want to take action to protect, to regenerate. And so this regenerative field of practice is where we can actually be really unapologetic in our deep longing for love and connection and relational vitality. And … bring that forward as a key medicine and a key frequency that is needed as an antidote to the kind of horror and despair and violence that the systems are currently producing for so many …”

Maria Vamvalis designs learning environments that strengthen collective well-being that help people rediscover their capacity to act together in conditions of uncertainty, through promoting critical thinking and relationship skills. Hear her inspiring conversation with Panu & Thomas. 

Links

• Maria Vamvalis and Anayennisi

  • Vamvalis (2023)  “We’re fighting for our lives”: Centering affective, collective and systemic approaches to climate justice education as a youth mental health imperative” 

• The Critical Thinking Consortium (TC²) Seven Transformative Thinking Habits

• The Association of Canadian Dean's Accord on Education for a Sustainable Future

• Accelerating Climate Change in Teacher Education

• Beyond Sustainability: AI, Education, and Regenerative Futures

• Program Example: Future Climate Collective (Portland, Oregon)

  • 2026 Climathon

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

Thomas Doherty: Well hello, I'm Thomas Doherty

Panu Pihkala: I am Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: And welcome to climate change and happiness. This is our podcast, the show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about, well, you know, a lot of things, issues about climate change and the environment and politics, but mainly we're thinking about what it means to be happy in the modern world. And I'm psychologist and I'm coming at this from a mental health and a wellness perspective, Panu is emotions scholar from Finland. and we've got a bit of an emerging theme on today for education and schools and young people and inspiration and for that we have a special guest with us.

Maria Vamvalis: Hello, my name is Maria Vamvalis. I'm a founder of Anayennisi, a regenerative field of practice and a director at the Critical Thinking Consortium, Canadian not-for-profit.

Doherty: Yeah, we were really excited. We've already been having a neat conversation with Maria and I've been aware of her work for a while. So it's really nice to have her on the show. Panu and I know you, Maria have crossed paths in the past. So Panu, do you want to get us going?

Pihkala: Warmly welcome Maria also on my behalf. Lovely to see you again and continue our talks. You've been up to many things, but there's some common threads in them. What you said briefly about what you have been doing already includes mentions of them. So very holistic and humane and interspecies approach to things. Could you start by telling something about your path towards where you are now?

Vamvalis: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think I've always been really drawn to this deeper sense of interconnectedness, even when I was a child, this sort of relational consciousness that I did not find a lot of mirroring for as I was growing up. I think in many ways it's educated and socialized out of us. But I was really deeply concerned about the environment and, you know, really all the violence that I felt in our society and this drew me to education and wanting to figure out ways that we can teach to create a more beautiful world, know, a more joyful world, a world where we were flourishing. And I started teaching about climate change about well over 20 years ago before it was even in the curriculum because I knew that this was something young people would be dealing with.

And through my experiences as an educator, I just became more and more concerned as I saw the cultural denial and delay around the issue. And I became very concerned about young people's mental health and how education was going to ultimately respond to that. And that led me to doctoral studies where my question was, how do we teach for climate change and climate justice in ways that nurture meaning, purpose and hope? that really support the psycho-spiritual wellbeing of learners. So that's really been part of my trajectory and doing that work and then trying to bring that research really into practice in these times.

Pihkala: Warm thanks for dwelling on that and listeners, if you have listened to previous episodes you'll notice that there's a lot of common between what Maria is doing and what I and Thomas are passionate about and I also have a long fascination and interest towards education and emotions and Maria, I know that you also have some Greek roots. Would you like to say something about that?

Vamvalis: Yes, yes, both of my parents are Greek actually. They're both immigrants to Canada. My mother came when she was six years old, my father later in his twenties. And I think my Greek roots have always been deeply important to me and probably have also influenced in seeing my relatives who really had to come because of colonization and civil war and for many reasons were displaced from land that they truly loved. And seeing the impacts of that displacement on them, I think has always been something that marked me as a person is understanding that and going back to that land and feeling.

I think those ancestral connections and how powerful that is when you recognize your family has tended to the land, has tended the olive trees. And so the regenerative field of practice that I've started is called Anayennisi. And Anayennisi means regeneration, revival, rebirth, renewal in Greek. And it's really an impulse that I think we need to be taking very seriously right now in these times of, well, you know, ecological collapse in many ways is what we're seeing.

Pihkala: Yeah, that's profound. That's profound and the displacement and colonization and also resonating with what is happening globally. That's another angle to this. The world is becoming strange on quite deep levels. do you feel that this Greek heritage has affected your relationship to the modern human world? is it like having two kinds of ecosystems that you easily bond with, the one where you grew up in Canada and the Greek one, or how do you see this?

Vamvalis: Yeah, no, this is, I really appreciate your question actually, because what I want to acknowledge is how it was my privilege of connecting with Haudenosaunee knowledge keepers here in the Canadian context, that actually, I think was the first time that that relational consciousness that I spoke to about was actually deeply mirrored and met. And through those connections was was able to deepen my connection to my ancestral homelands and my sense of that deep responsibility, but also recognizing the responsibilities that I have here to the place in which I live and to the treaty relationships with the First Nations that have been in many ways dishonored in this context. And so it's really connecting my own deep ancestral roots and the love of the land that is part of bringing myself into right relationship with the land and the people and the histories of where I currently live, of where I'm currently situated. So there's really a through line and it's the Indigenous presence.

Pihkala: Mmm.

Vamvalis: and that deep respect for relationality of being in right relationship that I think has so much to contribute to the ways in which we're thinking about how to respond to the current moment.

Doherty: That's lovely. Yeah. So many resonances with other guests that we've talked about. We always ask people their origin story and it often comes back to their place of their childhood and their family and then this larger thinking about the world. And as you're talking, Maria, I think we should just also highlight the special. I think there's a unique Canadian context to this too. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but as I've observed, I grew up near where you live Maria in New York, in Buffalo, New York, but just knowing a bit about Canadian culture. Unlike other countries, in North America in particular, you know, there seems to be this, and Canada is not perfect either, of course, but there does seem to be a much more welcoming attitude to just basic ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. And then a unique kind of Canadian outdoors nature kind of ethos. But also, think openness to the First Nations. And anyway, this it seems like there's more support for this kind of direction toward right relationships. I mean, I've been in Canada at workshops and I've seen the blanket ceremony, for example, you might be familiar with, you know, where the Native ceremony or it shows how the how the Native cultures were slowly kind of picked away through the treaties. There's just an attention like the New Zealand to the treaties like it's much more people are much more aware of the legal rights of native cultures. But you want to speak a little bit about just the Canadian side of this.

Vamvalis: Yeah, well, think, you know, obviously, I think this actually has a lot to do with an educational response that's needed. And we can look at the particular Canadian context, but also think about this from a global perspective as well, which is that if we think about climate emotions as signals, you know, they're signals.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Vamvalis: in many respects of us being not in right relationship with the earth. And if we resist just individualizing them and start to think about them as responses to systems that are harmful, we can look at these roots as, you know, that that coloniality, which has so much about land displacement, of disposability of peoples. Getting peoples off of the land by whatever means necessary. You know, these roots are certainly part of the Canadian context of land dispossession, of residential schools, of destruction of cultures and knowledge systems that are actually profound and sophisticated and have so much to offer. In the Canadian context, there's been a process of what's called truth and reconciliation where these histories and the truth of the histories are really coming to light.

And there have been, there are ongoing efforts to come back into right relationship, to honor, for example, where we live. And it actually affects the area where you lived as well, Thomas in New York. But there was a great law of peace that came after there were many, many wars in this area. And the great law of peace really comes back to the fact that having a good mind, you know, being a good mind. So we're thinking about this podcast as being about happiness or, you know, that the good mind is a mind that does not seek to harm others, including the more than human world. And if we think about the great law of peace as actually the citizenship law, you know, in this region that has been erased, coming back into right relationship is coming back into that good mind that we do want to see the flourishing of all life, that that is actually an impulse that we have as human beings to connect and to feel relational vitality and reverence and beauty and joy. And it's really systems that interrupt that, that are part of the extraction, you know, without any constraint.

Extraction of the earth without any constraint, whether it's, you know, to, you know, be so violent to get what it is that you need. This is really underlying so much of what we're currently facing. Like the systems that we're in have actually created the complex emotions that many of us are contending with. And to bring it back into that wider perspective. So that's, I see as a through line.

Pihkala: That's fascinating and reminds me of a phrase I haven't been thinking of in years coming from the dissertation studies time which is by Joseph Siddler this American earth-minded theologian and humanist and the line is, abuse is use without grace. Abuse is use without grace. So that's from roughly 1961. that was an early sermon on environmental matters, but really resonating with what you say, and having the right mindsets and the deeper dimensions of what is meant by morality and even by style. What is the style in which we are in the world and treat others? Whether those others are humans, humans or not, so I think you are really going to the heart of this podcast also, so how to live a meaningful and good life in the classic sense. So not just a good life of having lots of luxuries, but what is really good.

Doherty: Hmm. Yeah, good mind. love that. I love that term. Yeah, and so we've done a good job on the high ground of, I think, tracing out some of the some of the ethics and the vision of this work. Let's think about teachers and teachers in public schools, because Maria, I know you're actually the ground that you're working in is the school system. And that's an area that always needs more support everywhere, I find. So for teachers in the audience, let's think about them and our listeners. Like what are some of the practical things that you're doing in schools or what are some of your initiatives? I'd be curious about that.

Vamvalis: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've actually there's there's a number of things that we've done. One of the things we've done is that we've actually had a national online climate education course that that actually have taught co taught with a Haudenosaunee educator to bring these ideas of truth and reconciliation and, you know, decolonization, bringing that together with climate action.

And bringing really holistic responses so that with teachers, we actually talk about supporting the climate emotions, making that a part of how we teach. Because if we only taught students the scientific evidence and projections, we all know that's very dispiriting in many ways. And then we're not actually making the space for what will arise when young people are realistically encountering the scope and scale of ecological harm. But one of the things through my work with the Critical Thinking Consortium is that we actually look at the challenges around youth mental health, which are caused by a whole series of things, you know, intersecting, and to actually intentionally teach what we call the transformative thinking habits. So through a research-informed process, we've identified seven transformative thinking habits that we believe actually help transform some of the complex climate emotions into a deeper sense of agency, including collective agency in order to tackle these issues. So critical mindedness, relational thinking, courageous thinking, visionary thinking, accepting discomfort in learning, being inquiry minded.

If we actually teach the curriculum through these thinking habits so that, and especially in the context of AI, we wanna keep a focus on thinking, and nurturing that thinking and seeing these thinking habits as a profound way to engage any subject really, that we can teach history through a visionary lens, visionary thinking and inspire it to engage the climate crisis. So that's another piece is really scaffolding how we do that work in classrooms.

Doherty: Yeah. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought in the AI as well, because that's the danger is people kind of naively kind of outsource their thinking, so to speak. AI, of course, doesn't think I'm trying to stay away from actually the term artificial intelligence, because it's really more of a problem, you know, learning machine that's based on statistics and binary thinking. It's not thinking in the same way that humans think, you know, with our heart and our gut and our mind and all this other stuff. But yeah.

Pihkala: Yeah, that was actually what I was going towards here. that's very fascinating those thinking habits. And what do you think, Maria? Are they also partly affective habits or emotional habits?

Vamvalis: Yeah, so I think when we talk about the holistic thinking, mean, when you're thinking holistically, I you really are engaging mind, body, spirit. And so when we're looking at thinking, it's not just a cognitive act. know, are thinking, we are engaging more holistically with how to approach learning and bringing the whole learner. And I think actually that distinct Indigenous knowledge systems, when you look at their educational approaches, they actually center the learning spirit. know, they use this term, Dr. Marie Bautiste here in Canada, in the Canadian context, talks about the learning spirit and that this is central to education, that we nurture the spirit. And I think we can, I think we could absolutely have a conversation to talk about the climate crisis as being something that is destabilizing not only the psyche, but really the spirit of people that the systems that we've created are harming the spirits of young people as they're thinking about if these systems are not interrupted, if they're not shifted, there's such dispiriting projections for the future.

And so I think it's helpful to actually, you know, invite us to talk about the spirit, you know, the underlying spirit, which is about again, being in right relationship to all that is, that interconnectedness, that we've been separated from the epistemologies that so many of us are trained in disrupt that way of knowing, that way of being.

Doherty: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. “Dispiriting “is another great, great term because spirit also is just if we if we if we just divorce it from the mystical side spirit is just this inspiration is just this motivation. It's our breath. So it's like getting your breath knocked out of you, so to speak. How does it look? What is some of these transformational habits actually look like in the in the classroom with an actual education topic?

Vamvalis: Yeah, so for example, let's come back to this idea of the treaty relationships being really important in the Canadian context and wanting to invite students to think historically if we're inviting them into history education, but a way for them to engage with that history. it's not just studying the past in this kind of, you know, inert, let's look at the facts of history. we could invite visionary thinking by giving them a really rich inquiry question, like what would our community look like 10, 20, 50 years from now, if we began to truly honor treaty relationships. And we open up this inquiry that's visionary, in which they have to actually understand the history of treaty relationships.

And so really rich inquiry, critical inquiry is such a powerful way of engaging learners, of supporting mental health and wellbeing, and actually being intentional about the way we're scaffolding these transformative thinking habits, you know, so that we're encouraging that kind of visionary thinking, but rooted in evidence, rooted in oral histories, rooted in making connections systemically about what happened in the past and where are we now because we've dishonored treaties? What might be possible if we honor treaties? And you can feel the sort of richness and engagement of an inquiry like that and bringing that to life because our schools aren't necessarily, they're not therapeutic spaces in that way, but they are meaning making.

They can and should be meaning making spaces. And that's what engages us. And that's what invites our wholeness as learners to come in. And to use that to actually reimagine and think regeneratively, I think would be so powerful in this current context.

Pihkala: Hmm. Yeah, that's wonderful and resonates with many things in creative pedagogies in Finland also. And I'm tempted to talk more about the Finnish situations, but I will not. How has the reception been, Maria, for the work you and others are doing in this sphere?

Doherty: Yeah.

Vamvalis: Yeah, actually, we've had a lot of really positive engagement. So one project I was involved in is we've had a climate camp that's been led by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Dr. Hilary Inwood, the Eco Schools and our largest school board. We've collaborated to do this professional learning in the summer and brought some of these frameworks together. And you know, teachers have reported that they feel more energized, that they feel more capable and more confident of really bringing these issues forward and teaching in ways that nurture climate action and agency. And that's the big piece is nurturing collective agency in the way we do this work. With the transformative thinking habits, as we're continuing to engage educators and system leaders. We've seen again a lot of enthusiasm and excitement because people feel that sense of possibility. And I think that is really, important in this moment when so many people are feeling quite heavy and feeling a lot of despair and anxiety. So we've seen a lot of really positive reception to these more holistic approaches to this work.

Pihkala: That's very good to hear. In Finland, experience of many of us working with education and teachers is that even relatively short interventions which build resources and encourage people to be in touch with also difficult emotions and then moving forward to how to build collective agency and efficacy. So that's very powerful. Of course, there's the challenge of how to invite those teachers who are not so motivated in the first place to start coming towards these meterials. But anyway, one has always to start where we are and not everything can be at one spot just testifying to both the potential and some of the challenges from the Finnish side.

Vamvalis: Yeah, absolutely.

Doherty: Yeah, yeah, this is yeah, this is great. So pedagogy is one of those terms, you know, for listeners, that's like, you know, your theory of education, the teachers, the teachers sort of way of educating. it's one of those words that signal we're thinking we're thinking about our teaching and we're going to school about it. Yeah. So let's just stay with the teachers, because I think, you know, teachers just really do deserve support. I know I was at a climate conference last year and was a bunch of educators and education leaders talking about climate education. And I just was struck by how top down it was that even though the values and the content was good, was just all, I just felt it was just loading the teachers with so much, what the teaching standards and they have to get this information and that information. I remember saying at the group that I was with, know, what about the teachers themselves?

Like they, I think the danger is a lot of teachers don't feel confident to teach this material because they don't they haven't worked through their own environmental identity. You know Maria you're so eloquent about your culture and your background and you've clearly sat with it and worked through it but most teachers I think just haven't really thought about this. They're so I don't think they have the person skills sometimes to do this kind of work or how do we support teachers to do their own much like with therapists you have to do your own work first how can this is kind of a large just general question but like how can teachers do their own work?

Vamvalis: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's so important. And we actually at the Critical Thinking Consortium speak a lot about the inner work and how we sort of look at a Mobius, you know, like a Mobius strip, and this idea that there's no, there's no really distinction between the inner and the outer and that when we're teaching, like, our practices are, are actually so much grounded in our own beliefs as educators and how we are in the classroom has so much to do with, you know, who we are and the kind of reflexivity, you know, the really thinking about our mental models, our belief systems, our assumptions. I do think that, you know, there's many intersecting issues here. And again, this is why we can't really separate the systemic dimensions and just individualize because we've got education systems that may work at cross purposes, that in many respects, they're oriented toward educating for jobs on a burning planet right now. And so there's one issue is, you know, what is the purpose of education currently? You know, I do believe it needs to shift toward regenerative, you know, and planetary flourishing as being the purpose of education. And the work will come from that. I do think that teacher education programs really taking this seriously. So we're fortunate in the Canadian context that the Canadian deans for schools of education have actually signed an accord saying that the climate and nature emergency must be taken seriously. And we're starting to see more and more uptake in teacher education programs around this. I'm seeing signs of that as well in the United States. Some states and districts are doing this work, of course, in others, not at all. And in fact, we're going in the opposite direction. So it's uneven globally, but there's momentum and movement. I think teachers finding communities of practice is very important.

What often happens, and I found this in my research, that there'll be one teacher who's the eco teacher or the tree hugger teacher, and the school will be like, check, that teacher has us covered. And that is not the approach we need to be taking. We actually need, you know, communities of practice. So I've also been doing work with the school board here that we're building a climate education leadership program for the most motivated teachers. So they've got a space to come together and not feel alone within that larger system. And we believe in kind of doing these levers of systems change. You know, that's been part of my approach is, you know, building those communities is part of this. So even teachers taking online courses and finding others, you know, and not feeling alone. But yes, the inner work is really, really important.

Pihkala: Is this Anayennisi connected to that or more specifically what I'm asking as we come towards the close of this episode, time always runs out. What do do via that field of practice?

Vamvalis: Yes. Yeah, Anayennisi is really the place, it's a field of practice for people who want to practice regenerative ways of being. And when I talk about regenerative ways of being, I'm really talking about interrupting the logics, ways of knowing that these harmful systems have produced in us. So what does it mean to practice? Logics that are not rooted in supremacy of humans over animals or, you know, what does it mean to practice a slower way, an emergent way that is rooted with connecting with life, connecting with the land? What does it mean to really hold reverence and devotion for life?

What does it mean? Because I believe that our actions to protect and regenerate come from love. That it's the bird song that we love that ultimately makes us want to take action to protect, to regenerate. And so this regenerative field of practice is where we can actually be really unapologetic in our deep longing for love and connection and relational vitality. And you know, bring that forward as a key medicine and a key frequency that is needed as an antidote to the kind of horror and despair and violence that the systems are currently producing for so many and of course, inequitably around the world.

Doherty: Hmm. So you're such an eloquent speaker. It's just really great to listen to you. It's why we do this podcast. So I could get my, my own batteries recharged. That's so nice. I really appreciate all of the things you're saying. Unapologetic in our deep longing. That's in our deep longing. That's just such a nice, we're so far away from the, you know, the situation in the US right now is so dire. I feel like what we're talking about is, you know,

I think a lot of people are afraid in the United States because of our current government and they are afraid of even having conversations like this, or at least some of our superficial leadership is so far away from this kind of true cultural building, true knowledge that it is radical. It is very radical.

Vamvalis: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And really it's interesting because we look at the roots even of what's happening in the US and that kind of situation. We think about all these things we've been talking about and how certain ways of being of exploitation, of dominance, of hierarchy, of extraction that creates this kind of harm and fear and separation from relationality and really the joy of life. The joy of life is in the connection, it's in the loving. And why we've chosen to organize ourselves as human beings, you know, or why our systems have organized themselves is something we need to do really deep inquiries into and come back to that deeper knowing of what it is to be a good mind, coming back to the good mind, right? A good human being. And I think that this, the connections and the relationships is what forms the resilience that we need to counter the fear, to counter the kind of fear that's being really unleashed in the world.

Pihkala: Well said, very well said, I think. Even though we are over time, it reminds me of this Greek word, Spoudaiogeloion. Sorry for butchering the pronunciation, but that's the old concept for being grave merry or practicing earnestness. Spodio, Geloion. So that's the combination of comedy and tragedy and being so serious in your joy that it's able to hold both. So because of your Greek roots, just wanted to get it out there. But greatly enjoyed this conversation and very, very grateful for all the work you do.

Vamvalis: Thank you.

Doherty: Yeah, thank you Maria. Yeah, thank you.

Vamvalis: Thank you. It so nice. It went so fast. You're right. It's so lovely.

Doherty: Yes, that's what we say. Yeah. Well, listeners, we yeah, Maria, listeners, and, Panu. I want to thank everyone for the time. We're going to put a bunch of links to this community of practice and the Canadian Dean Accords and a lot of the really juicy things, especially for, know, for educators out there. This one is I mean, this is for all of us, but especially for educators out there. We only you know how challenging it is to to work in the classroom with truly holding mental health and well-being and trying to find joy. So we'll put this episode out. It'll be out soon and we'll have links to Maria's work, and Maria and Panu and listeners, everyone be well.

Panu and Thomas explored the increasing vilification of environmental and social protest. They reviewed research on the "repertoire of oppression” that state and corporate groups are employing such as disingenuous application of laws regarding terrorism and organized crime to non-violent, legal protest actions by the public and advocacy groups. These tactics enable more oppressive and violent police action, that in some cases are used to justify brutality,  killings and disappearances. While these repressive acts are typically associated with authoritarian states, they are alarmingly being used in democratic societies including Finland, the UK and the US. At the same time, counter-movements are also using legal methods to pursue more strenuous charges of “ecocide” and “climate atrocities” and practicing new and creative forms of resistance and grass roots organizing. As Panu noted, oppressive government actions can have unintended outcomes, for those who stand for Earth: Criminalization unites us even more. 

image credit | Juliette Jarvis

Season 5, Episode 11: Revisit Your New Year’s Resolutions from a Systems View

Panu and Thomas reflected on the passage of the winter season in Northern climes, lengthening daylight and earliest signs of spring. Thomas shared ways for listeners to revisit their New Year's goals and resolutions from a systems view – not just as singular actions but as ways of creating a healthy synergy in one's life. He highlighted that small changes – forgoing unhealthy food or drink, starting a new exercise plan, or doing a daily journal – can lead to broader changes in your life and relationships. Adding something demonstrably healthy will tend to beget health. Taking away something demonstrably unhealthy will tend to beget health. It’s the synergy. And further – resolutions should be seen as part of a larger system, where your personal health improvements influence and connect with broader social and environmental systems. This approach works because it reframes your resolutions as part of a larger, interconnected whole, making them feel more meaningful and impactful, which can motivate you to pursue them with greater commitment. And, it’s not too late to start. 

He and Panu also validated pressures for political action in service of justice and human rights that listeners may be experiencing given threats to civil liberty in the US and other places. Can listeners imagine their individual impulses to greater health as part of their quest for societal health?   

Links

• J. M. Berger (26 Jan, 2026) Anatomy of Extremism: What ICE Is Revealing in Minnesota | The MIT Press Reader

• Martin Niemöller, German Lutheran Pastor “First They Came…” 

Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and brevity.

Thomas Doherty: Well hello, I'm Thomas Doherty.

Panu Pihkala: I am Panu Pihkala.

Doherty: And welcome to Climate Change and Happiness. This is our podcast, a show for people around the globe who are thinking and feeling deeply about the personal side of climate change, other environmental and global issues, and particularly their emotional responses and their feelings and their coping. So we hold the space here for the inner game of this work.

I’m coming in as a clinical psychologist who's worked in this area for a number of years and Panu in Finland, an emotions researcher who's been doing a lot of the deep unpacking of a lot of these emotional concepts that's been useful for researchers and therapists so this is our podcast and we're speaking at the beginning of 2026 and coming into late January, early February, a really interesting time on the kind of seasonal calendar. Panu, how are you doing today and how's the weather in Helsinki?

Panu: Greetings from a very cold and snowy Helsinki. So with global warming, one never knows what the winter is going to be like in Helsinki. And even earlier on, because of the Baltic Sea, it was more random than in inland Finland. But now for practically a month, we've had sub-zero temperatures and snow.

Doherty: Mmm. Yeah.

Panu: And today in the morning it was minus 19 Celsius, so quite brisk, brisk weather but beautiful, high pressure, sunlight, white snow. So that gives energy to people and that's been good. How about you, Thomas? I know that you've been traveling quite intensively in relation to speaking about your book. Have you had any chance to recover from the travels yet?

Doherty: No, not really actually. You know, on another episode we'll talk in detail, but because of my new book I've got a chance to travel and do book talks and I've been in Europe. Over the last few months I've been in the US and also in Europe and also in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates for the Emirates Book Festival, which was a lovely...

Kind of, I would almost go so far as to say life-changing experience only because I got to spend time in a very different part of the world and meet people from around the world. And so I will say though, even with all the upheaval in the world right now, politically in the US, for example, and in Iran and just all the different things that we're dealing with, it proved my, my travels have proved my point that wherever I go, I run into these really gifted people that are quite dedicated and reflective about their lives and being ethical and working on climate change and helping the earth and being expressive. So I just really feel a sense of connection, you know, with people around the world. So it really counteracts my impulse to feel disillusioned about humanity and how effed up everything seems to be.

Panu: Hmm.

Doherty: So anyway, that's a short little place where I'm sitting. But you know, there's a lot of, it's an interesting time. I think right now, people start the new year with big ideas about what they want to do, or sometimes they do, and then here we are, get into, now we're into the year a little bit. Changing so I think it's just an interesting it's just an interesting time of the year to stop and reflect and check in and things like that so anyway to more formally answer your question I'm looking for some home time and to be here in my place.

Panu: Yeah, thanks for sharing sounds very understandable and looking forward some other time to get deeper into your travel experiences.

Doherty: Yeah. So we were talking about this idea of New Year's resolutions and what happens with them after a month or so. Is that something interesting to follow up on little bit?

Panu: Yeah, lots do that also. And then there's all the newspaper and social media discussions about how well or badly the following of those resolutions went.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I thought, you know, I thought it would be a good thing to think about because I'm sure many of the listeners, you folks out there have, well, I will make a broad generalization that people that listen to this podcast are conscious of their health and conscious of being a healthy person, both physically and mentally, socially, spiritually, all those dimensions, and are trying to be a part of the solution, trying to be their best self. I think that's, like, you and I share that, and I think our listeners share that, too. So I'm just imagining a lot of listeners either had goals in their life already or started the new year with a sense of wanting to take on a health behavior or let go of something or add something, which is totally natural and healthy. And it does support, as you say, culturally. This is kind of a meme in the news cycle about resolutions. And I think the shadow side of that, think, is that it's easy to make fun of people when they're trying to change, make fun of people when they're trying to be healthier, and kind of almost cut them down and say, we'll see these resolutions don't work.

And it's superficial and it's fake. But I think it's important to get underneath the superficiality of it and really understand it, because it is an impulse to being healthy. And people like a fresh start and an ability to cut through some of the old habits to start a new one. So I think we have to be really compassionate to ourselves. But I've seen in my work with people as a psychologist and a therapist, we talk about this a lot. But can I share a little bit about what I've learned about this?

Panu: Yeah, that would be very interesting.

Doherty: Teah, yeah. I mean, my latest thinking about it is that, you know, when you're thinking about New Year's resolutions, it's not only about the action, like the singular action, like, I'm gonna do, in the US, there's a thing about,or actually internationally doing like a dry January where people like for, know, take a break from it using any alcohol.

Panu:  Tipaton tammikuu in Finnish. Tipaton tammikuu which means dropless January, literally translated.

Doherty: I like it. That's better. A dropless January. You know, and apparently that started from a woman who was training for a marathon or something and it became a meme. But it's actually remarkably common and it speaks to people's, well, speaks to the amount of alcohol people have, but it also, people are realizing there's a lot of impacts to alcohol and oddly enough, younger generations are using much less alcohol and people are much more conscious about alcohols, negative effects, cancer, and things like that. But that's just one example of a New Year's resolution. It could be to exercise more, to be more physically fit, or to find a new relationship, or to change your job, or to fix up your home.

And those are all healthy, I think the problem in society is that people take it linearly and focus on the action. And so the success is predicated on whether you do the resolution or not, how long, so-called give up on it or surrender and so there's this impulse like to say “I'll just just surrender to society” that's not the right way to think about it. it's about the synergy you know, it's this it's a synergy because your life is a system so like when you change one thing, one small change can spark systemic change and I think that's the way to think about it. So listeners if you did have a resolution then think about what you were trying to do and how it affected your larger life because that's where the change is really.

Like for example if someone did try to do a dry january and not drink alcohol, then if you don't drink alcohol, then you have to do something else. You have to have something else to drink. You have to experiment with other enjoyable beverages. But if you don't drink, then it changes your body, and your body's not processing the alcohol and all the sugar and all the effects there in your brain. So it'll often change how people sleep, change their sleep patterns. They'll have more or less energy. They might need less other drugs. Like if someone's drinking a lot, then they don't sleep well. Then in the morning they have to drink a lot of coffee or tea to caffeinate themselves. And so that changes that. And then you might be more inspired to exercise because you're feeling healthier and then you exercise more.

It's that synergy that's really the key. And it could be keeping a journal all as your resolution or going to a yoga class You know or fitness class or playing an instrument doesn't really matter, but it changes your life. So adding something. I mean my general rule of thumb I think is that just like with cooking if you add a good ingredient to the recipe It will make the recipe better, a good healthy, you know fresh ingredient or if you take away something that's not good, then it will make the recipe better. you know, that's the goal. health is really this combination of things. So, you know, it's the synergy. So it's not too late to come back to this.

Panu: Mmm.

Doherty: You know, even now in late January, early February, this is actually the time where whatever information you gain from your life change, then you can actually act on it. So like the resolution January is like the test run. So anyway.

Panu: Yeah, it can be a return to resolutions February. And anyway, making the resolutions reflects your values and there may be very valuable commitments there.

So that's also something. And when we go into environmental and climate behavior, that commitment is highly important. And there will be ups and downs anyway in the practical choices we make, even though we make the commitments. But if we stay true to those values and commitments, that's a lot.

Doherty: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And in fact, I think each season brings its own health invitations too, because when it's certainly when it's the least in the Northern Hemisphere, when it's the spring and the weather warms and, you know, I just saw a video yesterday from an outdoor therapist in the UK and was talking about the green man archetype, know, the green man story in Celtic countries. But, you know, you start to see the green man pop out when the leaves are starting to, are starting to, you know, the little buds and things like that. But anyway, spring warm, warm weather that just sparks people to be more active and outdoorsy.

So that's an invitation. The summer is an invitation to yet another thing. The fall is an invitation to another, you know, another kind of set of behaviors and then the winter. So each season, each season has its invitations to health. But the key is like, don't give up. You can still start and it's not about the resolution only. It's about how it changes your life. If anything, it just makes you more conscious of autopilot behaviors, you know,

Panu: Mm-hmm.

Doherty: When I was traveling, I got into a, and when I went to Europe and Italy, they have a lovely, many lovely traditions of drinking, drinking a aperitif or all these kinds of really nice things. And then you get, you get totally used to it very quickly. You know, your body habituates to these things and then, you know, can you, can you shake up your, your nervous system? Essentially you become more conscious, you know, cause we, we try and you try something new and it's addicting and we're conscious of it for a while. And then suddenly it just becomes autopilot behavior.

Panu: Yeah. that can easily happen. Health and ethics are quite closely connected here. I know many people whose New Year resolutions are ethical decisions, trying to do something more or better for the world. If we take these concepts such as one health, for example, which pays attention to how the health of the planet and people and other creatures are all connected.

This connection between health and ethics and resolutions becomes ever more prominent. So hopefully that can also be sparked different times of the year. And I know that we both follow the old rhythms of nature and the festivals associated with them. So there's very interesting content in them also in relation to what kind of ethical questions and basically themes about life tend to arise in a given season.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Yeah, what kind of what are some of the ethical things you've experienced people working on?

Panu: Yeah, some people might commit to giving more to charity, for example, or trying to commit to doing voluntary work for the greater good more regularly. And that, course, is often powerful if you can form a habit towards the target of the resolution. So if it becomes part of the daily or weekly rhythm, it's much more probable that one keeps on doing it. But as we have been talking here, it's always, of course, also possible to return them if we fail to follow them. So those kinds of ethical things. in Finland, the Christian tradition is much present in culture.

And this traditional half-day between winter solstice and spring equinox. It's called Laskiainen. So it's been taken over by the idea of Christian time of fasting and Shrove Tuesday.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Uh-huh.

Panu: Is the most common name. It also has an element of going downhill on snow with sleds and different kinds of nice things we've developed in the Nordic countries that you can go downhill with. So it's like going down, descending traditionally to the fasting period, but also celebrating that it's like a carnival in its literal meaning. Saying goodbye to eating meat. That's the etymological root of the Carnival and Shrove Tuesday is an example of that. So people's resolutions to do good, sometimes in Finland, are also linked with this fasting period. And for example, the Protestant Lutheran Church in Finland has been trying to advocate for an ecological time of fasting. So that it would have a pro-environmental behaviour dimension. That's not a very popular or widespread thing in Finnish culture, but some people do it.

Doherty: Mm-hmm Yeah, yeah, that's that's what's lovely about all these holidays could you get the Mardi Gras Carnival holiday here and the yeah the Ash Wednesday and in the Catholic faith and lent Yeah, yeah, I think all of these speak to a really human tendency and need to repent, to recover, to, well, to celebrate, but also to duty, you know, what is our duty? In my book I talk about, your duty is literally like you know what is due? like what is due from you to the world? And so this conversation does move you know rather quickly to the social and political realm and justice.

Panu: Hmm. Mmm.

Doherty: And which in a natural way actually because I think then systemically people move from changes in their own body and their own small circle of health to like what is my ethical duty to the larger world. that's, you know, listeners, that's perfectly normal too, because again, from a systems perspective, these are all nested, linked up systems. My physical health is part of the larger system of nature and my family and community is part of larger social systems and political systems, national systems.

Panu: Mm-hmm.

Doherty: It is all connected. It can seem really confusing. But if you have that, you know, in my book, I talk about, know, people have this scale vertigo where there's, you know, there's so many scales of things, they're just dizzy with, with the news and different levels of things. And so that's, that's, that's like level two, that's more advanced New Year's resolution work, right? Because you realize, okay, how can you understand your small change, like whether it be something as mundane as writing in a journal each morning or walking more or exercising more or taking a break from alcohol or sugar or something like that. How does that, how can that possibly link to the state of the world? But it does because we're part of the world, we're part of nature and so when we become healthier, the world around us becomes healthier and then it, practically it gives us energy, more energy to be out in the world doing things. So it is all linked together. So it's not selfish, it's not selfish or egotistical to work on your personal health.

But you know for some people, know, the drive is to do more social work. In my book, you know, in the action section, you know, I'm trying to help people do, you know, as I say in my book, know, unburdening your conscience frees up mental energy for taking action. But what then? One of the most common barriers to environmental action is lack of clarity about what actions can have a true impact. Right. So then we then then we start to question, does it matter? You know, is it worth it? You know, my actions. But that's where this idea of ceremonial behaviors comes in, which I talk about, which is that, you know, some of these actions are ceremonial. They don't they're not going to change world by themselves. Like if you recycle, know, or exercise or recycle, or plant a garden, or go to a march, you know, or do any any of these things. But they're ceremonial in the sense that they do stand for your values. They're a way for you to broadcast your values publicly and stand up for yourself. So the metaphor is like if someone's doing martial arts, they might go into their dojo where they do their training and there's a ritual to bow before you go into the dojo or to the practice space or someone goes into a church, might, like a Christian church or a Catholic church, they might kneel or in the Catholic face, they might have the holy water and cross themselves or take their hat off in a church, all these kinds of things. Those are just ceremonial behaviors, but they stand for respect and value. So that actually means a lot.

Panu: Yeah, they work on people, that's true. Yeah, so they might not cause very much visible change in the world, but they may be linked with who you are and how you are in the world. So there may be sort of hidden power in them, even though they may seem purely ceremonial. This could lead into discussions about various things. In life and also religion including rituals and ceremonies and so on but perhaps we'll go there one day. We have been touching upon that in some of the previous episodes also.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, to tackle that for in my book for people, I, you know, I differentiate between ceremonial behaviors, which are things that we do that might not necessarily change the world, but do stand for our values, and we shouldn't dismiss them or belittle them. And then low-hanging-through, which is sort of behaviors that are fairly easy to do right around us that we can do those things that are just, you know, right there. And you know, and then real change is where we really have to dedicate ourselves to making change. you know, low hanging fruit might be just saying, my friend goes walking every morning, so I'll join them on their walk, or I'll join a club, or I'll do something that's fairly easy and easy to get into. But then the real change is like, okay, I'm really pushing myself, whether it be an exercise routine or really going through a detox from some substance like sugar or alcohol or really making a life change, letting go of things that are painful to let go of.

I see a clear a clear analogy to what's happening around politics in the US, particularly around the crisis in Minnesota with the really heavy-handed federal paramilitaries, know, rounding up people in Minnesota and the protests and then the deaths and the shootings. You know, it's really awoken a lot of a lot of questions and crises in the United States a lot of a lot of ongoing crises are reaching different boiling points. And for some people, the ceremonial behavior is looking at the news, talking about it, potentially going to a march, or joining things that are easy to join. And then the real change is where people really will put themselves in a place of danger or try to obstruct violence and things like that, or change the government. And that's a personal choice. That's a personal choice level, going from the ceremonial things to the actual easy things to the hard things. But that can happen when we devote ourselves and take time. I think the danger is to avoid what I call theater, or in the book I call it climate theater, because it's about climate change, was basically pretending, acting as if you're making a change when you're really staying in your comfort zone. So that's one of the hard personal questions is that, how do I judge my actions? Am I being more theatrical about it or am I really devoting myself and putting myself into a change zone?

Panu: Yeah, and there might be of course different levels between the low hanging fruits and the hard stuff. And then requiring various levels of commitment and courage. And people in Europe, including Finland, have also been following closely what's going on in Minnesota and Minneapolis. And that takes a lot of courage to go to the streets and try to work for the greater goods. there also the dynamic is present that if everybody thinks that why would I be needed, then there is no group power. But then this old question of the interconnectedness between individual action and collective action, it requires the individuals to get out there and then you have collective action, which can be very, very, very powerful.

Doherty: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and so, you know, we'll wrap it up for today, but this, just to realize that your personal resolutions, you can recover these and they're systemic and they do lead, they do link to your larger conditions in the world. And if you have questions about this, feel free to reach out. can find us at climate, hello at climatechangeandhappiness.com,

I'll put a link in the show notes to a really interesting story about in-groups and out-groups around extremists, because we have a lot of extremism in the US right now, violence. you can be in the in-group of the extremists in the sense of being like a white person in relation to like a white supremacist, but you can also, as a white person, resist the white supremacist and the violence that they're doing. But then that puts you in danger. And so it's kind of interesting to think about all that. But you had a poem that you were thinking about earlier. Maybe we can remind ourselves of that poem as we finish up, Panu

Panu: Yeah, I've been thinking about it in relation to what's going on in the States. So that's the poem by Martin Niemöller, a German Lutheran pastor. He was thinking about the events in Germany in the 1930s. And I know that this is written in places in public in the US also. So this is how it goes.

First, they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

So with gratitude to all the courageous ones.

Doherty: Yeah. Thanks, Panu. Yeah, I haven't heard that poem in a while and it is unfortunately highly relevant right now in the world. So can you stand up for yourself in various ways? know, the message is if you stand up, people in power need to stand up for people that are powerless, I guess you could say. And if we keep giving away our power, then eventually someone will have power over us.

So these are huge questions. These are big world-changing questions, but we focused personally today listeners on your own life and realizing it's not too late for you to recover your impulse to health and lessons you've learned from any resolutions and remember is the system. So again, even certainly with the politics as well small actions small healthy actions can grow and have systemic effects. And so it's your freedom to decide what level you want to work on, but encouraging everyone to try to be their best self and to do it in connection with other people that can recognize it, just like and I recognize our efforts together.

So Panu, I'll let you go into your evening and taking care of your boys. And I'm going to get into my day and everyone be well.

Panu: Take care.